in his quiet collegiate days, at Naishápúr. One of the countless victims of the Assassin's dagger was Nizám-ul-Mulk himself, the old school-boy friend.' "Omar Khayyám also came to the Vizier to claim the share; but not to ask for title or office. The greatest boon 'you can confer on me,' he said, 'is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune, to spread wide the advantages of Science, and pray for your long life and 'prosperity.' The Vizier tells us, that, when he found Omar was really sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted him a yearly pension of 1200 mithkáls of gold, from the treasury of Naishápúr. "At Naishápúr thus lived and died Omar Khayyám, 'busied,' adds the Vizier, 'in winning knowledge of every 'kind, and especially in Astronomy, wherein he attained to a 'very high pre-eminence. Under the Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained great praise for his 'proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favours ' upon him.' "When Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar was one of the eight learned men employed to do it; the result was the Jaláli era (so called from Jalal-u-din, one of the king's names),-'a computation of time,' says Gibbon, 'which surpasses the Julian, and approaches the 1 Some of Omar's Rubáiyát warn us of the danger of Greatness, the instability of Fortune, and while advocating Charity to all Men, recommending us to be too intimate with none. Attár makes Nizámul-Mulk use the very words of his friend Omar [Rub. xxxi.], “When Nizám-ul-Mulk was in the Agony (of Death) he said, 'Oh God! I am 'passing away in the hand of the Wind.'" 6 accuracy of the Gregorian style.' He is also the author of some astronomical tables, entitled Zíji-Maliksháhí,” and the French have lately republished and translated an Arabic Treatise of his on Algebra. "His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyám) signifies a Tent-maker, and he is said to have at one time exercised that trade, perhaps before Nizám-ul-Mulk's generosity raised him to independence. Many Persian poets similarly derive their names from their occupations; thus we have Attár, ‘a druggist,' Assár, an oil presser,' &c. Omar himself alludes to his name in the following whimsical lines : Khayyám, who stitched the tents of science, Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned; "We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and that relates to the close; it is told in the anonymous preface which is sometimes prefixed to his poems; it has been printed in the Persian in the appendix to Hyde's Veterum Persarum Religio, p. 499; and D'Herbelot alludes to it in his Bibliothéque, under Khiam :—“ "It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this 'King of the Wise, Omar Khayyám, died at Naishápúr in 'the year of the Hegira, 517 (A.D. 1123); in science he was 'Though all these, like our Smiths, Archers, Millers, Fletchers, &c., may simply retain the Surname of an hereditary calling. 2 "Philosophe Musulman qui a vêcu en Odeur de Sainteté dans la Fin du premier et le Commencement du second Siècle," no part of which, except the “Philosophe,” can apply to our Khayyám. 6 ' unrivalled, the very paragon of his age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, who was one of his pupils, relates the follow'ing story: 'I often used to hold conversations with my 'teacher, Omar Khayyám, in a garden; and one day he said 'to me, 'My tomb shall be in a spot, where the north wind may scatter roses over it.' I wondered at the words he 'spake, but I knew that his were no idle words.1 Years after, 'when I chanced to revisit Naishápúr, I went to his final ' resting-place, and lo! it was just outside a garden, and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden 'wall, and dropped their flowers upon his tomb, so as the 'stone was hidden under them."" Thus far-without fear of Trespass-from the Calcutta Review. The writer of it, on reading in India this story of 1 The Rashness of the Words, according to D'Herbelot, consisted in being so opposed to those in the Korán: "No Man knows where he shall die." This Story of Omar recalls a very different one so naturally-and, when one remembers how wide of his humble mark the noble sailor aimed-so pathetically told by Captain Cook-not by Doctor Hawkesworth-in his Second Voyage. When leaving Ulietea, "Oreo's last request was for me to return. When he saw he could not obtain that promise, he asked the name of my Marai-Buryingplace. As strange a question as this was, I hesitated not a moment to tell him Stepney,' the parish in which I live when in London. I was made to repeat it several times over till they could pronounce it; and then 'Stepney Marai no Tootee' was echoed through a hundred mouths at once. I afterwards found the same question had been put to Mr Forster by a man on shore; but he gave a different, and indeed more proper answer, by saying, 'No man who used the sea could say where he should be buried.'" Omar's Grave, was reminded, he says, of Cicero's Account of finding Archimedes' Tomb at Syracuse, buried in grass and weeds. I think Thorwaldsen desired to have roses grow over him; a wish religiously fulfilled for him to the present day, I believe. However, to return to Omar. Though the Sultan" shower'd Favours upon him," Omar's Epicurean Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Súfis, whose Practice he ridiculed, and whose Faith amounts to little more than his own when stript of the Mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide. Their Poets, including Háfiz, who are (with the exception of Firdausi) the most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar's material, but turning it to a mystical Use more convenient to Themselves and the People they addressed; a People quite as quick of Doubt as of Belief; as keen of Bodily Sense as of Intellectual; and delighting in a cloudy compound of both, in which they could float luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and the Next, on the wings of a poetical expression, that might serve indifferently for either. Omar was too honest of Heart as well as of Head for this. (however mistakenly) of finding any Providence but Destiny, and any World but This, he set about making the most of it; preferring rather to soothe the Soul through the Senses. into Acquiescence with Things as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain disquietude after what they might be. It has been seen, however, that his Worldly Ambition was not exorbitant; and he very likely takes a humorous or Having failed perverse pleasure in exalting the gratification of Sense above that of the Intellect, in which he must have taken great delight, although it failed to answer the Questions in which he, in common with all men, was most vitally interested. For whatever Reason, however, Omar, as before said, has never been popular in his own Country, and therefore has been but scantily transmitted abroad. The MSS. of his Poems, mutilated beyond the average Casualties of Oriental Transcription, are so rare in the East as scarce to have reacht Westward at all, in spite of all the acquisitions of Arms and Science. There is no copy at the India House, none at the Bibliothèque Imperiále of Paris. We know but of one in England: No. 140 of the Ouseley MSS. at the Bodleian, written at Shiraz, A.D. 1460. This contains but 158 Rabáiyát. One in the Asiatic Society's Library at Calcutta (of which we have a Copy), contains (and yet incomplete) 516, though swelled to that by all kinds of Repetition and Corruption. So Von Hammer speaks of his Copy as containing about 200, while Dr Sprenger catalogues the Lucknow MS. at double that Number.' The Scribes, too, of the Oxford and Calcutta MSS. seem to do their Work under a sort of Protest; each beginning with a Tetrastich (whether genuine or not), taken out of its alphabetic order; the Oxford with one of Apology; the Calcutta with one of Expostulation, supposed (says a Notice prefixed to the MS.) to have 1 "Since this Paper was written" (adds the Reviewer in a note), "we have met with a Copy of a very rare Edition, printed at Calcutta in 1836. This contains 438 Tetrastichs, with an Appendix containing 54 others not found in some MSS." |