Omar Khayyam
Omar Khayyam was born at Naishapur in Khorassan in the latter half of
our Eleventh, and died within the First Quarter of our Twelfth
Century.
The Slender Story of his Life is curiously twined about that of two
other very considerable Figures in their Time and Country: one of whom
tells the Story of all Three. This was Nizam ul Mulk, Vizier to Alp Arslan the
Son, and Malik Shah the Grandson, of Toghrul Beg the Tartar, who had
wrested Persia from the feeble Successor of Mahmud the Great, and founded
Seljukian Dynasty which finally roused Europe into the Crusades. This
Nizam ul Mulk, in his Wasiyat--or Testament--which he wrote and left
as a Memorial for future Statesmen--relates the following, as quoted in the
Calcutta Review, No. 59, from Mirkhond's History of the Assassins.
'One of the greatest of the wise men of Khorassan was the Imam
Mowaffak of Naishapur, a man highly honored and reverenced,--may God
rejoice his soul; his illustrious years exceeded eighty-five, and it
was the universal belief that every boy who read the Koran or studied
the traditions in his presence, would assuredly attain to honor and
happiness.
For this cause did my father send me from Tus to Naishapur with
Abd-us-samad, the doctor of law, that I might employ myself in study
and learning under the guidance of that illustrious teacher. Towards
me he ever turned an eye of favor and kindness, and as his pupil I
felt for him extreme affection and devotion, so that I passed four
years in his service.
When I first came there, I found two other pupils of mine own age newly
arrived, Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-fated Ben Sabbah. Both were
endowed with sharpness of wit and the highest natural powers; and we
three formed a close friendship together. When the Imam rose from his
lectures, they used to join me, and we repeated to each other the
lessons we had heard. Now Omar was a native of Naishapur,
while Hasan Ben Sabbah's father was one Ali, a man of austere life
and practise, but heretical in his creed and doctrine.One day Hasan said to me and to Khayyam, "It is a universal belief that
the pupils of the Imam Mowaffak will attain to fortune. Now,
even if we all do not attain thereto, without doubt one of us will;
what then shall be our mutual pledge and bond?" We
answered, "Be it what you please." "Well," he said, "let us make a
vow, that to whomsoever this fortune falls, he shall share it
equally with the rest, and reserve no pre-eminence for himself." "Be
it so," we both replied, and on those terms we mutually
pledged our words.Years rolled on, and I went from Khorassan to
Transoxiana, and wandered to Ghazni and Cabul; and when I
returned, I was invested with office, and rose to be administrator of
affairs during the Sultanate of Sultan Alp Arslan.'"He goes on to state, that years passed by, and both his old
school-friends found him out, and came and claimed a share in his
good fortune, according to the school-day vow. The Vizier was
generous and kept his word. Hasan demanded a place in the
government, which the Sultan granted at the Vizier's request; but
discontented with a gradual rise, he plunged into the maze of
intrigue of an oriental court, and, failing in a base attempt to
supplant his benefactor, he was disgraced and fell.After many mishaps and wanderings, Hasan became the head of the Persian
Ismailians, a party of fanatics who had long
murmured in obscurity, but rose to an evil eminence under the
guidance of his strong and evil will. In A.D. 1090, he seized the
castle of Alamut, in the province of Rudbar, which lies in the
mountainous tract south of the Caspian Sea; and it was from this
mountain home he obtained that evil celebrity among the Crusaders as
the OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS, and spread terror
through the Mohammedan world; and it is yet disputed where the word
Assassin, which they have left in the language of
modern Europe as their dark memorial, is derived from the hashish, or
opiate of hemp-leaves (the Indian bhang), with which they
maddened themselves to the sullen pitch of oriental desperation, or
from the name of the founder of the dynasty, whom we
have seen in his quiet collegiate days, at Naishapur. One of the
countless victims of the Assassin's dagger was Nizam ul Mulk
himself, the old school-boy friend."Omar Khayyam also came to the Vizier to claim his 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 mithkals of gold
from the treasury of Naishapur."At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, '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 favors upon him.'"When the Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar was one
of the eight learned men employed to do it; the result
was the Jalali era (so called from Jalal-ud-din, one of the king's
names)--'a computation of time,' says Gibbon, 'which surpasses
the Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.' He
is also the author of some astronomical tables, entitled
'Ziji-Malikshahi,' and the French have lately republished and
translated an Arabic Treatise of his on Algebra."His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a Tent-maker, and
he is said to have at one time exercised that trade,
perhaps before Nizam-ul-Mulk's generosity raised him to independence.
Many Persian poets similarly derive their names from
their occupations; thus we have Attar, 'a druggist,' Assar, 'an oil
presser,' etc. Omar himself alludes to his name in the
following whimsical lines:--"'Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science,
Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned;
The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,
And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!'"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 Bibliotheque, under Khiam."'It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this King of
the Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at Naishapur in the year of the
Hegira, 517 (A.D. 1123); in science he was unrivaled,--the very
paragon of his age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, who was one
of his pupils, relates the following story: "I often used to hold
conversations with my teacher, Omar Khayyam, 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.<4> Years after, when I
chanced to revisit Naishapur, 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 that 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 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 Favors 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 Sufis, whose Practise 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 Hafiz, 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 composition 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 of Head for
this. Having failed (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 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 Bibliotheque Nationale 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
Rubaiyat. 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
alphabetical order; the Oxford with one of Apology; the Calcutta
with one of Expostulation, supposed (says a Notice prefixed to the
MS.) to have arisen from a Dream, in which Omar's mother
asked about his future fate. It may be rendered thus:--"O Thou who burn'st in Heart for those who burn
In Hell, whose fires thyself shall feed in turn,
How long be crying, 'Mercy on them, God!'
Why, who art Thou to teach, and He to learn?"The Bodleian Quatrain pleads Pantheism by way of Justification.
"If I myself upon a looser Creed
Have loosely strung the Jewel of Good deed,
Let this one thing for my Atonement plead:
That One for Two I never did misread."The Reviewer, to whom I owe the Particulars of Omar's Life,
concludes his Review by comparing him with Lucretius, both as
to natural Temper and Genius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances
in which he lived. Both indeed were men of subtle,
strong, and cultivated Intellect, fine Imagination, and Hearts
passionate for Truth and Justice; who justly revolted from their
Country's false Religion, and false, or foolish, Devotion to it; but
who fell short of replacing what they subverted by such better
Hope as others, with no better Revelation to guide them, had yet made
a Law to themselves. Lucretius indeed, with such
material as Epicurus furnished, satisfied himself with the theory of
a vast machine fortuitously constructed, and acting by a Law
that implied no Legislator; and so composing himself into a Stoical
rather than Epicurean severity of Attitude, sat down to
contemplate the mechanical drama of the Universe which he was part
Actor in; himself and all about him (as in his own sublime
description of the Roman Theater) discolored with the lurid reflex of
the Curtain suspended between the Spectator and the Sun.
Omar, more desperate, or more careless of any so complicated System
as resulted in nothing but hopeless Necessity, flung his
own Genius and Learning with a bitter or humorous jest into the
general Ruin which their insufficient glimpses only served to
reveal; and, pretending sensual pleasure, as the serious purpose of
Life, only diverted himself with speculative problems of
Deity, Destiny, Matter and Spirit, Good and Evil, and other such
questions, easier to start than to run down, and the pursuit of
which becomes a very weary sport at last!With regard to the present Translation. The original Rubaiyat (as,
missing an Arabic Guttural, these Tetrastichs are more
musically called) are independent Stanzas, consisting each of four
Lines of equal, though varied, Prosody; sometimes all
rhyming, but oftener (as here imitated) the third line a blank.
Somewhat as in the Greek Alcaic, where the penultimate line seems
to lift and suspend the Wave that falls over in the last. As usual
with such kind of Oriental Verse, the Rubaiyat follow one
another according to Alphabetic Rhyme--a strange succession of Grave
and Gay. Those here selected are strung into
something of an Eclogue, with perhaps a less than equal proportion of
the "Drink and make-merry," which (genuine or not)
recurs over-frequently in the Original. Either way, the Result is sad
enough: saddest perhaps when most ostentatiously merry:
more apt to move Sorrow than Anger toward the old Tentmaker, who,
after vainly endeavoring to unshackle his Steps from
Destiny, and to catch some authentic Glimpse of TO-MORROW, fell back
upon TO-DAY (which has outlasted so many
To-morrows!) as the only Ground he had got to stand upon, however
momentarily slipping from under his Feet.