Omar Khayyam - a life (29 page)

Without more ado, the donkey entered the building, and the workmen asked Omar how he had made it do so. He replied that in a former life the donkey had been a lecturer in the academy, and therefore was unwilling to enter it again, until recognized!

In Nizam's
Chahar Maqala
there is an enlightening bit about soothsayers and their royal masters. This particular anecdote deals with Sultan Mahmud and one Abu Rayhan, a scientist and astrologer who was unfortunate enough to make a twofold prediction, doubly displeasing to his royal master. The prediction came true. Mahmud imprisoned Abu Rayhan, but eventually recovered his good humor and released the talented culprit.

"Kings are like little children," Saltan Mahmud explained frankly, "in order to receive gifts from them, it is necessary to speak according to their wishes. It would have been better for Abu Rayhan that day if one of his two prognostications had been wrong. But give him a horse caparisoned with gold, a robe of honor, a satin turban, a thousand dinars, a slave, and a handmaiden."

Then he scolded the offender, saying, "If thou desirest to profit from me, speak according to my desire, not according to the dictates of thy science."

The chronicler adds that after that day Abu Rayhan altered his practice, and agreed with the king, right or wrong.

From this
Chahar Maqala
—Four Discourses—of Nizam of Samarkand I have taken many incidents of this book, such as the riddle of the four doors, propounded to an astrologer.

The main events in this book, the major incidents, the scene itself, and perhaps half of the actual dialogue, are drawn from the reality of that day. They are retrieved from contemporary writings, or traditions, and are not invented.

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Reality in the book.

Most of the characters are shown as they appear in the evidence of that time. Hassan ibn Sabah is easy to draw; his peculiar genius left its stamp on the writings and thoughts of his generation; although his own commentary on events was lost when the Mongols burned Alamut more than a century after his death—destroying at the same time that extraordinary library of the Assassins*—many writers have quoted from his book, and I have been at pains to collect these references hidden in the Persian and Arabic chronicles. The details given about the "magic" of the Assassins are all actual, although they are attributed to another remarkable leader Rashid ad Din, grand master of the Syrian branch of the order. Even the trick of reading sealed letters by judicious use of messenger pigeons is true, with the really ingenious and rather bloody trick of making the head of a dead man speak from a blood-filled tray.**

(By the way, these anecdotes of the magic of the masters of the Assassins appear in these sources as actual miracles written down by zealous disciples. I am responsible for the explanations, but I am pretty sure of them.)

Nizam is presented as he appears in the historical sources, as is Malikshah, although occasionally as in the latter's remark upon the evils of spies, the actual words were spoken by his father Alp Arslan. Ghazali's life is known sufficiendy to indicate his character. Jafarak, Mai'mun, Isfizari, Mu'izzi are historical characters, portrayed as the evidence reveals them. But except for Mu'izzi, little is known about them.

So this book is a pattern of old mosaics, set in their proper places. It is not a portrait, because we have no sitter for a portrait, and the book had no plan at its beginning.

It is a story, told in the oriental manner. It is a
Maqamat
— a collection of episodes told as a story. Little was written in Asia at that time, and much was repeated from man to man. So we have more spoken tradition, like the
hadith
of the Arabs, than written records. So, likewise, when we study Omar's time, we are confronted with the recitals of eyewitnesses rather than historical records. History as an art was almost unknown in medieval Persia before the coming of the matter-of-fact Mongols with their Chinese secretaries. And certainly the European novel was undreamed-of.

This book is called a life, because the author did not know what else to call it. It is a work of pure imagination, based upon reality, in the oriental manner.*** Its author believed that, as Genghis Khan could be portrayed more faithfully by turning back the clock to the twelfth century in the Gobi Desert than by modern character analysis or a historical dissertation, so something of Omar might be revealed by a re-creation of the incidents and setting of his time, told in the manner of that time and place. And for this attempt I can best apologize in the words of Cunninghame Graham, in the latter's Preface to Wayfaring Men:

"So I apologize for lack of analysis, neglect to delve into the supposititious motives which influence but ill-attested acts, and mostly for myself for having come before the public with the history of a failure to accomplish what I tried; and having brought together a sack of cobwebs, a pack of gossamers, a bale of thistle-down, dragon-flies' wings, of Oriental gossip as to bygone facts, of old-world recollections."

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Our knowledge of Omar.

History yields us almost nothing that is certain about Omar. We believe he was the court astrologer of Malikshah's reign; we are convinced that he wrote most of the quatrains popularly ascribed to him; we know his work upon algebra, his commentary on Euclid, his research into the deep intricacies of mathematics and astronomy, and his creation of a new calendar. He had the House of the Stars in Khorasan. Malikshah, it seems, esteemed him, while Ghazali quarreled with him. His grave is at Nisapur; he was past his boyhood in 1073, and he died "some years" before 1135.

So much for established fact. We have traditions, beginning with Nizam of Samarkand's recital, and ending in vague latter-day remarks of the sixteenth century. These inform us that he was:

An unhappy philosopher.

A defender of Greek learning, and a follower of Avicenna's (Abu Ali Sina's) teaching.

The arch freethinker of his time, indolent and yet a great worker upon occasion, brusque in manner, endowed with a caustic wit, a quick temper, and a keen memory—once he rewrote a volume word for word after reading it seven times.

The greatest thinker of his time.

Other traditions have it that he avoided argument if possible, but gave tongue without restraint when aroused, that other scientists respected him—at his approach people would give back, saying "Here comes the Master"—while the religious groups in general disliked and perhaps feared him. Apparently he was spied upon by the rival sects. And at times his life was threatened.

It is said that he never married, and there seems to be no record of children.

These traditions yield a fragmentary but clear impression of a man's character. We can add to them the negative conclusions that he did not meddle with the politics of his time; that while he accompanied Malikshah at times, upon that Sultan's travels, he did not appear to be a courtier such as Mu'izzi. In fact he appeared to be the exact opposite of Mu'izzi.

So we have certain indications of a man going his own way in solitude, appealed to by others but independent of their thought. Next, by his remarks scattered through the Algebra, we discover that he had mastered such advanced processes as equations of the third degree solved by geometrical means,, and the use of hyperbolas, which he did not learn from the Greeks, and which were not relearned in Europe until Descartes. He also had studied still more difficult problems—"some of them impossible," he says.

In the introduction to his Algebra he writes:

"However, I have not been able to concentrate my thoughts on it, hindered as I have been by troublesome obstacles. We have been suffering from a dearth of men of science, possessing only a group as few in number as its hardships have been many. Most of our contemporaries are pseudo scientists, who mingle truth with falsehood, who are not above deceit, and who use the little that they know of the sciences for base material purposes only. When they see a distinguished man intent on seeking the truth, one who prefers honesty and does his best to reject the falsehood and lies—avoiding hypocrisy and treachery—they despise him and make fun of him."*

Shahrazuri, who wrote the "Recreation of Souls" about a century after Omar's lifetime, supplies us with an interesting afterword upon his character:

"His eminence in astronomy and philosophy would have become a proverb, if he had only been able to control himself."

There is no doubt that we are dealing with a penetrating mind of extraordinary ability. That he suspected that the earth revolved upon its axis is simply an assumption. Some of the Moslem scientists of his century did believe it. But in expressing such an opinion they would be faced with the antagonism of orthodox Islam.

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The Wheel of Heaven quatrain.

At least once Omar suggests in a quatrain that he conceived of the earth as turning upon its axis. The
rubai
beginning
In chark-i-falak
, I have taken as follows: