Omar Khayyam - a life (10 page)
The camp of Malikshah in the ruins of Babylon by the swift waters of the Euphrates. Early spring of the year 1075 in the calendar of the Christians.
The pavilions of the nobles—and Omar traveled with the personal following of the Sultan—had been pitched in the palm groves along the shore. Behind them stretched the huge mound of broken brick walls and heaped-up sand that had been Babylon. Omar had spent some time wandering curiously over these ruins. The Sultan, however, when he was not hunting, like to sit and watch the antics of dancers and conjurers.
A courtyard of the ruins had been hung with tapestries, and a flight of marble steps had been covered with a rug, to furnish a stage for the King and his mountebanks, and in the cool of one evening Omar was summoned thither.
"Eh, thou watcher of the stars," Malikshah greeted him pleasantly, "sit, and watch with me these dogs of mine."
A place was made for Omar on the carpet. Below him the dance was in full swing. The leader of the mountebanks made his own music; bells upon his shoulders chimed in cadence, while his fingers thrummed on a saddledrum bound to his waist. His loose hair whirled about his head as he wheeled and stamped in his dance.
Suddenly stopping, the chief performer flung himself down before Omar and crooked his hands for a reward, bright eyes peering up through the tangle of hair. Omar tossed him a coin which he spun expertly upon a ringer tip, leering the while.
"
Ai jagudar,
" he cried boldly. "Ha, magician! I can summon hailstones down, or raise a sandstorm up. I can read thy thoughts."
"Then," Omar smiled, "thou art a true magician."
"That I am, by the stars of the She Goat line, by the lightning that strikes the star gazer! Thou art thinking that I am a foul rogue, yet thou art afraid of me."
His eyes glared fixedly, and Malikshah, who had been amused, looked at him curiously.
"Now read my thoughts, star gazer. Nay, tell me but one thing—if thou canst."
His shaggy head wagging, he peered up at Omar. "Tell me," he said quickly, "by which gate I shall leave this court. See, there be four gates—east, south, west, and north. Four gates, and by which one shall I go forth, O prophet of the stars?"
Omar would have laughed aloud. But a glance at Malikshah startled him. The Sultan was leaning forward intently, as if the
luti
and the astronomer had been two swordsmen matched against each other.
"That is but a little thing," said Omar slowly, "and——"
"Thou hast great skill, men say. Now name the gate by which I go."
The other mountebanks gathered behind the speaker, and the Sultan's attendants edged closer to hear the better. Malikshah waited expectantly. Omar started to explain that the observation of the stars had nothing to do with such trickery: yet the words did not leave his lips. He realized that the Sultan was convinced that he could read this man's mind. No reasoning would alter Malikshah's blind superstition.
Too late he understood that this strolling player meant to trap him, and that he must match the other's trickery with his wit, if he could.
"Bring me a pen—paper," he said impatiently.
A secretary came forward and knelt, to offer him a small roll of paper and a quill pen. Omar took them, while he pondered. To match trickery with trickery. So this was to be the duty of the astronomer to the King! Malikshah would not forget his failure. If only he could guess aright! . . . Four doors the fellow had said, east, south, west, and north. By which of the four—they were clearly to be seen, with spearmen lounging in all of them .. . but why had not the
luti
said "By which gate"?
Omar wrote a few words on the paper, folded it, and stood up. If the player practised mummery, so could he. Asking Malikshah's consent, he went to the side of the steps and raised the edge of a marble block that had been the pedestal of some statue. Slipping the folded paper beneath it, he returned to his sitting place. "Now go," he bade the
luti
.
The eyes of the
luti
gleamed. He cavorted a few paces, and ran toward the east gate, his bells chiming. Then he whirled with a shout of triumph and darted at the wall. Clutching the embroidered hanging, he drew it aside, revealing a small postern door in the wall.
"By this," he shouted, "I go."
And the curtain fell behind him. A subdued exclamation of surprise came from the spectators, and Malikshah motioned the secretary to bring him the paper Omar had placed beneath the stone.
When he had it in his hand, the Sultan opened it slowly. He looked at the written words, and put his hand to his lips.
" 'By the fifth door,'" he read aloud. "
Y'allah!
Truly didst thou read that one's thoughts, O Master of the Invisible."
Omar had merely guessed that if the fellow were so insistent on the four doors—and a lucky choice might hit upon the one to be chosen of the four—he knew of yet another door from the court, although none was to be seen. But Malikshah leaned over to pat his astronomer on the shoulder, calling him a second Avicenna, and bidding the secretary fill his mouth with gold.
At once that official took up the tray of gold and silver pieces always kept at the Sultan's elbow, and began to stuff the coins into Omar's mouth.
"As for that dog of a
luti
," added the Sultan, "fill his mouth with sand, until he is full. By God, he was impudent to our lord of wisdom."
Some of the attendants ran from the court, to obey. When Omar had been given leave to depart, with the gold coins carried in triumph on a tray by a slave, he found a crowd collected by one of the gates of the audience court.
In the center of the throng two guards held the struggling
luti
by the arms. While another pried the vagabond's mouth open with a knife blade, a fourth Turk poured sand from a sack between his bleeding lips. The man's face grew darker, and at times he groaned terribly.
Omar turned away, nauseated, to seek his tent among the palms. Behind him, the slave turned also, holding high the gold—although he lingered to cast an avid glance over his shoulder.
That night Omar worked late with his books. He noticed that the black slave who had carried the tray of gold did not go to sleep at the threshold of the tent as usual. The man crouched there, muttering. A second shadow hung about the opening, and finally their whispering made the Tentmaker give up his calculation.
"
Ya Khwaja,
" cried the slave, seeing him rise, "this is verily a night of magic. Thy dog is afraid."
The other man muttered assent, salaaming. "Give leave that we may sit at the feet of the Lord of Wisdom. We are afraid of the night."
Edging toward the lighted lamp, the strange servant explained that he had been walking through the ruins after the last prayer, when he had seen a light upon one of the mounds. It was not moonlight, because there was no moon, as the Lord of Wisdom well knew, but in this circle of radiance appeared the white figure of a man. Going closer the servant had beheld two other things—the half-naked body of a man moving like a snake over the ground, and an eagle, a giant brown eagle, talking about the circle of light.
"Wah!"
cried the black slave who had seen nothing, but who was full of the tale, "it was on the highest mound, and the white devil talked to the eagle while the other one changed into a snake. There was also a knife.
Ai-ai
—that is a strange magic, and we fear."
"The body that crawled," added the other importantly, "was the dead
luti
with sand in his belly. I heard—I heard thy name spoken, O Master of Wisdom. It is a great magic they make."
"Where?"
"Yonder—up—on the high mound."
"Get a torch," Omar said impatiently; "show me the way."
Probably the servant had seen someone burying the
luti
among the mounds—still, Omar had no desire to have two frightened natives at his feet all night. The servant obeyed reluctantly, and the negro followed so close to Omar that he stepped on his heels. After they left the camp, the guide turned up a path that wound among broken walls, until he came to what had once been a broad street. Here he stopped, pretending to shake the torch to make it burn brighter.
"It is only a little way, master," he whispered, "there on the right. Thy slave—thy slave will await——"
Omar took the torch from him and strode on. Instantly he heard behind him a pattering and a sliding of gravel. The two servants were fleeing from the ruins with all the speed of their legs. He went on alone, looking from side to side, until he became aware of a faint glow above him.
It was on the huge ruin called The Temple—Omar had examined it by day and he knew where to search for a path leading up the sand heaps. When he came out on the height, he made his way toward the glow that seemed to come from a cleft in the brick wall. Yet it was brighter than the light of an ordinary oil lamp, and the man seated within the circle rose as if he had been waiting there for Omar's coming.
"One departs," he said, "and another comes."
He was shorter than the Tentmaker, with heavy eyebrows and a curling beard. He had thrown a white Arab burnous over his broad shoulders, but he did not seem to be an Arab.
Nodding toward the ground, he drew Omar's attention to the body that lay there, the body of the
luti
with the handle of a dagger projecting from its ribs. "I made an end of his agony," said the stranger.
Omar looked at the bird of prey that flapped about the ground. This he had expected to be a vulture or falcon; but he knew that it was an eagle. When he approached it, the great bird came to rest, its translucent eyes glaring at him.
"My companion," said the stranger. "Yea, he joins me upon the high places—he comes down out of the sky."
"Who art thou?"
"A man of the mountains." When the stranger spoke, his long chin jutted forward, his brilliant eyes flashed. "A man of Ray."
The ancient city of Ray lay almost within the shadow of the mountains that surrounded the snow summit of Demavend, loftiest of the peaks in Persia. Although this man might be a Persian, he had the accent of Egypt and the modulated voice of one who is at home in many languages.
"Thou—" his eyes held Omar's—"art the Tentmaker, the astronomer of the King. And thou art not at peace—hence thou art here, in the temple of Istar, speaking with a student whom many believe to be mad. I am Hassan the son of Sabah."
"It is a strange burial you make, Hassan ibn Sabah."
"It is no burial. By Allah, I leave that for the slaves. My work is done."
"You are a student—do you study the dying?"
Hassan pondered, as if considering something new in his mind. He was little older than Omar, and the vitality of his corded throat and muscular hands was that of an animal. "I am searching for the truth," he said at last, "of many things. This dancer I found where he had been thrown outside a gate of the camp, for the dogs to worry. So I had him carried hither, to a high place where the birds of the sky will pick his bones clean. I stabbed him to loose him from his pain—yea, all the camp feared to do that, because Malikshah had given command only to fill the gibbering fool with sand. . . . But most of all, I seek friends, true friends. So I waited long, in Babylon."
Hassan did not speak like an orthodox Moslem, or a courtier of the King. It crossed Omar's mind that he had the assurance of Malikshah himself.
"Have you ever waited for a sign?" Hassan asked suddenly.
"Did you find a sign, O son of Sabah"—Omar turned the question with another—"in Babylon?"
"Yes, when this
luti
died. For now, in this minute, I have met a man who knows his mind, and who seeks proof of the truth. By Allah, if I could have Omar of the Tentmakers for a friend! I think it was written that this should be. . . . But the stars are setting. It is late, and I go down."
As he spoke the light left the mound abruptly. Hassan appeared not at all disturbed. Saying that he knew the labyrinth of the ruins as well as a priest knows a wineshop, he took Omar by the hand and started down the narrow path. Once below the summit, they could see nothing, yet Hassan pressed on with his long strides. Behind them, Omar heard the flapping of wings, as if the giant bird were following. Then without word of farewell, Hassan let go his hand and vanished into the night. The sound of the wings trailed away and ceased.
In his own tent, Omar found the slaves waiting, crouched by the lighted lamp. For a while before sleeping he pondered the meeting with Hassan, who had a gift of the grotesque. Omar was aware that Hassan had expected him to come—the strange servant who brought the tale having vanished—and that in some way unknown to himself he had been put to a test.
The light, no doubt, had been a cleverly concealed lamp. But who, except for hunting gazelles, had ever tamed an eagle?
Omar asked many times for tidings of a Hassan ibn Sabah who spoke like an Egyptian, but he could find no one in the army who knew him.
The mount above the valley of the damned, opposite the east wall of Jerusalem.
By little things Omar understood that Nizam watched over him from a distance. No strolling players were allowed to confront him again. A smiling Hindu letter writer visited his tent at hours when he was alone, and gossiped about affairs in Balkh or Samarkand—and all Malikshah's actions.
Most helpful of all, weekly letters came from Nizam himself. Apparently these letters gave tidings of Nizam's work: actually they discussed policies to be followed, dangers to be avoided. Thus, Omar came to understand how important it was for Malikshah's army to take possession of Jerusalem—Al Kuds, the Holy, Nizam called it. Malikshah had become the recognized champion of the Kalif of Baghdad, who was looked upon by millions of believers as the head of Islam. Already the Seljuk Turks had won the overlordship of the two holy cities, Mecca and Medinah. It was important to add the third, Jerusalem, to the empire, taking it from the unlawful rule of the schismatic kalif of Cairo.
For a similar reason, Malikshah ought to press the campaign against the infidel Byzantines in the north. So long as the champion of Islam pursued the path of the
jihad
, the holy war, he would never lack for men to follow his banners . . . new clans of Turkish riders had drifted down from the steppes, and Nizam was sending them west to join the army.
Thus Omar could understand clearly how Nizam wove together his threads, as a rugmaker sitting before the loom knotted together tiny bits of wool, meaningless in themselves, but part of the pattern of the whole rug.
When he was asked by Malikshah if the time were favorable for an advance against Jerusalem, he did not need to hesitate.
"Verily," he said, "this month will be favorable. The planet Mars stands close to thy Sign."
This was true, as Malikshah well knew; yet if Omar had objected—so utterly did the Sultan rely on his astronomer—Malikshah would have changed his plans.
The army was encamped then in the red plain of Aleppo, and Omar decided to ride south with the cavalry of Amir Aziz who was to occupy Jerusalem. He wanted to see the western sea—he had never beheld the shore of an ocean—and make the pilgrimage to the Farthest Mosque, which was in Jerusalem. So he explained to Malikshah. But he had searched the marketplace of Aleppo and all the towns upon the way without news of a cloth-merchant of Meshed who traveled with a young wife.
From Aleppo, he knew that many caravans went south to Damascus, thence to cross the desert to Egypt. He might find some trace of Yasmi on this southern road. ... If only he had Tutush's means of gathering crumbs of information!
"So thou wilt make the pilgrimage,' Malikshah assented. 'Then make a prayer of nine bowings for me at the
mihrab
of the Farthest Mosque."
It seemed to the young Turk most fitting that the Tentmaker, whose wisdom was a gift from God, should complete a pilgrimage during the course of the campaign. But he was careful to have Omar leave him a chart of fortunate and unfortunate days for the term of his absence. The three planets, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter, were in conjunction in the sign of the Dragon, which was the sign ascendant at Malikshah's birth, so momentous events might be looked for. And he gave his astronomer a
bimbashi
with an imperial standard and a dozen horsemen of Black Cathay from his own guard for escort during the journey.
To the
bimbashi
, he gave command never to allow Omar, asleep or awake, out of sight of two of his men.
So, go where he would, Omar was always attended by a pair of silent bowmen. ( The
bimbashi
had informed his followers that the one who lost sight of Omar would lose his head.)
And Omar led them into unexpected bypaths. From Damascus, where he had haunted the marketplace, he led them up over the pine-clad shoulders of Lebanon past the gray summit of mighty Hermon with its snow cap gleaming against the sky, down to the waters of the sea.
Omar spent hours wandering along the sandy beaches, sniffing the air, examining the strange debris cast up at the water's edge.
This was the edge of the Great Sea, over which the Greeks and Romans had come in their galleys, to build ports of marble, now half ruined. Here was Tyre, stretching far out into the sea, and Sidon with its foundations visible beneath the water. He climbed the round height of Mount Carmel where strange Christian saints had lived and died.
Then he rode inland, to descend the steep slope to the sunken lake of Galilee. It seemed to the Cathayans as if there must be devils in this valley lying down in the maw of the earth, with its sulphur springs and mosaic pavement of a forgotten palace, and its sad, bearded men called Jews.
But when they ascended toward Jerusalem they found themselves in familiar surroundings. The Sultan's army, after its capture of the holy city, had pillaged the infidels upon the countryside. They rode through fields of trampled grain, beneath the blackened walls of monasteries that had been sacked and given to the torch. At times they saw groups of strange people—men without turbans and women unveiled, with children in their arms—laboring to make graves for heaps of bodies.
On the highroad they passed chains of slaves, bought by traders from the Turkish soldiers, on their way north to be sold at Damascus. And Omar remembered his return along the great Khorasan road with Zoë and Yarmak.
He halted at the camp of Malikshah's commander, the Amir Aziz, because the
bimbashi
insisted it would not be safe to stay at night within the walls of Jerusalem. But he went by daylight to visit the Moslem sanctuary, where there had been no fighting.
This marble enclosure, the Haram, he found thronged with mullahs who had accompanied the army and who had now taken possession of the Aksa mosque—the
imam
pronouncing the prayers from the pulpit in the names of the Kalif of Baghdad and Sultan Malikshah. The Egyptian preachers had fled the city. To escape the crowd, Omar entered the Dome of the Rock, where in the half darkness of the painted glass windows there was silence.
Here he knelt to pray with his hands upon the gray rock that was only less sacred than the black stone within the sanctuary of Mecca. The half-pagan Cathayans who followed at his heels knelt also, peering curiously at the marble piers of the dome and the gold mosaics.
When Omar rose, a low voice greeted him respectfully.
"Peace, to the seeker of salvation."
"And upon thee, the peace," he responded.
Hassan ibn Sabah stood at his elbow with another man. This time Hassan wore pilgrim dress and he chose to speak in Arabic which seemed to be as familiar to him as Persian.
'To Allah the praise," he smiled, "that I have found my friend again. Wilt thou know what is in this Dome of the Rock, more than the Rock itself?"
When he spoke, heads turned toward him. Hassan had the gift of holding attention, and the listeners drew closer as he explained that a mark upon the gray stone had been made by the foot of Muhammad the Prophet, when he ascended into heaven from this spot—and the holes along its edge had been made by the hand of the angel Gabriel, restraining the rock from rising after Muhammad. (The Cathayans pressed near with exclamations of wonder at this evidence of a manifest miracle.)
"Below," Hassan explained, "is the cavern where the waiting souls will gather at the Judgment Day. Follow me!"
Lighting a candle—he seemed to know where to find everything—he persuaded a mullah to let them descend into the grotto beneath the rock, where he pointed out in whispers certain signs of the supernatural. The Cathayans, grim in their leather armor and bronze helmets, grew afraid, but Hassan's companion, a stout man in a velvet kaftan, whispered to Omar that there would hardly be room here for more than a score of souls—unless, indeed, souls should become smaller than atoms.
Going up to the rotunda of the shrine, Hassan held his candle close to one of the piers.
"Long ago, soon after the ascension of our lord Muhammad," he said, "a Kalif of Islam caused these words to be written in gold. Behold!"
Omar made out an inscription in rectangular Kufic, which he could barely interpret; yet Hassan read it with ease: