Page:A Moslem seeker after God - showing Islam at its best in the life and teaching of al-Ghazali, mystic and theologian of the eleventh century (IA moslemseekeraft00zwem).pdf/95



I found two other pupils of mine own age newly arrived Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-fated Ibn Sabbah, founder of the sect of the Assassins. 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 Nishapur, while Hasan Ibn Sabbah’s father was one AH, a man of austere life and practice but heretical in his creed and doc trine. One day Hasan said to me and to Khay yam: 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 preeminence for himself/ Be it so/ we both replied, and on these terms we mutually pledged our words. Years rolled on, and I went from Khorasan to Trans oxiana, and wandered to Ghazni and Kabul; and when I returned I was invested with office, and rose to be administrator of affairs during the Sultanate of Sultan Alp Arslan."

After his education at Nishapur Nizam Al-Mulk served Alp Arslan, the successor of Togrul Bey, and for more than twenty years the burden of the