Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/408

 238 NISHAPUR, THE HOME OF OMAR KHAYYAM

Isfahan,^ which Omar had once seen, and across whose wide expanse in polo days of yore was driven the ball which 'no question makes of ayes and noes.'^

The chief mosque, or Jami' Masjid, mentioned above, from whose tower daily at dawn the Muazzin's cry arises, was in another part of the town ; ^ but it was a comparatively insig- nificant affair and, though several centuries old, as already stated, it could not have been the noble edifice described by Oriental writers before Omar was born.* Nor did we see a trace of any madrasah, or college, that might have been worthy of Omar's fame, or like the one where he is said to have enun- ciated his belief in the transmigration of the soul by humor- ously pretending to recognize the spirit of one of his old professors in the form of a jackass that refused to carry a load of bricks into the courtyard of the building until it had received due recognition from its colleagues on the faculty.*

During our jaunt about the town not a noteworthy person did we see except a wandering dervish, dressed in tatters and rags, who roamed through the bazar, begging-bowl in hand, asking for alms, and gladly receiving the bakshish we gave when he stood to be photographed. I suppose he looked quite the same as those seemingly pious mendicants — often wolves in sheep's clothing — who were found in the streets in Omar's time, and of whose hypocrisy he was so intolerant.

But perhaps I misjudged the man, and I should hate to do him a wrong. So let him pass, for the days of the real Omar are no more ; and perhaps his own shade might arise to check

��1 For the great plaza at Isfahan see Muezzin from the Tower,' but of 'a mj Persia, pp. 266-267, 270 (picture). crier coming from ambush' (niunddi

2 FG. 60 (70), Th. 60, P. 682, Wh. dar diad zi Tcamin) to give warning 401, ai raftah ba-chugdn-i kadd hamchu about the road.

gu, ' thou who art driven like a ball * See the account of the great

by the mallet of fate.' mosque of olden times in Nishapur

8 FG. 24 (25). In the original Per- given on p. 262, below, sian of this passage (Th. 24, cf. Wh. ^ por this Oriental story see Browne,

376, P. 638) the image is not of the Lit. Hist. Persia, 2. 254-256.

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