Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/413

 or * Old City,' with its story of a buried past, as told in the fol- lowing chapter.

Yet all this time, as we drove along, the turquoise dome of the Mosque of the Imam-zadah Mahruk, which Omar's grave adjoins, had been glancing ever nearer on the view. The deli- cate greenish blue of its vaulted dome, encircled by arabesque scrolls in yellow and white, had come out clearer and clearer to the eye. A few minutes more and we were at the gate of the white-walled enclosure around the precinct, over which high waving trees bowed salutation as we drove up.

Upon reaching the arched portal of the entrance, a mass of emerald bushes and yellow flowering shrubs, amid a profusion of rose-blossoms, burst upon the view. It was a truly typical Persian garden, with roughly outlined walks and stone-coped water-courses, and with shade-trees and flowers on every hand. I thought of the story told by Nizami of Samarkand, a devoted disciple of Omar, who had visited his master's grave some years after the great man's death, in 1123, and who told the story of Omar's prophecy that his grave would be where flowers in the springtime would shed their petals over his dust. The story told by Nizami is now well known, and I translate it literally here, beginning from the point where the disciple says his master had made the prediction more than a score of years before.

'At Balkh, in the year 506 a.h. (= 1112-1113 a.d.), when Omar Khay- yam and Muzaffar-i Isfari had put up at the sarai of Amir Abu Sa'id in the street of the slave-dealers, I joined the company, and in the midst of that social gathering I heard Omar, that Proof of Truth, say : " My grave will be in a place where every spring the north wind will scatter roses " \_gul, liter- ally * rose,' but used also of flowers or blossoms in general]. To me this saying seemed incredible, but I knew that his like would not say anything foolish. When I came to Nishapur in the year 530 a.h. (= 1135-1136 a.d.) — it being four[teen] years since that great soul had drawn on the veil of dust (i.e. died) and the inferior world had become orphaned of him — I went on Friday eve to visit his tomb, because he had upon me the claim of a master. I took with me some one who could point out to me his grave (lit. * dust '),

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