Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/415

 serves as the saint's mortuary shrine, appears to have been erected in the seventeenth century, probably to supplant a dilapidated building, and it is a place of pious pilgrimage for the faithful of Islam. We paid little attention to the sanctuary, however, for the grave of Omar was the only object of interest to us.

The sarcophagus stands beneath the central one of three arched recesses, its niche measuring about thirteen feet across, while the flanking arches measure about ten feet each and are empty. A couple of terraced brick steps lead up to the flooring where it rests. The oblong tomb is a simple case made of brick and cement, the poet's remains reposing beneath; and, although there is no inscription to tell whose bones are interred below, every one knows that it is Omar's grave. Vandal scribblers (found in Persia as in every other land) have desecrated it with random scrawls, and have also scratched their names upon the brown mortar of the adjoining walls, thus disclosing the white cement underneath. A stick of wood, a stone, and some frag- ments of shards profaned the top of the sarcophagus when we saw it. There was nothing else. I was tempted to lay my copy of the Rubaiyat upon it, but for the fact that I knew the little book would promptly be carried off and sold to the first possible purchaser.

An elderly priest, one of the Mullahs attached to the mosque, came forward and greeted us politely. Roses formed a part of his proffered welcome, for the Persians like to present flowers as a sign of hospitality. But no rose-tree can now shed its petals upon the poet's tomb, as was once the case in fulfilment of what had been, as tradition tells us, the dearest wish of his heart. It is true that Professor Edward G. Browne, of Cam- bridge, England, the best Persian scholar now living, believes that the story of Omar's prediction that he would be buried where roses (jguV) would fall in showers upon his grave is to be

p. 411, says, ' Mahruk was the great- by Yazid, governor of Khurasan, grandson of Imam Zain ul-Abidin, about the middle of the eighth who [he ?] was murdered and burnt century.'

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