Page:Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the astronomer-poet of Persia (IA ru00biytofomaromarrich).pdf/14

vi in his quiet collegiate days, at Naishápur. One of the countless victims of the Assassin's dagger was Nizám-ul-Mulk himself, the old school-boy friend."

"Omar Khayyám also came to the Vizier to claim his share; but not to ask for title or office. 'The greatest boon you can confer on me,' he said, 'is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune, to spread wide the advantages of Science, and pray for your long life and prosperity.' The Vizier tells us, that, when he found Omar was really sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted him a yearly pension of 1,200 mithkals of gold, from the treasury of Naishápur."

"At Naishápur thus lived and died Omar Khayyám, busied,' adds the Vizier, 'in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in Astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence. Under the Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained great praise for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favours upon him.

"When the Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar was one of the eight learned men employed to do it; the result was the Jaláli era, (so called from Jalal-ul-din, one of the king's names,)—'a computation of time,' says Gibbon, 'which surpasses the Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.' He is also the author of some astronomical tables, entitled Ziji-Maliksháhí," and the French have lately republished and translated an Arabic Treatise of his on Algebra.

These severer Studies, and his Verses, which, though happily fewer than any Persian Poet's, and, though perhaps