[1] About 1272 a.d.
[2] This title is hard to determine without any acquaintance with the contents of the pamphlet.
[3] C.H.A. Bjerregaard in «The Sufi Omar». J.F. Taylor & Co., N.Y., 1902.
[4] Some of Omar's Rubaiyat warn us of the danger of greatness, the instability of fortune, and while advocating charity to all men, recommending us to be too intimate with none. Attar makes Nizam ul Mulk use the very words of his friend Omar [Rub. xxviii.], «When Nizam ul Mulk was in the Agony (of Death) he said, ‹Oh God! I am passing away in the hand of the Wind.›»
[5] Though all these, like our Smiths, Archers, Millers, Fletchers, etc., may simply regain the surname of an hereditary calling.
[6] «Philosophe Musulman qui a vêcu en Odeur de Sainteté dans sa Religion, vers la Fin du premier et le Commencement du second Siècle,» no part of which, except the «Philosophe» can apply to our Khayyam.
[7] The Rashness of the Words, according to D'Herbelot, consisted in being so opposed to those in the Koran: «No Man knows where he shall die.»—This story of Omar reminds me of another so naturally—and when one remembers how wide of his humble mark the noble sailor aimed—so pathetically told by Captain Cook—not by Doctor Hawkesworth—in his Second Voyage (i. 374). When leaving Ulietea, «Oreo's last request was for me to return. When he saw he could not obtain that promise, he asked the name of my Marai (burying-place). As strange a question as this was, I hesitated not a moment to tell him ‹Stepney›; the parish in which I live when in London. I was made to repeat it several times over till they could pronounce it; and then ‹Stepney Marai no Toote› was echoed through an hundred mouths at once. I afterwards found the same question had been put to Mr. Forster by a man on shore; but he gave a different, and indeed more proper answer, by saying, ‹No man who used the sea could say where he should be buried.›»
[8] «Since this paper was written» (adds the Reviewer in a note), «we have met with a Copy of a very rare Edition, printed at Calcutta in 1836. This contains 438 Tetrastichs, with an Appendix containing 54 others not found in some MSS.»
[9] Professor Cowell.
[10] This was written in 1868.