Omar Khayyam - a life

by Harold Lamb

  "Who made these records?"

  'Excellency" said Mai'mun grimly, "I myself verified them. You will find no error."

  Omar ran his eye down the figures and took up another sheet at random. Thoughtfully he studied it. "Thou dost swear the calculations are true, and Isfizari swears his clock is unvarying. One of ye hath failed—but which?"

  "As for the clock, it serves well enough. Ay, after the first month we knew its variation." Mai'mun lifted his head stubbornly. " 'Tis easy to cry 'Be gone' yet I swear by the Kaaba and by my faith that my hand verified those findings."

  "Using the Ptolemaic star tables?"

  "Ay, surely."

  "Corrected for the latitude of Nisapur? Ptolemy made his observations in Alexandria."

  "As I have known. Will your Excellency see for himself? Here is the table of the last month."

  Taking up a pen, Omar made a brief calculation and compared it with one of Mai'mun's. Then he frowned. "What is this? The correction is truly made. The stars do not vary, and the clock is known. Yet here one lags six hours behind the other. Hast thou an explanation, O man of Baghdad?"

  Slowly Mai'mun shook his head. "It is hidden from me."

  "Bring me the Ptolemaic tables."

  When the great manuscript was spread before him, Omar took up the first sheet of Mai'mun's records. With bent head he set to work. Akroenos departed to his bed, and Jafarak curled up on a rug to sleep, but the old Mai'mun, watchful as an owl, waited silently. When the flame in the lamp flickered and sank, Mai'mun poured in more oil.

  "It cannot be," Omar muttered once, and turned to a new sheet.

  When the morning light came through the embrasure, and the lamp dimmed, he reached the end, and Mai'mun stirred expectantly.

  "My figures are correct?" he croaked.

  For a space Omar studied the first and last pages of the Ptolemy manuscript. "Thy calculations are without error," he murmured. "And so the error of the six hours and eighteen minutes is constant. Thy first entry—there—is like the last, six hours and eighteen minutes away from the sun."

  Mai'mun blinked, and assented. It must be so.

  "The error is here." Omar laid his hand on the worn manuscript of Ptolemy.

  "God forbid! What sayest thou? An error—after all these ages——" Mai'mun choked in his astonishment.

  "A constant error, yes."

  "But how—such an observer—and no one knew!"

  "If we knew how, we could correct it." Omar smiled, his tired eyes thoughtful. "But the great Alexandrine hath been a long time in his grave."

  Incredulity struggled with interest in the old man's face, for these star tables had been in use by the scientists of Islam for centuries. He would have expected to see the pillars of the great mosque of Nisapur sway as soon as suspect Ptolemy to be in error.

  "Ahai!" he moaned, as the full significance of their discovery dawned on him. "Then is our work vain. Vain, the labor of Kharesmi, and all the others. Our tables of the fixed stars are false—false." Utterly confounded, he looked about the room. If the floor had risen to stand on end, he would not have felt surprise. But Omar's dark eyes were intent.

  "Wait, Mai'mun—wait. The error is slight, it is constant. 'Tis here in the first column, as in the last. These observations were truly made, yet ever false, by so little." He sprang up, to stride across the room and stare out into the blinding sun. "False and true—it cannot be, but it is. If we could tear the veil from the mystery!"

  Mai'mun could only shake his head. "With Allah are the keys of the unseen."

  "If we could find the key—the key." Omar turned suddenly. "Tell me, are not Ptolemy's longitude and latitude correct?"

  "Ay, verily—else we had not followed him these thirty generations."

  "Then must he have known the key to his tables of the fixed stars. He could use the tables, but another—not knowing the key—would always fail, as we have failed." He struck his hand upon the open manuscript. "With the key, we can use these tables, Mai'mun—we alone."

  "If a hair divide the false from the true, still the false is not the true."

  Omar stared at the scientist, and his face relaxed. "Mai'mun, old master, forgive me that I cried out upon thee. Thou hast shown me the key by which the false becomes the true. I see—I see.

  "Y'allah, no man can see."

  " 'Tis such a little key. Why didst thou correct these tables for the latitude of Nisapur?"

  "Because——" the astronomer was past wondering—"the fixed stars as seen from Nisapur are seen from another angle at Alexandria, where Ptolemy worked."

  "And what," asked Omar gently, "if they were not seen at Alexandria?"

  "Y'allah. Was not Ptolemy's observatory at Alexandria?"

  "Yes, and there is our error."

  Mai'mun looked up wearily, without comprehension. "Art mad?" he muttered.

  "Nay, for Ptolemy, working at Alexandria, did not make these tables. They were made by another, before his time, at another place. He used them, as we have used them—thinking them his—yet he knew this unknown master of the stars who made the tables. He knew! And so his calculations were true."

  Mai'mun's eyes flashed, and then he shrank back. He saw the truth instantly, but it seemed to him as if Omar must have occult power, to discover what had been hidden for nine centuries. Had not Nizam himself said that Omar possessed a strange power?

  "It must be so," he sighed. "Yet we will never know who made these tables, or where. Perhaps it was a Chaldean of Babylon, or a Hindu of India, or a Greek in the far west. Who knows?"

  Unless they could discover where the observations had been made, the tables would be useless for exact work. Ptolemy had known, but that great Egyptian had kept the position of the unknown observer a secret.

  "In a few days," said Omar quietly, "I will tell you the place of the observations. But now I will sleep."

  As he limped from the tower to his own quarters, Mai'mun had one hope. A man who could accomplish one miracle might effect another—although he had never known a miracle to happen in mathematics before. But when he found his assistants gathered disconsolately at his threshold, awaiting him after the morning prayer, the old astronomer lifted his head and thrust out his chin. It might even be said that he swaggered.

  "O ye of the classrooms," he said proudly, "Khwaja Omar and I have found the error. After nine hundred years, I have discovered an error in the star tables of Ptolemy the Geographer. In a little while we will correct the error, but now I am weary and would sleep."

  Gathering his abba about him, he passed into his chamber, having asserted his dignity, and for a moment there was stunned silence among the assistants.

  "La Allah il allah," whispered one, "Old Fusty hath become drunk also on that wine of Shiraz."

  Except for the routine recording of the gnomon's shadow and the minutes of the sunrise and sunset by the water clock, no work was done in the House of the Stars for the following days, save by Omar, who never ceased his labor. He acted, the assistants decided, like one possessed—first calling for a copy of Ptolemy's geography from the library, then for a list of all the Greek astronomers of ancient days.

  For the most part he worked in silence, covering sheet after sheet with figures that he passed on to Mai'mun to verify. Mai'mun, helpless when dealing with the unknown, looked on with the fascination of one observing an operation which he does not expect to be successful. He understood readily enough that Omar was seeking the proportion of the error, and using this proportion to calculate the probable distance of the unknown observatory north or south of Alexandria. This, however, could only be approximated—it finally proved to be about five degrees of latitude.

  "The observatory of the unknown," Omar said at last, "lies close to five degrees north of Alexandria."

  "But why not to the south?"

  True, there seemed to be only deserts and unknown mountain ranges on the map south of that point, but Omar was not trusting to the map. He explained that many of the stars in the tabl
es could not be seen from the earth's surface south of Alexandria.

  "Nisapur itself lies along that line, to the north," Mai'mun observed, "Ay, and Aleppo, and Balkh and many others."

  They decided the point they sought could not be in India; it must be west of Nisapur. Omar believed it to be west of Aleppo, which made their search more difficult because they did not know so much about the ancient cities in the far west.

  One evening when they were deep in their tests, a jovial voice saluted them from the entrance.

  "Health to the two pillars of wisdom. May your labors be fruitful!"

  Omar turned as if pricked by steel, but Mai'mun beheld only Tutush, smiling beneath his blue turban.

  "What is this talk," Tutush observed, "in the bazaar of a great discovery made in the House of the Stars?"

  Omar dropped his pen and stood up. "It was upon the road I made the discovery," he said calmly, "and it is thou who wilt enlighten me."

  "Thy slave to command!" Tutush salaamed, "Thy friend of years—thou hast need only to ask of me."

  "I ask in what place thou hast hidden the silver armlet with turquoise inlay. Ay, and the words that were spoken with it?"

  The master of the spies had a quick mind, and he recalled the armlet that he had thrown to the girls by the fountain. For an instant he blinked, wondering by what magic the King's astronomer had found out anything about it.

  "Ah, there are a million armlets with turquoises! The Khwaja is pleased to jest."

  "There was one, given to thee by a jester with a message, in this room. The message thou didst hide from me, and now the death of a girl lieth upon my soul, never to be lifted." Omar's cheeks whitened, and his hands clenched at his girdle. "Now say to me again, Tutush, there are many girls. I loved only one, and that thou knewest. And hast lied to me."

  He was moving toward the plump master of the spies, and suddenly Tutush became afraid of the eyes that searched his soul. Omar had read his thoughts, and had seen his fear.

  "By the Ninety and Nine Names," he cried, "I know naught of this, and I have never set eyes upon any girl of thine. Hai, what—Mai'mun—aid!"

  Omar's hand gripped his throat and shook him, and Tutush choked like a beast in a snare. The fingers sank into his soft flesh like steel, and his eyes burned in his head. He heard Mai'mun shouting for help, and then, in overmastering fear he snatched a knife from his girdle and struck blindly. The edge of the blade slashed cloth and flesh, grating against bone. Then his wrist was caught and he was flung to the floor.

  There he sprawled, sobbing for breath. Looking up through a red mist he beheld Omar fast in the arms of a half-dozen servants and scholars. The cloak was torn over one shoulder, and a dark stain spreading down his breast.

  "There is blood between us, dog," said Omar in the same quiet voice, "but it is not this blood. It drips within me a drop at a time, and it is not to be staunched like this. Go, or thou wilt die."

  They took Tutush away, and Jafarak who heard the tale from the servants confided to the merchant Akroenos that night by the Takin gate that Omar had been wounded when he set upon the master of the spies in a blind rage. And Akroenos thought so much of this, that after Jafarak had departed, he summoned a runner from the bazaar. He wrote two words on a square of paper and gave it to the man without sealing it.

  "Take this," he ordered, "to Ray. Go to the khan of the travelers and cry aloud in the courtyard that thou hast a missive for the Lord of Seven. When he approaches thee, give this to him."

  "But how, O master," objected the slave, "will I know if it be truly the Lord of Seven? 'Tis a strange name."

  "He will tell thee whence thou comest."

  "Wah! That is magic."

  The slave felt curious about his message, and he opened the paper often to look at the two words. Since they appeared very much like any other two words, he was reassured; still he took some pains to find a mullah who could read, in order to make certain there was no curse attached to the words.

  "Sa'at shud" the mullah read aloud, "The hour hath come. Or, the time of commencement hath arrived. What is there to fear in this?"

  After his shoulder was bandaged, Omar kept to his room. Isfizari, who looked in at his door once, reported that he seemed to be writing on small slips of paper. Some of the papers lay on the floor.

  In the observatory, Mai'mun labored upon the unfinished calculation. Without Omar, he could get nothing done. The map was inaccurate and the list of Greek astronomers meant nothing to him. After trying some experiments of his own without result, he abandoned the observatory.

  He did not return until the night when Isfizari told him that the lamp in the workroom was lighted, although none of the assistants was in the tower. Hastening thither, the old astronomer found Omar kneeling at the low table, engrossed in the manuscript of Ptolemy.

  "The point we seek is west of Asia Minor," he said. "I am sure of that, now."

  Mai'mun's heart sank. "But west of there is only the sea,"

  Omar nodded.

  "Alas, our search is useless."

  "Nay, 'tis near the end. For on the land there were many cities in the ancient days. On the sea there were few." Omar was studying the list of the astronomers, crossing out one name after the other. Finally his pen paused.

  "The island of Rhodes," he murmured. "Hipparchus of Rhodes fixed the position of a thousand stars."

  The lips of the old astronomer moved soundlessly. Through his thin veins ran a fever hotter than the lust of a miser or the hunger of an explorer. They were on the verge of discovering a secret of science hidden for nine centuries.

  "Ay," he cried, "and Ptolemy wrote down those thousand and eighty stars of Hipparchus in his al magest. If it be true— if it be true!"

  "I think it is," said Omar carelessly. "Now we must verify these tables for Rhodes, the city of Rhodes, and the year one hundred and thirty-four before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth."

  "Let each of us do it—working apart." Mai'mun was fearful and yet eager for a share of the glory of discovery.

  For three days they labored, sleeping little, the savant of Baghdad scarcely taking his tired eyes from the pages before him, while Omar worked swiftly between long spells of musing. They ate sparingly, late at night and in the morning. Until Omar stretched his uninjured arm and laughed.

  "Enough. It is enough."

  "Nay, it is little," objected Mai'mun, because it appeared to him that he had only made a beginning of the task. But when their calculations were compared, he flushed and made strange sounds in his throat.

  "By the Kaaba, by the waters of Zem-zem—it is so. Avi-cenna himself would declare it so—and he never suspected. Oh, Khwaia Omar!" He seized the Tentmaker in his arms and caressed him. "Now we have accurate tables, Khwaja Omar. As Ptolemy himself used these tables of Hipparchus of Rhodes, we can use them."

  Mai'mun wished to go and sit in the courtyard; he longed to expound the momentous discovery to his disciples, to taste again the delight of the moment—even to visit his colleagues of the academy in Nisapur and to gossip about it with them. But to this Omar would not consent.

  "Already," he explained, "the masters of the Ulema say it is forbidden to measure time, and we are aided by evil spirits here in the House of the Srars. What would they say if they knew we were using the tables of an infidel Greek? Wait until our work is done and presented to the Sultan."

  "True, Khwaja Omar. Once a Hanbalite threw a blazing torch into the tower, crying out upon us. And of nights we watch the gnomon, for a crowd from the mosque stoned it while you were in Aleppo. We must put the seal of discretion upon the lips of confidence."

  He did not understand how Omar could turn at once to new labor. He did not know that when Omar's mind wandered from the tables, it passed into a distant region where a girl lay dying, moaning and clinging to his arms.

  It was a shadowy limbo, that, by the rushing river under the burning sun. At times he could dwell in imagination with Yasmi when her eyes were bright, and she smiled, t
ossing back the flood of her dark hair. But more often there was the river and the pain.

  "He labors," said Isfizari once, "as if he wished never to cease. And then he sits alone with his wine."

  "He has a strange power," answered Mai'mun with the importance of one who knows whereof he speaks, "and that is his way. If he fail not in strength of mind, he will outdo the labor of Ptolemy."

  But Jafarak, having the pitilessly clear understanding of a cripple, went to sit of nights with the Tentmaker. Crouching down by his friend, he watched the shadows cast by the lamp flame flickering upon the wall. He made no jests at such a time. "When Alp Arslan, my master, went out of this world," he ventured, "I wept an ocean of tears and was comforted. Yet the wine in that cup doth not make thee weep, O Tent-maker."

  Omar stared at the cup within his hand. It was old silver, inlaid with lapis lazuli. "When you can't sleep, you can be drunk. It is better than searching yourself to find out what you are and why you are—you."

  "Yet it brings no contentment."

  "It brings forgetfulness. See, Jafarak, how this cup holds the secret of alchemy. For one measure of it will trounce a thousand cares. Drink of it and you will reign upon a golden throne like Mahmoud's, and you will hear music sweeter than that which came from David's lips. . . . Tell me, would the man who made this cup fling it down to shatter it to bits?"

  "Nay—God forbid."

  "Then what love fashions a fair human body, and what wrath destroys it?"

  From the floor Omar picked up a crumpled sheet of paper, and tossed it to Jafarak. The jester smoothed it out, and, turning it to the light, saw that it was a rubai of four lines written in Persian in the astronomer's clear hand.

  This caravan of life in mystery

  Moves on. O Saki, bring the cup to me—

  The cup of laughter while the night goes by—

  And look not for the dawn that is to be.