We know much about the genesis of this great epic, the "Sháh Námeh"; far more than we know about the make-up of the other great epics in the world's literature. Firdusi worked from written materials; but he produced no mere labored mosaic. Into it all he has breathed a spirit of freshness and vividness: whether it be the romance of Alexander the Great and the exploits of Rustem, or the love scenes of Zál and Rodhale, of Bezhan and Manezhe, of Gushtásp and Kitayim. That he was also an excellent lyric poet, Firdusi shows in the beautiful elegy upon the death of his only son; a curious intermingling of his personal woes with the history of his heroes. A cheerful vigor runs through it all. He praises the delights of wine-drinking, and does not despise the comforts which money can procure. In his descriptive parts, in his scenes of battle and encounters, he is not often led into the delirium of extravagance. Sober-minded and free from all fanaticism, he leans not too much to Zoroaster or to Mohammed, though his desire to idealize his Iránian heroes leads him to excuse their faith to his readers. And so these fifty or more thousand verses, written in the Arabic heroic Mutakarib metre, have remained the delight of the Persians down to this very day--when the glories of the land have almost altogether departed and Mahmud himself is all forgotten of his descendants.

Firdusi introduces us to the greatness of Mahmud of Ghazna's court. Omar Khayyám takes us into its ruins; for one of the friends of his boyhood days was Nizam al-Mulk, the grandson of that Toghrul the Turk, who with his Seljuks had supplanted the Persian power. Omar's other friend was Ibn Sabbah, the "old Man of the Mountain," the founder of the Assassins. The doings of both worked misery upon Christian Europe, and entailed a tremendous loss of life during the Crusades. As a sweet revenge, that same Europe has taken the first of the trio to its bosom, and has made of Omar Khayyám a household friend. "My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses" is said to have been one of Omar's last wishes. He little thought that those very roses from the tomb in which he was laid to rest in 1123 would, in the nineteenth century, grace the spot where his greatest modern interpreter--Fitzgerald--lies buried in the little English town of Woodbridge!

The author of the famous Quatrains--Omar Ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyám--not himself a tent-maker, but so-called, as are the Smiths of our own day--was of the city of Níshapúr. The invention of the Rubáiyát, or Epigram, is not to his credit. That honor belongs to Abu Said of Khorasan (968-1049), who used it as a means of expressing his mystic pantheism. But there is an Omar Khayyám club in London--not one bearing the name of Abu Said. What is the bond which binds the Rubáiyát-maker in far-off Persia to the literati of modern Anglo-Saxondom?

By his own people Omar was persecuted for his want of orthodoxy; and yet his grave to this day is held in much honor. By others he was looked upon as a Mystic. Reading the five hundred or so authentic quatrains one asks, Which is the real Omar? Is it he who sings of wine and of pleasure, who seems to preach a life of sensual enjoyment? or is it the stern preacher, who criticises all, high and low; priest, dervish, and Mystic--yea, even God himself? I venture to say that the real Omar is both; or, rather, he is something higher than is adequately expressed in these two words. The Ecclesiastes of Persia, he was weighed down by the great questions of life and death and morality, as was he whom people so wrongly call "the great sceptic of the Bible." The "Weltschmerz" was his, and he fought hard within himself to find that mean way which philosophers delight in pointing out. If at times Omar does preach carpe diem, if he paint in his exuberant fancy the delights of carousing, Fitzgerald is right--he bragged more than he drank. The under-current of a serious view of life runs through all he has written; the love of the beautiful in nature--a sense of the real worth of certain things and the worthlessness of the Ego. Resignation to what is man's evident fate; doing well what every day brings to be done--this is his own answer. It was Job's--it was that of Ecclesiastes.

This same "Weltschmerz" is ours to-day; therefore Omar Khayyám is of us beloved. He speaks what often we do not dare to speak; one of his quatrains can be more easily quoted than some of those thoughts can be formulated. And then he is picturesque--picturesque because he is at times ambiguous. Omar seems to us to have been so many things--a believing Moslem, a pantheistic Mystic, an exact scientist (for he reformed the Persian calendar). Such many-sidedness was possible in Islam; but it gives him the advantage of appealing to many and different classes of men; each class will find that he speaks their mind and their mind only. That Omar was also tainted by Sufism there can be no doubt; and many of his most daring flights must be regarded as the results of the greater license which Mystic interpretation gave to its votaries.

By the side of Firdusi the epic poet, and Omar the philosopher, Sa'di the wise man, well deserves a place. His countrymen are accustomed to speak of him simply as "the Sheikh," much more to his real liking than the titles "The nightingale of the groves of Shiraz," or "The nightingale of a Thousand Songs," in which Oriental hyperbole expresses its appreciation. Few leaders and teachers have had the good fortune to live out their teachings in their own lives as had Sa'di. And that life was long indeed. Muharrif al-Din Abdallah Sa'di was born at Shiraz in 1184, and far exceeded the natural span of life allotted to man--for he lived to be one hundred and ten years of age--and much of the time was lived in days of stress and trouble. The Mongols were devastating in the East; the Crusaders were fighting in the West. In 1226 Sa'di himself felt the effects of the one--he was forced to leave Shiraz and grasp the wanderer's staff, and by the Crusaders he was taken captive and led away to Tripoli. But just this look into the wide world, this thorough experience of men and things, produced that serenity of being that gave him the firm hold upon life which the true teacher must always have. Of his own spiritual condition and contentment he says: "Never did I complain of my forlorn condition but on one occasion, when my feet were bare, and I had not wherewithal to shoe them. Soon after, meeting a man without feet, I was thankful for the bounty of Providence to myself, and with perfect resignation submitted to my want of shoes."

Thus attuned to the world, Sa'di escapes the depths of misanthropy as well as the transports of unbridled license and somewhat blustering swagger into which Omar at times fell. In his simplicity of heart he says very tenderly of his own work;--

"We give advice in its proper place, Spending a lifetime in the task. If it should not touch any one's ear of desire, The messenger told his tale; it is enough."

That tale is a long one. His apprenticeship was spent in Arabic Bagdad, sitting at the feet of noted scholars, and taking in knowledge not only of his own Persian Sufism, but also of the science and learning which had been gathered in the home of the Abbaside Caliphs. His journeyman-years took him all through the dominions which were under Arab influence--in Europe, the Barbary States, Egypt, Abyssinia, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor, India. All these places were visited before he returned to Shiraz, the "seat of learning," to put to writing the thoughts which his sympathetic and observing mind had been evolving during all these years. This time of his mastership was spent in the seclusion almost of a recluse and in producing the twenty-two works which have come down to us. An Oriental writer says of these periods of his life: "The first thirty years of Sa'di's long life were devoted to study and laying up a stock of knowledge; the next thirty, or perhaps forty, in treasuring up experience and disseminating that knowledge during his wide extending travels; and that some portion should intervene between the business of life and the hour of death (and that with him chanced to be the largest share of it), he spent the remainder of his life, or seventy years, in the retirement of a recluse, when he was exemplary in his temperance and edifying in his piety."

Of Sa'di's versatility, these twenty-two works give sufficient evidence. He could write homilies (Risalahs) in a Mystic-religious fashion. He could compose lyrics in Arabic and Turkish as well as in Persian. He was even led to give forth erotic verses. Fondly we hope that he did this last at the command of some patron or ruler! But Sa'di is known to us chiefly by his didactic works, and for these we cherish him. The "Bustan," or "Tree-Garden," is the more sober and theoretical, treating of the various problems and questions of ethics, and filled with Mystic and Sufic descriptions of love.