Note 101 — Chapter VIII · FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM1

A century later still, and in another region, we come upon the (now) most famous of all Eastern freethinkers, Omar Khayyám. He belonged to Naishápúr in Khorassan, a province which had long been known for its rationalism,101 and which had been part of the nucleus of the great Asiatic kingdom created by Sultan Mahmoud of Ghazni at the beginning of the eleventh century, soon after the rise of the Fatimite dynasty in Egypt. Under that Sultan flourished Ferdusi (Firdausi), one of the chief glories of Persian verse. After Mahmoud’s death, his realm and parts of the Khalifate in turn were overrun by the Seljuk Turks under Togrul Beg; under whose grandson Malik it was that Omar Khayyám, astronomer and poet, studied and sang in Khorassan. The Turk-descended Shah favoured science as strongly as any of the Abassides; and when he decided to reform the calendar, Omar was one of the eight experts he employed to do it. Thus was set up for the East the Jaláli calendar, which, as Gibbon has noted,102 “surpasses the Julian and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.” Omar was, in fact, one of the ablest mathematicians of his age.103