Note 285 — Chapter XVIII · The Seljūks
Reading edition
His name is familiar to the English public through the medium of `Omar Khayyām. All who have read Fitzgerald’s admirable translation of the Rubaiyāt know the story of the three famous schoolfellows—`Omar Khayyām, the poet; Nizām ul-Mulk, the statesman; and Hasan ibn Sabbāh, “the Old Man of the Mountain.” These three, as schoolboys at Nīshāpūr, had sworn that whichever of them should rise highest in the world should help the others. Of two of them we shall have to speak below.