Studies in Islamic Mysticism

Chapter I: Abú Sa‘íd Ibn Abi ’l-Khayr

Abú Sa‘íd and Omar Khayyam are associated in the history of Persian literature by the circumstance that each of them is the reputed author of a famous collection of rubá‘íyyát in which his individuality has almost disappeared. That these collections are wholly, or even mainly, the work of Abú Sa‘íd and Omar no one who examines the evidence is likely to assert: they should rather be regarded as anthologies—of which the nucleus, perhaps, was formed by the two authors in question—containing poems of a particular type composed at various periods by many different hands. It is possible, no doubt, that Omar's view of life and his general cast of thought are more or less reflected in the quatrains attributed to him, but we can learn from them nothing definite and distinctive. The same considerations apply with equal force to the mystical rubá‘ís passing under the name of Abú Sa‘íd. In his case, however, we possess excellent and copious biographical materials which make us intimately acquainted with him and throw a welcome light on many aspects of contemporary Persian mysticism.