The camp court was the travelling capital of the Seljuk Sultans. This imperial camp was laid out into squares and streets. We read how in a few hours a city, as if built by enchantment, would rise on the uninhabited plain. The camp exhibited a motley collection of tents and dwellings and palm-leaf huts. The only regular part of the encampment were the streets of shops, each of which was constructed in the manner of a booth at an English fair. Moore gives us the picture in these words: “Whose are the gilded tents that crowd the way, Where all was waste and silent yesterday? This City of War, which, in a few short hours, Hath sprung up here, as if the magic powers Of him who, in the twinkling of a star, Built the high pillar’d halls of Chilminar, Had conjured up, far as the eye can see, This world of tents and domes and sun-bright armoury.— Princely pavilions, screen’d by many a fold Of crimson cloth, and topp’d with balls of gold;— Steeds, with their housings of rich silver spun, And camels, tufted o’er with Yemen’s shells, Shaking in every breeze their light-toned bells.”[31] As for Nizam Al-Mulk we have an interesting autobiography which he wrote and left as a memorial for future statesmen. (It is quoted in Mirkhond’s “History of the Assassins.”) “One of the greatest of the wise men of Khorasan,” says he, “was the Imam Mowaffak of Nishapur, a man highly honoured and reverenced,—may God rejoice his soul; his illustrious years exceeded eighty-five, and it was the universal belief that every boy who read the Koran or studied the traditions in his presence would assuredly attain to honour and happiness. For this cause did my father send me from Tus to Nishapur with Abd-us-Samad, the doctor of law, that I might employ myself in study and learning under the guidance of that illustrious teacher. Towards me he ever turned an eye of favour and kindness, and as his pupil I felt for him extreme affection and devotion, so that I passed four years in his service. When I first came there, I found two other pupils of mine own age newly arrived—Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-fated Ibn Sabbah, founder of the sect of the Assassins. Both were endowed with sharpness of wit and the highest natural powers; and we three formed a close friendship together. When the Imam rose from his lectures, they used to join me, and we repeated to each other the lessons we had heard. Now Omar was a native of Nishapur, while Hasan Ibn Sabbah’s father was one Ali, a man of austere life and practice but heretical in his creed and doctrine. One day Hasan said to me and to Khayyam: ‘It is a universal belief that the pupils of the Imam Mowaffak will attain to fortune. Now, even if we all do not attain thereto, without doubt one of us will; what then shall be our mutual pledge and bond?’ We answered: ‘Be it what you please.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let us make a vow, that to