those translators who closely reproduce the original he remains beyond question a freethinker, [1117] placing ethic above creed, though much given to the praise of wine. Never popular in the Moslem world, [1118] he has had in ours an unparalleled welcome; and it must be because from his scientific vantage ground in the East, in the period of the Norman Conquest, he had attained in some degree the vision and chimed with the mood of a later and larger age. That Omar in his day and place was not alone in his mood lies on the face of his verse. Many quatrains ascribed to him, indeed, are admittedly assignable to other Persian poets; and one of his English editors notes that "the poetry of rebellion and revolt from orthodox opinion, which is supposed to be peculiar to him, may be traced in the works of his predecessor Avicenna, as well as in those of Afdal-i-Káshí, and others of his successors." [1119] The allusions to the tavern, a thing suspect and illicit for Islam, show that he was in a society more Persian than Arab, one in which was to be found nearly all of the free intellectual life possible in the Moslem East; [1120] and doubtless Persian thought, always leaning to heresy, and charged with germs of scientific speculation from immemorial antiquity, prepared his rationalism; though his monism excludes alike dualism and theism. "One for two I never did misread" is his summing up of his philosophy. [1121] But the same formula might serve for the philosophy of the sect of Sufis, [1122] who in all ages seem to have included unbelievers as well as devoutly mystical pantheists. Founded, it is said, by a woman, Rabia, in the first century of the Hej'ra, [1123] the sect really carries on a pre-Mohammedan mysticism, and may as well derive from Greece [1124] as from Asia. Its original doctrine of divine love, as a reaction against Moslem austerity, gave it a fixed hold in Persia, and became the starting point of innumerable heterodox doctrines. [1125] Under the Khalif Moktader, a Persian Sufi is recorded to have been tortured and executed for teaching that every man is God. [1126] In later ages, Sufiism became loosely associated with every species of independent thinking; and there is reason to suspect that the later poets Sadi (fl. thirteenth century) and Hafiz [1127] (fl. fourteenth century), as well as hundreds of lesser status, held under the name of Sufiism views of life not far removed from those of Omar Khayyám; who, however, had bantered the Sufis so unmercifully that they are said to have dreaded and hated him. [1128] In any case, Sufiism has included such divergent types as Al Gazzali, [1129] the skeptical defender of the faith; devout pantheistic poets such as Jâmi; [1130] and singers of love and wine such as Hafiz, whose extremely concrete imagery is certainly not as often allegorical as serious Sufis assert, though no doubt it is sometimes so. [1131] It even became nominally associated