Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 January 1919 — DESOLATE CITY IS NISHAPUR [ARTICLE]

DESOLATE CITY IS NISHAPUR

Hmm «f Wrßer of the Rubaiyat One •f the Most Forbiddinf Spots £ on Earth. The isolated city of Nlshapur, in Persia, was the home of the Persian best known of all his nation to the western world —Omar, surnamed Khayyam, or the Tentmaker, author of the Rubaiyat. The poet fir stilt one of the great historic figures in his Sit 5 clent dtjy, but he is remembered there not as a poet or a tentmaker but as a eage, philosopher, astronomer and mathematician. Nlshapur lies in a barren upland plain, many days’ overland journey from the nearest railroad point. It is encircled by mountains, most of which aiM' lew and barren. The northern range, however, rises to a considerable height, and through many months of the year its peaks are white with snow. The lower ©slopes have a curious reddish tint, due to iron in the earth, so that rare and delicate color combinations are formed at dawn and twilight Looking southward from his city, Omar saw a level, featureless plain, depressingly treeless, save for . here and there a clump of slender poplars. The winter turned it to a lifeless gray; in the summer, pitiless sunlight and choking dust tormented the eyes. Only for a brief spring season did the fresh green of growing crops, the cool mists that rose after the early rains and the rainbow gleams of pale color from the mountains lend the vista a melancholy charm. Beyond the plain rose another row of low hills, and beyond that, he knew, stretched the endless desert. Each year a few weeks of joy and beauty; between mountain ’ and desert a few miles of half kindly' man-tilled earth —bits of respite that hardly broke the hostile round of nature —it Is easier to understand the defiant pessimism of the Rubaiyat after seeing Nlshapur. Chicago Dally Nows.