Karl Hermann Ethé and an anonymous author

“ Voltaire never wrote anything equal to ‘Omar's fascinating rhapsodies in praise of wine, love and all earthly joys, and his passionate denunciations of a malevolent and inexorable fate which dooms to slow decay or sudden death and to eternal oblivion all that is great, good and beautiful in this world. There is a touch of Byron, Swinburne and even of Schopenhauer in many of his rubā‘īs, which clearly proves that the modern pessimist is by no means a novel creature in the realm of philosophic thought and poetical imagination. ”

“ His standard work on algebra, written in Arabic, and other treatises of a similar character raised him at once to the foremost rank among the mathematicians of that age, and induced Sultān Malik-Shāh to summon him in A.H. 467 (A.D. 1074) to institute astronomical observations on a larger scale, and to aid him in his great enterprise of a thorough reform of the calendar. ”