The Sufistic Quatrains

"We may look upon Omar as a deeply learned man, following his own convictions, who, tortured with the question of existence, and finding no solution to life in Musulman dogmas, worked out for himself a regular conception of life based on Sufistic Mysticism; a man who, without discarding belief, smiled ironically at the inconsistencies and peculiarities of the Islam of his time, which left many minds dissatisfied in the fourth and fifth centuries, needing as it did vivification. It found thi...