Nizam al-Mulk: Book of Government; or, Rules for Kings

Context

In Islam, concepts of temporal kingship, or secular rule without any claim to rule by divine authority, developed in the tenth century—four hundred years after the rise of Islam. The first four caliphs did not rule merely as kings. (A king could claim that he ruled through divine right or that God had chosen the royal family, but he had no authority in religious matters.) Although the Umayyad caliphate essentially became a monarchy, as did the Abbasid caliphate after it, it still incorporated the spheres of both temporal and spiritual authority. The caliph was the deputy of God; he ruled by divine right and had authority in secular and religious affairs, even if most religious leaders challenged his religious authority. Only after the decline in the caliphs' power during the Abbasid period (750–1258) were governors able to assert their own temporal authority, independent of the caliph's. Even then, temporal rulers felt a need or perhaps an obligation to be recognized by the caliph as a legitimate ruler.

The Abbasids ruled the Islamic empire from 750 to 1258 from the city of Baghdad. By the tenth century their empire had become decentralized, and local rulers at the periphery gradually increased their own power. Among them were the Shia Buyids. Most Muslims were Sunni, or those who followed the path of the prophet Muhammad. Shia Muslims differed from Sunnis less on religious grounds than on the interpretation of who should lead the Muslim world. The Shia believed that Muhammad had made his cousin Ali his successor, which had not happened. The Shia movement gradually evolved into a separate religious interpretation of Islam, in that the Shia believed that the Ali and his descendents were specially chosen because they could also interpret the will of God. The Shia, then, essentially challenged the basis of Abbasid authority.

In 1056 Baghdad and much of the land that is now Iran and Iraq were held by the Buyids, a Shia Muslim dynasty from Daylam, near the Caspian Sea. Although they were Shia Muslims, they controlled the actions of the Abbasid caliph, the titular head of the Sunni Muslim world. The position of the caliph existed primarily because the Buyids found it expedient to allow it to exist. This period of Shia dominance quickly came to an end, beginning in the early eleventh century, when Turkic nomads from central Asia crossed the Amu Dar'ya River and settled in northeastern Iran. Soon they became a force to reckon with under the leadership of the Seljuk clan.

By 1058 the Seljuks under Toghrïl Beg had forced the Buyids from Baghdad and conquered most of Iran and Iraq. Soon the empire stretched from modern-day Turkey into Afghanistan. Few, if any, could challenge Seljuk military supremacy, but administratively Seljuk rule was haphazard. Into this situation came a Persian, Nizam al-Mulk. Like others among the conquered, he entered the service of the Seljuks and assisted in the administration of the empire. Having both witnessed and studied the history of less sophisticated groups who had established empires but proved largely unable (at least in his view) to rule them with any sophistication, Nizam al-Mulk wrote a treatise on how to rule, encompassing both traditional Persian and Islamic modes of thought into his Book of Government.

By the time of the Seljuks, the role of the caliph had diminished such that the caliph wielded only titular temporal and spiritual authority beyond Baghdad. The Seljuks did not seek to change the situation. Indeed, their capital was not Baghdad but Esfahan, thus marginalizing the caliph. The Seljuk sultan (a title that means “power” in Arabic) was the true ruler. Most of the early sultans began as provincial governors and became increasingly independent but still sought the approval of the caliph. Symbolic gestures toward the caliph served to lend them legitimacy, but in reality the power of the Seljuk military was their true source of legitimacy. Armies of archers who aimed and fired from horseback gave the Seljuks all the authority they needed. They bolstered their armies with Turkic nomads migrating from the steppe in search of pasture land.

A proverb common to empires taken by nomads was that one could conquer but could not rule from horseback. There was a need for talented administrators to provide stability. Thus, individuals with administrative skills, like Nizam al-Mulk, filled a niche in the Seljuk Empire. In the medieval Middle East a rough caste system existed, although no laws or formal boundaries enforced it. Turks were the warriors, Persians the administrators, and Arabs the religious leaders. Gradually, an administration was erected, more or less along lines similar to those that had existed in the Abbasid Empire and the Ghaznavid Empire (977–1187) in eastern Iran and Afghanistan. Indeed, Nizam al-Mulk first took refuge in the Ghaznavid Empire during the early Seljuk period. It was only after the Seljuks conquered the Iranian regions and western portions of Afghanistan held by the Ghaznavid Empire that Nizam al-Mulk's family entered Seljuk service.

In its first fifty years, the Seljuk Empire grew at a breathtaking rate as the Seljuks directed other Turkic nomads westward to search for pastures. With the rapid advance and the ever-increasing numbers of Turks, many who were only recent converts to Islam, and—from the bureaucracy's standpoint—not civilized, it was a period of anxiety for urban and peasant populations. Indeed, one of the reasons the Seljuks sent the nomads westward was so that they would not be tempted to plunder Iran. By 1100 the Seljuk elite could not be considered nomadic, although their martial prowess provided them sufficient credibility among the nomadic population. In general, the warrior classes viewed the bureaucracy as effete. While the bureaucracy placed value on education, knowledge, and rational government, the warriors believed in rule through might and the sword. The sultan appreciated the need for bureaucracy but often preferred the company and advice of his generals. The bureaucracy felt a considerable amount of uncertainty in its position, because ultimately the military might of the sultan decided matters of legislation.

The ulema, or traditional religious elite consisting of scholars, jurists, and theologians, had previously had considerable influence in the running of the state, providing a moral compass. Its members had also developed certain ideas of how a temporal ruler should behave and rule. Above all, justice must be maintained. The people should obey the ruler, because the ruler had been chosen by God—even if he was not godly. Gradually, the ulema and the bureaucracy increasingly turned to an older Persian tradition termed the “Mirrors for Princes.” These textual mirrors served as handbooks or guidebooks for rulers by providing examples of how to rule. Although many of the examples were idealistic and at times somewhat naive, they gave a model of what was considered to be a good ruler—in terms of both practical and ethical rule. It is fair to ask whether the majority of rulers governed according to the mirrors or whether the models offered were, in fact, wishful thinking on the part of their authors. It was in this milieu that Nizam al-Mulk entered Seljuk service and wrote his own mirror, the Book of Government.