Multiplicity and Rhetoric

First in a series of chapters devoted to the religious-political context of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, this chapter explores the confessional composition of the Samanid domains and the varied discourses related to religious cultures and the communities associated with them. Noting the region’s history of religious multiplicity, the chapter traces the inclusive approach to religious diversity evident in tenth-century encyclopaedic writings, as well as the contemporaneous production of a literature of refutation, directed against Muslim and non-Muslim groups. His mentality shaped by these factors, Pseudo-Māwardī emphasises the king’s need to develop skill in religious argumentation, particularly against heretics, whom he depicts as agents of political as well as religious dissent. After discussing paradigms of heterodoxy, the chapter ends with an account of the Ismāʿīlī mission active in the Samanid domains and its success in winning the support of the Amir Naṣr b. Aḥmad, during whose reign Naṣīḥat al-mulūk is likely to have been written, and whose conversion to Ismāʿīlism perhaps played a significant role in occasioning its composition.

Kingship and Governance: Concepts and Terminology

This chapter reads Naṣīḥat al-mulūk as a product of the distinctive political-social milieu of the Oxus regions in the first half of the tenth century. Concentrating on the themes of kingship and governance, it provides translations of passages from the mirror, and discusses them in conjunction with cultural and intellectual discourses prevalent in Pseudo-Māwardī’s environment. The chapter presents Pseudo-Māwardī’s portrayal of an ordered cosmos that reflected the wisdom of its Creator, and identifies principles, such as welfare or well-being (ṣalāḥ, maṣlaḥa) and the optimal (al-aṣlaḥ), that recur in Pseudo-Māwardī’s presentation of this order. It also treats Pseudo-Māwardī’s discussions of concepts and practices associated with social relationships, such as khidma (‘service’) and iḥsān (‘kindness’, ‘beneficence’). The chapter situates Pseudo-Māwardī’s treatment of kingship and governance in the context of a decentralised polity dependent on co-operation and maintained through ties of loyalty and obligation. It finds Pseudo-Māwardī’s use of titles, such as malik (‘king’), consistent with practices in the Samanid domains in the first half of the tenth century.

Religion and the Samanid Amirs

To situate Naṣīḥat al-mulūk in the religious culture of the tenth-century Samanid domains, this chapters explores the orientations and practices of the Samanid amirs from the later ninth century onwards. It portrays the proclivities towards austerity (zuhd) and religious devotion (ʿibāda) of the earlier amirs, especially the generation of Naṣr I and his brothers, the memory of whose conduct significantly shaped Pseudo-Māwardī’s conception of good governance. The chapter presents the efforts of this generation of amirs to develop mutually supportive relations with the religious scholars, and their active participation in the public religious sphere, in, for example, the hearing and transmission of ḥadīth and participation in the funerary rites of prominent scholars. It treats the social prominence and economic means of religious scholars and renunciants, whose support and co-operation Pseudo-Māwardī urges the king to cultivate. The chapter concludes with a discussion of religious developments during the reign of Naṣr II.

The Religious Sensibility of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk

The concluding chapter to this volume explores the evidence in Naṣīḥat al-mulūk for Pseudo-Māwardī’s religious-intellectual orientation. It discusses his emphasis on the themes of (1) ethical responsibility, expressed in part in observance of the divine law; (2) the indispensable nature of rationality in the pursuit of religious understanding; and (3) an austere way of living in the world, with an abiding sense of its transience and relativity. The chapter situates the mirror Naṣīḥat al-mulūk in the context of a milieu in which philo-ʿAlidism, the intellectual orientations of the Ḥanafiyya and the Muʿtazila, and practices of renunciation featured prominently.

A Liminal Setting: The Location of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk

This chapter situates Naṣīḥat al-mulūk’s first composition in the geographical-cultural context of the Samanid domains. It discusses late ninth- and tenth-century conditions in the regions of Transoxiana (location of the Samanid capital Bukhara), Khurasan and Tukharistan. On the basis of contextual factors, such as the establishment of Persian as a lingua franca and the region’s Buddhist heritage, and the cultural, linguistic and geographical indications contained in the text, the chapter argues for Naṣīḥat al-mulūk’s likely provenance in Tukharistan, and more specifically Balkh, close to the Oxus River. It also explores the (somewhat less likely) possibility of the mirror’s composition in Samarqand.

An Early Samanid View of History: The Dating of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk

By drawing on internal and external evidence, this chapter situates the mirror Naṣīḥat al-mulūk in an early tenth-century context. Providing an account of the Samanid polity in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, the chapter concentrates on the generation of amirs who dominated Samanid politics in the later ninth and early tenth centuries, namely the Amirs Naṣr I b. Aḥmad, Ismāʿīl b. Aḥmad and Isḥāq b. Aḥmad, all of them sons of Aḥmad I b. Asad. The chapter argues for the shaping force of this generation on the political outlook of Pseudo-Māwardī, whose historically sequenced depiction of exemplary rulers it presents. Among Pseudo-Māwardī’s principal reference points are literary texts, such as ʿAhd Ardashīr (‘Testament of Ardashīr’) and the pseudo-Aristotelian correspondence known as Risāla ilā l-Iskandar (‘[Aristotle’s] Epistle to Alexander’). Acknowledging the possibility of a later reworking, the chapter concludes with the proposal that Naṣīḥat al-mulūk was written during the reign of Naṣr II b. Aḥmad (r. 301-31/914-43).

The Afflictions of the Kingdom and their Remedies

This chapter presents the third chapter of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, in which Pseudo-Māwardī analyses factors that lead to the ruin of kingdoms and the loss of royal legitimacy and power, and prescribes measures to prevent such developments. The chapter offers translations of this section with references to ʿAhd Ardashīr, an Arabic text of Sasanian derivation that informed Pseudo-Māwardī’s understanding of the relationship between sovereignty and religion. The chapter relates Pseudo-Māwardī’s exposition to conditions in the Samanid domains in the early tenth century and suggests the possible meanings for his audience of his references to dissent, corruption and the activities of viziers. It further relates this section of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, in which Pseudo-Māwardī stresses the importance of rationality, to contemporary and near-contemporary writings.

Intermediaries and Networks

This chapter explores Pseudo-Māwardī’s treatments of groups beneath the level of kings and their immediate assistants. Offering translations of several passages of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, the chapter traces Pseudo-Māwardī’s presentation of the khāṣṣa and the ʿāmma, respectively the individuals closest to him and the groups further removed from his person, largely coinciding with categories bound in personal service to the ruler, and categories whose support of the ruler was voluntary. The chapter reads Pseudo-Māwardī’s treatment of social categories, defined in economic and professional terms and including the land-owning dihqāns as well as office-holders, as descriptive of the Samanid amirs’ dependence on networks of intermediaries, who exercised power in local settings and whose co-operation was indispensable to the maintenance of Samanid rule. The chapter concludes with aspects of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk that reflect the multi-confessional society in which Pseudo-Māwardī lived.

Introduction

The Introduction discusses the manuscript of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk and its history, the copyist’s attribution of the mirror for princes to al-Māwardī and the history of this attribution, and the arguments advanced by modern scholars for and against al-Māwardī’s authorship. Drawing on earlier studies, the Introduction takes Naṣīḥat al-mulūk to be a product of tenth-century eastern Iran, and sketches the geographical, cultural and intellectual milieu in which the book seems likely to have been written – a milieu shaped by a cosmopolitan literary culture, and the intellectual outlooks of the philosopher Abū Zayd al-Balkhī and the Muʿtazlite theologian Abū l-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī al Balkhī. The Introduction also discusses the several discourses and genres with which Naṣīḥat al-mulūk interacts.