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Nizam al-Mulk

(Arabic: "Order of the Kingdom"), original name ABU 'ALI HASAN IBN 'ALI (b. 1018/19, Tus, Khorasan, Iran--d. Oct. 14, 1092, near Nehavand), Persian vizier of the Turkish Seljuq sultans (1063-92), best remembered for his large treatise on kingship, Seyasat-nameh (The Book of Government; or Rules for Kings).

Early life.

Nizam al-Mulk was the son of a revenue official for the Ghaznavid dynasty. Through his father's position, he was born into the literate, cultured milieu of the Persian administrative class, a background that molded his attitudes and determined his career. In the years of confusion following the initial Seljuq Turk expansion, his father fled, eventually to Ghazna (now in Afghanistan), where Nizam al-Mulk, too, in due course entered Ghaznavid service. He soon returned to Khorasan, however, and joined the service of Alp-Arslan, who was then the Seljuq governor of Khorasan. When Alp-Arslan's vizier died, Nizam al-Mulk was appointed to succeed him, and, when Alp-Arslan himself succeeded his father in 1059, Nizam al-Mulk had the entire administration of Khorasan in his hands. His abilities so pleased his master that, when Alp-Arslan became the supreme overlord of the Seljuq rulers in 1063, Nizam al-Mulk was made vizier.

Influence in Seljuq policy

For the next 30 years, under two remarkable rulers, he occupied this position in an empire that stretched from the Oxus River in the east to Khwarezm and the southern Caucasus and westward into central Anatolia. During these decades, the Seljuq empire was at its zenith; Nizam al-Mulk's influence guided the sultan's decisions, sometimes even military ones, and his firm control of the central and provincial administration, through his numerous dependents and relatives, implemented those decisions. His influence was especially felt in the rule of Sultan Malik-Shah, who succeeded to the Seljuq throne when he was only 18. Indeed, Nizam al-Mulk's boast shortly before his assassination (1092) was substantially true: "Tell the sultan, 'If you have not already realized that I am your coequal in the work of ruling, then know that you have only attained to this power through my statesmanship and judgment'." Such was his reputation among contemporaries that he was compared to the Barmakids, viziers to the 8th-century caliph Harun al-Rashid. His aim, like that of other great Persian viziers, was to impress on his less-sophisticated Turkmen rulers, brought up in the rude tradition of the steppe, the superiority of Persian civilization and its political wisdom. Nizam al-Mulk's conception of society was based partly on the ideals that he had inherited from his background, a Persian tradition of order and hierarchy in the state that reached back beyond the Arab conquest of Persia in the 7th century to the traditions of Sasanian society. The ruler, chosen by God, had as his main task the preservation of stability in the kingdom and the traditional forms of society. His power was absolute, requiring no authorization, and the administration was centralized in his person.

The Seyasat-nameh

Yet, despite his immense power and prestige, Nizam al-Mulk was only in some measure able to mold his sultans in this ideal of kingship. Shortly before his death and at Malik-Shah's request, he wrote down his views on government in the Seyasat-nameh. In this remarkable work, Nizam al-Mulk barely refers to the organization of the dewan (administration) because he had been able, with the help of his well-chosen servants, to control and model it on traditional lines. But he never had the same power in the dargah (court) and found much to criticize in the sultan's careless disregard for protocol, the lack of magnificence in his court, the decline in prestige of important officials, and the neglect of the intelligence service. The most severe criticisms in the Seyasat-nameh, however, are of those with heterodox religious views, the Shi'ites in general and the Isma'ilites in particular, to whom he devotes his last 11 chapters. His support of "right religion," Sunni Islam, was not only for reasons of state but also a matter of passionate conviction, providing the other major influence that shaped his view of society.
He expressed his religious devotion in other ways, however, that more effectively contributed to the Sunnite revival. He founded Nizamiyah madrasahs (colleges of higher learning) in many major towns throughout the empire to combat Shi'ite propaganda, as well as to provide reliable, competent administrators, schooled in his own branch of Islamic law. Less orthodox religious communities among the Sufi orders also benefited from his generosity; hospices, pensions for the poor, and extensive public works related to the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina were created or sustained by his patronage. Particularly in his last years, when the Isma'ilite threat grew stronger and its partisans found a refuge in Alamut, the castle of the Assassins, he set himself the task of combating their influence by every means possible.
On Alp-Arslan's death in 1073, Nizam al-Mulk was left with wider powers, since the late sultan's successor, Malik-Shah, was only a youth. By 1080, however, Malik-Shah had become less acquiescent. Nizam al-Mulk also antagonized the sultan's favourite courtier, Taj al-Mulk, and he made an enemy of the sultan's wife Terkhen-Khatun by preferring the son of another wife for the succession.
Nizam al-Mulk was assassinated in 1092, on the road from Esfahan to Baghdad, near Nehavand. The murder was probably committed by an Isma'ilite from Alamut, possibly with the complicity of Taj al-Mulk and Terkhen-Khatun, if not that of Malik-Shah himself. Within a month, however, the sultan, too, was dead, and the disintegration of the great Seljuq empire had begun.
As a great Iranian vizier, Nizam al-Mulk conspicuously exemplifies the chief minister's role of mediator between a despot, in this instance an alien Turk, and his Persian subjects. Nizam al-Mulk kept Turkmen immigrants, who had entered Iran with the Seljuqs, engaged in hostilities outside the country; he enhanced the dignity and prestige of the Seljuqs by inculcating canons of royal behaviour and etiquette; and he tempered military harshness with lessons in judicious clemency and conciliation. He built up Seljuq power with the sultan as the keystone of an integrated administration, and he encouraged the recognition of local rulers as honourable vassals. Nizam al-Mulk was, for contemporaries, as he has remained for successive generations who read his Seyasat-nameh, the quintessential vizier--wise, prudent, resourceful and successful, and a devout Muslim. By his life and work, he brought the Persian and the Islamic cultures toward a closer integration at a time when medieval Islam reached its zenith.
The only complete English translation of Nizam al-Mulk's Seyasat-nameh is by Hubert Darke, The Book of Government; or, Rules for Kings (1960).