NM

Written by Steven Schwartz on July 8th, 2009

Five hundred years before Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, the Nizam Al-Mulk, a medieval Persian leader and Islamic philosopher, tried his hand at an advice book for rulers that he called Siyasatnama (The Book of Government).
In contrast to Machiavelli's realpolitik, the Nizam Al-Mulk focused on good character. Good leaders, he said, share the following qualities: “modesty, good temper, forgiveness, humility, generosity, patience, gratitude and honesty”.
I cannot help but wonder what he would think of our contemporary political leaders.
For example, what would he make of the British parliamentary expenses scandal, which has so degraded their political elite? Taxpayer funded pornography, phantom mortgages and the MP who got the taxpayer to pay for cleaning out the moat that surrounds his castle.
(Actually, he was probably the wisest of the lot as at least he has a method for defending himself when the angry taxpayers come to extract their revenge. He can just raise the drawbridge and dump them into his newly cleaned moat.)
And what would the Nizam Al-Mulk make of our own parliament devoting the last days of its deliberations to the affairs of a Queensland car dealer?
Other business was pushed aside including the passage of the much needed student amenities legislation. Helping universities to serve students better by repealing the previous government’s voluntary student unionism legislation, a promise made in the 2007 election campaign, will now have to wait until 2010. Meanwhile students must continue to make do with whatever cash strapped universities can afford.
They say a country gets the parliamentarians it deserves, but I think we deserve better.
I certainly don’t think that the Nizam Al-Mulk would have been impressed. He was a great believer in education. As an important official in his own right (he was a vizier), he founded a series of advanced academies, which were called Nizamiyyah schools (named after their founder). These schools were the medieval forerunners of what later became colleges and universities. They were his longest lasting legacy.
But the Nizam Al-Mulk was also a pithy philosopher. One of his sayings, perhaps applicable to some involved in delaying the student bill was: “He who finds himself on the losing side has no business in parliament”.