Counsel for Kings: Wisdom and Politics in Tenth-Century Iran Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Notes on Transliteration and Dates
- Glossary
- Introduction
- Part I Situating the Text
- Part II Governance and Society
- Part III The Religious Landscape
- 5 Multiplicity and Rhetoric
- 6 Religion and the Samanid Amirs
- 7 The Afflictions of the Kingdom and their Remedies
- 8 The Religious Sensibility of Naṣīḥ at al-mulūk
- Notes
- Index
7 - The Afflictions of the Kingdom and their Remedies
from Part III - The Religious Landscape
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Notes on Transliteration and Dates
- Glossary
- Introduction
- Part I Situating the Text
- Part II Governance and Society
- Part III The Religious Landscape
- 5 Multiplicity and Rhetoric
- 6 Religion and the Samanid Amirs
- 7 The Afflictions of the Kingdom and their Remedies
- 8 The Religious Sensibility of Naṣīḥ at al-mulūk
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In the third chapter of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, Pseudo-Māwardī describes a sequence of developments that result, he argues, in the ruin of the kingdom and the loss of first the king's legitimacy and eventually his power. He also prescribes measures for the avoidance and correction of these developments. This section of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk immediately precedes Pseudo-Māwardī's chronologically arranged presentation of prophets, caliphs and kings who combined their exercise of temporal authority with the discharge of their religious and moral responsibilities and whose collective example provided instructive and persuasive models for the amirs of the present. The following pages offer a translation and discussion of most of this section of Pseudo-Māwardī's third chapter. A particularly prominent point of reference in this chapter is ʿAhd Ardashīr, which, with other legacies of the late antique heritage, contributed deeply to the shaping of Pseudo-Māwardī's mentality.
Pseudo-Māwardī opens his discussion with an assertion of the similarities among communities, which share many characteristics. Given this affinity, contemplation of the experience of earlier kingdoms proves highly instructive:
We say: The conditions of the communities (umam, pl. of umma) whose accounts are well known, of the kingdoms (mamālik) whose reports are famous, and the kings (mulūk) the beginnings and ends of whose days have been transmitted to us are similar and akin to one another. On this subject it has been related from our Prophet that, in describing the condition of his umma, he said: ‘By all means follow the customary practices of those who came before you in a completely identical manner (feather for feather and shoe for shoe), so that were someone among them to enter a lizard's hole, then you too would enter it.’1 (He said this) even though God distinguished this umma by the existence of truth in it until the Day of Resurrection, and made its consensus a proof against any areas of disagreement that remain (jaʿala ijmāʿahā aujjatan ʿalā mawā∂iʿ ikhtilāfihā mā baqiyat), and promised it support and assistance until the end of time and the passing of the duration of the world.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Counsel for Kings: Wisdom and Politics in Tenth-Century IranThe Nasihat al-muluk of Pseudo-Mawardi: Contexts and Themes, pp. 191 - 227Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016