The two chapters in Part I of this volume addressed the situation of Pseudo-Māwardī's Na‚īhat al-mulūk in time and place. In those chapters I sought to establish that the book is a product of the first half of the tenth century and the Oxus regions, and I suggested more precisely that it was written during the reign of Na‚r II in the vicinity of Balkh. In what follows, I attempt to read Naṣīḥat al-mulūk in the context and as a product of this distinctive milieu. Chapters 3 and 4 undertake such a reading with regard to Pseudo-Māwardī's presentation of kingship and governance.

Mirrors for princes frequently display perspectives that differ considerably from the approaches characteristic of juristic and theological writings. Their authors possessed diverse professional backgrounds, and accordingly mirrors encompass a broad range of points of view and intersect with various specialised strands of discourse. Among the earlier examples in Arabic are secretaries’ and administrators’ compositions, often dedicated to particular topics or written to address a particular situation or occasion; the ‘testaments’ of rulers and governors, addressed to their successors or to their subjects; the testaments or edificatory writings of religious figures, addressed sometimes to an individual and frequently to a broader public; and texts of varied length that set forth, often in language that recalls materials assimilated into Arabic from Middle Persian and, to some degree, Greek, Syriac and Sanskrit sources, principles of royal governance, wise maxims, practical advice and regulations for the king's officials and for persons in attendance at the court. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, mirrors in Arabic and Persian had grown considerably in length and scope, and, while retaining a high degree of flexibility, the genre, now often in the form of a book for presentation, had acquired several characteristics. Mirrors of this period address well-known themes, such as royal justice and clemency, the dangers of acting in anger or haste and the necessity of consultation. The specific import of authors’ treatments of these topics is often obscured by their deployment of an established repertoire of Qurʿānic verses, Prophetic ªadīth, utterances ascribed to named or, perhaps more commonly, generic and deliberately decontextualised figures (‘a king’, ‘a vizier’, ‘a sage’), narratives and anecdotes, verses of poetry, aphorisms and proverbs.