In continuation of Part II's examination of the composition and character of the Samanid state, this chapter explores Pseudo-Māwardī's presentation of social groupings beneath the level of kings, amirs and their immediate servants and assistants. It considers Pseudo-Māwardī's explicit and implicit treatment of the constituent categories among the khāṣṣa and the ʿāmma, the élites and the common people, the king's inner and outer public, and seeks to convey his perception of their relationships to royal sovereignty and their mediating functions in a diffuse political system. The most pertinent discussions fall in Pseudo-Māwardī's sixth and seventh chapters, devoted to the governance of the khāṣṣa and ʿāmma, respectively. Incidental information appears throughout the book, and materials drawn from more than one chapter will be addressed.

The Samanid dynasty's ability to endure depended on the periodically active support and participation of the region's multiple communities and constituencies. The maintenance of this support, whether active or implicit, entailed, beneath the levels of central and regional dynastic power, the engagement of a diverse set of localised holders of authority, who performed the functions of intermediaries between the rulers and the populations in given localities. While hierarchical in appearance, the Samanid system of rule depended on the networks of these local figures, whose episodic challenges to Samanid authority the amirs were only partially and on some occasions able to accommodate and contain. Jürgen Paul has argued that for long periods of time, it was such intermediaries, with their associates and extended families, who possessed and exercised power; the Samanids, and the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad still more remotely, represented, at most, a symbolic power.

Social Categories and Office Holders in Naṣīḥat al-mulūk

Pseudo-Māwardī, in his chapter devoted to governance of the ʿāmma, describes the relationship of royal sovereignty to the multiplicity of groupings among the subjects in the following terms:

It should be known that the king's adornment lies in the well-being (salāh) of the subjects. The more affluent and distinguished the subjects, and the nobler their condition in terms of religion and the world, and the more prosperous and extensive his kingdom (mamlaka), the greater in power (aẓam sulṭānan) and the more illustrious in repute (ajall shaʾnan) the king; whereas the more base in state and dejected in mind the subjects, the more negligible in sovereignty, the more insignificant in income and demeaned in reputation is the king.