Part III of this volume, in four chapters, studies the religious-political context for Pseudo-Māwardī's Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, and explores the textual indications of his philosophical-theological disposition and his religious sensibility. The chapters address the confessional composition of the Samanid domains and some of the varied discourses related to religion that flourished in the tenth-century mashriq. These discourses accommodated inclusive, pluralistic and exclusionary aspects: they assumed and acknowledged, often without evaluative rhetoric, the polity's religious diversity; they also refuted religiously identified groups, and located the potential for political instability in particular forms of religious interpretation. In Pseudo-Māwardī's conception, the ‘protection’ of religion was among the king's principal responsibilities. Part III explores Pseudo-Māwardī's understanding of the relationship between religion and kingship, and the factors that contributed to his perception, perhaps shared by numbers of his contemporaries, that the Samanid polity had fallen into incipient crisis.

Pseudo-Māwardī foreshadows the theme of religious divergence in a fleeting reference to ‘pseudo-prophets’ (mutanabbiʿūn) in his preface. In that context, Pseudo-Māwardī states that just as God sent His prophets to kings rather than to individuals, so pseudo-prophets had directed their attention towards kings, since subjects follow the path (madhhab) of their leaders. Placed prominently at the opening of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, the remark is likely to allude to the circumstances of the Samanid court at the time of the mirror's composition. The purpose of the present chapter is to explore the religious landscape of the period and the religious–intellectual culture that shaped Pseudo-Māwardī's perception and his articulation of religious arguments. Chapter 6 addresses the governance and behaviour of the Samanid amirs, and especially the amirs likely to have coincided with Pseudo-Māwardī's lifetime, with regard to the religious culture of their domains. Chapter 7 presents Pseudo-Māwardī's analysis of the ‘corruption’ that he perceived in the kingdom, and Chapter 8 offers a summary of Pseudo-Māwardī's location in the religious context of his milieu.

Western Central Asia had a long history of religious multiplicity. The region's location occasioned the convergence of numerous cultural currents, and facilitated the interaction of a profusion of religious orientations and communities.