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Who was Nizam al-Mulk? In a similar way to ‘Umar II and Charlemagne, Nizam al-Mulk is praised in medieval historiography not just for his political acumen, but also for his knowledge of law, patronage of the clerics, and his ability to stand his ground in religious debate. Nizam al-Mulk crossed the chasm that divided politicians from religious professionals, the one that separated Islamic from Iranian, Sufi from legist, Turk from Persian, Hanafi from Shafi‘i, and sultan from caliph. His uniqueness is reinforced by his enduring legacy, which contrary to current scholarship is shaped not by the Nizamiyya schools, but by his Siyar al-muluk, a guide to good rule written for the Saljuq sultan, Malikshah (r. 1073-1092). This chapter argues that the life of Nizam al-Mulk and its many retellings provide a fulcrum, or an organizing principle, for perceiving the transformation of the social order in medieval Iran.

Reviewing the early sources on al-Ghazali’s life and comparing them with information that he himself gives in his Persian letters leads to the conclusion that he was born around 1056, roughly two years than usually assumed. His family was more prominent among the scholars of Iran than the Muslim historians like to admit. An early contact with his later mentor Nizam al-Mulk is likely. Al-Ghazali’s so-called “crisis” in 1095, when he left Baghdad, was the result of a log-lasting development and was triggered by his changed attitude towards the Seljuq state authorities. His subsequent “seclusion” was merely a deliberate absence from schools (madrasas) that were supported with state funds. He continued to teach, however, at small private madrasas and at no point did al-Ghazali seclude himself from his students and followers.

The focus in the fifth and final chapter is on the afterlife of Nizam al-Mulk, of his legacy as well as of his representations. By the late fifteenth century, in Timurid Iran, Nizam al-Mulk is already the stuff of legend. In one historian’s estimation, the vizier is a veritable eleventh-century avatar of the martyr par excellence of Shi’i lore Husayn b. ‘Ali (d. 680), and the progenitor of modern Iran. But the story of Nizam al-Mulk does not end with his metamorphosis into a crypto-Shi‘i and a proto-Iranian patriot. In the 2010s, it is Nizam al-Mulk who is the most regularly invoked exemplar of legitimate Islamic governance, exhorting prudence and expedience to guide the Iranian polity through the treacherous waters of nuclear negotiations with the West, and to domesticate outlier and extremist fervor. The Iranian invocation of Nizam al-Mulk differs radically from his depiction in modern Sunni—Arab or Turkish—historiography. That living legacy is the true history of the laureled vizier.

Alterity is inflected with allegorical valences in Nizam al-Mulk’s biographies. Medieval historians imagined the vizier as the sultan’s alter ego: he is old and wise, learned and vigilant, Persian and Shafi‘i; the sultan is young and brash, frivolous and uncouth, Turkic and Hanafi. They also upheld him as a paragon of non-partisanship and stressed his willingness to compromise. In Siyar al-muluk, his mirror for the Saljuq prince, on the other hand, governance is inflected with the language of religious and ethnic difference. This chapter attempts to reconcile these seemingly contradictory assessments. The vizier’s policies vis-à-vis Turkic rulers, Abbasid caliphs, and heretics including Shi‘is and Sufis are scrutinized to suggest that secular, political concerns couched in the language of religious metaphors may be read to reveal the scaffolding of authority in medieval Islamic thought.

This chapter gives translations of Muslim accounts of the battle of Manzikert dating from the thirteenth century. All these narratives are in Arabic; some of them are written in ornate style. The authors come from Central Asia, Iraq and Syria. Their accounts of the battle are presented in roughly chronological order. Each of these translations is accompanied by a detailed commentary, analysing their content, style and the specific context in which the author is writing.

Al-Ghazali’s early career was spent in the service of the Seljuk regime, and he was actively involved in the wars of succession that followed the death of the sultan Malikshah. His letters reveal that one of the motives behind his famous departure from Baghdad in 1095 was to sever his ties with the regime. And yet his political connections continued to serve him in his revivalist agenda for the rest of his life.

In the pursuit of political thought on authoritative and efficacious rule, this chapter contains a brief introduction to those currents that shaped the eleventh century: the coming of the Turks to the eastern Islamic world, and the interaction of Turkic rulers with the Abbasids and local elites, to which Nizam al-Mulk belonged, as narrated in the medieval histories with a particular élan. Drawing on new scholarship on ethnicity, ethnogenesis, and nomadic polities, it argues that normative assumptions that color medieval accounts of Saljuq tribal and political organization offer insights that have hitherto been neglected. Ethnonyms and toponyms are frequently used in medieval sources as situational constructs, camouflaging alliances and ideological proclivities.