from his The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shi'ite Iran from the Beginning to 1890. University of Chicago Press, 1984. [chpt 3, pp. 85-100.]
The primitive cosmologies built around the central notion of sacral kingship have a number of essential characteristics in common. The king is equivalent to the cosmos, being typically "identified with the sky, and amid the sky with the sun." "The germ which . . . expands into law is the king's imitation of the universe, and more particularly of the sun which is the life of the universe." Thus the king "is the upholder of ordinances." Justice or order, in the sense of a body politic ordered in harmony with the cosmos -- as the antithesis of chaos and disorder -- is the central ethico-cognitive notion of these cosmologies. To this central notion of kingship, best reflected in the prototype of the sun king, was added the secondary notion of king as a warlord, usually associated with the prototype of the war king, which tended to recede into the background after the founding of dynasties and establishment of order. Another essential feature of these cosmologies is their materialism: their "all-embracing conception of welfare, the life of the world," which makes the furtherance of prosperity of the land and the subjects, by magical, political, or ethical means, the essential responsibility of the king.
"Whatever was significant was imbedded in the life of the cosmos," Frankfort tells us in his classic study of kingship in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, "and it was precisely the king's function to maintain the harmony of that integration." The pharoah's primary obligation is to maintain the right order. In Mesopotamia, more relevant to our concern because of the direct influences consequent upon its conquest by Cyrus the Great, the king was not a god but a man. On the other hand, the "Mesopotamian king was, like Pharoah, charged with maintaining harmonious relations between human society and the supernatural powers." Furthermore, "in historical times the Mesopotamian, no more than the Egyptian, could conceive of an ordered society without a king."
The antithesis between the ethical religions of salvation, based as they are on monotheism and on the transcendence of God, and the materialist cosmologies incorporating sacral kingship is fundamental. It inevitably generates some measure of antipathy toward the earthly powers. Nevertheless, what is strikingly demonstrated by the discussions in this chapter is the likelihood of the persistence of these archaic normative orders despite the superimposition of a world religion, and the often negligible impact of the latter upon the former.
In this respect, the case of Judaism is exceptional. The evidence for the prevalence of sacral kingship in ancient Israel is compelling. Yet the transcendence of Yahweh and his uniqueness as a war god entailed some unusual features in Hebrew sacral kingship, making for the preponderance of elements associated with the moon king prototype. According to the Hebrew conception, the most important functions of the king were leadership in war and the administration of justice. The king was also the vicegerent of God. He was the Messiah or the "anointed" of Yahweh, endowed with Yahweh's spirit, and his person was sacrosanct. However, with the termination of historical kingship and continued subjugation of the Jews, sacrality of kingship was completely transposed into messianic hope associated with the house of David. With the absence of dynastic rulers with a vested interest in mirroring the cosmic order and embodying the spirit of Yahweh, the eschatological transposition of sacral kingship could be achieved. Earthly kingship disappeared, and the crown came to put on the Torah. In no other case do we witness such a complete triumph of a world religion over the cosmology of sacral world order and kingship.
H. A. R. Gibb states:
"The nemesis of the over-rapid conquests of the Arabs -- and the political tragedy of Islam -- was that the Islamic ideology never found its proper and articulated expression in the political institutions of the Islamic states." Islam is not alone among the world religions in not having had a notable impact on the constitution of the polity or on the political ethos prevalent in the lands it conquered. The same is true of Eastern Christianity, and of all Christianity down to the latter part of the eleventh century. Writing about the post-Constantine period, Troeltsch considers the influence of Christianity on political institutions to have been "extraordinarily slight":
"The institutions and intellectual culture rooted in the old ideas
were too ancient, too independent, too radically remote, to be able to
assimilate new impulses, while the Church, on the other hand, was still
too much concerned with the next world, . . . still inwardly too detached
to be able to weave ideas of that kind into the inner structure of the
State....
Thus in the Early Church we can only look for a theoretical adjustment
of the relationship between the Church and the Kingdom of God on the one
hand, and the State and the world on the other, as of two inwardly essentially
separate magnitudes which . . . are prevented from mutual interpenetration."
The divergent courses of evolution in Western and Eastern Christianity from that point on, bearing the respective influences of Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339?) and Saint Augustine (d. 430), are instructive. Both Christianity and Islam encountered the same political ethos of sacral kingship in the form of Persian and Hellenistic theories of universal monarchy. In Eastern Christianity, the theory of universal monarchy was endorsed by the hierocracy and incorporated into the Orthodox belief system. Eusebius adopted the Hellenistic philosophy of kingship, and presented imperial government as a copy of the rule of God in heaven. The Roman emperor was therefore the vicegerent of the Christian God. For the Hellenistic philosopher Diotegenes, the state had been the mimesis of kosmos (which means "order" as much as it means "universe"). Eusebius substituted the kingdom of heaven for cosmos. The Hellenistic theory in which God was the archetype of the true king was adopted virtually in its entirety: "Eusebius had only to drop the Godhead of the king and to put in its place the Vicegerent of God." Diotogenes had stated:
"As God is to the universe, so is the king to the State (polis), and as the State is to the universe, so is the king to God. For the State, which is a body joined together in harmony from many different parts, imitates the system and harmony of the universe; and the king, who exercises an authority [which] is not responsible [to any earthly superior], and who is in himself Animate Law, thus becomes the figure of a God among men."
In the Tricennial Oration, or De laudibus Constantini, Eusebius declares:
"So crowned in the image of heavenly kingship, [the emperor] steers and guides men on earth according to the pattern of his prototype . . . God the Great King . . . is the standard of kingly power; and it is He who determines the establishment of a single authority for all men.... So there is one King; and the Word and the law that proceed from Him are one, expressed not in letters and syllables, or in inscriptions and pillars that perish with the passage of time, but living and subsisting as the Word that is God.... "
A specifically Christian touch was added by the title of Equal of the Apostles, bestowed upon Constantine and retained by his successors, otherwise the theory retained its pre-Christian characteristics. In the fifth century (ca. 428), Cyril of Alexandria would address the emperor as the image of God on earth. Even at the end of the fourteenth century, when the Orthodox patriarchate was far larger than the shrunken empire, Patriarch Antony IV sharply reminded the grand prince of Muscovy, Basil I, that the holy emperor was God's viceroy on earth and the consecrated head of the Oecumene: "The Eusebian conception still endured." It endured to the last, the fall of Constantinople, only to be transplanted, to the anachronistic delight of the grand prince, to the Third Rome to bestow caesaro-papist legitimacy on the czars.
Saint Augustine's replacement of a God-ordained oecumene by the dichotomy of the City of God and the civitas terrena precluded a consistent legitimation of caesaropapist political monism in Western Christianity: "Far from regarding a Christian empire as a realisation of God's kingdom on earth, [Augustine] doubts whether there is any possibility of realizing the Christian postulates in it." The state, though a consequence of sin, can be legitimated if it is based on justice, as earthly peace and earthly justice are the gifts granted to fallen humanity; but it can be so legitimated as temporal rule. For centuries to come, theories of sacral kingship were retained and Germanic elements were added to the idea of universal monarchy; but henceforth, in the eyes of the Christian believers, they could only legitimate kingship as temporal rule. "Two there are, august emperor," would write Pope Gelasius I (d. 496) to the emperor Anastasius, "by which this world is chiefly ruled, the sacred authority [auctoritas] of the priesthood and the royal power [potestas]." Nevertheless, the christianization of Germanic kingship was a slow process, and centuries had to pass before the institutional development of the papacy and a suitable constellation of political and hierocratic power would allow the "rationalization" of the principles of legitimacy of royal authority in Western Christendom by bringing them into congruence with Augustine's fundamental conceptions. Charlemagne had been "addressed as Rex and Sacerdos, and even reverenced as the Vicar of St. Peter, and vested with the 'two swords.'" This conception of the "priest-king" was justified with reference to the biblical figure Melchizedech. Furthermore, in he ninth century, Christ was often identified with David and depicted as a warrior king. In 877, Pope John VIII could accordingly regard Charles the Bald as "the principem populi established by God in imitation of Christ, the true king; what Christ possessed by nature Charles could have by grace; he was the salvator mundi.' Unlike in Byzantium, in the West this early medieval conception of Rex et Sacerdos had to give way to Papa versus Imperator in the later Middle Ages. Royal consecration lost the character it had in Carolingian times, and was forever excluded from the seven sacraments. The king was granted a place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy -- not as the head but only as an arm. The twelfth and thirteenth century emperors no longer claimed priestly authority but only direct endowment with the temporal sword by God. The papacy, on the other hand, conceived of the emperor as a "mere officer who had to draw his sword at the bidding of the papacy." For Innocent III, "the pope as the Vicar of Christ had the right to create the universal protector of Christiandom [i.e., the emperor] . . . [hence] the repeated emphasis on the sun-moon allegory in [Innocent's] text, the moon receiving its light from the sun." A world religion may be forced to a prolonged or permanent compromise with the idea of a sun-king, representing divine order, justice, and peace, but easily accommodates that of a moon-king, the war-king, and can willingly legitimate his temporal authority as a warrior and protector of faith. Thus, although the principle of universal monarchy was retained, it could only legitimate kingship as temporal domination. Thus, in Western Christianity, kingship was secularized."
A comparable development had taken place many centuries earlier in ancient India, where kingship had had a pronounced sacral character. As Dumont has shown, the analogous separation of the religious sphere from the political, accompanied by the exclusive appropriation of religious authority by the Brahmans, resulted in the secularization of kingship in Hinduism. Furthermore, with greater consistency than in the case of medieval Western Christianity, kingship was legitimated as temporal rule, that is, as authority pertaining to the "politico-economic domain, . . . [a] domain [which] is relatively autonomous with regard to absolute values." With this assumption, Kautilya (d. ca. 300 B.C.), the author of the Artha-sastra, uses the notions of danda (punishment) and artha (material advantage) as cornerstones of his theory of government to legitimate kingship, in Dumont's paraphrase, as "the exercise of force for the pursuit of interest and the maintenance of order."
The definitive separation of religious authority from the political during the formative period of the development of Imami Shi'ism entailed the secularization of kingship. Doctrinal indifference to the principles of legitimacy of temporal rule -- which was thus relegated to the realm of the profane, "the world" -- amounted to granting autonomy to the pre-Islamic theory of sacral kingship and at the same time restricting its relevance to the temporal sphere. With the replacement by a world religion -- Islam and then its Shi'ite branch -- of the cosmology of which the idea of sacral kingship was the central part, the husk of the theory of kingship, emptied of divine attributes, was retained while whatever religious motivation had previously contributed to its upholding was dessicated. But the husk was soon filled by earthly majesty, profane and perhaps even pagan, but nevertheless capable of inducing the motivation to submit to its authority. Though like the theories of monarchy in medieval Western Christianity, and unlike Kautilya's theory, the principles legitimating kingship in Persian political theories were not systematically shorn of formal sacralizing elements, the clear differentiation of political and religious authority in Shi'ism rneant that they could consistently legitimate kingship only as temporal rule.
I do not know of any satisfactory account of the transition from the (nomadic) tribal notion of kingship one encounters at the time of the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great to the divine charisma of the Sasanian kings at the time of the Arab conquest -- an account, that is, which would show the respective influence of the Mesopotamian and the Aryan theories of kingship.
Pending the appearance of an authoritative study of this transition, we may plausibly assume that the Aryan influence became predominant in the long run because of Zoroastrianism, which originated in northeastern Iran and persisted through the Hellenistic period, to be fully restored by the Sasanians in the third century A.D. The subsequent analysis is therefore exclusively focused on the Aryan, Zoroastrian influence, which, in any event, was decisive in the terminology of kingship eventually to be adopted by medieval Islam.
Christensen places the organization of monarchy among the Aryan tribes of eastern Iran between 900 and 775 B.C., some 150 to 300 years before the appearance of Zoroaster as the reformer of the Mazdist religion. The notion of charismatic kingship that emerged in this first heroic age of political organization is recorded in the pre-Zoroastrian proto-yashts (especially yashts 13 and 19). There we first meet the terms x'areno [Middle Persian farrah] of the Aryans" (airyanem xVareno) and more importantly, x'areno of the Kavis [kings]" (kavae-m x'areno). Bailey painstakingly establishes the primary meaning of x'areno as "a thing obtained or desired" and suggests "welfare, well-being" or "fortune" or, more concretely, "good things" as equally satisfactory translations. This primary meaning is found in such verses as "O Fortune [asi], bestowing good things [x'areno]. X'areno of the Kavis, Royal Fortune, represents the pre-Zoroastrian abstract hypostasis of the notion in the legends of the earliest kings. This kingly Fortune was Yama's until he abandoned Arta (Right/Order) for the Drug (False). Then, "the x'areno went from Yama . . . in the form of the bird Varagna." The Turanian Franrasyan forfeited the Fortune of the Kavis by killing the Zainigav and adhering to the false faith. He attempted to recover it by swimming in the lake Vorukasa (Lake Hamun), the eternal repository of x'areno of the Kavis and the Aryans. But Royal Fortune escaped from him to be recovered by his vanquisher, Kavi Haosravah. Finally, Kavi Vistaspa, the champion of Zoroastrian faith, offered sacrifice to the goddess Fortune (Asi, hypostasis of good things bestowed), and came to possess the Fortune of the Kavis. Ahura Mazda enjoins every man to seek the "unseized x'areno of the lake Vorukasa, which he who has not asa (Arta, Right) cannot hold. Needless to say, x'areno thus hypostasized as Royal Fortune, maintains its connection with prosperity, order, and the sun as a bestower of good things.
With Zoroastrianism, a third abstract hypostasis makes its appearance in the Avesta: the x'areno of Zoroaster. The emergence of Zoroaster as the religious reformer, ratu, and keeper of Right (asa) meant that one would in time speak of religion as a force in the invisible world bestowing fortune; the unseized x'areno could also subsequently be claimed by the priests by virtue of their knowledge of Ahura Mazda.
While Zoroastrianism was growing but long before it became the established religion of the state, the local rulers of northeastern Iran assumed the etymologically remarkable title of x'atav (he who is powerful by himself, auto-krator). The notion behind the title later found general acceptance in Iran and produced a conception of lordship which was at complete divergence with those of the Latin rex and Sanskrit raj at the two extremities of the Indo-European world, both of which gave royalty the character of "rector," the sovereign's role consisting only in "tracing the right way." This Iranian conception of lordship was also indicated by xsara (Sanskrit ksatra), from which the Old Iranian xs'a-yaiya (corresponding to the Sanskrit ksatriya) meaning king, and therefore the Achemenid king of kings and the inverted shahan shah were derived. However, the apotheosis of the king of kings is not a feature of the Achemenid Empire, and very probably began with the founder of the Parthian dynasty, Arshak, who according to the well-informed Ammianus Marcellinus
"was placed among the stars according to the sacral custom of their country; and -- they believe -- he was the first of all to be so honored. Hence to this day the over-boastful kings of that race suffer themselves to be called brothers of the Sun and Moon.... Hence they venerate and worship Arsak as a god."
Henceforth, in Widengren's words,
"the king is holy, because his descent is from the gods. His person is of a divine character. He is the Brother of Sun and Moon and has his real home among the stars. He is the Aion incarnate. Some kings are regarded more as Sun-kings, other as Moon-kings. His real nature is fire, for he has descended from heaven as lightning in a column of fire."
However, the peaceful sun king aspect predominated over the warlike moon king aspect throughout Iranian history.
The man to capture the Royal Fortune and establish the Sasanian Empire in A.D. 226 was Ardashlr, son of Papak. He sought and obtained the aid of "the divine Fortune of Iran." Shortly before his final victory, the wise vizier of Ardavan, the last king of the Parthian dynasty to be overthrown by him, reportedly interpreted an incident in which Ardavan was chasing the fugitive Ardashir when a "great ram," after pursuing the latter for a time, mounted behind him on the horse, meaning that "the Royal Fortune has reached Ardashlr and he cannot in any way be taken."
Ardashlr made the restoration of Zoroastrianism the pillar of his newly founded empire. He was the restorer of Right/Order (Arta, Old Iranian rta, Avestan asa) and styled himself the King/Lord of Right/Order. In this he was assisted by the Zoroastrian priesthood. A letter attributed to his great herbad, Tansar, has come down to us in Persian translation. The core of the letter is very probably from the time of Ardashlr, and may well have been written by Tansar. It expounds the foremost principle upon which imperial order was restored:
"Do not wonder at my zeal and ardour for promoting order in the world, so that the foundation of the laws of religion may be made firm. For religion and kingship were born of the one womb, joined together and never to be sundered. Order and corruption, health and sickness of both has the same constitution."
Religion and kingship were born of one womb and were the equally indispensable constituents of Arta (Right/Order).
According to Zaehner, in the Zoroastrian ethos "the King is the center of the universe, and the goal of the universe is happiness." The prosperity of the subjects depends on the quality of the king. Furthermore, "God is absolute lord of both worlds; the King is his representative on earth and, as such, may himself take the title of bagh, 'god.'" In the Denkart, we have the affirmation of the principle, "Religion is royalty, and royalty is the religion." Further, "the symbol of the Holy Spirit surely manifests itself on earth in [the person of] the good and righteous King, one whose will is bent on increase, whose character is pure, whose desire for his subjects is good."
Thus, over the whole world stands the King of Kings, who, in Zaehner's words, "is the guardian of religion as he is of justice and order. Religion indeed, in the Zoroastrian sense, is almost synonymous with justice and order." What is striking is the materialism of the Zoroastrian cosmology:
"The fruit of the Good Religion is the benefit of the creatures,
that of false religion is their harm....
Injustice gives strength to the demons in their ruining of the material
world....
From belief in . . . the Good Religion proceeds the formation of character,
from the formation of character the Mean: from the Mean is justice born
from justice good thoughts, good words, and good deeds; from the welfare
of Man.... The spiritual world is made straight and the material world
brought into order."
It is important to note that this charismatic legitimacy was conditional upon the king's being good and righteous, and was forfeited in case of tyranny: "whereas the good king was the symbol of the divine sovereignty (Light) on earth, the wicked king or tyrant was rather that of Ahriman (The Evil Spirit of Darkness).
Kingship was associated not only with Royal Fortune but also with light and splendor, as reflected in such phrases as splendid lordship. We are thus told in the Karnamak that "Papak one night saw in a dream how the sun shone from the head of Sasan and made the whole world bright."
According to Bailey, under the influence of Manichaean and Christian writers and translators, the primary meaning of "fortune" was partly forgotten and merged with the idea of splendor of lordship. X'arr (farrah) thus acquired the vaguer meaning of "glory" and was symbolized by the nimbus of light or fire surrounding the head of the king.
The Sasanian kings had no difficulty in accommodating the apotheosis of kingship they had inherited from the Parthians into this Zoroastrian framework. Shahpur II would thus call himself "King of Kings, partner with the stars, brother of the Sun and Moon." Furthermore, the Sasanian kings not only called themselves gods: they imitated gods in their attire, notably in their crown, the crown being adorned by objects that symbolized the Farrah or Royal Fortune/Glory. With the accretion of emblems the crown became so heavy that it could not be worn by the king and hung above the throne. This usage passed to the court of Byzantium, where it was observed in 1170 by Benjamin of Tudela. As for the shapes of the throne, they were perpetuated at the court of the Baghdad caliphs. Except for the deification of the king, this picture bears a remarkable similarity to the world view and ethos of imperial China, where
"the impersonal power of Heaven did not 'speak' to man. It revealed itself in the regimen on earth, in the firm order of nature and tradition which were part of the cosmic order, and, as elsewhere, it revealed itself in what occurred to man. The welfare of the subjects documented heavenly contentment and the correct functioning of the order."
Weber's characterization of Chinese rule as "theocratic patrimonialism" therefore seems also applicable to Sasanian Iran, both with regard to the charismatic position of the monarch and to the centrality of the notion of the "welfare state," with a strong materialistic emphasis on the prosperity of the kingdom and on the economic well-being of the subjects, the ra'aya or ra'iyat (original meaning "tended livestock"). However, Sasanian theocratic patrimonialism, unlike that of the Chinese, had to face the onslaught of a world religion of salvation to which it succumbed.
Like the imperial crown, the influence of the Sasanian ethos of universal monarchy penetrated into Islam as early as the eightht/second century through the work of Ibn Muqaffa', the chancellor of the 'Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, both in administrative handbooks and in mirrors for princes. The most important of the Sasanian tracts on kingship and statecraft translated into Arabic in the eighth/ second century bore the significant title of the Covenant of Ardashlr ('Ahd Ar- dashlr). It takes the form of the testament of Ardashlr, Lord of Right/Order, to his successors among the kings of Persia:
"Know that kingship and religion are twin brothers; there is no solidity for one of them except through its companion because religion is the foundation of kingship and kingship the protector of religion. Kingship needs its foundation and religion its protector as whatever lacks a protector perishes and whatever lacks a foundation is destroyed."
Similarly, the Sasanian idea of kingship influenced the 'Abbasid idea of caliphate: "The 'Abbasid Caliphs themselves at least tolerated the idea that their caliphate was a continuation of Persian royalty." The caliphs' strong claim to Islamic legitimacy as the "heir of the Mantle [of the Prophet], the Staff and the authority [hukm] of God," was effectively buttressed by their claim to righteous sovereignty as the source of prosperity of the realm as reflected in panegyrics of the court poets: "through you the expanses of land have become fertile. / How can the world be barren when you are its protector?"
The Buyid seizure of power in Baghdad in the mid-tenth/fourth century ushered in a major bifurcation in the Islamic structure of domination. The caliph's position became largely ceremonial, yet it precluded any claim on the part of the actual rulers of the Islamic lands to be the heirs of the Prophet. The Sasanian idea of kingship could then be seen as the most effective means for the legitimation of temporal power. Thus the Buyids revived the full-fledged conception of kingship. In the tenth/fourth century, the Buyid rulers assumed the title of shahanshah, which continued to be borne by the Saljuq sultans in the following century. Thus, with the eclipse of the 'Abbasid caliphate in the tenth/fourth century, political theory came to center around the de facto ruler -- later to be designated "Sultan" -- rather than the caliph, and by the second half of the eleventh/fifth century, the tradition of seeing the ruler as the "Shadow of God on Earth" became firmly established. The Sasanian idea of kingship had been adopted by Islam.
In the last quarter of the eleventh/fifth and the early years of the twelfth/sixth century, when the bifurcation of the Islamic structure of domination into caliphate and rulership had become fully established, some of the most important treatises on rulership, statecraft, and political ethics made their appearance. By then, the eighth/second- and early ninth/third-century Sasanian translations had become fully assimilated into the conventional wisdom. However, the separation of the caliphate, associated with the prophetic tradition and with religion, from temporal rulership necessitated a subtle change of emphasis in political theory. Ibn Muqaffa' had chosen to speak of religion (din) rather than Islam. As religion, retaining its pre-Isamic connotations, implied a right order based on justice, the explicit role of justice was secondary and the term was used in a general rather than a legal sense. With the eighth/second- and ninth/tenth-century differentiation of religion and the prophetic tradition from the political order, and with the tenth/fourth- and eleventh/fifth-identification of caliphate with Islamic orthodoxy, justice replaced right religion as the twin companion of kingship; and kingship as supreme temporal rule claimed direct and autonomous divine sanction in the form of the Farr (Farrah)-e Izadi, the Yazdan x'arrah of the Karnamak-e Ardashlr, now assuming the meaning of divine effulgence.
As Lambton points out, in one of the famous treatises on government, Siyasat-nameh, Nizam al-Mulk tacitly regards the theory of divine effulgence (Farr-e Izadi) as superseding the classical theory of the caliphate. Although Nizam al-Mulk emphasized the importance of right religion and stability, justice rather than religion -- including religious law -- became the basis of his theory of kingship: "The object of temporal rule was to fill the earth with justice." In another famous treatise of the period, al-Ghazall's Nasihat al-Muluk, the emphasis on justice is predominant. The one qualification he makes for a true sultan is the exercise of justice. This trend was typical throughout the Middle Ages. Sasanian notions were recast in Islamic and Hellenistic terms: the theory of the ruler as the Shadow of God on Earth was taken from Sasanian sources, and the Hellenistic idea of the philosopher king was assimilated to it. Justice rather than the right religion became the foundation of the medieval theory of righteous rule.
The first important impact of Islam -- like that of other world religions -- on the ethos of universal monarchy was to change the notion of justice, which came to acquire the connotation of enforcement of the sacred law rather than the maintenance of the 'right order" in harmony with the cosmos. This impact is unmistakable and the notion of justice becomes firmly connected with the enforcement of the sacred law. Nevertheless, the impact was not strong enough to generate a systematic public law. The political economy of the reconstituted ethos of kingly patrimonialism is clearly expressed in a slightly earlier treatise:
"Make it your constant endeavor to improve cultivation and to govern well, for understand this truth, good government is secured by armed troops, armed troops are maintained with gold, gold is acquired through cultivation and cultivation is sustained through payment of what is due to the peasantry, by just dealing and fairness: be just and equitable therefore."
The overriding fear of anarchy and bloodshed made the Muslim jurists and legal theorists enjoin unconditional obedience to "those in authority" (Quran, 4: 59), contenting themselves with emphasizing that the latter were held morally accountable to God. Protection of the subjects and just administration of the kingdom was the responsibility of the ruler, for which he was answerable to God. Ghazali cites the tradition that states: "the harshest torment at the Day of Resurrection will be for the unjust ruler." That the king is also responsible for the action of those to whom he delegates his authority is clearly brought out in a passage in the Siyasat-nameh, in which Nizam al-Mulk urges the land assignees and governors to protect the subjects and treat them as the king treats them -- i.e., with justice, "so that the subjects should be content with the justice of the king, and the king be immune from suffering and punishment in the other world." Gibb pointed out that the Sunni doctrine of imamate as effective political rule became divorced, step by step, from the sacred law and moved in the direction of absolutism. With the subsequent substitution of sultanate for imamate in medieval Persian political theory after the eleventh/fifth century, this trend was reinforced. Even so pious a jurist as Ghazali mentioned the sacred law only in one section of his treatise on government. The attribution to the sultan, as the Shadow of God on Earth, of autonomous charisma as divine reflection upon the temporal world, and the emphasis on the exercise of substantive justice by him, minimized the effects of Islamic tenets on the patrimonial theories of temporal rule. The notion of justice that came to prevail in these theories was the unformalized substantive justice of Sasanian patrimonialism: protection of the weak from the strong, removal of oppression and administration of punishment for wrongdoings and for contraventions of customary norms of fairness.
The emphasis on justice entailed the abhorrence of injustice and tyranny (zulm) . Al-Mawardl had equated injustice with irreligion; and the notion of Zulm as the antithesis of justice assumes an equally central position. Here, too, however, the connection between "tyranny" and the sacred law is slight. Zulm retains its primeval connotation of darkness (zulma) as the shadow of death (zill al-maniyya). Tyranny, connoting disorder and darkness, was opposed to justice, connoting order and light.
The overthrow of the 'Abbasid caliphate by the Mongols ended the bifurcation of the structure of domination, and made possible a closer association between rulership, religion, and the sacred law. Two of the most important post-'Abbasid treatises on political ethics, the Akhlaq-e Nasiri of Nasir al-Din Tusi (the second half of the thirteenth/seventh century) and the Akhlaq-e Jalali of Jalal al-Din Davvam (the second half of the fifteenth/ninth century), put forward two contrasting interpretations of the interdependence of the twin-born religion and royalty, which, however, accommodate the rule of the sacred law of Islam to the ethic of kingly patrimonialism with equal theoretical consistency. (Incidentally, as has been pointed out, Nasir al-Din Tusi was a Shi'ite who was greatly influenced by his philosophy and presumably by his political theory.) Both authors confirm the covenant of Ardashir: religion and kingship are twin-born. However, they offer contrasting interpretations of the nature of this interdependence in relation to the sacred law.
Justice, equated with the Aristotelian mean, remains central to Tusi's political theory: "Prosperity of the world depends on civic justice, and the ruin of the world on civic injustice." And the preservation of justice among the people depends on three factors: divine law, human ruler, and money (dinar). Tusi equates the divine nomos (namus-e ila-hl) of the ancients -- i.e., the Greeks -- with the sacred law (shari'at) of the traditionists and presents it as the greatest or first Namus. The ruler as the animate law (nomos empsychos) of Diotogenes and the Byzantines then takes its place in Tusi's hierarchy as the second Namus. Money (dinar), which is said to be a just nomos, then follows as the third Namus. The health of the body politic, the prevalence of a just order, is determined by these three, and it is necessary for the second Namus, the ruler, to follow the first, the sacred law, as it is for the third to follow the second. Tusi's synthesis thus offers us a combination of the Hellenistic and Sasanian notions of order and the Islamic notion of the sacred law in his hierarchy of three differentiated orders: the religio-legal, the political, and the economic. Formally, the supremacy of the sacred law makes this system a divine nomocracy. Substantively, however, Tusi pays only minimal attention to the sacred law, and his conception of justice consists in the proper treatment of the classes of society according to the norms of Sasanian patrimonialism. Once the rules of justice are followed, beneficence and charity are the most important principles of statescraft; however, they should be exercised judiciously so as not to impair the awe (haybat) of authority: "Beneficence must be commensurate with awe [haybat] [of authority] as the glory [farr] and honor of kingship stems from awe . . . and beneficence without awe [of authority] would cause the wantonness of the subjects, embolden them and increase their covetousness and greed."
In the following paragraph, Tusi sums up his conception of the health of the body politic:
"As the rectitude of the body depends on nature and the rectitude of one's nature depends on the soul and the rectitude of the soul on reason, the rectitude of cities depends on kingship and the rectitude of kingship on statecraft and that of statecraft on wisdom. When wisdom prevails and the True Nomos is followed, order is obtained, as is the attention to the perfection of beings. But if wisdom departs, Namus is impaired and when Namus is impaired the adornment of kingship disappears and disorder makes its appearance. The customs of chivalrous generosity become delapidated and prosperity turns into rancor and adversity."
While retaining the hierarchy of the three differentiated orders -- the religio-legal, the political, and the economic -- and presenting the ruler as the second Namus, Jalal al-Din Davvam pays far greater attention to the sacred law and declares that the ruler should consult its interpreters in devotional duties. Tyranny is defective government in which the ruler strives to enslave the servants of God. Just rule, on the other hand, means the rule of the sacred law; otherwise the just ruler cannot rule and his subject cannot prosper.
Other motifs of the ethos of kingly patrimonialism and rules of statecraft are also to be found in the treatise. Dawam extols the typical virtues of the "mirrors for princes," such as sobriety, moderation, and close supervision of administration, and adduces alleged signs of divine favor vouchsafed to his patron, Sultan Uzun Hasan. At the same time, the prominence given to the sacred law in Davvam's theory enables him to claim a stronger Islamic legitimacy for the ruler observing it, calling the latter the deputy (khallfa) of God:
"The sovereign is a person distinguished by divine support so that he might lead individual men to perfection and order their affairs.... The first concern of [the ruler] is the maintenance of the injunctions of the Sacred Law. In specific details, however, he retains the power to act in accordance with the public interest of his age as long as his actions fall within the general principles of the Sacred Law. Such a person is truly the Shadow of God, the Caliph of God, and the Deputy of the Prophet."
Davvam's return to the 'Abbasids' stronger claims to Islamic legitimacy was not to have a lasting effect in Iran because of the advent of Shi'ism. As we shall see, the caesaropapist claims of the Safavids had to be stated in terms of the deputyship of the Hidden Imam, and not that of God and the Prophet. However, the conception of the ruler as the shadow of God on earth, together with the substance of Davvam's political ethic of patrimonialism, was passed down to posterity.
The creation of a distinct religious sphere by Islam as a religion of salvation and the somewhat slight and unformalized connection between the patrimonial conception of justice and the sacred law of Islam tended to restrict the pertinence of the theories of universal monarchy to temporal domination even before this restriction was made definitive by the impact of Shi'ism. When Ghazall interpreted the notion of "divine effulgence" as the "shadow of God on earth," he was legitimating rulership as earthly domination within the temporal sphere. It is not accidental that, together with the influence of the Sasanian political ethos, the purely secular notion of Dawla as the fortunate "turn" (of a dynasty) makes its appearance in the 'Abbasid annals.
We occasionally come across topics not treated in political ethics and political theory which are nevertheless enormously important in affecting people's political attitudes and motivation to submit to authority. Dawla, like its Hellenistic counterpart Fortune, is one such popular belief recorded in Islamic historiography. The primeval notion they embody is perhaps nowhere as systematically elaborated as in the Chinese theory of the mandate of heaven, according to which "heaven sent this ruin [the overthrow]" on the last ruler of the Shang dynasty so that the conquering "Chow merely assisted by carrying out [the Heavenly] Mandate . . ." (twelfth century s.c.). Nevertheless, we do find parallel ideas in a wide variety of historical contexts. The "kin-right" of the Germanic kings in the early Middle Ages, for instance, rested on their being charismatic "repositories of the tribal 'luck.'" It consisted of a claim for the family, whose original foundations were "an unusual power, a fortunate virtue, a special divine vocation, with which legend all times loves to enwrap the figures of the founders of dynasties."
More pertinently to our subject matter, the goddess Fortune (Tyche) dominated the third century B.C. to such an extent that even sober historians like Polybius "did not disdain the concession to popular belief implied in the use of her name. She was not blind chance, but some order of affairs which men could not apprehend." By reversing her wheel she would bestow her favor on a new dynasty (or nation), thus endowing it with venerability and legitimacy. In the Hellenistic East, the fortune (Farrah) of the king would naturally be rendered in Greek as Tyche of the king. That such a deep-rooted popular belief persisted after the establishment of Christianity is reflected in Procopius's (d. 565?) explanation of the submission of the Byzantine senate and people to the upstart imperial couple he detested (Justinian and Theodora): "All of them, I imagine, were subdued by the thought that this was the fate assigned to them, and accordingly lifted no finger to prevent this revolting state of affairs, as though Fortune had given a demonstration of her power...."
In Islamic history, similarly, the notion of Dawla (turn [of fortune]), by compelling though unstated implication, endows the ruling dynasty with temporal if not pagan charisma, and legitimates its rule, which is granted it by divine favor. The legends surrounding the founding of a dynasty and the continuation of its fortunate virtue as God's manifest approval of its rule are effectively legitimatory. A new dynasty is given a Dawla for reasons best known to God. This conception of Dawla as the divinely granted turn in power was supported by a Quranic verse: "Say, O God, possessor of sovereignty, you give sovereignty to whomever you choose and take it from whomever you choose" (3: 26). The 'Abbasids had claimed that their Dawla was synonymous with the divinely granted turn of power of Islam. The Buyids claimed a new Dawla, as did the other dynasties rising in the eastern lands of the Caliphate. Thus, the vizier and historian Bayhaqi in the eleventh/fifth century explains the rule of the dynasty he served as follows:
"If any defamer or jealous person says that this great house has come from humble or unknown origin, the answer is that God, since the creation of Adam, has decreed that kingship be transferred from one religious polity [ummat] to another and from one group to another.... So it should be realized that God's removal of the shirt of kingship from one group and his placing it on another group is in that sense divine wisdom and for the commonweal of mankind, [wisdom] which surpasses human understanding.... [God knows] that in such and such a spot a man will appear through whom men will obtain happiness and good fortune."
From the Mongol conquest until the establishment of Shi'ism by the Safavids, Iran was ruled by Turko-Mongolian dynasties. In the materialist cosmology of these nomadic tribes as reflected in the paleo-Turkic inscriptions of Mongolia and Siberia, the Kagan (emperor) was the terrestrial counterpart of the great sky god, Tangri. He came from the sky and possessed a celestial mandate, ruling in harmony with cosmic order as long as his mandate lasted. After their islamization, these grounds of legitimacy of the rule of the great Khans were transformed to a nomadic principle of legitimacy akin to the Germanic kin-right, according to which the right to rule rested with the male members of the family of the Khan. Genealogies claiming the descent of the Turkman dynasties from Changiz Khan and from the legendary Turkish ruler Oghuz were regularly produced to demonstrate and legitimate the fortunate turn in power of the Il-Khans, the Timurids, the Jalayirids, the Quaraquyunlu, and the Aqquyunlu.
Although the conception of Dawla has not been a topic in Islamic political theory, its retention singly and in various combinations as the term denoting "government" attests to its continued importance in implicitly legitimating temporal rule as earthly majesty throughout the medieval period and beyond.
If the above analysis is correct, the striking secularity of the Persian "mirrors for princes" is hardly surprising. In these, no less clearly than in Kautilya's Artha-sa-stra, government pertains to the temporal realm, the realm of material advantage and of "punishment" or the use of force to maintain order. Indeed, the word for "politics," contained in the title of Nizam al-Mulk's treatise and treated at great length in all the mirrors -- siyasat -- means "punishment" and is no other than Kautilya's danda. And the rule to serve as a mirror for the prince to assure the welfare and prosperity of the subjects is no other than the Arthasastra, the science of polity.