Part Three: on what concerns the noble character of kings and the manners of their retinue — Chapter One: the noble character of kings in particular

You come to know your brothers * In hardships rancours fall away * Judgement comes before the courage of the courageous * When you honour the noble man you have made him yours * Time has bred enmity toward free men * Here ends the second part of this book, and praise belongs to God, the Exalted, the Bestower

﴿ Part Three: on what concerns the noble character (makārim al-akhlāq) of kings (mulūk) and the manners (ādāb) of their followers ﴾

﴿ Chapter One of it: on the noble character of kings in particular ﴾

Know that a noble work is not carried through except by noble character, and that leadership is not complete except through good governance (siyāsah); for the prudent governor is like the skilled physician in preserving health and removing disease, and the disorder that befalls a kingdom resembles the aches and maladies that befall bodies. The king’s exertion in tending the health of his kingdom and removing its sickness ought therefore to be like his exertion in tending the health of his own body and removing its sickness, and his satisfaction in the lofty remembrance and the fair trace he leaves behind ought to be greater than his satisfaction in what he witnesses with his hearing and his sight during his lifetime. The sage said: the man with the best claim to kingship is the one who most loves the setting right of the subjects, the most knowing in management, the most sovereign over his own passion and the most subduing of it in what touches the interests of the kingdom, and the most capable of spreading justice through it and lifting oppression from it; for justice is God’s balance upon His earth, by which the weak is given his due from the strong, and the man in the right his due from the man in the wrong. Whoever does not observe God’s right and His balance among His servants and His lands has been ignorant with the greatest ignorance and deluded with the gravest delusion. The kingdom cannot be held firm nor the subjects tended save by awe, and there is no awe of the king among the elite and the common people like the awe of justice and of an integrity untouched by the disgrace of the appetites. (And in the counsel (waṣīyah) of Arisṭū and al-Iskandar:) Beware the appetites, and let what helps you restrain your soul from them be your knowledge that they stupefy the intellect, debase judgement, disgrace honour and distract from the great affairs of kingship. If your soul pulls you toward the appetites and the pleasures, toward diversion and the instruments of diversion, it has pulled you toward the worst of stations, the lowest, the meanest and the most contemptible; so struggle against it with the utmost struggle, refuse it with the utmost refusal, and let your return from it be to the truth. Do not indulge yourself in a small passion, or it will covet a great one from you. Do not squander your life on anything but the truth, nor your wealth on anything but what is due, nor your strength on anything but right guidance. And if you must occupy yourself with some pleasure, let it be conversation with the learned and the study of the books of wisdom, for that gathers for you delight and the completeness of happiness, while its opposite gathers for you immediate disgrace and a grievous outcome. Another sage said: do not delude the king with a delusion by making the occasions of diversion, jest and laughter attractive to him, for that is boyishness, or the affectation of boyishness; and do not lead him into the fancy that partaking of them removes tedium or weariness and is more profitable than casting them aside, for that is among the most contemptible and the basest of fancies, and a more ruinous bargain than his who sells the sufficiency of life and the noblest of the works that lead to the everlasting felicities for the meanest of bestial acts, which are the doing of boys and women. Make being free of the people of idleness attractive to him; and if he wishes to dispel tedium, let it be in the company of the excellent among his boon companions and in conversing with them, and in hearing the reports of the kings of ages past, the shifting of their circumstances and their epochs and the turning of their dynasties and their cycles, so that his tedium is dispelled by it and his character is refined by the profits of experience that reflection upon it earns him. And if at times he takes his rest in listening to what summons to generosity, urges to open-handedness and stirs to courage, and in hunting and the chase in so far as it is training and exercise for his horses and his troops, there is no harm in it for him — though no listening is nobler than a wisdom that tells of the realities of things, and no hunting is more profitable than the snaring of the hearts of helpers and friends. What most profits the king is the management of the kingdom, the adornment of sovereignty, the preservation of awe, keeping the company of the learned, listening to their propriety and accepting their counsels, and making them his trusted men, his helpers and his intimates, and watchmen over his deeds and his states, such that they are never heedless of him even when he is heedless of himself. It is then incumbent upon him to look after their affairs and to provide their maintenance, and not to hold any one of them in contempt for his obscurity and the meanness of his condition; for the ruin of kings in this world and the next lies in belittling the learned and despising men of understanding and intellect. Let him know that the swiftness with which the good become well disposed when they are won over is like the swiftness with which rainwater mingles with the seas, and that the remoteness of the wicked from such concord, however long one consorts with them, is like the remoteness of beasts from mutual affection, however long they are fed together. If affairs become entangled for the king and the courses of action go blind to him, let his recourse in them be to the opinions of the learned who guide and the ministers who counsel sincerely, and to consultation with them, for through these the sound courses of affairs become plain as lamps become plain in the darkness of the pitch-black night. The resolute man, in a matter of judgement that has become obscure to him, is in the position of one who has lost a pearl and gathers up all the dust around the place where it fell and sifts it until he finds it: just so, the resolute man gathers all the opinions upon the obscure matter, then drives his thought deep into it and discards part of it until the sound judgement is sifted out of it. It has been said: he who takes counsel is fortified, and he who acts alone plunges headlong into error. Perhaps your own judgement will suggest to you that some people will scorn you for borrowing sound judgement from them, and that your standing will be made light of with them. If this occurs to you, cast it away with the utmost casting away; for the felicity you gain from the knowledge acquired from them, and the success you win by parting company with the people of ignorance, is better for you, more perfectly profitable and of greater consequence than that anything else should be set up against it — besides which, people are, with respect to you, two men: an intelligent man, with whom the soundness of your judgement is established, and an ignorant man, who does not distinguish sound judgement from error, and whose word and deed carry no weight with men of intellect. Let the king know that the laying of the foundations of the kingdom and the ordering of the affairs of justice (al-ʻadlah) is not accomplished save by cutting off the calamities of the wicked, by tending the good well, by the soundness of helpers and supporters, and by diligence in selecting fit officials; for the offices of the king are many, and the aptitude for all of them cannot be gathered in one man. The right course in this is that the king should know the conditions of every office and the aptitude of every man with a complete knowledge, so that he entrusts to each official an office that befits him and in which he is known for competence and trustworthiness; for an official is to a king what a weapon is to a fighter, and if the king loses honest officials, there has befallen him what befalls a fighter left without a weapon. He must appoint the best of the people of his kingdom and not set their ignorant in power over the people, for ignorance is the leader of error, error is the go-between of sedition, and in sedition there is the shedding of blood and destruction. And it has been said:

Men do not prosper in anarchy, with no chieftains over them — nor are there chieftains for a people whose ignorant have become their lords

After entrusting the offices to officials fit for them, he must inspect their conduct in their offices and go to lengths in scrutinising the reports of them, so that neither the good work of one who has done well in his office nor the ill work of one who has done ill in it is hidden from him; then he must not be slack in establishing the one who does well and dislodging the one who does ill, as the requital of the good and the ill each has done. Let him be prompt in this, so that the good servant is gladdened by his knowing of him before his favour reaches him, and the bad one is struck with fear in his grief before he is afflicted with his punishment. It has been said: the best of kings is he whom the innocent man trusts and from whom the suspect feels no safety; the people of good know that his favour reaches them only by the help of good, and the people of falsehood are certain that his punishment will reach them with nothing to ward it off. For the innocent man’s trust increases his striving in sincere counsel, and the suspect’s fear increases his dread and awe; and with striving in sincere counsel goes well-being, and with dread and awe goes uprightness in obedience. With this, his door must not lack intercessors whose refusal would weigh upon him and whose contradiction would come hard to him, so that by their intercession he is held back from excess in chastisement beyond the measure of the offence. He must know that not one of the people is free of a fault and a virtue: so let no man’s fault keep him from calling on him in what that man has of profit for him, and let no man’s virtue carry him to call on him in something in which that man has no help to give. And if some hindrance befalls one of his servants, cutting him off from an aim he was set upon, let him not lay upon him the fault of fortune, given his trust in him; for hindrances do cut kings themselves off from their own rights, let alone their friends and their servants (khidmah). Know that the presence of evil helpers is more harmful to him than the absence of honest helpers. In carrying affairs through he should call upon two qualities: one of them is bringing the opinions of his helpers into agreement, the other is steadiness in execution. Let him avoid delay in weighty matters and slackness in what arises of them, for if he does that, affairs crowd in upon him and duties pile up on him, and when his time does not suffice to take them in hand he is bewildered in managing them and loses them altogether. All affairs are but two: a small one, which he ought not to take in hand himself, and a great one, which he ought not to delegate to another. Whenever he takes the small affairs in hand they keep him from the great ones, and whenever he delegates the great ones to others, more is lost than is kept and more is spoiled than is set right. So when tasks pile up on him, let him not seek relief by pushing them off and slipping away from them, for patience with them is what preserves them for him, and vexation at them is what makes them crowd in upon him the more. Let him keep with him at such a time the judgement by which he chooses among affairs: let him choose the first and most important of them and busy himself with it until he is free to turn to the next; and let not what has slipped away loom large for him, and let him postpone what is to be postponed, so long as he has put judgement in its place and set his occupation upon what is obligatory. Let the king know that people follow his creed, so let righteousness, manly virtue and good conduct have currency (nifāq) (١) with him, for by that he blocks the road of debauchery and corruption in his kingdom. Among the affairs of the subjects that he inspects, let him look to the destitution of the elite and work to relieve it, and to the insolence of the rabble and strive to suppress it. Let him know that if he seeks the satisfaction of all people he seeks what cannot be attained; and how should the satisfaction of men who differ in their desires ever agree? Let the greatest of his aims in governing be three qualities: the satisfaction of his Lord, the satisfaction of his sovereign if there is a sovereign above him, and the satisfaction of the upright among those he governs. It does him no harm to be inattentive to wealth and rank and the interests bound up with them, for once these qualities are observed he will obtain of them what is possible in the best of ways without striving to seek it. Let him know that whatever of his honouring and his inclination he turns aside to the deficient harms him and disables him from honouring the people of excellence; that whatever of his wealth he spends upon falsehood he will find missing when he wills the truth; and that whatever of his judgement he occupies with the unimportant does injury to the important. Among the traits of character which the prudent king must hold himself to is that he should not grow angry for any cause whatever, but should arm himself with forbearance and gravity when anger rises. Let him know that anger is one of the diseases of the heart: when it occurs, judgements are corrupted along with it; and if he is afflicted with it, let him not carry out any act nor execute any judgement while angry. It has come in the tradition that a judge shall not judge between two parties while he is angry. Azdashīr ibn Abak said: Satan has no hope of power over the king at any hour of time stronger than his hope in the hour of anger. And that joy and praise in his presence should not carry him away, and that glad tidings should not fill his heart, lest he be charged with weakness of resolve and smallness of ambition; and let him settle it in himself that glad tidings, however many they are, are trifling when measured against the greatness of his ambition and set beside the loftiness of his station. And that calamities should not loom large for him when they descend, and that he should set before his thought that events, when they come knocking, and misfortunes, when they fall, are light beside his patience and his mettle; so that when one of them befalls, his superiority over others appears in endurance, in patience and in self-command at the moment of his distress, and in gravity and deliberateness once it has settled. And that it should not be his way to delight in praise and commendation, for he who accepts praise is like one who praises himself; and if people come to know this of him, it becomes a breach among the breaches in his intellect through which they force their way in upon him, a door among the doors by which they open him up, and a slander with which they slander him and at which they laugh. Let his very love of praise be what carries him to refuse it, for he who refuses it is praised and he who accepts it is blamed. And that he should not grieve at the passing of what he loves or the loss of what he seeks, for grief stupefies the intellect and severs contrivance, and the fruit of the intellect is that a man should cast off the cares that come upon him with resolutions of patience; and when something grievous comes upon him, let him put grief down with patience and summon the intellect to contrive the recovery of what has passed away or been lost, if that is possible. Let him not regret what has escaped him of riches (١), for wealth is like a bird that moves from one high ground (٢) to another: when it comes it is swift in coming, and when it turns away it is malicious in its removal. There is no joy in which the king should take satisfaction save a joy attended by hope of a good hereafter; as for anything besides that, it is cast aside by men of understanding, since there is nothing among the joys of this world that is secure against blights and reversals and that the human intellect holds in awe, except the belittling of this world and of its worth in view of what is seen of the scrutiny of the hereafter, and the rejection of the deceit within it by pleasures whose consequences are not safe. Kings ought to find in themselves an admonition that the common folk do not have: namely that they reflect upon the swiftness with which their reigns come to an end and upon the excess of their appetite for sins when they have the power for them, and upon what they know of how short was the enjoyment of those of their like who have passed away, and how much embitterment and mischance there was in their blessings and their reigns. Let them know that the most fearful of states for them is the one they are in, and let them not be more confident in themselves and less confident in their Lord out of reliance upon their kingdoms and their good fortune; for deeds have their requital and affairs have their sudden turns, so let them be on their guard against these and hasten to good works, for there may come an hour that does not return. A sage said: the best of kings is the most thankful of them to God, the purest of them from what He has forbidden, the greatest of them in magnifying His command, the most discharging of them of rights, the most merciful of them to the subjects, the furthest-seeing of them in consequences and the most fearful of them of the turns of fortune; and the most complete of them in felicity is the one whose knowledge is abundant and who is granted the grace to act upon it, and whose joy is in what earns thanks from people and reward and recompense from God. The ugliest of their traits are sharpness of temper, want of forbearance, poor understanding, the mastery of avarice, hardness, coarseness, and little concern for the affairs of the subjects. The king must exact for the weak from the strong and for the poor from the rich their shares of right and their portions of justice, and must look more closely to the poor and the weak, care for them more fully and examine their case more searchingly; because the strong man and the rich man fend off oppression and injury by their own power, whereas the poor man and the weak man cannot fend it off by any authority or power of their own, but only by his help to them. And he must not be taken in by gilded speech and delicate talk, for the oppressor and criminal, the flatterer and traitor, may come before him and escape his assaults and win his kindness by the magic of his eloquence and the clarity with which he sets out his case; while the trustworthy man in the right may perish before him and the innocent man who has been wronged be cut off, because of the stumblings of his tongue and his inability to state his case. So let him himself argue the case of the man who is unable to be eloquent and falls short of fluency. Let him know that the authority of the kings of this world is only over the bodies of those they rule and over what appears of the outward aspects of their affairs; as for their intentions and the inward matters hidden from them, there is no way to these for them, because they are veiled from them. So they ought not to hold the subjects to account for anything but what appears to them of them, and they should leave off surmise, for surmise summons suspicion and the fabricating of charges, and these two summon blame and misery. Let them know that they have no power to keep the common people from speaking of their faults, and let them not weary themselves that people should not see the defects in them; rather let them strive to have no fault at all, and keep clear of people’s complaint against them, for whoever does not care about complaint has confessed to baseness. And let them know that no reformer has set another right except by the rightness of his own soul, and no corrupter has corrupted another except by the corruption of his own soul; so if the governor desires the setting right of those he governs, let him begin with the setting right of himself, and if he wishes to lift faults from them, let him first purify himself of them. And when two courses are confused for him and he does not know which of them is the sounder, let him look to whichever of them is nearer his own inclination and go against it, for inclination is the enemy of the intellect, and the two are never joined. Let him know that some matters are caution and some are faintheartedness: if his fear of a matter comes before he has engaged it, that is caution

— Notes —

[64] (١) Al-nifāq, with fatḥah on the nūn: currency, ready circulation. End.

[67] (١) Al-tharāʼ, with the long vowel: abundance of wealth. End.

[67] (٢) Al-nashz, with fatḥah then sukūn, and also with two fatḥahs: raised ground. End.