The Author's Introduction

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

( And in Him we seek help )

The Imām, chief justice (qāḍī al-quḍāh) Abū al-Ḥasan ʻAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb al-Māwardī — may God the Exalted have mercy upon him out of His mercy — said: Praise be to God for the guidance and direction He has given, and thanks be to Him for the enabling and the setting straight He has granted. And may God bless His pure messengers and His righteous, elect friends, and give them abundant peace.

To proceed: whoever has called others to obedience has bound himself to obedience, and whoever has directed others to the good has himself done good; and though the two are set fast in the constitution of men of merit, the quick-witted man is not for all his sharpness exempt from the vigilance of one who rouses him, nor is the man of understanding satisfied with his own prudence to the exclusion of the admonition of one who reminds him — for passion lies in wait, deceiving with its infatuation and veiling with its cloud. And you, O vizier (wazīr) — may God sustain you with His enabling grace — are in an office whose sides face different ways: you administer others among the subjects (raʻāyā) and are yourself administered by another among kings. So you are a governor governed: you undertake the governance (siyāsah) of your subjects and are led in obedience to your sultan (sulṭān), uniting in yourself the ascendancy of one who is obeyed and the compliance of one who obeys. Half your thought draws those whom you govern, and half of it is drawn by him whom you obey — and this is the heaviest-laden of the three divisions and the hardest to mount; for men fall between governor, governed, and one who unites the two, and to you belongs this uniting rank. So you gather what is divergent in its rulings and fill out what is disparate in its divisions, and in your hand is the administration of a kingdom whose soundness is required of you and whose corruption is ascribed to you. You are held to account for ill done, and good done is not reckoned to your credit; the beginnings are made soft for you with encouragement and the ends are made hard upon you with reproach; and with that backing you would ask to be credited with the good you have done and to be spared the aftermath of being called to account — while the contrary of these binds you in what is due to your sultan: that you make no claim upon him for the soundness of his realm, since you are the one appointed for soundness, and that you offer him no excuse for its disorder, since the disorder is ascribed to you. Make your excuse your effort and your striving, for the tongue of deeds is more articulate than the tongue of words, its witnesses being manifest. If the decrees of fate cross you, hearts will excuse you even if mouths do not speak it, since created beings are too weak to render what is due. It is related of the Prophet — may God bless him and give him peace — that he said: No wariness avails against what is decreed. And it is said in the Scroll of Maxims (manshūr al-ḥikam): Take every precaution, and yet there is no guard against the appointed term; rely with utter reliance, and yet there is no excuse for courting ruin; make agreeable all that can be made agreeable, and do not chafe at what the decree has fetched. And for you, if you have command of your own choice, to be one who holds aloof in a time of turbid fortune is better than for you to be one who contends against the decree. And it is said in the Scroll of Maxims: What has turned away from you, do not go out to meet. But if necessity calls you to engage with it, then be pliant toward the age and do not deal roughly with it, for one of the sages has said: Part of a man's good fortune is that he not be, when the age is corrupt, an administrator of the age. So be forbearing, and hold aloof from it if it wrongs you, and outwit it if it rages — as the poet said:

Step with the age whenever it steps — and run with the age as it runs.

And God the Exalted extends His help to whomever He enables; and I hope that you may be among them.

Know, O vizier, that you are in direct charge of administering a kingship that has a foundation — which is the revealed religion — and an order — which is the truth that is to be followed. And it has been said: He who contends against the truth is confuted. So make religion your leader and the truth your guide: every hard thing will be made tractable for you and every affliction made easy, for religion has its champions and the truth its helpers, and if their bodies hold back from you their hearts will not. It is enough for you that hearts are with you. One of the sages was asked: Which troop gives the surest protection? He said: Religion. It was said: And which matériel is strongest? He said: Justice. Religion has a sovereign authority to which its own leadership submits and upon which its prop rests; so make it a support to you in your affairs and a help to you in your administration, and you will find reverence in hearts and submission in souls. No kingdom has drawn its strength from it but has prevailed, nor made good its claim to its emblem but has endured. It is related of the Prophet — may God bless him and give him peace — that he said: “No man among the Muslims has a greater reward than an upright vizier with an imām whom he obeys and whom he enjoins to what is God the Exalted's own due.”

Set over yourself, for God the Exalted, in your hours of solitude, two watchers: desire and dread. Let desire lead you to obedience to Him and dread turn you back from disobedience to Him, that your inward self may be sound of defects and your secret self pure of sins. And lead your soul toward justice (ʻadl): by it people are led into obedience to you, by it they are held back from disobeying you, and by it they are kept within bounds in what they demand of you. For whoever is reckless in taking is dealt with recklessly when he asks, and whoever deals by halves is dealt with by halves. The Arabs say, among their proverbs on recklessness: He entered a house he never came out of. And the Lord Messiah said: By the measure with which you measure, it shall be measured to you, and you shall be given more. And the poet said:

Whoever, among those who show forth evil, supposes — that he will be requited with no evil has supposed a monstrous thing.

Know that you will never make your revenues abundant save by justice and beneficence, nor make them scarce by anything like injustice and ill-doing; for justice is a perpetual husbanding of fruit, and injustice an uprooting that cuts off. And it is said in the Scroll of Maxims: By justice and fairness the term of concord endures.

Nor is justice confined to monies, to the exclusion of words and deeds. Your justice in monies is that they be taken by their rightful title and paid to the one entitled to them, for in matters of due you are a trusted envoy and a surety under pledge: upon you falls the loss, and to another belongs the gain.

Your justice in words is that you not address the man of merit in the terms of his inferior, nor the learned man in the terms of the ignorant, and that you hold to praise and to blame in the measure of good done and ill done, so that your encouragement and your intimidation accord with their causes, with neither excess nor deficiency; for your tongue is your balance — so keep it from tipping over and from falling short. One of the sages has said: God made man the most excellent of animals and made the tongue the most excellent organ in him, appointing it an interpreter of what lies hidden within, a clear declaration of what minds and insights have gathered, and a discriminator between truth and falsehood. And al-Aḥnaf ibn Qays said: “Speech uncovers, and silence covers.” Speech has a deliberation that goes before the meanings but not before the wording: so commit every meaning to your deliberation and consign the wording to your extempore wit, for to improvise meanings is perilous, while deliberation over the wording is a stammer. And that speech be native is better than that it be manufactured — unless the mind is dulled by the admixtures of care and the speech is with a man of great rank: then let him deliberate toward brevity, for in saying much there is stumbling, which issues in vexation if it is found paltry and in tedium if it is found burdensome. It has been said: The beginning of inarticulacy is confusion, and the worst of speech is excess. And for this it is said: Tongue-tiedness is better than babble, for tongue-tiedness weakens the argument while babble destroys the life-blood. And ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd said: The man of sense keeps his tongue in halter. And it is said in the Scroll of Maxims: When reason is complete, speech is diminished.

Your justice in deeds is that you punish only for a sin and pardon only where there is a turning back, that displeasure not move you to cast aside merits, and that favour not carry you to pardon faults. It is related of Sulaymān son of Dāwūd — blessings and peace be upon them both — that he said: I was given what men are given and what they were not given, and I was taught what men know and what they did not know; yet I was given nothing more excellent than what is right in contentment and in anger, moderation in wealth and in poverty, and the fear of God in secret and in the open. One of the sages has said: “Among the intoxications of sovereignty is being pleased with one who deserves displeasure at the cost of one who deserves to be pleased with.” And just as the good deed and the bad deed are not equal, so the doer of good and the doer of ill are not equal. It has been said: The vilest of men is he who levels merits with faults. So draw to your deeds by your acts what befits them, and meet with your requital what has made it due, and make the requital of deeds proportionate to them, whether of good or of ill, such that reward and punishment are earned by them. For your inclination and your favour have a ruling of their own: if you bestow a gift upon that ground, you have passed out of requital into free giving — and in your free giving you have choice, while in your requital you are under compulsion. Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī said: The believer does not deal unjustly with one he hates, nor sin on behalf of one he loves. As for bringing near and setting at a distance, these may properly be measured by displeasure and favour, provided you do not thereby bring low men of worth or raise up the obscure; for you have your choice to begin by bringing near whom you wish and distancing whom you dislike, so long as your judgement is clear of bringing near the deficient man and distancing the man of merit — else you would be written down as one who brings the deficient near and puts the man of merit away, even though like seeks like by something rooted in the temperaments. One of the masters of eloquence has said: Do not take into your service one whom his stock has betrayed, nor keep as a companion one whom reason has passed by; for the man with no stock deceives in the very act of counselling, and the man with no reason corrupts in the very act of setting right. That is a thing hard to guard against, whose remedy and repair slip past recovery. And let your fulfilment of a promise (waʻd) be an absolute obligation, and of a threat (waʻīd) a matter of resolve; for the promise is a due owed by you, while the threat is a due owed to you by another, so that in it you retain your choice — and for that reason breaking a promise is not permissible, though breaking a threat is. One of the poets has said:

And I, though I threaten him or promise him — break my threatening and fulfil my promise.

Yet the breaking of a threat should be joined with a reason, so that your threat is not cheapened, that the order of awe (haybah) may be preserved by it and the canon of governance kept exact in it. So make the reason plain if it is hidden, that you may be excused for breaking your threat and thanked for your pardon of it. It is related of the Prophet — may God bless him and give him peace — that he said: No one has ever gained by pardon anything but might. Promise and threat have two conditions: the first, that they be deserved by the good or the ill that made them due; the second, that in setting them ahead of reward and punishment there be some benefit of inducement and of deterrence. For if reward and punishment must be put ahead of promise and threat, then the promise was a falling short or the threat an incapacity. One of the sages has said: The promise is the sickness of a favour, fulfilment is its recovery, and putting off is its death. And one of the masters of eloquence has said: If you have spoken well, then act well, so that the distinction of the tongue and the fruit of beneficence may be gathered to you together; for in breaking it you will not escape either a sin you earn or an incapacity you saddle yourself with. Let your doing be more than your saying, for the excess of word over deed is baseness and blemish, while the excess of deed over word is nobility and adornment. And do not give your anger sovereignty over your soul, to carry you out of balance into inconsistency; for no judgement is kept safe from lapse in anger, nor any speech from folly, since the outburst of anger is a recklessness that disgraces and its recoil a violence that harms, and because it passes out of correction into revenge and out of straightening into extirpation. For this it is said: The beginning of anger is madness and its end regret. And Ibn ʻAbbās said: None inclines to anger but one whom the authority of argument has worn out. And one of the forebears said: Beware the pride of anger, for it delivers you to the abasement of apology. And one of the sages said: Whoever's excess is great, his error is great. And one of the poets said:

And of enemies, when I had put them to the test — I saw no enemy to a man's reason more hostile than anger.

Let your anger be a feigned anger, by which you keep command of your resolve and set your adversary straight, so that you are kept safe from the injustice of your anger and stand upon the balance of your feigned anger. It is said in one of the scriptures of the Children of Israel: When a man is given to anger, abasements come upon him one after another, and the fiercer his anger the greater his affliction. And one of the sages said: Anger rusts the intellect. And Kisrā Abarwīz wrote to his son Shīrūyah: One word from you sheds blood and another word from you stanches blood, and the effect of your command goes with the utterance of your speech; so guard, in your anger, against your speech erring, your colour changing, and your body growing light — for kings punish out of power and pardon out of forbearance. And anger may be joined with obstinacy (lajāj), which equals it in disgrace and shares in its harm, since obstinacy is the clinging to error and the casting aside of reward. So put from you the obstinacy of the wrangling adversary, and shun the consequences of the base dullard; and follow sound judgement (raʼy) in what it requires, for it will be no disgrace in you to turn aside to it after your obstinacy, and to profit by judgement is better than to seek your might in obstinacy. One of the sages has said: He who seeks the help of judgement rules, and he who wrestles with affairs by main force perishes. And Ibn al-Muqaffaʻ said: Leave off obstinacy, for it breaks the resolutions of minds. And it is said in the Scroll of Maxims: Victory belongs to him who argues, not to him who persists. And it is said therein: The obstinate man enters upon what there is no coming out of.

Know that seriousness (jidd) and jest (hazl) are two mutually repellent opposites; for seriousness is among the foundations of the truth, which prompts to soundness, while jest belongs to the frolic of falsehood, which invites to corruption. So the difference between seriousness and jest came to be the difference between truth and falsehood, and the mutual repulsion of opposites bars their being joined: if you keep to one of them alone, you are abandoning the other. It has been said: The truth is imposed as a duty, and falsehood is refused. And ʻAlī — may God ennoble his countenance — said: Reason is a cutting sword and forbearance an ample covering; so fight your passion with your reason and cover the flaw of your character with your forbearance. Employ seriousness: the truth will be led to you and falsehood will part from you; and do not turn aside to jest, or falsehood will follow you and the truth will shun you. Seldom is the awe of seriousness breached, or the awe of the jester made complete — and awe is the foundation of sovereignty. ʻAmr ibn Murrah related that a man of Quraysh said to ʻUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb — may God be pleased with him: Be gentle with us, for you have filled our hearts with awe. He said: Is there any injustice in that? He said: No. He said: Then may God increase my awesomeness in your breasts. And the sage of India said: Let there be in you, along with your open cheer, some severity, lest men be emboldened against you by the cheer or driven from you by the severity. As for jest, it comes of frivolity or of insolent ease, above which one who governs subjects and administers realms stands too high. Buzurjmihr said: Jest is the blight of seriousness, lying is the enemy of truthfulness, and injustice is the ruin of kingship. And the king of India said to al-Iskandar, when he had entered his land: What is the sign that a kingship will endure? He said: Seriousness in all affairs. He said: And what is the sign of its passing away? He said: Jesting in it. And it has been said: Him whom prosperity has made insolent, its passing away will strike deaf. Arrogance and harshness are not seriousness, nor are humility and gentleness jest; and these traits are sometimes counterfeited through the mastery of passion and the pull of native disposition (fiṭrah), so that their possessor mixes into seriousness arrogance and harshness in order to have the better title to the awe of seriousness and to stand the further from the frivolity of jest. But this is not a thing perceived, because arrogance and humility are among the traits of souls, like generosity and miserliness, while seriousness and jest are among their acts, like truth and falsehood: so the two stand far apart in their cause and differ in what they cause. It is related of the Prophet — may God bless him and give him peace — that he said: “When God wills good for a servant, He appoints him an admonisher out of his own soul.” And it is said in the Scroll of Maxims: If you know yourself, what is said of you will do you no harm.

Seriousness may wear out the mind of the earnest man, so that he takes relief in some jest to help him endure seriousness. It is said in the Scroll of Maxims: Care is a fetter upon the senses. And it is related of Abū al-Dardāʼ that he said: I give my soul rest with something of the frivolous, that it may be the stronger for the truth. And it is said in the Scroll of Maxims: How many a man has forbidden and thereby incited! So there is no harm in his taking some of it privately in his time of rest and his hours of seclusion, in the measure of his remedy for his ailment; for weariness is tedium, and the man overcome by tedium has neither prudence nor resolve. And let there be, in whatever