Draft:Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk

Template:جعبه اطلاعات شخصیت Abu Ali Hasan ibn Ali ibn Ishaq al-Tusi, son of Ali son of Ishaq al-Tusi, known as Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk Tusi, was the powerful vizier of two of the kings of the Seljuk dynasty in Iran. He was the most powerful vizier in the Seljuk dynasty, and the Seljuqs reached the peak of their power during his tenure. He directed the internal and external policy of the Seljuqs for twenty-nine years.

Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk Tusi was born in the year 408 AH in the city of Nughan, Tus, in Khorasan. His father's profession, Ali ibn Ishaq, was dehgan, and he was counted among the companions of Mahmud Sabuktigin. Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk also engaged in dehganry with his father in childhood and at the same time completed the Quran under his supervision, and after that his father urged him to acquire science and knowledge and learn language and grammar.

Biography

The real name of Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk was Abu Ali Hasan, and his father's name was Abu al-Hasan Ali, and his grandfather's name was Ali bin Ishaq bin Abbas, who was from the dehqan lineage of Beyhaq. Ali bin Ishaq, whose kunya was Abu al-Hasan, was skilled in writing and accounting.

He had entered the court of the ruler of Khorasan and was serving. The main residence of his family was also Beyhaq, but Abu al-Hasan Ali, after having advanced in governmental positions, was assigned to manage state properties in the region of Tus, and he settled there and got married, and three of his sons were born in Tus, the eldest of whom was this same Hasan, i.e., the future Nizam al-Mulk.

When Hasan reached the age of learning, he learned the preliminaries of sciences. As soon as he graduated from studying fiqh and hadith and other religious sciences and literary arts around the age of twenty, and became a learned scholar and a capable scribe, he engaged in governmental duties. It is said that the Khwaja was raised in a dehqan's house.

Dehqan, in the political lexicon and contrary to later periods where it was often referred to landless peasants, was a sign of lineage and native nobility during the time of the Khwaja and before. Dehqans were native landowners during the Sassanid era who played a significant role in the social and economic hierarchy and also in the establishment of power. The dehqans, in this same concept, were transferred to the early centuries of Islam.

At the age of 21, with the decline of the Ghaznavid sultanate and the invasion of the Seljuk Turkmens into Khorasan, he entered the service of the Seljuks. After the defeat of Masud at Dandanqan in the year 432, the Khwaja joined the Seljuk court in Transoxiana, but after experiencing harassment from Ibn Shadhan, the Amid of Balkh, he went to Merv and joined the court of Chaghri Beg and served them for 10 years, i.e., until the year 444.

It was only the Seljuks who, with the expansion of their possessions, made the national unity of Iran possible. Tughril Beg made Ray his capital and in the middle of the fifth century, with the capture of Baghdad, extended his dominance to the center of the spiritual power of the empire and ended the Buyid control over the Caliphate in Baghdad.

The Seljuks did not have the knowledge and experience to administer their vast possessions and were forced to employ educated and experienced Iranian officials, at the head of whom was Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk, who, by accepting the vizierate of two powerful Seljuk kings, strove in practice and theory to concentrate the political and national unity of Iran.

During the ten years that the Khwaja was in the service of Chaghri Beg, Tughril campaigned in the central regions of Iran and died in 455, and because he had no son, Alp Arslan succeeded him. During the reign of Alp Arslan, Nizam al-Mulk had a free hand in supervising the affairs of the empire.

Moreover, he spent much time on military affairs. He accompanied his ruler on war campaigns and also himself commanded the troops at the forefront in battles, including campaigns to Fars, whose victories in both wars greatly added to his fame and credibility.

Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk, during approximately twenty-nine years and seven months and a fraction of vizierate under Alp Arslan and Malik Shah, in administering affairs and conquering lands and suppressing the opponents of these two kings, showed such competence and administrative skill that he brought a vast state from Aleppo to Kashgar under their command and spread the name and sign of those two sultans in the east and west of the known world of that time, to the extent that most of the fame and progress that accrued to Alp Arslan and Malik Shah in their works should be attributed to the blessing of the Khwaja's wisdom and competence.

He made the domain of the government of Iran so vast that its like has not been seen in all these fourteen hundred years of Islamic history, and in this domain there was no place that would allow even a slight delay in carrying out his order.

Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk possessed high determination and loved Iran, and was always looking for a way for the growth of the homeland and building schools that would revive knowledge again for his compatriots.

Alp Arslan chose the Khwaja as his vizier and considered him a compassionate and kind father, and did not do anything without consulting him and did not approve of anything contrary to his order; after Alp Arslan spent the last moments of his life, his son Malik Shah willed that he should not disobey the Khwaja's opinion in administering governmental affairs and consider him a compassionate and kind father, and Malik Shah also accepted and kept him in the position of vizier.

Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk performed very great cultural services during his term of vizierate that undoubtedly can be said to have no precedent in history. He engaged in creating and establishing schools that are known in history by his name and as Nizamiyya schools.

These are the same schools that became the model for universities and the most important of them are:

The Nizamiyyahs of Baghdad, Mosul, Nishapur, Balkh, Herat, Merv, Amol, Gorgan, Basra, Shiraz, and Isfahan. The movement that Nizam al-Mulk created by building multiple Nizamiyyahs was soon and with amazing speed followed from all points of Iran and many other lands of Islamic countries, so that in the fifth and sixth centuries AH there was no city in which there were not multiple schools.

In these schools, lessons such as literary sciences, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy, fiqh, hadith, and exegesis were taught, and also all schools had reputable libraries. The Khwaja ordered that for each library, scribes should copy and keep 5 Shahnamehs from the Hakim of Tus, the immortal speaker Ferdowsi.

Eternal Gifts for Iranians

• First, he ordered that a Solar calendar be prepared so that the Lunar calendar would be set aside.
• Second, he ordered that the wise book of Shahnameh of Ferdowsi be rewritten thousands of times so that the Iranian language would be saved.
• Third was the establishment of the Nizamiyyah universities, which are the root and foundation of modern universities.

Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk, in addition to building universities, offered numerous other services to the world such as water reservoirs, bathhouses, bazaars, and hospitals, and turned the fifth century into the most flourishing cultural period of Islam.

Viewpoint and Method of Statecraft

In the book Siyasatnama, Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk defended the model of a unified government, such as the government of the Sassanian period and post-Islam states that modeled themselves after this state, such as the Buyids, Samanids, and even Ghaznavids, as the model of an ideal system.

He was a staunch enemy of the feudal movement of the time, which in his view led to the fragmentation of the country, although he himself outdid the greatest landowners of his time in expanding his own lands. He was a staunch enemy of the Oghuz leaders who wanted to have an autonomous land for themselves away from the view of the central government, and as much as he could, he tried to prevent the strengthening of the royal family and the Turks related to them, and in the end, he was removed from office by the pressure of these same people.

Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk was a follower of the Sunni and Shafi'i creed. Historians consider Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk among those who preferred the Hereafter to the world and was always present in gatherings of religious scholars. It is famous that whenever Khwaja heard the sound of the Adhan, he would stop whatever work he was doing and stand for Prayer, and if the Muezzin was negligent in reciting the Adhan, he would admonish him. During Khwaja's time, there was the peak of abundance in Iran, such that one of the travelers says that in Iran bread was found in abundance and at a cheap price, while at that time, according to Pope Urban, the people of Europe were tearing each other's bellies from hunger.

Khwaja also took Jihad seriously, such that the Seljuk government had advanced from the east to the city of Kashgar in modern-day China and in the west to the end of the Asian part of modern-day Turkey, and their naval force severely threatened the city of the Byzantine Empire.

Works of Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk Tusi

He is the author of the book Siyasatnama (Siyar al-Muluk). This work was published with correction by Hubert Darke by the Book Translation and Publication Company in the year 1340 in 372 pages. Also, he collaborated with scholars such as Khayyam in processing the Jalali calendar; this calendar was completed in the year 451 Hijri.

Also, the Nizamiyyah University of Baghdad, where Imam Muhammad Ghazali was one of its teachers, was established by his order. Other famous Nizamiyyahs were in Isfahan, Nishapur (Nishapur Nizamiyyah), Basra, Mosul, and Herat.

Titles of Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk Tusi

Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk has been remembered in historical books with seven titles:

• Grand Vizier: Since no vizier of his greatness had been found in the Seljuk court;
• Great Khwaja: For tutoring Malik Shah during the crown prince period;
• Taj al-Hadhratayn: For vizierate of two kings;
• Qavam al-Din: This was a religious title that the jurists of the time had given him;
• Nizam al-Mulk: A title by which the public mostly called him. After him, in later historical periods, many trusted viziers of kings in Iran and India were called by this title;
• Atabek: A title that Malik Shah had given him after becoming king;
• Radi Amir al-Mu'minin: A title that Caliph Al-Muqtadi bi-Amr Allah had given him in the year 475. Also, this sentence was written on Nizam al-Mulk's seal: Alhamdulillah ala ni'mah.

Assassination of Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk Tusi

In the final years of Malik Shah's reign, disagreements arose between him and Khwaja, which finally led to his removal from vizierate and then the suspicious assassination of Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk.

He was wounded on the 12th of Ramadan 485 Hijri Qamari while traveling with the royal camp from Isfahan to Baghdad in Borujerd near Nahavand by someone who was wearing the garb of Sufis; he was struck with a knife on the chest and his vein was injured, and he died one day after that.

His killing was linked to the Ismailis at that time. Thirty-five days later, on the 15th of Shawwal after his death, Malik Shah also died, and based on some historians' guesses, he had been poisoned by Khwaja's supporters.

Some historians also consider his removal and death the result of the conspiracy of "Turkan Khatun", Malik Shah's wife, because Nizam al-Mulk opposed the crown princehood of her son Mahmud. After his removal, Malik Shah made Taj al-Mulk Qomi his replacement.

Some consider this individual also the instigator of Khwaja's killing. The name of his assassin has been written as Bu Tahir Arrani, who was immediately killed by Khwaja's guards after committing the act.

Tomb of Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk Tusi

The tomb of Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk is located in the Dar al-Battikh building in the Ahmadabad neighborhood of Isfahan, in an alley named Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk. This small and unadorned structure is a Seljuk tomb, and there are approximately ten graves within it attributed to Seljuk princes and dignitaries.

Precious marble stones have been placed on most of the tombs, and a very beautiful marble stone is placed on Khwaja's grave, around which there is an inscription decorated with Ayat al-Kursi and other words. It is well-known that Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk and Sultan Malik-Shah are also buried in this place. Although this building is registered as number 99 in the list of National Monuments of Iran, it remains forgotten and neglected among the historical sites of Isfahan.

References

Adapted from the Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk Tusi website - Mediasoft