The Instruments of Power in Nizam al-Mulk's Sīyāsatnāmeh " The Book of Government"

What Ibn Khaldun writes on the cycle of fall and rise of Asabiyyah in tribal governments is not true about Iran because the presence of social castes such as proletarian، institutions such as ministry، structures such as subterranean aqueducts and practices such as endowment etc. has led to provision of margins for basis of governmentality in Iran which cannot be defined in terms of exploitative domineering techniques. A case in point is Nizam al-Mulk’s Siyasatnamah in which the author despite having Ash’ari attitude and Iranshahri advisory practical wisdom devises utterly sagacious methods to practice and limit power. In addition to fiqh، wisdom and mysticism، Iranians enjoyed a method called “writing book of advice—Andarznāmeh” which is their shared heritage of ancient Iran. In this method، they have proposed and employed techniques for governmentality which despite its being in the metaphysic era of governing it has accommodated realistic and expedient signs of the circulation of public affairs. The present paper، tries to outline the techniques for practicing and limiting power in Nizam al-Mulk’s Siyasatnamah through the use of theoretic literature of governmentality and also via proposing a theoretic model tries to criticize and evaluate that.