The Hard Core of Iran’s Political Thought
The Religion and Thought Service of the Iran Book News Agency (IBNA); The book “Etiquette of Governance: Basic Texts of Persian Literature and Politics” by Ruhollah Eslami is an analytical and interdisciplinary study that, with a new approach, re-reads the legacy of Persian literature as the foundation of Iranian humanities. The author is based on the idea that “humanities in Iran is the same as Persian literature” and that the roots of political thought, the etiquette of power, and methods of just governance should be sought in the historical layers of the Persian language and literature. This book is a return to Iran’s intellectual legacy from ancient times to the contemporary era; a legacy formed in the nexus of politics, ethics, wisdom, and literature, and sustained in the form of enduring texts from the foundations of wisdom to the treatises of the Constitutional period.
In the book’s introduction, the author emphasizes the importance of “the continuity of the Iranian rational tradition”; a continuity that has not only been narrated but institutionalized in Persian literature. Persian literature, in Eslami’s view, is the language of tolerance, abstaining from harming people, and inviting to wisdom; a language that curbs power and strengthens ethics. Therefore, examining the etiquette of statesmanship and understanding the logic of government in Iran is not possible without reviewing literary texts; because literature in Iranian history has always had a socio-political function, and advice manuals, historical chronicles, and ethical treatises have formed the main pillars of the Iranian governance mindset.
The book is organized into several chapters, with each chapter dedicated to one of the great thinkers and foundational literary-political works of Iran. The first chapter introduces the rituals of governance in classical Persian literature, and the author, by reviewing texts such as the foundations of wisdom, ancient advice manuals, and the tradition of Nasihat al-Muluk (Advice to Kings), shows how the structure of government in Iran was based on the ethics of power, empirical wisdom, and spiritual order.
The next chapter is dedicated to examining the works of Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk Tusi and his role in the institutionalization of the Seljuks. In this chapter, the author considers Nizam al-Mulk’s Siasatnameh as one of the first classical texts on public administration in the world, in which security, justice, and bureaucratic organization are defined as the basis of governance.
In the third chapter, Ala al-Din Ata-Malik Juvayni and his important work “Tarikh-i Jahangushay” (History of the World Conqueror) are analyzed; a work that the author calls “a reflection of Iranian statecraft in the face of the crisis of the Mongol invasion.” This chapter shows how Juvayni’s historiography is a blend of politics, ethics, realism, and historical wisdom. The fourth chapter is dedicated to “Qabusnameh” and the tradition of advice-writing; a work that describes political education, the etiquette of power, worldly wisdom, and the ethics of governance in connection with daily life.
In the next chapter, the author addresses Ubayd Zakani and his “Risaleh Akhlaq al-Ashraf” (Treatise on the Ethics of the Nobles). In this work, Ubayd uses his sharp satire to criticize political corruption, the hypocrisy of elites, and the inversion of the ethics of power. Eslami shows in this chapter how Ubayd, with the language of satire and insinuation, presented one of the most serious criticisms in Iranian history against those in power, and this critique remains important for analyzing contemporary governance. The book then moves to the treatises and writings of the Constitutional period and examines the role of thinkers of this era in transforming traditional political ethics into a theory of the modern state; a period in which concepts such as law, freedom, public participation, and the rule of law entered Persian texts, and the etiquette of governance acquired a new meaning and structure.
Ruhollah Eslami
