To Preserve and Protect: Husayn Vaᶜiz-i Kashifi and Perso-Islamic Chancellery Culture

Abstract

It is Generally Agreed that the Beginning of the Persian Literary Renaissance of the tenth–eleventh centuries was concomitant with the emergence of a bureaucratic tradition that had its roots in pre-Islamic Sasanian Iran. The avatars of these bureaucratic principles in medieval Perso-Islamic history—Nizam al-Mulk, Rashid al-Din, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, to name the most famous—were trained in Arabic and Persian, wrote scholarly treatises on a wide array of religious, philosophical, and scientific topics, and advocated, among other things, the need for responsible rule and consistent administration according to Islamic law and custom. These admonitions were generally directed at their Turkic and Mongol dynastic patrons whose steppe traditions were often at cross-purposes with the running of a sedentary society that depended on irrigated agriculture, commerce, public works, and systems of taxation. Prominent Persian bureaucrats and their descendents undertook these duties and were able to accrue considerable power and wealth, but often at a high cost when we read of the fates of Rashid al-Din, Saᶜd al-Dawla and Juvayni.

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