Medieval Muslim Mirrors for Princes

The 'mirror for princes' genre of literature offers advice to a ruler, or ruler-to-be, concerning the exercise of royal power and the wellbeing of the body politic. This anthology presents selections from the 'mirror literature' produced in the Islamic Early Middle Period (roughly the tenth to twelfth centuries CE), newly translated from the original Arabic and Persian, as well as a previously translated Turkish example. In these texts, authors advise on a host of political issues which remain compelling to our contemporary world: political legitimacy and the ruler's responsibilities, the limits of the ruler's power and the limits of the subjects' duty of obedience, the maintenance of social stability, causes of unrest, licit and illicit uses of force, the functions of governmental offices and the status and rights of diverse social groups. Medieval Muslim Mirrors for Princes is a unique introduction to this important body of literature, showing how these texts reflect and respond to the circumstances and conditions of their era, and of ours.

Louise Marlow is Professor of Religion at Wellesley College. She is the author of Counsel for Kings: Wisdom and Politics in Tenth-Century Iran (2016) and Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought (Cambridge, 1997). She is the editor of The Rhetoric of Biography: Narrating Lives in Persianate Societies (2011), Dreaming across Boundaries: The Interpretation of Dreams in Islamic Lands (2008) and, with Beatrice Gruendler, Writers and Rulers: Perspectives on Their Relationships from Abbasid to Safavid Times (2004).