These essays were written by colleagues and former students of Richard Bulliet, the scholar and mentor whose most important contribution remains his extraordinary imagination in the service of history. The hallmark of Views from the Edge, then, is innovative scholarship in all periods of Islamic history. Its authors share a commitment to asking original historiographical questions, with an overall orientation toward issues in social history. articles in the medieval period, including the use of biblical metaphors and the portraiture of a courtesan to competing paradigms of legitimacy in the...

In Advice for the Sultan Neguin Yavari excavates multiple, conflicting strands of Islamic political thought from the medieval past to the present, reassessing these ideas and their impact over the longue duree. Her aim is to revise our understanding of the relation- ship between modern history and the current master narratives of both Western and Islamic histories of political thought. She does this by re-examinating Islamic advice literature, bringing it to life in novel ways. Yavari argues that if read laterally and closely, it promotes secular values such as reason and moderation as the...

Global Medieval: Mirrors for Princes Reconsidered begins with a question: Is a genuine history of political thought in the premodern period possible? The volume brings together mirrors for princes from a variety of historical contexts and lineages of political thought, each with its own international cast of characters and varied modes of advice, sanctified by claims of distant and often alien origins. Placed in a comparative structure, these texts become a powerful lens for exploring ideals and manners of good rule across political, religious, and cultural divides. The temporal frame,...

The Future of Iran's Past is a critical study of the life and afterlife of Nizam al-Mulk (1018-92), celebrated Persian vizier and stalwart figure of power and authority in medieval Islamic society. He became the de facto ruler of a vast empire, with a final apotheosis as Islamic history's archetypal good vizier. Such was his standing among the glitterati of his era that he was considered an ideal replacement for the Abbasid caliph himself.
As well as the outstanding figure in a long run of great viziers and administrators who dominated premodern Islamic politics, al-Mulk is remembered as...

A biography of the remarkable administrator who for thirty years effectively ran Persia's great Seljuk Empire (1037-1194).