who seated him and said to him, “O Ḥasan, may Allah be pleased with you just as (1) the Commander of the Faithful is pleased with you.”

Niẓām al-Mulk is given a lengthy entry in Ibn al-Najjar’s History. He adhered to the Shafi‘i school and the Ashʿarī creed.

It was said that his assassination was planned by the sultan, who himself was granted no more than about a month thereafter (2).

Niẓām completed the Qur’an at the age of eleven, devoted himself to the Shafi‘i madhhab, and travelled to Ghazna, where he became an outstanding secretary, unrivalled in accounting and masterful in chancery prose. He was intelligent, discerning, alert, and consummately noble (3).

They related that he never sat down unless in a state of ablution, and whenever he performed ablution he would offer a supererogatory prayer. He fasted on Mondays and Thursdays, refurbished Khwārazm and the shrine at Ṭūs, founded a bimaristan that cost fifty thousand dinars, and built madrasas in Marw, Herat, Balkh, Basra, and Isfahan. He was forbearing, dignified, and liberal, a man of chivalry, endurance, and extraordinary beneficence, and he went to great lengths in humbling himself before the righteous.

It was also reported that every morning he would give one hundred dinars in charity.

Ibn ʿAqīl said: “Niẓām’s life bedazzled minds by his munificence, generosity, justice, and revival of the hallmarks of the religion. His days were a golden age for the scholarly community. His final chapter was sealed with martyrdom while he was on his way to the pilgrimage, in Ramadan; thus he died a king in this world and a king in the Hereafter (4).”