The examples of political advice contained in this anthology, written across terrain that stretched from Egypt to Central Asia, date from the first half of the tenth century to the first half of the twelfth century (roughly, the Islamic Early Middle Period). The mirror-writers were both formed by and responded to the conditions in which they lived. This second chapter presents an overview of political and intellectual developments in western Asia in the Early Middle Period. It begins with a general, thematic discussion of the processes of historical change taking place in the region in the tenth to twelfth centuries, and proceeds to offer a narrative history of the major polities of the period (Samanids, Karakhanids, Buyids, Ghaznavids, Seljuks, Fatimids). It locates each mirror and mirror-writer within their specific contexts and points to interconnections among them across this historical-geographical canvas.

The early caliphate adopted the political organisation predominant in the late antique Middle East – imperial monarchy, sanctioned by divine power – but with a distinctively Islamic ideology of leadership involving kinship, piety, victory and justice. The prime location for the performance of royal power was the court, particularly for caliphal accessions or successions. The warrior rulers filling the caliphal vacuum after 945 adopted Islamic means of legitimisation, including oaths of loyalty, honorific titles, robes of honour, and being named on coinage and in Friday prayers; while the ʿulamaʾ increasingly claimed spiritual authority as ‘heirs of the Prophet’. The new Turco-Mongol elites from the thirteenth century on found a role for military strongmen, incorporating the nomadic virtues of strong leadership, good fortune and royal genealogy into a fluid mixture of ideologies. Performance of power encompassed the hajj, hunting parties, public sessions dispensing justice and rituals designed to bind the palaces of the court more closely to the towns wherever they were based.