Injustice, Corruption, and Partisanship in the Eastern Seljuq Lands of the Early Twelfth Century: al-Ghazālī’s Persian Letters to Viziers as a Historical Source

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses five historical missives written by the great theologian Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī to three Seljuq viziers, and datable to the years 490/1097 to 504/1110 f. The first four of these letters form a progressive series complaining of governmental corruption in Ṭūs during the Seljuq civil war around the turn of the sixth/twelfth century, and thus provide the sole extant eyewitness testimony from Khurāsān during the last five years of the Seljuq civil war period. They also reveal al-Ghazālī’s vision of just rule far more concretely than do al-Ghazālī’s numerous theoretical writings on the subject. The fifth letter, written after the civil war had ended, explores the problem of intra-Sunni madhhab-based religious partisanship (taʿaṣṣub), and also incidentally reveals important biographical information about al-Ghazālī. All five of these letters constitute unique eyewitness testimony to some of the major political and social problems of the Seljuq period.