TMA 509 - History of Political Treatises and Nasihatname

This course is devised to offer an overview of the Islamic advice literature or the nasîhat-nâme corpus, one of the most important genres of historical texts, offering counsel to rulers and courtiers. They were intended to inspire the ruler to self-reflection by providing advice about standards of virtuous conduct and detailing examples of just rulers to imitate. These texts flourished at various Muslim courts during the pre-modern period. The works of advice literature express a variety of philosophical ideas, literary motifs and ethical principles and views on the human nature, the society and the political organization of society. These normative and theoretical ideas and principles cover the broadly named Islamic political thought. As we will see during this course, the Islamic world has inherited a rich intellectual legacy of the ancient cultures. Over centuries, many Muslim thinkers developed on this legacy and produced a variety of texts on political thought that form a deep-rooted and rich intellectual tradition to the present day. During this course, we will highlight and discuss the most influential authors and their works of advice literature, which shaped the Islamic political thought.

In reading the various works of advices literature during this course, we will excavate the rich information they reflect on the political thought, the mentality and the culture of their period. Some of the paradigmatic concepts and principles that were highlighted in these works are today also seen as important ideas. During this course, we will discuss the most influential works of advice literature and interpret them as sources giving us precious information about the views on the ideal state and the desired social organization. As such, we will consider these texts as valuable sources that reflect the contemporary Islamic views and understandings of politics, economy, cultural and social conditions in which they were produced. In this regard, we will read these texts as textual sources for the study of Islamic political ideas, mentality and cultural reading.

In this course, the continuity and the differences in the Islamic thought will be surveyed. In this context, we will try to answer a series of questions, such as why has a society need for political authority or a ruler? What is the understanding of state? How is authority defined?  How can the state obtain its legitimacy? What is the basis of its legitimacy? What is the conception of the ideal state and society? What qualities and virtues has the ruler to show? Why is the existence of the state founded on the idea of justice?