Politics
Siyasetname
CevvelaPolitics
Siyasetname
Nizamülmülk · İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları · 1092
9
Cevvela Score
7.6 (4.228 oy)
Reader Score
Summary
The masterwork of Eastern political philosophy, in which the Great Seljuk Vizier Nizam al-Mulk counsels his Sultan — through history, parable, and hard moral wisdom — on how a state must be governed with justice, strength, and merit.
Quotes from Cevvela
“A state can survive criticism, but it cannot survive injustice.”
“To appoint the unworthy to positions of power is a betrayal of the state itself.”
“Above all else, a ruler must listen not to the voice of flatterers, but to the cry of the oppressed.”
“Justice is not merely the act of punishment — it is placing every thing and every person exactly where they deserve to be.”
“Power without moral grounding is nothing but naked force.”
Reader Quotes
…
Rate as a reader
Choose a score from 1 to 10. It saves immediately; one vote per device for this book.
Reader Comments
…
Nizam al-Mulk's pen cuts sharper than any sword. Where the West reaches for Machiavelli, the East produced its own answer — one built not around the cold mechanics of power alone, but around the uncompromising centre of justice. And yet this is no naive ethics lecture. The author knows exactly how power works, and he does not flinch from it.
His central warning still lands like a blow: a ruler's most dangerous enemies are not the armies massing at the frontier. They are the flatterers inside the palace and the unqualified appointees inside the institution. A court full of yes-men will bring down a kingdom faster than any siege.
This maps directly onto what Cevvela means when it says that integrity is a matter of character, not circumstance. Nizam al-Mulk applies that principle to statecraft — and applies it ruthlessly. Read this text and you will find yourself unsettled by how precisely its warnings about merit and intelligence still describe the way today's organisations quietly hollow themselves out.
The book was written a thousand years ago. Its urgency has not aged a day.
Where justice collapses, no fortress holds.