for thirty years, from the moment he was made chief minister in 1063 by the sultan Alp Arslan (regn. 1063–72), Nizam al-Mulk devoted every effort to shaping the jerry-built Seljuqid political enterprise into a centralized absolutist monarchy. By the late 1080s, he could claim considerable success, for the sultan whom he now served (Malikshah, regn. 1072–92) enjoyed uncontested authority from the Oxus to the Mediterranean. After an initial succession struggle between Malikshah and his uncle Qavurd, there were no further disruptions which seriously threatened Malikshah’s supremacy. Nizam al-Mulk had created an administrative machinery which allowed him to maintain a fairly effective control over the flow of revenues and information. It is clear that he wanted to penetrate the whole apparatus with a network of informers and security agents, though it is not clear that he was able to achieve this goal. In any case, he dispersed his relatives and protégés everywhere he could, and even the most powerful officials in the remotest places had good reason to think that they were being watched.

Nizam al-Mulk could only use the tools available to him in the world of eleventh-century Iran and Iraq, of course. For example, he would have preferred to build a tax system based on salaried officials, but fiscal reality compelled him to make wide use of the iqta’. Even so, he strove to maintain a close supervision over these iqta’s and to limit the powers which their holders could exercise over the villages assigned to them. By this time, Seljuqid military power was based increasingly on a standing ‘professional’ army – an army whose members were registered by name, paid regular stipends and (in principle) subject to muster as needed.