d. 485/1092
Niẓām al-Mulk, the great vazīr of the Seljuk sultans, was born ca. 410/1019-1020 and spent his early career in the service of the floundering Ğaznavīd government shortly before Seljuks fully completed their rise to power. Some time around 445/1053–4, he entered the service of Seljuk Alp Arslān (who was then serving as a lieutenant in Eastern Ḫurāsān) and several years later attained the position of Alp Arslān’s vazīr. When Alp Arslān (r. 455/1063 to 465/1073) ascended to the position of Seljuk sulṭān in 455/1063, Niẓām al-Mulk in turn became vazīr of the empire. It was during that time, together with the reign of Alp Arslān’s son and successor Malikšāh (r. 465/1073 to 485/1092), when the Seljuk empire was not only at its strongest but also effectively ruled by Niẓām al-Mulk from the position of vazīr.
Niẓām al-Mulk’s overall role seemed to be that of conditioning the “barbaric” Turk tribesmen to their new role as rulers of an empire and to the practices of a sedentary government which maintained a central administration with financial, religious, and political responsibilities. Thus, in a general sense, perhaps Niẓām al-Mulk was less innovative than his widespread fame suggests. He replicated the role of the vazīr who adapted the practices of Persian administration and statecraft to a recently anointed Islamic dynasty with little previous knowledge of empire management, a practice that began well before his time.
Nonetheless, Niẓām al-Mulk did introduce practices such as the iqtāʿ system (“whereby military commanders supported themselves and their troops on the yield of lands allotted to them”) and helped orchestrate a general Sunni political and religious revival by such acts as endowing theological schools, the most famous being the Niẓāmiyya of Baghdād. He was assassinated in 485/1092 according by most accounts at the dagger of an Ismaili assassin.