The Circle of Power

Ibn Khaldun transmits eight political maxims, drawn from what the book attributed to Aristotle on politics has indicated. They are linked together, and their ends return to their beginnings in a circle with no fixed edge: "the world is a garden whose fence is the state; the state is an authority by which the sunna lives; the sunna is a policy governed by the king; the king is an order supported by the army; the army are helpers provided for by wealth; wealth is a provision gathered by the subjects; the subjects are servants held together by justice; and justice is what is familiar and by which the pillars of the world stand," and then back to the beginning of the saying. In the same sense is the saying of the mobad Bahram ibn Bahram: the king's might is not complete without the Law; the Law has no stability without the king; the king has no glory without men; men have no stability without wealth; wealth has no path except through cultivation; and cultivation has no path except through justice. And the saying of King Anushirvan: the army by the troops, the troops by wealth, wealth by the land tax, the land tax by cultivation, and cultivation by justice; the head of all is the ruler's own supervision of the condition of his subjects. Ibn Khaldun holds that the book set out the explanation of these maxims and their details without teaching from Aristotle or instruction from a mobad, and that the letters of Ibn al-Muqaffa' and the book Siraj al-muluk by Abu Bakr al-Turtushi contain many of its questions in the manner of oratory. ²

What is not recorded here needs a further source.