[6] Viewed by many historians as "the most important statesman in Islamic history", the policies implemented by Nizam ul-Mulk remained the basic foundation for administrative state structures in the Muslim world up until the 20th century.

[10] Abu Ali Hasan was born on 10 April 1018, in a small village named Radkan, near Tus, in Iran, to a dehqan family.

[15] However, when the Seljuk Turks defeated the Ghaznavids at the Battle of Dandanaqan in 1040, and conquered Khorasan, Abu Ali Hasan's father fled to Ghazni.

Domestic affairs were handled by Nizam al-Mulk, who also founded the administrative organization that characterized and strengthened the sultanate during the reigns of Alp Arslan and his son, Malik Shah I.

This type of military fiefdom enabled the nomadic Turks to draw on the resources of the sedentary Iranians, and other established cultures within the Seljuk realm, and allowed Alp Arslan to field a huge standing army without depending on tribute from conquest to pay his soldiers.

He not only had enough food from his subjects to maintain his military, but the taxes collected from traders and merchants added to his coffers sufficiently to fund his continuous wars.

Several minor rulers then acknowledged Seljuk authority, while Alp Arslan and Nizam continued to penetrate deeper into the Caucasus, reaching Georgia.

This greatly angered Nizam's son Jamal al-Mulk, who tore out the tongue of Ja'farak, one of the perpetrators of the false stories.

Does he not remember when his father was killed, and I assumed responsibility for the conduct of affairs and crushed the rebels who reared their heads, from his own family and from elsewhere.

[21] The treatise uses historical examples to discuss justice, effective rule, and the role of government in Islamic society, and has been compared to Machiavelli's The Prince.

[10] The work also discusses various aspects of state surveillance and spying, advising rulers to establish an extensive espionage network.

[23][24] This account is particularly interesting in light of a possibly apocryphal story that first appeared in English in the introduction to Edward Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

In this story a pact is formed between a young Nizam al-Mulk (at that time known as Abdul Khassem) and his two friends, Omar Khayyam and Hassan-i-Sabbah.

Although Hassan, unlike Omar, decided to accept the appointment offered to him, he was forced to flee after plotting to depose Nizam as vizier.

[25] Nizam al-Mulk was a skilled and effective vizier, he represented the majesty, splendor and hospitality of the Barmakids, historians and poets describe him as a great organizer and an ideal soldier and scholar.

[27] Nizam was not only the leader of the Persian-dominated bureaucratic (divan), but was also an atabeg who served in the royal court (dadgar) and played an important role between the politically and culturally different Iranians and Turks.