دولتپژوهی (Jan 2024)
The Concept of Efficient Government in Qawanin al-Wizarah by Abul Hasan al-Mawirdi (d. 450 AH) Understood by the Conceptual Approach of Thomas Spragens
Abstract
Qawanin al-Wizarah is one of the most significant works of Abul Hasan al-Mawirdi, a policy theoretical scholar of the 5th century AH, in which he presented a constructed image of the government; however, this image is not purely theoretical, but also that is to a great amount image of government with its essential working parts and process. Understanding the relationship between the variables active in the writer's thoughts and society with the content of this work is the main problematic issue of the current research. Despite the importance of Qawanin al-Wizara in the heritage of Islamic political thought and Islamic statesmanship, this work has been less studied by contemporary researchers when it has been more in the shadow of al-Mawirdi's more well-known other work, Ahkam al-Sultaniyyah, so usually scholars have not paid enough attention to Qawanin al-Wizarah`s significance. For this reason, the current research aims to identify the main characteristics of an efficient government in this important work of statesmanship. This research by applying the thematic analysis method has tried to explain the main factors of an efficient government in Qawanin al-Wizarah. This study has been done through a library method when its main concentration has been on the Arabic text of Qawanin al-Wizarah. A Part of the achievement of this research is the understanding of more than 300 themes of Qawanin al-Wizarah the work has been mainly constructed; The result of their analysis shows the division of themes into the categories of crisis themes, crisis causes, crisis solutions, and efficient government or crisis-free (ideal) government by them the work has been presented.Our final step is the attempt to understand the achievement of thematic analysis of the text through the conceptual approach of Thomas Spragens in his book Understanding Political Theory (New York, 1976). By this last step, it becomes clear that al-Mawirdi considered the political crisis of the 5th century AH as the lack of structural, behavioral, and program procedures for government administration, as the main issue of Spragens is finding political-social crisis behind motivations of writing every original book in political theory.In this step, it became clear that al-Mawirdi employed all his themes in his book to solve the crisis, when he carefully drew dozens of structural models, organizational behavior, and government programs for the ruler, Wazir, and some other main figures of government to use them to be well guided throughout the way of governing. Spragens believes that the model of "disorganization - trying to return to order" causes the emergence of political thought in the mind of political thinkers to transition from crisis to ideal.It seems that al-Mawirdi considered disorder to be the cause of the inefficiency of the government, and he made it possible to achieve an efficient government through a theoretical production of organizational order. From the early Islamic period, the experience of the government system in Sassanid Iran was transferred to the Islamic Caliphate and caused its prosperity. But during al-Mawardi`s lifetime, the government system had suffered from internal problems and degeneration;The historical books of this period are full of all kinds of narrations about very ridiculous conflicts between government officials, such that due to a little annoyance and greed, the leaders of the government used to draw swords at each other, and the government treasures were easily looted. The Turkish generals, who were considered the special and main troops of the caliph, were also the main threat against the government structure.In this period, the dominance of the Turkish generals over the usual routines of the Abbasid caliphate, which was previously based on the regulations of Iranian Sassanid manner, had caused the deterioration of the government's performance. Thus, the hierarchy and structure, professional ethics, and organizational behavior were also destroyed in court. In such circumstances, the Qawanin al-Wizarah, focusing on the themes of regulations, had been a theoretical support to overcome this internal degeneration of the government and a response to the needs of the author`s era. The final result of this research has analyzed the relationship between the era and the text which was the solution to the crisis that had been the reproduction of the concept of efficient government.
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