In this excerpt, the historian Narshakhī describes Aḥmad (I) b. Asad, the Sāmānid governor of Samarqand, as a learned and pious ruler. In her analysis of Islamic mirrors-for-princes literature on judging in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Louise Marlow uses the examples of the learned and pious Sāmānid and Ṭāhirid rulers to supply context for Pseudo-Māwardī’s stress on the need for the ruler to cultivate religious knowledge.
This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, ed. Intisar A. Rabb and Abigail Krasner Balbale(ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of primary sources and other material used in and related to the book.