Whatever of good or evil, of weal or woe, appeareth in this world of growth and decay is dependent upon the decree of a powerful Sage and hingeth upon the will of an absolute Potentate.¹

     This is a study of leadership as seen in a Persian's reflections on the period of the Mongol Khans. 'Ala-ad-Din 'Ata Malik Juvaini was a the court of Mengu, the fourth Mongol Qa'an, when he wrote The History of the World Conqueror between 1250 and 1260. Juvaini's appreciation of leadership is a foreign one and his vision of how reality is defined is based on a number of premises that are neither accepted nor often considered in this culture.
    We live in a Cartesian world, a world separated into fact and fantasy, matter and mind, reality and dreams. The borders of these two categories do not touch, and we say that one cannot pass from one to the other. But men have not always been so ignorant.

 For they are a people devoid of understanding.²

Juvaini's discussion does not show the inhibitions of this perspective. Perhaps the most eloquent spokesman for the unity of psychic and physical reality is an idolator, Thubten Jigme Norbu, the elder brother of the Dalai Lama.

Far from being magical or even mystical tantricism is essentially pragmatic, and it seeks a pragmatic explanation for all phenomena ... We believe there are various levels of reality, of which the external world is one ... The external world is not quite what it seems. It is in one respect a mere response to our senses, a creation of our minds. This is not to deny it, but rather to show how personal a thing the world around us is, so much of it being given color and shape by our imaginations. The self-created image is another level of reality, and ... it is possible to pass from one level to another, from the physical to the mental and the other way around.³

    Juvaini's perspective rests on similar pillars, requiring only two other important premises: first, the existence of almost Jungian psychic unity, i.e., the interconnection of all human minds; and second, that our emotional state is at least partially determined and controlled by extra-organismal determinants. In other words, the emotional state is a reaction to and a statement on the situation in this tightly coupled psychic and physical reality. Through it you either support or deny the existence of reality in its present form.

He had a day of hardship on which there were misfortunes for mankind, and a day of ease, on which there were blessings for mankind.⁴

The interpretation of the percepts received is based on loyalty; one supports both emotionally and physically those feelings to which one is constrained by loyalty. Within this unity a man's loyalties are defined by those aggregates in which he is a participant. For example, he may be a member of the Yekusai family, the Qiyat clan, the Boijigin tribe, the Mongol Nation and the Will of Heaven, to take a rather well-known illustration. But loyalties shift, peoples are exterminated or rise to positions of prominence.

To this hath fate condemned some of her people; the calamities of some appear a feast to others.⁵

    The opening quotation gives the Sage responsibility for finding the path to be followed and the values to be proffered in seeking the best possible condition for the members of a group. The Sage must also determine what the optimum condition is and consequently is responsible for both a society's long- and short-term goals. The goals a Sage brings forth reflect the aggregate he has integrated within his vision, and his vision's strength is determined by its beauty and its fit with the real circumstances.
    The Potentate is responsible for actively implementing the vision of the Sage and making whatever changes are necessary toward its realization. Here we need to recall the concept of psychic unity. Within this unity all are working toward the realization of the most satisfactory reality. In other words, given the existence of a superior vision within an unresponsive group, the vision's validity may mobilize another group to remove the obstacle to its implementation. Or conversely, given the existence of injustice within the unity, another group can be called up to ease the pain. Chingiz Khan admonished the Persians:

O people, know that you have committed great sins, and that the great ones among you have committed these sins. If you ask me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.⁶

    Discussing the Persian view of group being requires another foreign concept: when two peoples hold conflicting views, follow differing dreams, the contradiction defines and emotional conflict between the two peoples. If the vision I follow contains the vision you follow, my actions are correct in your context but your very existence may be questionable in mine. The effect of this is dual. The superior position gives strength and courage  to him who holds it while those who come into contact with him are forced to defend themselves not only physically but emotionally as well. With this two fronted battle sapping their strength, they become easy prey to the visionaries implementing the new order.

The army was led by noblemen by whom the atmosphere was choked and the mountain tops crushed.⁷

In other words, if they are right then we must be wrong, and we have nothing but our fear with which to oppose them.

Before thy foe thy arrow is a valiant army; around thy army thy terror is a strong fortress.⁸

Nothing but terror in an attempt to deny their existence and push them out of reality.

That which I see do I see it in wakefulness or in sleep, O Lord?⁹

    In describing the nature of a group, one is depicting not the organization of a society but the functioning of a faith, whether the group recognizes it or not. Each member of the society is given a role within the vision. Both individual and group happiness depend on their fulfilling the requirements of their roles and the tightness of the interface between the vision and reality. Chingiz Khan argues:

Heaven has appointed me to rule all the nations for hitherto there has been no order upon the steppes. Children did not harken to the words of their fathers, younger brothers disobeyed elder brothers, the husband had no confidence in his wife, and the wife did not heed her husband's orders. Inferiors did not obey superiors; and superiors did not fulfill their duties to inferiors; the rich did not support the rulers, and there was no content anywhere. The race was without order and without understanding; that is why on all hands, there were malcontents, liars, thieves, rebels, and robbers. But when Jenghiz Khan's good fortune became apparent, all came under his command and he will rule them ... that rest and happiness shall prevail in the world.¹⁰

A lord must look out for both the physical and the psychic well-being of this people and protect the faith they share.
    The Persians saw their king not so much as the head of a government, but as the living embodiment of his people's highest ideals and aspirations. While a lord might represent the integration of a particular group with special interests, the king was the embodiment of the unity of his whole realm together with all its conflicting desires and ideas. As the physical container of his people, he was also the arbiter and defender of their integrity and very existence in the face of the conflicting groups and visions of the peoples around them.

Now, when the king, who is, as it were, the heart, becomes weak in his limbs, how shall there remain strength in the members of the body? And so timidity prevailed over events and fear over men, and bewilderment and uncertainty overwhelmed them.¹¹

The behavior of kings is not to be judged for it rests on motivations that come from seeing a bigger picture and touches on the Will of God.

Now it is not concealed from the wise and discriminating that kings are snatched up and carried off by God, and that they receive divine inspiration.¹²

It is sometimes God's Will that a people be exterminated and the king is just an instrument in this process.

To complain of our fate is useless; whatever befalleth us is our own doing.¹³

They came, they sapped, they burnt, they slew, they plundered and they departed.¹⁴

Neither the pleasure of union with the Beloved has remained, nor the Beloved. Nothing has remained of anything, save care and grief.¹⁵

    Beyond the concerns of kings, the Persian ladder of leadership and authority climbs still higher. Beyond kingship, the next level of leadership is the Defender of the Faith, with the Khalifa reflecting a still larger group unified not physically (during this period anyway) but within his vision. The Khalifa is a king of kings, standing at the head of the faith as God's representative among men. He upholds the glory and the Vision of the Prophet. However, there is another who is even higher.

God Almighty always had a vicar (khalifa) amongst men, and this vicar had his own vicar.¹⁶

This is the Imam. Here once again we move into foreign territory, for this concept is based on a very different conception of heredity, and the structure of mind.

And the Prophets are the people of revelation (tanzil) and the Imams the people of interpretation (ta'vil).¹⁷

A faith must be protected from changing times by one who can interpret it to fit reality. To this point the image is understandable, however:

The world, they said, had never been without an Imam and never would be. If a man was Imam his father had been Imam before him, and his father's father before him, and so on back to Adam (on whom be peace!). They say too that an Imam is not always visible. Sometimes he is visible and sometimes hidden like day and night following each other. Before the rise of Islam there was a period of occultation (satr) but with the lifetime of  'Ali (may God be pleased with him!) the Imam, that is 'Ali himself, became visible, and from thence onward until the time of Isma'il and his son Muhammad, who was the seventh Imam, all the Imams were visible. He became invisible and after him all the Imams will be invisible until they become visible.¹⁸

    To approach an understanding of this idea, we are obliged to make a distinction between what might be termed mundane and psychic leadership, between the leadership of a people's bodies and the leadership of their Mind. The Imam's leadership does not depend on recognition. He is the head of human being, the loftiest vision, the guard at the gate of inner sanctity and the open nature of God's being. His position is defined by birth, in that the standards of his actions are an inherited characteristic. However, the Imam's mind is not like other men's minds.

My grandsire is my prophet, and my father my Imam, and my speech the assertion of God's oneness and justice.¹⁹

The Imam's mind is open to the minds of his ancestors. One is reminded of The Persians by Aeschylus, in which Cyrus is shown as guiding the lives of his descendents. The Imam embodies the wisdom of his ancestors, but even more, his mind is not separated from them or from God. Psychic unity is ordered and hierarchical and the Imam is at the summit. Whatever an Imam said or did was right since he stands next to the source of rightness and cannot help but be so.

Everything he thought he had read from the inscriptions on the "Preserved Tablet," that everything he said he said through divine inspiration an that any mistake or error in his thought or speech was not possible.²⁰

    So at the top of Persian leadership stands a leader not of men, but of Dignity, Nobility, Absolute Truth, and all the High Dreams of men. His primary loyalties rest not with humanity, but with God and reality.

And God knows better.
 
 
 

1. 'Ala-ad-Din 'Ata-Malik Juvaini, trans. John Andrew Boyle, Ph.D., The History of the World Conqueror (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), p. 12.
2. Ibid., p. 440, cited from the Koran.
3. Thubten Jigme Norbu and Colin M. Turnbull, Tibet (New York, 1970). pp. 165, 163.
4. Juvaini, op.cit., p. 235.
5. Ibid., p.
6. Ibid., p. 105
7. Ibid., p. 191
8. Ibid., p. 258
9. Ibid., p.
10. Michael Prawdin, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, The Mongol Empire (New York, 1967), pp. 89-90.
11. Juvaini, op.cit., p. 154.
12. Ibid., p. 282.
13. Ibid., p. 8.
14. Ibid., p. 107.
15. Ibid., p. 382.
16. Ibid., p. 691.
17. Ibid., p. 646.
18. Ibid., p. 645.
19. Ibid., p. 661.
20. Ibid., p. 706.
 

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