“I don’t know what more important things you mean.”
“The rumor is there’s a bitter battle going on over the succession. Nizam al-Mulk wants the first-born, Barkiarok, to be designated the sultan’s heir. But the sultana has been pressuring His Highness to promise the succession to her son Mohammed. The army and the people are for Barkiarok. I once saw him. There’s a real man for you. A soldier from head to foot. What Mohammed will be like, no one can know. He’s barely out of the cradle.”
Before they reached Hamadan, ibn Tahir had found out everything that the people and soldiers were saying about intrigues at the court. In the city he heard that the sultan had already left Nehavend heading for Baghdad. He left the sergeant and the quartermaster wagons, spent the night once again at an inn, and then changed horses and rode farther on toward Nehavend.
From the four corners of the realm, units were arriving at the military camp near Nehavend. Several thousand tents had been pitched on the broad, sun-scorched plain. The horses, mules, and camels chomped on dry grass, chased each other around the camp in herds, dug into the earth, and fled from guards on horseback. Thousands of head of cattle, goats and sheep were being kept in huge pens. In the mornings, shepherds would drive the herds into the hills, where pastures remained green. Detachments of soldiers rode from village to village collecting and plundering fodder for the livestock and anything that was in the least bit edible.
There was a large empty space in the middle of the camp. That was where the sultan’s tents had stood just a few days before. The trampled ground and the large beds of ashes left over from the campfires that the emperor’s escort had lit and tended testified to that.
Only one tent was left. A large, sumptuously green tent, the dwelling of the grand vizier.
These last months since falling out of his master’s favor, Nizam al-Mulk had aged considerably. Although he was already past seventy, he had still been exceptionally healthy and robust right up to the end. Everyone admired how firmly in the saddle he still remained. He had held the reins of state in his hands for more than thirty years. The current ruler’s father, sultan Alp Arslan Shah, had named him vizier and never regretted it. As he was dying, he recommended the vizier to his son and heir. One of the titles the latter conferred on him was ata beg, or “king’s father.” The vizier established peace at the borders, criss-crossed the country with roads, built cities, mosques and schools, regulated taxes, and raised the level of safety and well-being in the country to an unprecedented degree. He enjoyed the ruler’s unqualified trust, until he quarreled with the young sultana about the succession to the throne. Even before then his rivals and detractors had tried to blacken his name with the emperor. But the sultan didn’t listen to them. He granted his vizier the wealth he had accumulated in his service. He also let Nizam al-Mulk place his twelve sons in the highest positions in the land. But Turkan Khatun eventually succeeded in demonstrating to the sultan how capricious the vizier’s actions had been, how he had treated him, his master, like a schoolboy, and how ruthlessly he abused his power. The most obvious instance of this willfulness of the vizier’s was seen in a certain action taken by his eldest son, Muad-u-dolah. The sultan had advised him to accept a certain Adil into an area of his service. The vizier’s son refused, claiming the man was not suitable for the position. “Am I really such a complete zero in my own country?!” the sultan exclaimed. He immediately ordered the vizier’s son deposed and appointed in his place the very same Adil whom the son had rejected. This behavior offended the vizier deeply. He let slip some bitter words about the thanklessness of rulers. These words were brought to the sultan’s attention and made him even angrier. He threatened to take away Nizam’s quiver, pen, ink and brush—the symbols of the vizier’s rank. “I’ll be glad to hand over my quiver and brush to the sultan,” the vizier said bitterly. “The peace and prosperity of this country are my doing. While the sea was still stormy, His Highness honored me with his trust. Now that the waves have been calmed and the sky is clear, he listens to my critics. But he stands to realize very soon how closely the quiver and brush in my hands are connected with his crown.” These words put the sultan in an even worse humor, until the vizier’s own admission that he had misrepresented Hasan’s abilities so wounded the sultan’s pride that he deposed the vizier in a fit of extreme anger.
Now that they had made peace again in the face of the danger threatening the state, he was gradually becoming his old self again. He set two goals for himself: toppling his rival Taj al-Mulk and destroying the latter’s ally, his own mortal enemy Hasan. If he could achieve those two goals, he would once again be the unlimited master of all Iran.
The first steps had not been bad. He had portrayed the defeat of the Turkish vanguard outside of Alamut—that insignificant scratch against the cavalry—in such a way that he undermined the sultan’s faith in Taj al-Mulk. The sultan remembered all too well how much the sultana and her secretary had tried to keep him from taking any action against the Ismailis. Now the vizier persuaded him that he had to move decisively against those apostates if he wanted to keep the respect of his own citizens. And so the ruler gave the vizier the authority to deal with Alamut once and for all. Nizam felt it was high time for this. Legends of miracles in the castle, of fanatics who said that Hasan had shown them paradise, were reaching his ears too. Even though he viewed all these reports as pure nonsense, he didn’t underestimate their potential effect on the masses. He knew too well that they were not just gullible, but took a particular delight in hearing and succumbing to tales of miracles.
Now the military camp near Nehavend became a kind of provisional chancellery for him. People came to him from all directions with requests and complaints. While he had been grand vizier instead of Nizam, Taj al-Mulk had fired a large number of old bureaucrats and appointed his own people to replace them. When the former bureaucrats learned that the sultan had reinstated his old vizier, they either came rushing to see him or sent their confidants with the request to accept them back into service, seeing as how they had lost their positions on account of their loyalty to him. Nizam al-Mulk received his petitioners and made promises. At the same time he was assembling an army to force his rival, protected by the sultana, to step down.
One morning his master of ceremonies announced that a certain Othman, a student of al-Ghazali, was requesting an audience. Apparently his teacher had sent him from the Nizamiyah in Baghdad with a petition that he would like to present to him.
The grand vizier was reclining on a heap of pillows. Beside him was a gilt platter of raisins, sweetened nuts and other delicacies. Now and then he reached over and picked up this or that morsel to savor. He would pour himself some mead into a cup from a copper decanter and slowly sip it. He had already dealt with a large number of petitions and visits, and his two assistants, who sat to either side of him, writing, had their hands full.
“What’s that? Al-Ghazali’s student, did you say? Bring him in! Bring him in!”
It was much easier to get to the grand vizier than to the Ismaili supreme commander. That day ibn Tahir found this out for himself. He had come across a guard outside the encampment. He showed the commanding officer the sealed letter from the university in Baghdad and explained he had brought it for the grand vizier. He was allowed to pass. They showed him Nizam’s green tent.
He was remarkably calm and focused. He didn’t stutter when he said what he had come for. He couldn’t feel any effects from the pellet yet. He remembered paradise and Miriam and smiled a childlike smile. He hadn’t been thinking of her particularly at all these past days. Now suddenly he became aware that she was waiting for him as a reward for his action, so he would have to summon all his might to carry it out successfully.