The empire was, indeed, the culmination of trends towards autocracy visible in the earlier 'Abbasid caliphate and its successor states. Dynasties like the Buyids and Samanids had tried to centralize administration in their territories and to make the amir a despotic figure, but their attempts had foundered; in the case of the Buyids, because of family rivalries and the impediment of a turbulent Dailaml tribal backing, in the case of the Samanids, because of the entrenched power of the Iranian military and landowning classes and of the merchants, all hostile to any extension of kingly power.
The Ghaznavids, on the other hand, did not rise to eminence on the crest of a tribal migration or movement of peoples, and had few local, established interests to contend with. Hence they could make themselves far more despotic than their successors in Persia, the Saljuq sultans. Whereas the great Saljuq vizier Nizam al-Mulk (whose views derived from his family background of service in Ghaznavid Khurasan) later complained that the Saljuqs did not make full use of the machinery of despotism available to them, the Ghaznavid official Baihaqi denounces Mas'ud b. Mahmud's over-reliance on this machinery, his arbitrary behaviour, and his use of spies and informers, which created an atmosphere in the state of suspicion and mistrust. Leaving their pagan steppe origins behind completely, the Ghaznavids enthusiastically adopted the PersoIslamic governmental traditions which they found current in their newly acquired territories.
This process of adoption was facilitated by a continuity of administrative personnel with the previous regimes. When Mahmud took over Khurasan, most of the Samanid officials remained in office and merely transferred their allegiance to the new master. Thus Mahmud's first vizier, Abu'l-'Abbas al-Fadl Isfara'ini, had formerly been a secretary in Fa'iq's employ. Certain officials, like the qadi ShirazI, who was civil governor of northern India in the early part of Masud's reign, had a background of service with the Buyids. Trained men like these were welcomed in the Ghaznavid administration, particularly as the expansion of the empire under Mahmud enlarged its sphere of operations and the volume of work with which it had to cope.
Sultan Amir Ahmad Bathhouse, Kashan City, Iran
