The Siyasat-nama is a textbook on politics which the Seljuq vizier Nizam al-Mulk wrote for his sovereign. The work is written in a very simple style of Persian ； free from rhetorical ornamentation and with few quotations from the classics, it is easy to read. Its contents consist of a profusion of anecdotes strung together to please the reader. The Nizam al-Mulk had two aims in writing the work. One was to edify the unsophisticated Seljuq sultan by means of Islamic, Persian culture. The other was to defend Islamic orthodoxy against heresies. The author takes three stories from the work and analyzes them. The protagonists of these stories, the Sassanid Anushirwan the Just, the Abbasid caliph Mu'tasim, and Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni are all depicted as models of orthodoxy. Anushirwan, especially, is deemed not only in the Siyasat-nama but throughout the history of Iran to have been one of the most outstanding of rulers.