安萨里——致塞尔柱苏丹桑贾尔的信

You should know that by now I am fifty-three years old. Forty years of my life have been spent in the various peaceful haunts of famous scholars and learned men under whom I studied until I was raised to such a rank that people began to know me and understand the change in my ideas. For twenty years I lived in the rein of your royal father who did all that he could to make both Isfahan and Baghdad the most flourishing cities of the world. On several occasions I served, on behalf of your father, as ambassador to the court of the Abbasid Caliph Muktadar Billah and did all that was possible to remove certain misconceptions between the Seljuk empire and the Abbasid Caliphate. I authored seventy books. For several years I lived and preached in Mecca and Jerusalem, and when I visited the tomb of Prophet Abraham, peace be upon him, in Jerusalem and offered Al Fatihah, at this mazar, I solemnly pledged that: #I shall neither attend the court of a king, nor receive anything of the nature of emolument from the governments in any shape or form whatsoever, since such circumstances would lesson the worth of any service to the people. #I will not entangle myself in anything that provokes religious controversy. For the last twelve years I have been solemnly faithful to the pledge I made at the tomb of Hadrat Abraham. Now I have received an urgent message from your Majesty asking me to attend your court. In compliance with your orders, therefore, I have journeyed to Mashhad Rada, en route to the capital, but as an after-thought and in view of the aforesaid religious pledge to which I have bound myself, I have made up my mind to cancel the proposed visit. I beseech your Majesty to consider the right I have in fulfilling a religious pledge and that I may not suffer just because of my honesty. If I may undertake to counsel, I think you would do well to refrain from forcing me to attend your court, nor would you like it in me if I attended in violation of the pledge.…