Hasanwayh Kurdi played a considerable part in the advancement and spread of higher learning, and did so long before the time of Nizam al Mulk. The figure of three thousand buildings, which comes from Ibn al-Jawzi, seems to me to contain an excess of a zero. A few hundred would be a more credible number. Even so, it is no small achievement, though perhaps less extraordinary when one considers the nature of the buildings themselves. Such establishments were, in most cases, simple structures, and there was nothing particularly difficult about putting them up.
We know very little about what was actually taught in these early institutions founded by Hasanwayh. The most reasonable supposition, given the scant evidence at our disposal, is that their instruction depended largely upon the teachers who happened to be present. Their subjects may therefore have varied considerably, extending from musical theory to religious discourse. We should be careful not to imagine a uniform system of learning where the sources give us no reason to do so.
But what moved Hasanwayh to establish so many places of learning throughout his dominions, and thereby leave an influence that extended far beyond his own lifetime? Historians have often explained the founding of such institutions in political terms, and with good reason. Yet politics alone does not always explain a ruler's actions. To understand the thoughts that animated him, we must also consider the books he read, the traditions that inspired him, and the models of kingship that his age had inherited.
There is a curious habit among historians of attributing to Islam ideas, institutions and administrative practices whose origins are often to be found in the pre-Islamic world. Much of what later (by ignorant moderns) came to be called Islamicate civilisation rested upon older foundations. The Sasanian origins of the Bayt al-Hikma is but one example of this continuity.
Perhaps, then, we may find a glimpse of the ideal ruler as Hasanwayh and his contemporaries understood political ideals in the political writings, ancient legends and maxims available to them. One figure in particular deserves our attention: the legendary Jamshid, whose image as an exemplary sovereign endured for centuries, indeed until the final years of the Ottoman Empire. Evliya Çelebi, writing in a much later age, praised rulers who encouraged the outward signs of civilisation by comparing them to Jamshid. The comparison is revealing. It suggests that the old Iranian ideal of kingship had not vanished, but continued to offer a model by which the achievements of rulers could be judged and remembered.
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