It is a matter of great pride for me to be the first International Visiting Scholar at Robert Morris University. Robert Morris University is no doubt situated in Western Pennsylvania, but its outlook embraces the whole world. Many older universities in North America have not yet renounced what might be called a provincial attitude to education, research and academic interaction. But Robert Morris University is going places. Robert Morris University deserves full support in its ambitious attempt to become a well-known International University - and Robert Morris University will certainly get there. Here I would like to express my gratitude to very many people, some known and others unknown to me, who have had a part in inviting me to Robert Morris University and in making my stay a memorable one. I would especially like to offer thanks to Senior Vice President Katip and Dean Omurtag, who have treated me with excessive kindness and understanding. I reiterate my pleasure at being able to address you all in these resplendent surroundings, and express my gratitude to Winston Erevelles and Terri Kwiatkowski for their skilful organization. I should also mention that the subject of my lecture today is Management Handbooks of the Ancient Past.

Introduction
The celebrated Prussian general and strategist Carl von Clausewitz has said in his treatise On War (1):
Der Krieg ist die Forsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln
or, War is the continuation of politics by other means.

In ancient times, it was the art of war and the outcome of the final battle that decided the future of tribes or nations. Today, there is a case for saying that business is the continuation of war by other means. War and politics and business - like all organized human activity - have to be managed.

Much has been written about the management of war - but this is peripheral to our present lecture, and I will touch upon it only briefly. I think that we should all appreciate that whether it is the management of men or money or guns, of a business company or a kingdom, the overall principles of Management will be applicable. A whole country, like a large company is, in theory, a system based on many different, even conflicting, operations and all systems require strategies if sound results are to be achieved.

My main intention today to introduce some books to your attention. Tennyson has said that 'knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers', and I shall therefore make an effort to distil some wisdom from these books of long ago. I shall try to preserve a fair balance. My general plan is to present short quotes from them, followed in most cases by an equally short explanation or comment of my own. Book launching is a well-established practice, designed to attract readers for books that have freshly been published.

SUN TZU
However, the first book that I shall talk about goes back a very long way - to roughly 500 years before Christ, as firm dates are not available. It is a celebrated Chinese text called The Art of War by Sun Tzu. The translation I shall be using here was made by Lionel Giles in 1910, but as the book is now a classic, fresh editions of the book continue to appear, along with copious commentaries. I am aware that Sun Tzu is currently much in fashion in Schools of Management, for like all other disciplines, Management is also developing its own philosophy. The items selected from Sun Tzu here should provide a broad initial canvas for the themes to be discussed.

• All warfare is based on deception. [ Chapter I, No. 18 ]

• There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. [ Chapter II, No. 6 ]

• ...supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. [ Chapter III, No. 2 ]

• To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence. [ Chapter IV, No. 8 ]

• Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of a trigger. [ Chapter V, No. 15 ]

• Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances. [Chapter VI, No. 28 ]

• When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard. [ Chapter VII, No. 36 ]

• In hemmed-in situations, you must resort to stratagem. In a desperate position, you must fight. [ Chapter VIII, No. 2 ]

• When the soldiers stand leaning on their spears, they are faint from want of food. [ Chapter IX, No. 29 ]

• When the common soldiers are too strong and their officers too weak, the result is insubordination. When the officers are too strong and the common soldiers too weak, the result is collapse. [ Chapter X, No. 16 ]

• The principle on which to manage an army is to set up one standard of courage which all must reach. [ Chapter XI, No. 32 ]

• No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique. [ Chapter XII, No. 18 ]

• Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity. [ Chapter XIII, No. 15 ]

KAUTILYA
The second book - which I shall treat in somewhat greater detail, was written in about 300 B.C., and it was composed in the heart of the ancient world, in India. Again, there is some controversy about dates here. The name of the book is ARTHASHASTRA or, A Treatise on Material Gain. In Sanskrit, Shastra means text or work or scripture, and Artha means Wealth. Material gain here covers all aspects of life - from marriage to justice to the duties of a king. Arthashastra is a detailed manual on statecraft and the 'science of living' written by Kautilya [ or Kautalya ] , who was Chief Minister to Chandragupta Maurya. Kautilya, who is also known as Chanakya and Vishnugupta, was a Brahmin.

Here one needs to recall that 326 years before Christ, Alexander the Great of Macedonia crossed into India and the valley of the River Indus, defeating the Punjab rulers who were satraps or vassals of the Persians. After Alexander's death in 323 B.C. his empire collapsed, and a year later, from his base in Pataliputra [ the modern Patna ] Chandragupta Maurya slowly but surely started to build up what was the first Indian empire. Alexander's victories over the Punjab rulers had not been easy. Chandragupta became powerful enough to defeat Seleucus, the general who had inherited the major part of Alexander's empire and who made a fresh attempt in 305 B.C. to regain Alexander's Indian conquests. Seleucus accepted a gift of 500 war elephants and gave up claims on India, but left behind an ambassador at the court of Chandragupta, whose name was Megasthenes.

Among the information left behind by Megasthenes is that the Mauryan empire was highly civilized, and the capital city, Pataliputra, covered eighteen square miles, making it the largest city in the world of the time. But let us hear more of the Pataliputra of Chandragupta from an article on the Mauryan empire: (2)

Two other agencies were very important in holding the empire together. One was the professional army, which Megasthenes reports was an incredibly large force of 700,000 men, 9000 elephants, and 10,000 chariots. The other was the secret police, whose numbers were so large that the Greek writer concluded that spies constituted a separate class in Indian society.

Complementing this picture of an efficient but harsh bureaucracy is a remarkable book, Treatise on Material Gain (Arthashastra), written by Chandragupta's chief minister, Kautilya, as a guide for the king and his ministers. Kautilya exalts royal power as the means of establishing and maintaining "material gain," meaning political and economic stability... To achieve the aims of statecraft, Kautilya argues, a single authority is needed that will employ force when necessary. Like Machiavelli, the Renaissance Italian author of a famous book on statecraft (The Prince), Kautilya advocates deception or unscrupulous means to attain desired ends.

The book called the Arthashastra is in print; it was last published in Delhi in 1992. (3) It has to be stated that the Arthashastra includes much erudition within its covers. A few thought-provoking statements from the text - which sound remarkably contemporary - are given below:

• Knowledge is cumulative. Every new piece of knowledge reveals connections with other areas of knowledge. Each breakthrough in knowledge creates new opportunities that expand and multiply.
• Change your thinking, and you change your life. To take control of your life, you must take control of your mind.
• By failing to plan, you are planning to fail. Effective performance is based on thorough preparation.
• Be firm about your goal, but flexible about reaching the goal.
• Power goes to the person who uses it most effectively.
• Leaders must develop the ability to predict and anticipate the future.
• Be pragmatic. Do not ask where the new idea came from or who thought of it first. Ask only one question: does it work?
• Success is not an accident. Success needs action. Action needs initiative.

The Arthashastra has many chapters, and depending on the inclination of the reader, it may also be considered as a manual on intelligence gathering, on strategy, on war and defence, on protocol and foreign affairs, management and on many other subjects in addition to statecraft and wealth.

Thus, in a paper, (4) Charles Waldauer, William J. Zahka and Surendra Pal , all of the School of Management at Widener University, have the following to say:

This paper demonstrates that Kautilya, a great Indian Philosopher-statesman and contemporary of Aristotle, and whose work was lost for more than 1400 years, anticipated classical economic thought by some 2,000 years in the areas of international trade, taxation and a labour theory of value. This...has been overlooked by historians of economic thought and we believe that his contributions should receive appropriate and overdue recognition.

Furthermore, Sultan Hali, a research scholar, gives an analysis of defence management from the Arthashastra and writes: (5)

The Arthashastra is well-known as the pioneering work on Political Economy. But the Arabs knew it as a treatise on the Art of War. The Fihrist of al-Nadim...composed in A.D. 950... records an Arabic translation of a book written by Shanaq (Arabicized form of Chanakya) "about the administration of war". (6)

Anil Naik, an Indian Management Consultant, proceeds to draw elaborate parallels between Kautilya's work and latter-day Management techniques. (7) In his article, he synchronizes the end results proposed by Peter Drucker in his book Managing for Results (8) with the advice given by Kautilya to his king. Other Indian writers go even deeper to find parallels between Kautilya and specialized techniques of modern management such as "head hunting". (9)

Current interest in Kautilya's work suggests that its contents are by no means exhausted. Here it would be unfair not to point out that one of the greatest scholars in this area is Roger Boesche, who is Arthur G. Coons Professor in the History of Ideas at Occidental College, Los Angeles. His latest work (10) mentions that Kautilya has ideas similar to those of Sun Tzu and also Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes. Boesche demonstrates the relevance of Kautilya's work to modern Indian strategic thinking and the relationship of politics and economics. Here is an excerpt from a recent paper by Boesche (11):

Kautilya offers a view of history and time in which time just rolls on, flows like a river, turns like a wheel, destroys at one instant and creates at the next. What does this mean for the political order or the state? Every kingdom swings like a pendulum passing through three phases - decline, stability, and advancement. How does a statesman take action, given such a view of history? In this arena of time, the king should use Kautilya's science of politics to maximize the time in which his kingdom is in a state of advancement and to minimize periods of decline.

NIZAM AL-MULK
From the 8th century onwards, the Islamic civilization originating in the heartlands of the Middle East but extending eventually from Spain to Indonesia was the center of intellectual activity and production. There is no shortage of books or writers over the centuries producing books on governance, diplomacy, management, war, the theory of history and the production of wealth. Al Turtushi, (12) Ghazali, Ibn Khaldun and a host of others have produced volumes of original work in these areas. However, if the stress is on aspects of Management, the book that should be chosen for further study is that of the great Abu Ali Hasan al Tusi, otherwise famous as Nizam Al-Mulk. (13)

Nizam Al-Mulk was born in 1018 A.D. in the town of Tus in the Persian province of Khorasan. It is more or less accepted that Nizam Al-Mulk was in the same class at school with the poet-astronomer Omar Khayyam and with Hasan bin Sabah, the founder of the sect later known as the Assassins. The word "assassination" in English is an unfortunate legacy of this violent sect. Edward Fitzgerald, the author of the most famous translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam tells the story of the lives of these one-time school friends. (14)

Nizam Al-Mulk rose to become Grand Vizier to the Seljuq sultan Alp Arslan and his son Malik Shah who ruled over vast areas of Iran, Central Asia and present-day Turkey. Aside from his extraordinary influence as Grand Vizier with full authority, Nizam Al-Mulk is also well-known for the colleges of higher education he set-up throughout the Empire, called the Nizamiyyah, of which the most celebrated ones were those of Baghdad and Nishapour. (15) Sad to narrate, it was the Assassins who were responsible for the assassination of Nizam Al-Mulk himself, in 1092 A.D.

However, it is his monumental political treatise Siyasatnama or Book of Government with which we are concerned. The book of 50 chapters, written in Persian, has been described as the 'Magna Charta' for an ideal state. Replete with historical anecdotes and gleanings from his own rich personal experience, the book treats a huge variety of managerial topics. Nizam Al-Mulk developed a vast and rich store of experience, because he considered travelling over the huge empire and keeping direct contact with the people to be a top priority. It is narrated that he traversed the length and breadth of the great empire seven times during his tenure as Vizier.

A few pertinent selections from the book by Nizam Al-Mulk shall now be given, followed by short comments from my side. Although Nizam Al-Mulk in his discourse usually addresses the King, it is apparent that the wisdom he seeks to distil into his advice is for all people in authority, be they kings, governors, generals or - in today's parlance - presidents, CEOs, ministers or managers.

While there are lessons in each case, no extrapolation has been made here to economics or politics or management. I am not an expert in these areas; my job here is only, at best, to provoke thought.

• A kingdom may last while there is irreligion, but it will not endure when there is oppression. [ Chapter II ]

• When the king sits in a place protected by doors, gates, locks, vestibules, screens and chamberlains, self-interested and oppressive persons can keep people back and not let them go before the king. [ Chapter III ]

• Tax collectors...must be instructed...to take only the due amount...with civility and courtesy...and not until the time comes. [ Chapter IV ]

• The best of rulers is he who keeps the company of men of learning, and the worst of learned men is he who seeks the society of the king. [ Chapter VIII ]

• Knowledge is better than wealth, because you must take care of wealth but knowledge takes care of you. [ Chapter VIII ]

• The employment of intelligence agents and reporters contributes to the justice, vigilance and prudence of the king, and to the prosperity of the country. [ Chapter X ]

• A man who does not take counsel in affairs shows weak judgement... No task can be accomplished without men of the proper skill; no more can any enterprise succeed without deliberation. [ Chapter XVIII ]

• When troops are all of one race dangers arise; they lack zeal and they are apt to be disorderly. It is necessary that they should be of different races. [ Chapter XXIV ]

• His [ the king's ] housekeeping ought to be better, more lavish and cleaner than that of any of the nobles; and if... the king's wine-bearer gives them bad wine, he should be punished, because he is issued with nothing but good wine... [ Chapter XXIX ]

• If one [ promoted and elevated to high rank ] commits a fault, it should be overlooked at the time; later he should be summoned privately and told... [ Chapter XXXIII ]

• When two appointments are given to one man, one of the tasks is always inefficiently and faultily performed...whenever two men are given a single post each transfers his responsibility to the other and the work remains forever undone. [ Chapter XLI ]

• History relates that when Alexander came from Rum and defeated Darius, who was King of Persia, ... people said to Alexander, 'It befits you to pass by Darius's night-quarters and see those moon-faced fairy-figured ones, especially his daughter, for in beauty she has no peer.' Alexander replied, 'We have vanquished their men; let us not be conquered by their women.' [ Chapter XLII ]

MACHIAVELLI
If it took 13 centuries between Kautilya and Nizam Al-Mulk, then the passage of 6 more centuries brings us to Niccolo Machiavelli (16), the Florentine diplomat whose book "The Prince" is regarded as a latter-day handbook of political manipulation and intrigue.

It is highly likely that of the names that will be mentioned here today, that of Machiavelli is the most well-known. There are countless essays available on Machiavelli and his books, even on the Internet. One of the most consulted books in the world, the Concise Oxford Dictionary, has the following entry on Machiavelli:

Machiavelli, n. Unscrupulous schemer; one who practises duplicity in statecraft...

A few of the precepts put forward by Machiavelli in "The Prince" will be summarized next. The intention is not to give any exhaustive judgement on the man or his work, but just to introduce a few salient points from his work for those to whom it may not be familiar. (17)

• An inherited principality is easier to rule than a new one - all you have to do is not break their old rules. Chapter 2

• People should be treated well or be crushed. If you injure someone only lightly they can still take revenge, if you crush them they cannot take revenge. Chapter 3

• When you are on the spot, problems are easily spotted and fixed before they get out of hand. You can also prevent your officials from plundering the country. Chapter 3

• A country with barons is much easier to take over - there are always some barons that are unhappy about something that you can win over. Such people make a takeover easier, but make it more difficult to hold afterwards. Chapter 4

• Having such a small government run by you has its advantages - they support you because they cannot live without your support. Chapter 5

• Nothing is more dangerous, difficult and uncertain than to introduce a new order of things. Your enemies will be those that had greatest advantage from the old order of things. Those people that will not benefit from your new order of things, will not support it enthusiastically. Chapter 6

• Alexander is an excellent example of all the following actions necessary to secure a new principality - loved, admired and feared by people and the soldiers...strict and generous as required...overcoming by force or fraud... Chapter 7

• Most frequently a private person becomes a prince through fortune or his own genius / abilities. A third way is through wickedness. Chapter 8

• Virtues just followed because they are virtues might cause your ruin. Vices must not always be avoided, they might bring security and prosperity. Chapter 15

• Liberality will cause you to give away all your property. Liberality will also require you to tax your people to have money to give away. In the end you will be poor - this helps no-one. Chapter 16

• It is not possible to love and fear a prince. Being feared is much safer than being loved. A wise prince is very careful not to be hated - that is dangerous. Chapter 17

• Princes that are cunning and strong as appropriate always succeed better than princes who are only as lions. Chapter 18

• A prince must be clear towards any party that he is either a true friend or a sure enemy - a prince should never stand neutral. Chapter 21

• You must let your men know that they must always tell the truth to you - that it does not offend you. Chapter 23

• You are evaluated more by what you do in the present than what you did in the past. Chapter 24

• Fortune only controls half of our lives. We are able to control the other half. You should be in control, otherwise you will be controlled. Chapter 25

• Troubled times clearly reveal the abilities of a prince. Chapter 26

SARI MEHMED PASHA
Next it is time to turn to someone of high position who came on the stage of history two hundred years after Machiavelli. The Chief of the Treasury of the Ottoman Empire, Sari Mehmed Pasha, wrote The Book of Counsel for Viziers and Governors in 1703. This important text on governance - like the other books referred to in this presentation - is also available in English. (18) Sari Mehmed Pasha lived between 1655 and 1717 and was, for many years, a member of the Council of State before holding the office of Treasurer during the first two decades of the 18th century. In his book, Sari Mehmed Pasha analyzed the forms of administrative corruption and also called for strong leadership to reform the system. The items of advice from Sari Mehmed Pasha considered below have been translated into English by myself after selection from the modernized Turkish text. (19)

• To extract unbearable taxes from the subjects in order to support the expenses of those who govern, is like removing earth from the foundations to use in the superstructure. Soil removed from the foundation is bound to weaken the foundation, rendering it powerless to bear its load. This will cause damage and collapse to the building.

• Not to reveal the secrets of those close to you or your own secrets is a sign of good character. It has been said: "Keep your secret even from the shirt you wear."

• There are those who lap up respect and attention given to them, but do not show greatness or a contented face to the population.

• The Grand Vizier should even pray in his own house so as to be easily accessible all the time and his door should always be open.

• In upper circles, discourse should be serious, dealing with the welfare and protection of the State and religion. No untoward jokes, horseplay or uncouth rowdiness is to be permitted.

• Judges and those in authority over the population should strive to obtain such information by employing both public and private paid agents who are utterly dependable.

• Find the man most suited for the job and give him the job if you wish the affairs of state to run smoothly.

• Whether it is reward or punishment, investigate matters thoroughly and do nothing in haste.

• Those in public service must learn to manage with the salary they get and not try to accumulate wealth and property by pressuring or mistreating the population.

• Bending or twisting laws after taking bribes is the worst crime a man in authority can commit. Bribery and corruption are diseases with no cure. They need to be eradicated from the system.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
With your permission, I would like to conduct a brief summing up. The objective of the present lecture has been to introduce the political thoughts of Sun Tzu, Kautilya, Nizam Al-Mulk, Machiavelli and Sari Mehmed Pasha. As mentioned earlier, time has precluded any attempt on my part at detailed appraisal or criticism of the details of their suggestions or arguments, but there is little doubt that the passage of the centuries has not tarnished the quality of their work. It is not surprising that the idea of establishing links between a few of these names has occurred to Roger Boesche, who writes: (20)

Sun Tzu and Kautilya... were also prepared to win in ways Machiavelli would regards as loathsome and disgraceful - assassination, disinformation, causing quarrels between ministers by bribes or by means of jealousy over a beautiful woman planted as a secret agent, and so on...
...Machiavelli (21) who offers no systematic discussion of even guerilla warfare would have been easily outmatched by generals reading either Sun Tzu or Kautilya.

It should be added that Nizam Al-Mulk and Sari Mehmed Pasha are both quite deeply rooted in the values of the Muslim faith and diffident about trespassing them. Although Sari Mehmed Pasha is more famous within Turkey than outside Turkey, there are references to him in serious books such as Hourani, (22) who writes:

From the late sixteenth century onwards, those who compared what they saw around them, with what they believed to have existed earlier, often said that...the institutions and code of social morality on which Ottoman strength had rested were in decay. Some of them read Ibn Khaldun; (23) in the seventeenth century, the historian Naima (24) reflected some of his ideas, and in the eighteenth, part of his Muqaddima (25) was translated into Turkish.

For such writers, the remedy lay in a return to the institutions of the real or imagined golden age. For Sari Mehmed Pasha... writing at the beginning of the eighteenth century, what was important was that the old distinction between rulers and ruled should be restored and that the rulers should act justly.

I come now to my concluding sentences. Paraphrasing Virginia Woolf's famous essay, it might be said that the duty of the speaker is to give the audience, at the end of a long lecture, a nugget of pure truth which they can wrap up and take home, presumably to look over in solitude. I cannot claim to have done that. We have, however, taken a walk together through the dusty corridors of history. Sir Isaac Newton, a multi-faceted genius himself, has said: "If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." The rich legacy of the past - in all the sciences and in all the arts - is valuable only if appreciated and exploited. It lies hidden in nooks and crannies in the most unexpected places, but belongs to all humanity and lessons need to be learnt from it. In this lecture I have merely tried to skim the surface of the ocean of treasures that lies all round us.

I thank you for your patience and attention.

Notes and References

1. Clausewitz, Karl von, On War, Penguin Books, 1974, p. 119 (Book I, Ch. I Sec.24).
2. http://www.emayzine.com/lectures/mauryanempire.htm
3. Kautalya, Arthashastra , edited by L N Rangarajan, Publisher: Penguin India; (January 1, 1992) ISBN: 0140446036, Paperback: 868 pages.
4. http://ideas.repec.org/a/dse/indecr/provider#provider
5. http://defencejournal.com/march98/chanakya1.htm
6. Dodge, Bayard (ed. & trans.), The Fihrist of Nadim: A Tenth Century Survey of Muslim Culture, Columbia University Press, New York, 1970, Vol. II, p.738.
7. Anil M. Naik, "ARTHASHASTRA - Lessons for Management Theory and Practice", The Bombay Chartered Accountant Journal, Bombay, India, September 2002. Available at http://www.esamskriti.com/html/readers.htm
8. Peter F. Drucker, Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-Taking Decisions, Harper Collins, 1993.
9. Nitish Bhushan & Ajay Raj Kumar, India's Ancient Political Teachings And Modern Business Management - The teachings of 'Kautilya's Arthashastra' to be found at the web address: http://www.indiainfoline.com/bisc/sibmart01.html
10. Roger Boesche, The First Great Political Realist: Kautilya and His Arthashastra, Rowman & Littlefield Pub. Inc., May 2003. Chapters in this book include: A Science of Politics for a Wise King; Kautilya's Spy State; The Economy: A Socialist Monarchy; Foreign Policy and War; Power, Advancement, and a Theory of History.
11. Roger Boesche, "Kautilya's Arthashastra: A Pendulum Theory of History," South Asian Studies 17 n.n. (2001) pp. 1-6.
12. Muhammad Ibn al-Walid al-Turtushi (1060 - 1126 A.D.) known as Ibn Abi Randaqa is the author of the monumental political treatise, Siraj al-Muluk. It contains sixty-four Chapters, in which political thought has been subordinated to ethical considerations. This work had a great influence on contemporary and later political thinkers including the celebrated Ibn Khaldun.
13. Nizam Al-Mulk, The Book of Government or Rules for Kings, translated from the Persian Siyar al Muluk or Siyasatnama by Hubert Darke, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1978, 264 pp.
14. Available on the web at several addresses, including: http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/rubintro.html
15. When Malik Shah complained about the expense of creating lavish educational institutions and asked why Nizam Al-Mulk did not build a fortress or raise a regiment of soldiers, Nizam Al-Mulk is said to have replied: "The educational fortress I have built for you will defy the ravages of time and prove unbreakable. The arrows of soldiers will not travel beyond 100 yards. The arrows of the army which I have created will ascend into heaven itself and render your name imperishable."
16. Niccolo Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy in 1469. His greatest work is The Prince, written in 1513 and published after his death in 1532. The book is a classic of Realpolitik, i.e. a state policy based not on ideals but on retaining political power.
17. The detailed summary is available at the following address:
    www.the-prince-by-machiavelli.com/ summary-of-the-prince-by-machiavelli.html
18. Sari Mehmed Pasha, the Defterdar, Ottoman Statecraft: The Book of Counsel for Vezirs and Governors, Turkish Text with Introduction, Translation and Notes by Walter Livingston Wright, Jr., Princeton University Press, 1935.
19. Defterdar Sari Mehmet Pasa, Devlet Adamlarina ¿g¿tler [ Advice to Statesmen ], simplified by H¿seyin Ragip Ugural, published by the Ministry of Culture, Ankara, 1992.
20. Roger Boesche, "Moderate Machiavelli? Contrasting The Prince with the Arthashastra of Kautilya", Critical Horizons 3:2, Koninklije Brill NV, Leiden, 2002, pp. 253 - 276.
21. The reference here is not to The Prince but to Machiavelli's The Art of War.
22. Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 1991, Chapter 15.
23. Ibn Khaldun [ born Tunis 1332, died Cairo 1406 ], a thinker and historian of extraordinary merit whose works are available in English. In the famous Prolegomena [ Muqaddima ] to his History, he states:

    Empires, like persons, have a term of life, an existence which is peculiar to them; they grow, they reach the age of maturity, then they begin to decline.

24. Mustafa Naima [ 1655 - 1716 ], first and greatest Ottoman court chronicler.
25. Muqaddima, by Ibn Khaldun, ed. and trans. F. Rosenthal, The Muqaddimah, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967.