In western and Islamic intellectual traditions, the foreigner appears as someone who can introduce ideas from elsewhere and challenge us to reconsider our political theories. After all, Plato’s myth of the metals was Phoenician, Rousseau’s lawgiver came from elsewhere, and medieval Arabic models of kingship were derived in large part from ancient Persian models of rule. I analyze foreigners at the Abbasid court to understand their role in the history of Arabic thought. I am interested in how these foreigners drew upon their heritage to achieve power. To do so, I focus on the works of one particular Persian secretary named Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ who worked in the early Abbasid dynasty. I suggest that Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s life (and his identity as a Persian, mawl? and Muslim) can help us understand how a foreigner was able to draw upon his Persian heritage to achieve power. In this paper, I analyze Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s Risala fi'l-sahaba to reveal how he introduced a particular model of the just world (i.e. an Abbasid “circle of justice”), through which he welded models of Persian, authoritarian rule to the needs of the nascent ‘Abbasid dynasty. I show how Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ delineates a “circle of justice” in the early Abbasid context, by writing a letter (known as the Risala fi'l-Sahaba) to the nascent Abbasid caliph. The term “circle of justice” represents a hierarchical social order, in which a divinely inspired king places men in particular social classes (namely: that of the military, tax collectors, and the agricultural class). Justice, here, connotes a balance between social classes that facilitates political order and agricultural prosperity. The structure of the circle is reminiscent of ideal accounts of the social structure of Sasanian Iran, a society esteemed for its order in medieval Arabic sources. I argue that in the Risala fi'l-sahaba, Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ offers a blueprint that the caliph can use to build an Abbasid “circle of justice.” I analyze the polity that Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ outlines, in which his caliph (portrayed in the style of a Sasanian sacral king) will govern as the shadow of God on earth and will place men in their respective ranks. In the end, this paper reveals how Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ invoked the “circle of justice” to create a gateway between Persian, Zoroastrian antiquity and Islamic modernity – a gateway that served to transform Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s own position from a secretary to something of a political founder.