The paper examines the political deployment of Sufi textuality by focusing on the Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqah wa sharī‘at al-ṭarīqah [The Garden of Truth and the Law of the [Sufi] Path] (hereafter the Ḥadīqah), an understudied book of Sufi and political advice composed by the Persian poet Sanā’ī of Ghazna (d. 1131 CE). The convergence of Sufi and political ethics in the works of Sanā’ī, including his Ḥadīqah, has only been discussed by a handful of scholars, such as J.T.P. de Bruijn (1983), and Franklin Lewis (1995). No detailed study has been conducted to investigate the way this convergence is manifested in Sanā’ī’s portrayal of an ideal ruler. Additionally, no scholarly attempt has been made to highlight the relationship between the circumstances surrounding the patronage of Sanā’ī’s poetry and his conception of “perfect” kingship— specifically, his idealized portrayal of his royal patron, Bahrāmshāh (r. 1117 – 1157 CE), and of Sulṭān Maḥmūd (r. 998 – 1030 CE), Bahrāmshāh’s forefather and the founder of the Ghaznavid empire. This study includes a textual and contextual analysis of Sanā’ī’s Ḥadīqah. I will provide an overview of the key cultural and political aspects of Bahrāmshāh’s reign, including his attempts to create a parallel between his rule and that of Maḥmūd. I will then closely analyze passages from Sanā’ī’s Ḥadīqah to highlight the ways in which this parallelism is manifested in Sanā’ī’s work. I will demonstrate that Maḥmūd is not only portrayed as a just, generous, and intelligent ruler— similar to ideal rulers in the mirrors-for-princes genre— but also as a perfect man, in its mystical sense, who had access to divine knowledge. Thus, he is idealized and placed above legendary Persian rulers such as the Sasanian king, Khusraw Anūshīrvān (d. 579 CE). I will argue that Sanā’ī counsels Bahrāmshāh to follow the footsteps of Maḥmūd and on multiple occasions portrays him as an ideal ruler similar to his forefather. I will then conclude my paper with a discussion on the way Sanā’ī’s Ḥadīqah could have possibly functioned as a source from which Bahrāmshāh drew legitimacy. Using the historical overview provided in the beginning of the presentation, I will explain possible motivations behind the royal patronage of the Ḥadīqah even after Sanā’ī’s death. By examining one of the earliest specimens of court-patronized mystical poetry, this paper sheds light on the role of court poetry in creating a strong bond between Islamic mysticism and politics in the Persianate world.