The Mongols as part of popular imagination have acquired the reputation of providing nothing more than a fierce but amusing footnote in history, men on horseback who appeared from nowhere in the thirteenth-century and receded into obscurity a century or so later. As the articles in this volume demonstrate, the popular imagination is un-nuanced and, far from being transitory rogues, the Mongols, and their complex narratives, made a significant impact upon many histories and cultures across the world as they expanded through Asia changing, modifying and absorbing much in their wake.

The working title for this festschrift was ‘Papers for the Padishah’. It was discarded for the sake of propriety as well as the well-known decree that all academic books must include a colon, a decree which some would say is worthy of Chinggis Khan himself. Nonetheless, I believe it is fair to consider David O. Morgan the Padishah of the study of the Mongol Empire. David, ever humble, would simply wave this title away and offer another scholar the throne. In this sense, David is like Ogodei Khan—generous, well-liked by all, and he laid much of the modern foundations for the study of the Mongols. Yet, David, like Ghazan Khan, always kept one foot firmly in Iranian Studies as well, thus giving him claim to the title of Padishah. David's similarity to the Mongols does not end there, however, as he carved his own intellectual empire.

This article investigates political vocabulary and metaphor in the writings of al-Juwayni (d. 1085) to bring out the commitments and presuppositions of premodern Islamic political tradition and raises the question of their compatibility with those of the modern nation-state.

The period following the death of Saladin (589/1193) was a formative one in the history of the Ayyūbid empire. It saw the eventual establishment of Saladin's younger brother Sayf al-Dīn al-Malik al-ʿĀdil as the acknowledged sovereign of the various territories ruled by members of the Ayyūbid family, overturning the succession arrangements that Saladin had put into place; and it established modes of behaviour to be followed, mutatis mutandis, following the death of a leading Ayyūbid ruler on future occasions. The main loser in al-ʿĀdil's rise to the sultanate was Saladin's eldest son, al-Malik al-Afḍal ʿAlī, whom some have written off as an incompetent failure. In this paper for David Morgan, for many years my trusted colleague in the SOAS History Department, I suggest that that judgment on al-Afḍal is open to appeal.

The geopolitical shape of the Middle East has varied greatly over time. This article is concerned with the period from Late Antiquity to the end of the eighteenth century, during which four basic configurations succeeded each other. Late Antiquity was marked by the coexistence of two large empires, one based in the western Middle East and the other in the eastern Middle East; the early Islamic period saw the dominance of a single empire the location of whose centre was unstable; the medieval period was characterised by the absence of large and lasting empires and a shifting plurality of smaller states; finally in the Ottoman period we see the renewed dominance of a single empire, now based in the western Middle East. Are these changes to be seen as random fluctuations, or can they be explained in terms of a small number of underlying factors? The point of this article is to argue that a focus on the potential imperial heartlands of the Middle East can help us to explain much—though not all—of the changing geopolitical configuration of the region.

The following joint article is a departure from standard studies, in that historical research is put side-by-side with numismatic evidence. It reflects the growing awareness of the underlying concepts of steppe society that significantly shaped the formation and endurance of the Mongol Empire. With new analysis, it is apparent that the society was clear about these concepts and expressed them in very public pronouncements. They are most evident in the early period of the empire; during the formation of the state by Chinggis Khan and his first two successors, Ögödei (r. 1229–41) and Güyük (r.1246-48). However, the cataclysmic civil war in the middle of the thirteenth century between the Ögödeyids and Toluids removed direct acknowledgment of such a social ethos. Indeed, after 1250 khans strongly focused on pragmatic issues and relied less on philosophical theories of legitimacy, at least Mongolian ones. By contrast, the first three rulers were keenly aware of the theory of the state and the way society functioned within it. They developed this ethos into a fairly cohesive form that provided moral strength to a nascent regime. The evidence for this development emerges from the study of two particular words, tengri, “Heaven”, and especially töre, “grand principle”. Töre in this usage was the equivalent of the ‘binding and unbinding’ and the sunna of the messenger, Muḥammad, in medieval Islamic societies and of democracy in modern times. Tengri and töre are culturally defined theories closely related to the Aristotelian sense of positive law. In all cases, reality required various approaches to them at a given period of time. As a result, the concept of töre had existed before the empire and continues to this day, always implying the correct order of good governance.

The first decade of the 21st century proved remarkably fertile in yielding up manuscripts relevant to the earliest direct contacts between Latin Europe and the Mongol empire – namely, those framed by the devastation of Rus´ (1237-40), Poland, Moravia and Hungary (1241-2) by the Mongols (or ‘Tartars’) and the subsequent despatch to the Mongol world of three parties of friars (1245-7) as envoys of Pope Innocent IV. These texts include:- (1) an early manuscript of the Epistula de vita secta et origine Tartarorum of the Hungarian Dominican Julian, who travelled to the Ural region in 1236–7 in search of the Hungarians’ pagan kinsmen in what was known as ‘Greater Hungary’, and returned with news of the imminent Mongol assault on Rus´; (2) two hitherto unknown letters from the Nestorian monk Simeon Rabban-ata to the Emperor Frederick II and King Louis IX of France, brought back from Azerbaijan in 1247 by one of Innocent IV's envoys, the Dominican André de Longjumeau; and (3) a second copy of the so-called ‘Tartar Relation’, an account produced in Poland in mid July 1247 by a Franciscan friar calling himself ‘C. de Bridia’ and closely linked with the most celebrated of the papal embassies to the Mongols, which was led by the Franciscan John of Plano Carpini and travelled across the Eurasian steppes as far as the court of the Qaghan Güyük in Mongolia.

As is well known, Hülegü, Chinggis Khan's grandson and the founder of the Ilkhanate (r. 658–664/1260-65), never converted to Islam. Moreover, as the man who annihilated the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258), that had led the Islamic umma for more than half a millennium, Hülegü was often portrayed—albeit mainly outside his realm—as one of the great destroyers of Islam. Yet around the mid-seventh/fourteenth century we find at least two different conversion stories relating to Hülegü in both Ilkhanid and Mamluk sources, both allegedly originating in Baghdad. This paper aims to present these narratives and analyse their origin and use in the context of the later or post-Ilkhanate period. I may say already at this stage that I have more questions than answers, and that my explanations as to why such stories were invented are rather speculative.

Three women dominated the politics and government of the Mongol Empire in the decade of the 1240s. Töregene and Oghul-Qaimish ruled as regents and are credited with corruption and petty politics throughout their regencies, while Sorqoqtani Beki became a paragon of virtue throughout the world for her adherence to the yasa of Chinggis Khan. Curiously, very little attention has been paid to this period to verify the accuracy of the statements. This study examines the role of all three women, but also attempts to place their actions in context, examine their role in commerce and how that affected their activities and their legacies. It argues that while the overall depiction of Töregene and Oghul-Qaimish may not be inaccurate, it overlooks some crucial elements and motives in their actions which also reveal that Sorqoqtani's actions were not as virtuous as the sources state.

When Chinggis Khan died in 1227, his sons inherited different parts of the empire that had been built by their father. Chinggis Khan's second son, Chaghatai (d. c. 1241), became the ruler of the lands of present-day Central Asia, conforming the origin of what became to be known as the Chaghataid Khanate. After the death of its founder, this political entity experienced a long succession crisis that lasted for a decade until a woman, Orghīna Khātūn, took control of the khanate in the name of her son. Although a ruling woman is not an exceptional case in the Mongol empire, she was the first and only woman that ruled over the Chaghataid Khanate, and that did so peacefully and without major upheavals for nine years. Additionally, she did not adopt a passive role but was involved in the running of the khanate, playing her cards in the always-unstable political arena of the Mongol empire. This article looks at the ascension to the throne, the reign and the legacy of this Mongol woman in Mongol Central Asia by contextualising her rule within the history of the region in general and in that of the Mongol empire in particular.

The Chinggisids clearly favoured specific in-law clans through policies of repeated marriage over generations. This paper charts the fortunes of one such clan, the Oirats, who first joined the Chinggisids when Chinggis Khan and Börte's daughter Chechiyegen wedded an Oirat prince. Thereafter Chechiyegen's own daughters married back to the Toluid, Jochid and Chagatayid families. This paper follows those Oirats who intermarried with the Ilkhanids, beginning with Chechiyegen's daughter Güyük and ending with the Toluid-Oirat Ilkhan, Abū Sa‘īd (r. 1317-1335).

Various Near Eastern and European writers of the thirteenth century remarked on the outlandish appearance of the Mongol warriors then rampaging across Eurasia. One aspect of this was their distinctive headgear. From our sources it is clear that Mongol costume could be exploited by non-Mongols in the Near East for a variety of purposes; how these distinctive hats were described, and how contemporary artists depicted them, will also be discussed.

Perhaps, appropriately, crime and criminality only enter the local histories of Yazd, the ‘Tārīkh-i Yazd and the Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, by stealth.1 The interests and concerns of the authors of the local histories lay elsewhere, in describing the topography of the city, its religious edifices and shrines, noting its pious, learned and great inhabitants and recording its history from earliest times; and indeed if the authors were writing about a city endowed with the title Dār al-ʿIbādaʾ, the Abode of Piety, it is unsurprising that crimes or criminal acts are largely absent from the text and so, only one or two accounts of crime feature in the local histories. However, the ordering of society and the maintenance of this order constitute a central topic in medieval Persian writings, including the histories.

Despite the existence of some general overviews, the institution of the Mongol tribunals has not been studied in a satisfactory way. A great deal of details are unclear and the functioning of the whole legal procedure is shrouded in obscurity. The present paper makes an attempt to elucidate an aspect of the historical development of this Turco-Mongolian institution in Ilkhanid Iran, one of the Chingisid uluses, namely what were the preconditions and prescriptions of being appointed to the rank of a Mongol judge? The focal point will be the three charters of appointment (or yarlik samples) presented by Muḥammad ibn Hindūshāh Nakhchivānī (ca. 679/1280 – after 768/1366), in his Dastūr al-kātib fī tacyīn al-marātib (“Guidelines of the Secretary for Defining the Echelons”), a manual of Ilkhanid and Jalayirid administration, accomplished in the 1360s.

The Chronology of Ancient Nations mirrors both al-Biruni the polymath and Mongol Iran in its wide calendrical, geographical and historical horizons. The pictorial programme highlights multi-ethnicity, Iranian national sentiment and religion: orthodox and heretical Islam, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Christianity (Annunciation and Baptism).1

This paper explores some different, interrelated versions of the history of the Pīshdādiyān, the earliest dynasty represented in the Shāhnāmeh, especially the recently edited text of Rashīd al-Dīn's Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh. This is compared with Bal‘amī’s Persian version of the History of al-Ṭabari and Qāḍī Baiḍāwī’s Niẓām al-tawārīkh, of which the latter is shown to provide much the closer basis for Rashīd al-Dīn's work — especially when confronted with the manuscripts of the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh contemporary with the life of Rashīd al-Dīn. Comparison with both the early Arabic and Persian witnesses of the work suggests that the printed edition does not represent Rashīd al-Dīn's original text, but later reworkings of his chronicle — such as that by the fifteenth-century historian, Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū — which draw more directly on the Shāhnāmeh. In so far as there is discernible subtext to Rashīd al-Dīn's coverage of these earliest periods of Iranian monarchical history, it is more to emphasise the didactic message of the Shāhnāmeh and the justice and constructive achievements of the first kings, than to follow Firdausī’s narrative. Despite the potency of idea of the Shāhnāmeh as expressing Persian kingly traditions, it is suggested that perhaps it was only after the time of Rashīd al-Dīn and the Islamisation of the Mongol rulers that historians appreciated and emulated the literary and narrative aspects of the text for their own sake.

This article investigates the history of the Mongol period as seen from the provinces, looking not only through the historian's lens of written documents but also through the art historian's gaze on art and architecture. It focuses on the town of Warāmīn and its multiple shrines and shows how buildings and their furnishings, notable the extensive revetment in signed and dated lustre tiles, can be rich sources for writing history.

The biography of the Nestorian patriarch Mār Yaḇalāhā III and of his teacher Rabban Ṣawmā is a well-known book, arguably the most interesting historical work in Syriac, and an important source for the history of the Ilkhanate and its relations with Western Europe.

In recent years the image of the Mongols has undergone a steady change. This shift reflects a growing interest in the development of the Chinggisid Empire and its assimilation of the peoples and cultures that it absorbed and conversely the absorption, not always voluntarily, of things Mongol by the sedentary cultures which acted as the Mongols’ hosts. It was not only military technology, cuisine, medicine, art, and the practicalities and instruments for enhancing the quality of life and commerce which were exchanged but the intellectual ideas and ideals which underpinned the life styles of those who were encountered. Chinggis Khan famously aspired to provide his wives and children with the fineries of life and the best the world had to offer. But it was not just the material world that he aspired to but also the intellectual luxuries of scholarship and learning. Throughout the Chinggisid Chronicles there are references to wise men and learned advisors who were consulted on the great decisions but also not infrequently there are references to debates often described in language more reminiscent of jousting tournaments or duels than intellectual exchange. These learned debates, usually between clerics of rival faiths, were staged by various princes in courts throughout the empire for sport and entertainment. Their popularity highlights aspects of the regimes’character.

This paper will consider the nature of these debates and the traditions from where they might have emerged and at the same time it will consider the role of ‘wise men’ in Chinggisid society.

Pre-modern historians of the Persianate world have primarily been used by modern historians as sources of factual information and rarely to gain insight into the means, methods and world-views of the historians themselves. The 15th C Persian historian Mīrkhwānd is a case in point despite the fact that his extensive discussion on the utility of history lends itself well to an historiographical assessment. While his understanding of the purpose of history may differ in some aspects for the modern discipline, his concerns and application were not as distinctive as we might like to think.