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153-634: It was produced in the context of the Il-khanid court ruling Persia as part of the Mongol Empire , about a century after their conquest, and just as the dynasty was about to collapse. It remained in Persia until the early 20th century, when it was broken up in Europe by the dealer George Demotte , and now exists as 57 individual pages, many significantly tampered with, in a number of collections around

306-468: A Hanafi Sunni , though he still retained some residual shamanism. In 1309–10, he became a Shi'ite Muslim. An Armenian scribe in 1304 noted the death of "benevolent and just" Ghazan, who was succeeded by Khar-Banda Öljeitü, "who too, exhibits good will to everyone." A colophon from 1306 reports the conversion of Mongols to Islam and "they coerce everyone into converting to their vain and false hope. They persecute, they molest, and torment," including "insulting

459-590: A biography of Süleyman the Magnificent . At the end of the 17th century, they gave up Persian as the court and administrative language, using Turkish instead; a decision that shocked the highly Persianized Mughals in India. The Ottoman Sultan Suleyman wrote an entire divan in Persian language. According to Hodgson: The rise of Persian (the language) had more than purely literary consequence: it served to carry

612-836: A continuation of Ala' al-Din Juvayni 's slightly earlier work, Tārikh-i jahangusha ('History of the World Conqueror' ) which narrates the fall of the Khwarazmian Empire and the rise of the Mongol Empire. Various other works were also commissioned. The later years of the Ilkhanate were also marked by interest in the Shahnameh , the Iranian epic by 11th-century poet Firdowsi . Not only were new copies of

765-706: A counterpoise to the rigidity of formal Islamic theology and law, Islamic mysticism sought to approach the divine through acts of devotion and love rather than through mere rituals and observance. Love of God being the focus of the Sufis' religious sentiments, it was only natural for them to express it in lyrical terms, and Persian Sufis , often of exceptional sensibility and endowed with poetic verve, did not hesitate to do so. The famous 11th-century Sufi, Abu Sa'id of Mehna frequently used his own love quatrains (as well as others) to express his spiritual yearnings, and with mystic poets such as Attar and Iraqi , mysticism became

918-614: A currency as a lingua franca; and at its widest, about the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the Christian Era, its range in this role extended, without a break, across the face of South-Eastern Europe and South-Western Asia from the Ottoman pashalyq of Buda, which had been erected out of the wreckage of the Western Christian Kingdom of Hungary after the Ottoman victory at Mohacz in A.D. 1526, to

1071-477: A dispute between Hanafi and Shafi'i Sunnis, expressed his view that Islam should be abandoned and Mongols should return to the ways of Genghis Khan. Qāshani also stated that Öljeitü had reverted for a brief period. As Muslims, Mongols showed a marked preference for Sufism , with masters like Safi-ad-Din Ardabili often treated with respect and favour. Öljaitü 's son, the last ilkhan, Abu Sa'id Bahadur Khan ,

1224-409: A great extent. An autographed note of both Jahangir and Shah Jahan on a copy of Sa’di's Gulestān states that it was their most precious possession. A gift of a Gulestān was made by Shah Jahan to Jahanara Begum , an incident which is recorded by her with her signature. Shah Jahan also considered the same work worthy enough to be sent as a gift to the king of England in 1628, which is presently in

1377-464: A historical source on two levels: firstly, for its contribution to the store of basic factual knowledge of a period, and secondly, for the light it sheds, intentionally or otherwise, on contemporary thought and politics. Iranian and Persianate poets received the Shahnameh and modeled themselves after it. Murtazavi formulates three categories of such works too: poets who took up material not covered in

1530-676: A joint attack with Baybars and forged an alliance with the Mamluks against Hulagu. The Golden Horde dispatched the young prince Nogai to invade the Ilkhanate but Hulagu forced him back in 1262. The Ilkhanid army then crossed the Terek River , capturing an empty Jochid encampment, only to be routed in a surprise attack by Nogai's forces. Many of them were drowned as the ice broke on the frozen Terek River. In 1262, Hulagu gave Greater Khorasan and Mazandaran to Abaqa and northern Azerbaijan to Yoshmut. Hulagu himself spent his time living as

1683-490: A legitimate, even fashionable subject of lyric poems among the Persianate societies. Furthermore, as Sufi orders and centers ( Khaneghah ) spread throughout Persian societies, Persian mystic poetic thought gradually became so much a part of common culture that even poets who did not share Sufi experiences ventured to express mystical ideas and imagery in their work. As the broad cultural region remained politically divided,

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1836-587: A library of 3,000 volumes), and patronized "Men of the Pen" The Safavids introduced Shiism into Persia to distinguish Persian society from the Ottomans , their Sunni archrivals to the west. At the beginning of the 14th century, the Ottomans rose to predominance in Asia Minor. The Ottomans patronized Persian literature for five and a half centuries and attracted great numbers of writers and artists, especially in

1989-578: A new census and decreed that each man in the Mongol-ruled West Asia must pay in proportion to his property. Persia was divided between four districts under Arghun. Möngke Khan granted the Kartids authority over Herat, Jam, Pushang (Fushanj), Ghor , Khaysar, Firuz-Kuh, Gharjistan, Farah, Sistan , Kabul, Tirah, and Afghanistan. Hulegu Khan , third son of Tolui, grandson of Genghis Khan, and brother of both Möngke Khan and Kublai Khan,

2142-481: A new overall cultural orientation within Islamdom. Henceforth while Arabic held its own as the primary language of the religious disciplines and even, largely, of natural science and philosophy, Persian became, in an increasingly part of Islamdom, the language of polite culture; it even invaded the realm of scholarship with increasing effects. It was to form the chief model of the rise of still other languages. Gradually

2295-672: A nomad in southern Azerbaijan and Armenia . During his early rule, the Ilkhanate experienced mass revolts by its subjects, with the exception of the Seljukids and Artuqids in Anatolia and Mardin . It was not until Shams al-Din Juvayni was appointed as vizier after 1262 that things started calming down and a more sustainable administration was implemented. Hulagu fell ill in February 1265 after several days of banquets and hunting. He died on 8 February and his son Abaqa succeeded him in

2448-631: A prime example). One may call these traditions, carried in Persian or reflecting Persian inspiration, ‘Persianate’ by extension. This seems to be the origin of the term Persianate . The Iranian dynasty of the Samanids began recording its court affairs in Persian as well as Arabic, and the earliest great poetry in New Persian was written for the Samanid court. The Samanids encouraged translation of religious works from Arabic into Persian. In addition,

2601-668: A profusion of mosques , palaces, and tombs unmatched in any other Islamic country. The speculative thought of the times at the Mughal court, as in other Persianate courts, leaned towards the eclectic gnostic dimension of Sufi Islam, having similarities with Hindu Vedantism , indigenous Bhakti and popular theosophy . The Mughals , who were of Turco-Mongol descent, strengthened the Indo-Persian culture , in South Asia. For centuries, Iranian scholar-officials had immigrated to

2754-568: A range of palettes. Some pigments have not lasted well. The miniatures have elements derived from both Chinese and (less often) Western traditions; for example the mourners of Iskandar draw from Christian depictions of the Lamentation of Christ , and reminiscences of several other standard scenes from the Life of Christ in art appear in other miniatures. Even costumes are highly variable: 37 styles of hat have been found, and 8 of lapels . From

2907-532: A result of the Western impact. According to Gibb in the introduction (Volume I): the Turks very early appropriated the entire Persian literary system down to its minute detail, and that in the same unquestioning and wholehearted fashion in which they had already accepted Islam. The Saljuqs had, in the words of the same author: attained a very considerable degree of culture, thanks entirely to Persian tutorage. About

3060-531: A similar Sufi spirit, thus following the norms of any Persianate court. The tendency towards Sufi mysticism through Persianate culture in Mughal court circles is also testified by the inventory of books that were kept in Akbar's library, and are especially mentioned by his historian, Abu'l Fazl , in the Ā’in-ī Akbarī . Some of the books that were read out continually to the emperor include the masnavis of Nizami,

3213-516: A state religion in 1295. However, despite this conversion, the Ilkhanids remained opposed to the Mamluks, who had defeated both Mongol invaders and Crusaders . The Ilkhanids launched several invasions of Syria, but were never able to gain and keep significant ground against the Mamluks , eventually being forced to give up their plans to conquer Syria, along with their stranglehold over their vassals

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3366-566: A synthesis of Sufism and Sharia , which became the basis for a richer Islamic theology. Formulating the Sunni concept of division between temporal and religious authorities, he provided a theological basis for the existence of the Sultanate , a temporal office alongside the Caliphate , which at that time was merely a religious office. The main institutional means of establishing a consensus of

3519-400: A third "classical" tongue emerged, Turkish, whose literature was based on Persian tradition. Toynbee's assessment of the role of the Persian language is worth quoting in more detail, from A Study of History : In the Iranian world, before it began to succumb to the process of Westernization, the New Persian language, which had been fashioned into literary form in mighty works of art...gained

3672-461: A total of 49 rectangular images. Stepped images total nine, with 5 symmetrical and four not (so 58 in total). The Shahnameh , an epic poem of about 60,000 couplets, was completed in 1010 by Ferdowsi . It covers the pre-Islamic history of Persia, beginning in pure legend, but by the final Sassanid kings giving a reasonable accurate historical account, mixed in with romantic stories. It represented an assertion of Persian national identity, begun during

3825-425: A type known in previous periods, as well as brass inlaid with gold, a newer trend used for more costly court objects. Among these examples is the base of the largest preserved candlestick from Islamic-era Iran, commissioned by one of Öljeitü 's viziers in 1308–09 and measuring 32.5 centimetres (13 in) high. Objects in gold and silver were likely also important but no examples have survived. Ceramic production

3978-455: A way, along with investing the notion of heteroglossia , Persianate culture embodies the Iranian past and ways in which this past blended with the Islamic present or became transmuted. The historical change was largely on the basis of a binary model: a struggle between the religious landscapes of late Iranian antiquity and a monotheist paradigm provided by the new religion, Islam. This duality

4131-608: A world history, the Jami' al-tawarikh , the earliest manuscript of which also dates to 1307. Rašīd-al-Dīn set up a scriptorium in the Tabriz suburb of Rab'-e Rashidi , where the book was researched, scribed, illustrated and bound. The intention was to produce two illustrated manuscript copies each year, one in Persian and one in Arabic, for distribution around the empire; parts of three of these survive, as well as parts of other books from

4284-615: Is a history of the Mongol dynasty while the second is a history of the Iranian and Islamic world, along with stories of other cultures. Ghazan also patronized Abu al-Qasim Qashani , who composed the Ta'rikh-i Uljaytu ('History of Öljeitü'), and Shihab al-Din Waṣṣaf , who wrote the Tajziyat al-amṣar wa-tazjiyat al-a'ṣar ('The Allocation of Cities and Propulsion of Epochs' ). The latter was intended as

4437-576: Is a society that is based on or strongly influenced by the Persian language , culture , literature , art and/or identity. The term "Persianate" is a neologism credited to Marshall Hodgson . In his 1974 book, The Venture of Islam: The expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods , he defined it thus: "The rise of Persian had more than purely literary consequences: it served to carry a new overall cultural orientation within Islamdom.... Most of

4590-645: Is filled with a repeating pattern of rhomboids and ornate medallions with vegetal motifs and peacocks in between them, while the other stripes are filled with large epigraphic inscriptions in Arabic script. Between these are narrower bands filled with other animals. The use of this piece for a royal funerary shroud in Europe suggests that Iranian textiles were still highly prized abroad during this period. In metalwork, Ilkhanid productions were often larger and more richly-decorated than earlier Iranian works. Major centers of production included Tabriz and Shiraz . Surviving pieces are often made of brass inlaid with copper,

4743-545: Is little else than Persian poetry in Turkish words. But such was not consciously their aim; of national feeling in poetry they dreamed not; poetry was to them one and indivisible, the language in which it was written merely an unimportant accident. In general, from its earliest days, Persian culture was brought into the Subcontinent (or South Asia) by various Persianised Turkic and Afghan dynasties. South Asian society

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4896-600: Is symbolically expressed in the Shiite tradition that Husayn ibn Ali , the third Shi'ite Imam, had married Shahrbanu , daughter of Yazdegerd III , the last Sassanid king of Iran . This genealogy makes the later imams, descended from Husayn and Shahrbanu, the inheritors of both the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and of the pre-Islamic Sassanid kings. After the Arab Muslim conquest of Iran, Pahlavi ,

5049-506: Is the author of the standard A Literary History of Ottoman Poetry in six volumes, whose name has lived on in an important series of publications of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish texts, the Gibb Memorial Series . Gibb classifies Ottoman poetry between the "Old School", from the 14th century to about the middle of the 19th century, during which time Persian influence was dominant; and the "Modern School", which came into being as

5202-477: The Artuqid sultan of Mardin , and Kufa and Luristan . The Qara'unas Mongols ruled Khorasan as an autonomous realm and did not pay taxes. Herat 's local Kart dynasty also remained autonomous. Anatolia was the richest province of the Ilkhanate, supplying a quarter of its revenue while Iraq and Diyarbakir together supplied about 35 percent of its revenue. In 1330, the annexation of Abkhazia resulted in

5355-662: The Caucasus endured until the loss of Azerbaijan , Armenia , eastern Georgia and parts of the North Caucasus to Imperial Russia following the Russo-Persian Wars in the course of the 19th century. The culture of peoples of the eastern Mediterranean in Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt developed somewhat independently; India developed a vibrant and completely distinct South Asian style with little to no remnants of

5508-617: The Chester Beatty Library , Dublin. The emperor often took out auguries from a copy of the diwan of Hafez belonging to his grandfather, Humayun . One such incident is recorded in his own handwriting in the margins of a copy of the diwan , presently in the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library, Patna . The court poets Naziri , ‘Urfi , Faizi , Khan-i Khanan , Zuhuri , Sanai , Qodsi , Talib-i Amuli and Abu Talib Kalim were all masters imbued with

5661-662: The Iranian Intermezzo after the Arab Abbasid Caliphate had lost effective control of Persia. By the time it was finished the Turkic Ghaznavids had taken over. The Mongol Empire had begun to conquer Persia in 1219, and completed it in the 1250s, founding the sub-dynasty and state known as the Ilkhanate, which as well as Persia included modern Iraq and parts of Afghanistan , Turkey and several other countries (especially parts of

5814-551: The Islamic Revolution in 1979, he could not regain his previous position and died in 1984 as the last Ilkhan of the Qashqai. After the Ilkhanate, the regional states established during the disintegration of the Ilkhanate raised their own candidates as claimants. Claimants from eastern Persia (Khurasan):   Khamag Mongol / Mongol Empire   Il-Khanate Persianate A Persianate society

5967-741: The Kaaba ) to Mecca in 1319. In 1325, Chupan undertook the pilgrimage and sponsored repairs to the water supply in Mecca and the construction of a madrasa (college) and a hammam (bathhouse) in Medina. These actions challenged the primacy of the Mamluks in the Hejaz and provoked the Mamluk sultan, al-Nasir Muhammad , into repeatedly reasserting his dominance in the region by sponsoring his own works there, by purging or replacing local officials, and by undertaking

6120-697: The Keir Collection of Islamic Art (4) and the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art (1) Ilkhanate The Ilkhanate or Il-khanate was a Mongol khanate founded in the southwestern territories of the Mongol Empire . It was ruled by the Il-Khans or Ilkhanids ( Persian : ایلخانان , romanized :  Īlkhānān ), and known to the Mongols as Hülegü Ulus ( lit.   ' people / state of Hülegü ' ). The Ilkhanid realm

6273-519: The Mediterranean Sea . Under their rule, many pre-Islamic Iranian traditional arts like Sassanid architecture were resurrected, and great Iranian scholars were patronized. At the same time, the Islamic religious institutions became more organized and Sunni orthodoxy became more codified. The Persian jurist and theologian Al-Ghazali was among the scholars at the Seljuq court who proposed

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6426-467: The Seljuq , Timurid , Mughal , and Ottoman dynasties. Persianate culture flourished for nearly fourteen centuries. It was a mixture of Persian and Islamic cultures that eventually underwent Persification and became the dominant culture of the ruling and elite classes of Greater Iran , Asia Minor , and South Asia . When the peoples of Greater Iran were conquered by Islamic forces in

6579-460: The Shahnameh before the 14th century, and the ten surviving manuscripts from between 1300 and 1350 all appear to have been produced for Mongols. Possibly a relative unfamiliarity with the Persian language and the text may have encouraged adding pictures. These include three "small" Shahnameh s, perhaps the earliest, whose small size (text and image area of 250 x 170 mm in a typical example) may have suited nomadic owners, and four manuscripts for

6732-472: The Shahnameh was viewed as more than literature. It was also a political treatise, as it addressed deeply rooted conceptions of honor, morality, and legitimacy. Illustrated versions of it were considered desirable as expressions of the aspirations and politics of ruling elites in the Iranian world. The Persianate culture that emerged under the Samanids in Greater Khorasan , in northeast Persia and

6885-634: The Sultanate of Rum and the Armenian kingdom in Cilicia . This was in large part due to civil war in the Mongol Empire and the hostility of the khanates to the north and east. The Chagatai Khanate in Moghulistan and the Golden Horde threatened the Ilkhanate in the Caucasus and Transoxiana, preventing expansion westward. Even under Hulagu's reign, the Ilkhanate was engaged in open warfare in

7038-586: The hajj pilgrimage himself. The Ilkhanid period saw the creation of numerous written works devoted to history. They were typically intended for Ilkhanid administrators or even written for a particular ruler. Many of the writers in the early period were scholars who were trained under pre-Mongol dynasties but received patronage under the new regime. The most famous work of this time is the Jami' al-tawarikh ('Compendium of Histories') of Rashid al-Din , initially commissioned by Ghazan but presented to Öljeitü upon its completion in 1307. Its first surviving volume

7191-488: The jizya (minority religion tax). Ghazan gave Buddhists the starker choice of conversion or expulsion and ordered their temples to be destroyed; though he later relaxed this severity. After Nawrūz was deposed and killed in 1297, Ghazan made religious intolerance punishable and attempted to restore relations with non-Muslims. In terms of foreign relations, the Ilkhanids' conversion to Islam had little to no effect on its hostility towards other Muslim states, and conflict with

7344-615: The kuriltai for the next Great Khan. He left a small force of around 10,000 behind in Palestine that was defeated at the battle of Ain Jalut by the Mamluks of Egypt . Due to the suspicious deaths of three Jochid princes in Hulagu's service, Berke of the Golden Horde declared war on Hulagu in 1262. According to Mamluk historians, Hulagu might have massacred Berke's troops and refused to share his war booty with Berke. Berke sought

7497-399: The madrasas . As the result of the impacts of Persian literature as well as to further political ambitions, it became a custom for rulers in the Persianate lands to not only commission a copy of the Shahnameh , but also to have his own epic, allowing court poets to attempt to reach the level of Ferdowsi: Thus, as with any piece of historical writing, the Shahnameh can be evaluated as

7650-583: The ulama on these dogmatic issues was the Nezamiyeh , better known as the madrasas , named after its founder Nizam al-Mulk , a Persian vizier of the Seljuqs. These schools became the means of uniting Sunni ulama , who legitimized the rule of the Sultans. The bureaucracies were staffed by graduates of the madrasas, so both the ulama and the bureaucracies were under the influence of esteemed professors at

7803-458: The 11th-century Garshāspnāmeh by Asadi Tusi . This tradition, chiefly a Timurid one, resulted in the creation of Islamic epics of conquests as discussed by Marjan Molé. Also see the classification employed by Z. Safa for epics: milli (national, those inspired by Ferdowsi's epic), tarikhi (historical, those written in imitation of Nizami's Iskandarnamah ) and dini for religious works. The other source of inspiration for Persianate culture

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7956-451: The 1330s, the Ilkhanate was ravaged by the Black Death . The last ilkhan, Abu Sa'id Bahadur Khan , died in 1335, after which the Ilkhanate disintegrated. The Ilkhanid rulers, although of non-Iranian origin, tried to advertise their authority by tying themselves to the Iranian past, and they recruited historians to present the Mongols as heirs to the Sasanian Empire (224–651). Native intellectuals interested in their own history interpreted

8109-410: The 16th century. The Ottoman Empire's undeniable affiliation with the Persianate world during the first few decades of the sixteenth century are illustrated by the works of a scribe from the Aq Qoyunlu court, Edris Bedlisi. One of the most renowned Persian poets in the Ottoman court was Fethullah Arifi Çelebi , also a painter and historian, and the author of the Süleymanname (or Suleyman-nama ),

8262-430: The 7th and 8th centuries, they became part of an empire much larger than any previous one under Persian rule. While the Islamic conquest led to the Arabization of language and culture in the former Byzantine territories, this did not happen in Persia. Rather, the new Islamic culture evolving there was largely based on pre-Islamic Persian traditions of the area, as well as on the Islamic customs that were introduced to

8415-436: The Arab conquest to the Mongols and is longer than Ferdowsi's work. The literary value of these works must be considered on an individual basis as Jan Rypka cautions: "all these numerous epics cannot be assessed very highly, to say nothing of those works that were substantially (or literally) copies of Ferdowsi. There are however exceptions, such as the Zafar-Nameh of Hamdu'llah Mustaufi a historically valuable continuation of

8568-450: The Arab world to the west, the dividing zone falling along the Euphrates . Socially the Persianate world was marked by a system of ethnologically defined elite statuses: the rulers and their soldiery were non-Iranians in origin, but the administrative cadres and literati were Iranians. Cultural affairs were marked by a characteristic pattern of language use: New Persian was the language of state affairs, scholarship and literature and Arabic

8721-409: The Basin of the Oxus and the Jaxartes; and in the heyday of the Mughal, Safawi, and Ottoman regimes New Persian was being patronized as the language of literae humaniores by the ruling element over the whole of this huge realm, while it was also being employed as the official language of administration in those two-thirds of its realm that lay within the Safawi and the Mughal frontiers. E. J. W. Gibb

8874-404: The Caucasus with the Mongols in the Russian steppes. On the other hand, the China-based Yuan dynasty was an ally of the Ikhanate and also held nominal suzerainty over the latter (the Emperor being also Great Khan) for many decades. Ghazan converted to Islam under influence of Nawrūz and made Islam the official state religion. Christian and Jewish subjects lost their equal status and had to pay

9027-502: The Chinggisids. Tekuder was the first Muslim ruler of the Ilkhanate but he made no active attempt to proselytize or convert his realm. However he did try to replace Mongol political traditions with Islamic ones, resulting in a loss of support from the army. Arghun used his religion against him by appealing to non-Muslims for support. When Tekuder realized this, he executed several of Arghun's supporters, and captured Arghun. Tekuder's foster son, Buaq, freed Arghun and overthrew Tekuder. Arghun

9180-400: The Ilkhanate and the Yuan Dynasty headquartered in China encouraged this development. The dragon clothing of Imperial China was used by the Ilkhanids, the Chinese Huangdi (Emperor) title was used by the Ilkhanids due to heavy influence upon the Mongols of the Chinese system of politics. Seals with Chinese characters were created by the Ilkhanids themselves besides the seals they received from

9333-442: The Ilkhanate – is the large fragment of a burial robe for Duke Rudolf IV of Austria (d. 1365), which was made from an Iranian import. The textile was originally manufactured in an Ilkhanid state workshop, most likely in Tabriz , and bears the name and titles of Abu Sa'id after 1319. It is woven in lampas and compound weaves in tan and red colours, with gold wefts . It features a motif of broad alternating bands: one set of stripes

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9486-450: The Ilkhanids ruled their realm through a Central Asian-Persian ("Tajik") administration in partnership with Turco-Mongol military officers. Not all of the Persian administrators were Muslims or members of the traditional families that had served the Seljuqs and Khwarazmians (e.g, the Juvayni family ). For example, the Ilkhanate vizier from 1288 to 1291 was Sa'ad al-Dawla , a Jew, while the prominent vizier and historian Rashid-al-Din Hamadani

9639-423: The Ilkhans, Iranian historians also moved from writing in Arabic to writing in their native Persian tongue. The rudiments of double-entry accounting were practiced in the Ilkhanate; merdiban was then adopted by the Ottoman Empire . These developments were independent from the accounting practices used in Europe. This accounting system was adopted primarily as the result of socio-economic necessities created by

9792-551: The Mamluks for control of Syria continued. The Battle of Wadi al-Khaznadar , the only major victory by the Mongols over the Mamluk Sultanate , ended the latter's control over Syria for a few months. For the most part, Ghazan's policies continued under his brother Öljaitü despite suggestions that he might begin to favor Twelver Shi'ism after he came under the influence of the theologians al-Allama al-Hilli and al-Bahrani . Öljeitü, who had been baptised in Christianity as an infant and had flirted with Buddhism, eventually became

9945-425: The Mamluks. In 1327, Abu-Sai'd replaced Chupan with "Big" Hasan. Hasan was accused of attempting to assassinate the khan and exiled to Anatolia in 1332. The non-Mongol emirs Sharaf-ud-Din Mahmud-Shah and Ghiyas-ud-Din Muhammad were given unprecedented military authority, which irked the Mongol emirs. In the 1330s, outbreaks of the Black Death ravaged the Ilkhanate and both Abu-Sai'd and his sons were killed by 1335 by

10098-435: The Middle-Persian of pre-Islamic times, but enriched by Arabic vocabulary and written in the Arabic script. The Persian language, according to Marshall Hodgson in his The Venture of Islam , was to form the chief model for the rise of still other languages to the literary level. Like Turkish , most of the more local languages of high culture that later emerged among Muslims were heavily influenced by Persian ( Urdu being

10251-400: The Mongol conquests was the emergence of the "national state" in Iran during the Ilkhanate era. The Ilkhanate Mongols remained nomadic in their way of life until the end of the dynasty. Their nomadic routes covered central Iraq , northwest Iran , Azerbaijan , and Armenia . The Mongols administered Iraq, the Caucasus , and western and southern Iran directly with the exception of Georgia ,

10404-421: The Mongol expedition, Azerbaijan and the southern Persian dynasties in Fars and Kerman voluntarily submitted to the Mongols and agreed to pay tribute. To the west, Hamadan and the rest of Persia was secured by Chormaqan. The Mongols invaded Armenia and Georgia in 1234 or 1236, completing the conquest of the Kingdom of Georgia in 1238. They began to attack the western parts of Bagratid Armenia , which

10557-445: The Mongol military hierarchy. In Georgia, the population was temporarily divided into eight tumens . In 1244, Güyük Khan stopped raising of revenue from districts in Persia as well and offered tax exemptions to others. In accordance with a complaint by the governor Arghun Aqa , Möngke Khan prohibited ortogh -merchants (Mongol-contracted Muslim traders) and nobles from abusing relay stations and civilians in 1251. He ordered

10710-406: The Mongol old guard with his alleged sexual relations with a boy. Gaykhatu was overthrown in 1295 and replaced with his cousin Baydu . Baydu reigned for less than a year before he was overthrown by Gaykhatu's officer, Ghazan . Hulagu's descendants ruled Persia for the next eighty years, tolerating multiple religions, including Shamanism, Buddhism, and Christianity, and ultimately adopting Islam as

10863-403: The Mongols. In 1236 Ögedei commanded Greater Khorasan to be restored and the city of Herat repopulated. The Mongol military governors mostly made camp in the Mughan plain in what is now Azerbaijan. Realizing the danger posed by the Mongols, the rulers of Mosul and the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia submitted to the Great Khan. Chormaqan divided Transcaucasia into three districts based on

11016-498: The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his Iranian bride. Iranian poets, such as Sa’di , Hafez , Rumi and Nizami , who were great masters of Sufi mysticism from the Persianate world, were the favorite poets of the Mughals. Their works were present in Mughal libraries and counted among the emperors’ prized possessions, which they gave to each other; Akbar and Jahangir often quoted from them, signifying that they had imbibed them to

11169-641: The Muslim "successor-states" which had been carved, after the victory of the Deccanese Muslim princes at Talikota in A.D. 1565, out of the carcass of the slaughtered Hindu Empire of Vijayanagar. For this vast cultural empire the New Persian language was indebted to the arms of Turkish-speaking empire-builders, reared in the Iranian tradition and therefore captivated by the spell of the New Persian literature, whose military and political destiny it had been to provide one universal state for Orthodox Christendom in

11322-601: The Oxus to the southern territories of the Persian Gulf. Shah Isma'il's successors went further and adopted the title of Shāhanshāh (king of kings). The Safavid kings considered themselves, like their predecessors the Sassanid Emperors, the khudāygān (the shadow of God on earth). They revived Sassanid architecture, build grand mosques and elegant charbagh gardens, collected books (one Safavid ruler had

11475-526: The Persian language and Persianate culture was brought deep into India and carried further in the 13th century. The Seljuqs won a decisive victory over the Ghaznavids and swept into Khorasan; they brought Persianate culture westward into western Persia, Iraq, Anatolia, and Syria. Iran proper along with Central Asia became the heartland of Persian language and culture. As the Seljuqs came to dominate western Asia, their courts were Persianized as far west as

11628-559: The Persian word for lapis lazuli . These often had a deep blue or sometimes blue-ish turquoise glaze and were then overglaze -painted with red, black, white, and gold colours. These have been found at Takht-i Sulaymān and they may have replaced the pre-Mongol mina'i ceramics. The emergence of the Ilkhanate had an important historical impact in West Asia . The establishment of the unified Mongol Empire had significantly eased trade and commerce across Asia. The communications between

11781-606: The Shah-nama" and the Shahanshahnamah (or Changiznamah ) of Ahmad Tabrizi in 1337–38, which is a history of the Mongols written for Abu Sa'id. Second, poets versified the history of a contemporary ruler for reward, such as the Ghazannameh written in 1361–62 by Nur al-Din ibn Shams al-Din. Third, heroes not treated in the Shahnameh and those having minor roles in it became the subjects of their own epics, such as

11934-834: The Turkic Ghaznavids and Seljuks (11th and 12th centuries), the Timurids (14th and 15th centuries), and the Qajars (19th and 20th centuries). The Ghaznavids, the rivals and future successors of the Samanids, ruled over the southeastern extremities of Samanid territories from the city of Ghazni . Persian scholars and artists flocked to their court, and the Ghaznavids became patrons of Persianate culture. The Ghaznavids took with them Persianate culture as they subjugated Western and Southern Asia . Apart from Ferdowsi, Rumi , Abu Ali Sina , Al-Biruni , Unsuri Balkhi, Farrukhi Sistani , Sanayi Ghaznawi and Abu Sahl Testari were among

12087-452: The Yuan dynasty which contain references to a Chinese government organization. The Ilkhanate also helped to pave the way for the later Safavid dynastic state, and ultimately the modern country of Iran. Hulagu's conquests had also opened Iran to Chinese influence from the east. This, combined with patronage from his successors, would develop Iran's distinctive excellence in architecture. Under

12240-406: The affairs of everyday life and in the business of government, they preferred their own ideas; but in the sphere of science and literature they went to school with the Persian, intent not merely on acquiring his method, but on entering into his spirit, thinking his thought and feeling his feelings. And in this school they continued so long as there was a master to teach them; for the step thus taken at

12393-464: The agricultural and fiscal reforms of Ghazan Khan in 1295–1304. The title ilkhan resurfaced among the Qashqai nomads of southern Iran in the 19th century. Jan Mohammad Khan started using it in 1818/19, and this was continued by all the following Qashqai leaders. The last Qashqai ilkhan was Nasir Khan, who in 1954 was pushed into exile after his support of Mohammad Mosaddegh . When he returned during

12546-590: The borderlands of Turkistan exposed the Turks to Persianate culture; The incorporation of the Turks into the main body of the Middle Eastern Islamic civilization, which was followed by the Ghaznavids , thus began in Khorasan; "not only did the inhabitants of Khurasan not succumb to the language of the nomadic invaders, but they imposed their own tongue on them. The region could even assimilate

12699-577: The centers of the Islamic world eastward. The institutions stabilized Islamic society into a form that would persist, at least in Western Asia , until the 20th century. The Ghaznavids moved their capital from Ghazni to Lahore in modern Pakistan , which they turned into another center of Islamic culture. Under their patronage, poets and scholars from Kashgar , Bukhara , Samarkand , Baghdad , Nishapur , Amol and Ghazni congregated in Lahore. Thus,

12852-520: The conclusions reached at a seminar at Harvard in 1975, published in 1980 by Oleg Grabar and Sheila Blair (see Further reading below). This proposed a short period of creation, with the start of work very precisely dated to "between November 1335 and May 1336", and a commission by Rašīd-al-Dīn ’s son Ḡīāṯ-al-Dīn Moḥammad , with work on the manuscript probably brought to an end by his murder in May 1336. Both these points have been generally accepted, though

13005-749: The cost of sustaining the Arab caliphs , the Umayyads , and in the 8th century, a general Iranian uprising—led by Abu Muslim Khorrasani —brought another Arab family, the Abbasids , to the Caliph's throne. Under the Abbasids, the capital shifted from Syria to Iraq , which had once been part of the Sassanid Empire and was still considered to be part of the Iranian cultural domain. Persian culture, and

13158-481: The cross and the church". Some of the Buddhists who survived Ghazan's assaults made an unsuccessful attempt to bring Öljeitü back into Buddhism, showing they were active in the realm for more than 50 years. The conversion of Mongols was initially a fairly superficial affair. The process of establishment of Islam did not happen suddenly. Öljeitü's historian Qāshāni records that Kutlushah , after losing patience with

13311-832: The customs of the Persian Barmakid viziers , became the style of the ruling elite. Politically, the Abbasids soon started losing their control over Iranians. The governors of Khurasan , the Tahirids , though appointed by the caliph, were effectively independent. When the Persian Saffarids from Sistan freed the eastern lands, the Buyyids , the Ziyarids and the Samanids in Western Iran, Mazandaran and

13464-576: The defeat, Abaqa executed the local regent Mu'in-ad-Din Pervane and replaced him with the Mongol prince Qongqortai. In 1281, Abaqa sent Mongke Temur against the Mamluks, but he too was defeated at Homs . Abaqa's death in 1282 triggered a succession struggle between his son Arghun , supported by the Qara'unas , and his brother Tekuder, supported by the Chinggisid aristocracy. Tekuder was elected khan by

13617-498: The early 16th century, if not later, and then at some point entered the main library of the shahs, where it was photographed in the late 19th century, still bound. At this point it was extensively restored, probably at the Golestan Palace library: the folios were trimmed, remargined, and renumbered, with missing text supplemented on new paper folios, written out by Tehran calligraphers following fourteenth-century style. Many of

13770-662: The epic, poets who eulogized their patrons and their ancestors in masnavi form for monetary reward, and poets who wrote poems for rulers who saw themselves as heroes in the Shahnameh , echoing the earlier Samanid trend of patronizing the Shahnameh for legitimizing texts. First, Persian poets attempted to continue the chronology to a later period, such as the Zafarnamah of the Ilkhanid historian Hamdollah Mostowfi (d. 1334 or 1335), which deals with Iranian history from

13923-621: The era of the Crusades.) Despite their shared opposition to the Muslims , primarily the Mamluk Sultanate , no formal alliance ever was concluded. While Abu Sa'id eventually concluded a peace treaty with the Mamluks in 1322, the rivalry between the two powers continued diplomatically. Abu Sa'id, as a Muslim ruler, sought to demonstrate his legitimacy further abroad in Islamic terms, particularly through efforts to exert influence over

14076-757: The famous Persian astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi learned about the mode of the Chinese calculating tables . An observatory was built on a hill of Maragheh . Taking over from Baiju in 1255, Hulagu established Mongol rule from Transoxiana to Syria . He destroyed the Nizari Ismaili state and the Abbasid Caliphate in 1256 and 1258 respectively. In 1258, Hulagu proclaimed himself ilkhan (subordinate khan). After that he advanced as far as Gaza, briefly conquering Ayyubid Syria and Aleppo in 1260. Möngke's death forced Hulagu to return to Mongolia to attend

14229-542: The far-flung cities of the Persianate world, from Anatolia to India . Persianate culture involved modes of consciousness, ethos, and religious practices that have persisted in the Iranian world against hegemonic Arab Muslim ( Sunni ) cultural constructs. This formed a calcified Persianate structure of thought and experience of the sacred, entrenched for generations, which later informed history, historical memory, and identity among Alid loyalists and heterodox groups labeled by sharia -minded authorities as ghulāt . In

14382-495: The formation of Anjuman-i Ma’arif, an academy devoted to the strengthening of Persian language as a scientific language. From about the 12th century, Persian lyric poetry was enriched with a spirituality and devotional depth not to be found in earlier works. This development was due to the pervasive spread of mystical experience within Islam. Sufism developed in all Muslim lands, including the sphere of Persian cultural influence. As

14535-445: The former Soviet Union ). The Mongols initially mostly continued a nomadic lifestyle and lived separately from their Persian subjects, but increasingly settled in Persian cities and developed an understanding of Persianate culture, as well as converting to Islam , which happened rapidly, at least among the elite, after the newly-converted Ghazan reached the throne in 1295. However, the Mongols remained largely culturally distinct at

14688-524: The great Iranian scientists and poets of the period under Ghaznavid patronage. Persianate culture was carried by successive dynasties into Western and Southern Asia, particularly by the Persianized Seljuqs (1040–1118) and their successor states, who presided over Iran , Syria , and Anatolia until the 13th century, and by the Ghaznavids, who in the same period dominated Greater Khorasan and parts of India . These two dynasties together drew

14841-535: The historian Rashid al-Din Hamadani , Kublai Khan granted his brother Hülegü the title ilkhan after Hülegü's defeat of Ariq Böke , another brother. The term ilkhan here means " khan of the tribe, khan of the ulus ", and this lesser khanship refers to the initial deference to Möngke Khan and his successors as Great Khans of the Mongol Empire . The title ilkhan carried by the descendants of Hulagu and, later, other Borjigin princes in Persia, does not appear in

14994-404: The idiom of administration and literature. The Tahirid and Saffarid dynasties continued using Persian as an informal language, although for them Arabic was the "language for recording anything worthwhile, from poetry to science", but the Samanids made Persian a language of learning and formal discourse. The language that appeared in the 9th and 10th centuries was a new form of Persian, derivative of

15147-530: The invasion. Muhammad II's son Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu returned to Iran in c. 1224 after fleeing to India. The rival Turkic states, which were all that remained of his father's empire, quickly declared their allegiance to Jalal. He repulsed the first Mongol attempt to take Central Persia. However, Jalal ad-Din was overwhelmed and crushed by Chormaqan 's army sent by the Great Khan Ögedei in 1231. During

15300-400: The lack of evidence for either has been noted, and in particular some scholars favour a period of creation stretching over a much longer period. The main alternative initial patron proposed has been the last of the main line of Ilkhanid rulers, Abu Sa'id , who died in 1335, as did his sons, all apparently of the plague, so precipitating the splitting of the Ilkhanate into small states. If this

15453-564: The landscapes and skies. In many images, large main figures dominate the composition in a way unusual in Persian miniatures, though common in the West. In Chinese art, there were large main figures, but these were not combined with landscape painting , as they are here. The display of emotion by figures is also unusual; the convention for depicting grief is borrowed from Christian art. Kings often have halos. As regards their shape, 29 are horizontal rectangles, 8 vertical ones, and 12 squares, giving

15606-526: The language of Pre-Islamic Iran , continued to be widely used well into the second Islamic century (8th century) as a medium of administration in the eastern lands of the Caliphate . Despite the Islamization of public affairs, the Iranians retained much of their pre-Islamic outlook and way of life, adjusted to fit the demands of Islam. Towards the end of the 7th century, the population began resenting

15759-602: The language of religion. The Safavid dynasty ascended to predominance in Iran in the 16th century—the first native Iranian dynasty since the Buyyids . The Safavids, who were of mixed Kurdish , Turkic , Georgian , Circassian and Pontic Greek ancestry, moved to the Ardabil region in the 11th century. They re-asserted the Persian identity over many parts of West Asia and Central Asia, establishing an independent Persian state, and patronizing Persian culture They made Iran

15912-399: The late 13th century, although it ceased producing ceramic vessels after 1284 and then produced only tiles until 1340. The designs were less accomplished than in previous periods but they started to incorporate new Chinese-inspired motifs such as lotuses and simurghs . Starting around the 1270s or 1280s, a new style of expensive ceramic started to be produced, known as lajvardina , from

16065-454: The latter, as there are artistic similarities between Mamluk and Ilkhanid manuscripts. One notable development in this period is the production of manuscripts with very large pages, up to 70 by 50 centimetres (28 in × 20 in) in size, with accordingly large scripts, particularly in muhaqqaq style. Illustrations were common and are found in works on a variety of topics such as history, nature, religion, and astronomy. Among these

16218-471: The learned authorities of Islam, the ulama , began using the Persian lingua franca in public. The crowning literary achievement in the early New Persian language was the Shahnameh (Book of Kings), presented by its author Ferdowsi to the court of Mahmud of Ghazni (998–1030). This was a kind of Iranian nationalistic resurrection: Ferdowsi galvanized Persian nationalistic sentiment by invoking pre-Islamic Persian heroic imagery and enshrined in literary form

16371-482: The manuscript (see below), the usual system of numbering by folios cannot be applied. The style, technique and artistic quality of the miniatures are highly variable; it has been suggested that different artists were responsible for them, but attempts to assign the miniatures to different hands have not achieved consensus. There seems to be experimentation in several respects. Some miniatures are paintings in ink lines and coloured washes, others use opaque watercolour, in

16524-688: The middle of the eleventh century they [that is, the Saljuqs] had overrun Persia, when, as so often happened, the Barbarian conquerors adopted the culture of their civilized subjects. Rapidly the Seljuq Turks pushed their conquest westward, ever carrying with them Persian culture...[s]o, when some hundred and fifty years later Sulayman's son [the leader of the Ottomans]... penetrated into Asia Minor, they [the Ottomans] found that although Seljuq Turkish

16677-567: The more local languages of high culture that later emerged among Muslims... depended upon Persian wholly or in part for their prime literary inspiration. We may call all these cultural traditions, carried in Persian or reflecting Persian inspiration, 'Persianate' by extension." The term designates ethnic Persians but also societies that may not have been predominantly ethnically Persian but whose linguistic, material or artistic cultural activities were influenced by or based on Persianate culture. Examples of pre-19th-century Persianate societies were

16830-466: The most treasured folk stories. Ferdowsi's Shahnameh enjoyed a special status in Iranian courtly culture as a historical narrative as well as a mythical one. The powerful effect that this text came to have on the poets of this period is partly due to the value that was attached to it as a legitimizing force, especially for new rulers in the Eastern Islamic world: In the Persianate tradition

16983-483: The north-east respectively, declared their independence. The separation of the eastern territories from Baghdad was expressed in a distinctive Persianate culture that became dominant in west, central, and south Asia, and was the source of innovations elsewhere in the Islamic world. The Persianate culture was marked by the use of the New Persian language as a medium of administration and intellectual discourse, by

17136-438: The outset developed into a practice; it became the rule with the Turkish poets to look ever Persia-ward for guidance and to follow whatever fashion might prevail there. Thus it comes about that for centuries Ottoman poetry continued to reflect as in a glass the several phases through which that of Persia passed...[s]o the first Ottoman poets, and their successors through many a generation, strove with all their strength to write what

17289-521: The paintings were retouched, with occasional Persian commentary written onto them. It first appeared in Europe with Georges Demotte , a Belgian art dealer active from 1900–23 in Paris: "Demotte is said to have acquired the manuscript in Paris in about 1910; he bought it from Shemavan Malayan, brother-in-law of the well-known dealer Hagop Kevorkian , who had brought it from Tehran ". Demotte failed to raise

17442-552: The plague. Ghiyas-ud-Din put a descendant of Ariq Böke , Arpa Ke'un , on the throne, triggering a succession of short-lived khans until "Little" Hasan took Azerbaijan in 1338. In 1357, Jani Beg of the Golden Horde conquered Chupanid-held Tabriz for a year, putting an end to the Ilkhanate remnant. In contrast to the China-based Yuan dynasty, who excluded the native population from gaining control of high offices,

17595-515: The price he wanted for the whole manuscript from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other potential buyers. He then separated the miniatures and sold them, after various physical interventions to increase the sale value, and without properly recording the original form of the book. Pages were pulled apart to give two sides with miniatures, and to disguise this and the resulting damage, calligraphers were hired to add new text, often from

17748-439: The region by the Arab conquerors. Persianate culture, especially among the elite classes, spread across the Muslim territories in western, central, and south Asia, although populations across this vast region had conflicting allegiances (sectarian, local, tribal, and ethnic) and spoke many different languages. It was spread by poets, artists, architects, artisans, jurists, and scholars, who maintained relations among their peers in

17901-743: The region where their expertise in Persianate culture and administration secured them honored service within the Mughal Empire. Networks of learned masters and madrasas taught generations of young South Asian men Persian language and literature in addition to Islamic values and sciences. Furthermore, educational institutions such as Farangi Mahall and Delhi College developed innovative and integrated curricula for modernizing Persian-speaking South Asians. They cultivated Persian art, enticing to their courts artists and architects from Bukhara, Tabriz , Herat , Shiraz , and other cities of Greater Iran. The Taj Mahal and its Charbagh were commissioned by

18054-479: The religion and cultural heritage of the very lands that they themselves had devastated some two generations previously—and doing so with an urgency that suggested they were making up for lost time." In the first decade of the 13th century the Persian Jewish vizier , Rašīd-al-Dīn was commissioned by Ghazan to continue a history of the Mongols, which he completed in 1307, and the next khan Öljaitü ordered

18207-694: The reunification of the Kingdom of Georgia. However, tribute received by the Il-Khans from Georgia sank by about three-quarters between 1336 and 1350 because of wars and famines. The courts of Western Europe made many attempts to ally with the Mongols, primarily with the Ilkhanate, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, starting from around the time of the Seventh Crusade in the mid-13th century. (Western Europeans were collectively called 'Franks' – ' 'Farang', 'Faranji' – by Muslims and Asians in

18360-497: The rise of Persianised-Turks to military control, by the new political importance of non-Arab ulama and by the development of an ethnically composite Islamic society. Pahlavi was the lingua franca of the Sassanian Empire before the Arab invasion, but towards the end of the 7th and the beginning of the 8th century Arabic became a medium of literary expression. In the 9th century, a New Persian language emerged as

18513-594: The role of women as kingmakers", as well as scenes of murder and mourning. These choices are usually taken as reflecting contemporary political events, including "tensions between the Il-khanid dynasty and Persian subjects", and the Black Death , which was ravaging Persia in these years. They have been described as "often doom-laden". Borrowings from Chinese art , in the shape of gnarled trees, round-topped wave-like rocks and tightly curling strips of cloud, dominate

18666-493: The semi-independent Injuid rulers of Shiraz and Isfahan in the south-west. This latter group, probably all later than the Great Mongol Shahnameh , are influenced by it, though much less complex in style. The books had a political purpose, which is reflected in the choice of incidents to illustrate: "in such works, the hitherto stubbornly alien rulers of Iran were expressing a new and public commitment to

18819-666: The shape of the Ottoman Empire and another for the Hindu World in the shape of the Timurid Mughal Raj. These two universal states of Iranian construction on Orthodox Christian and on Hindu ground were duly annexed, in accordance with their builders' own cultural affinities, to the original domain of the New Persian language in the homelands of the Iranian Civilization on the Iranian plateau and in

18972-514: The sharp antagonisms between empires stimulated the appearance of variations of Persianate culture. After 1500, the Iranian culture developed distinct features of its own, with interposition of strong pre-Islamic and Shiite Islamic culture. Iran's ancient cultural relationship with Southern Iraq ( Sumer / Babylonia ) remained strong and endured in spite of the loss of Mesopotamia to the Ottomans. Its ancient cultural and historical relationship with

19125-539: The smaller examples from Baghdad took four years to transcribe and eight years to decorate – and feature elaborate multi-coloured frontispieces with geometric designs similar to those seen in Ilkhanid architecture such as the Sultaniyya Mausoleum . High-quality silk textiles were also produced under the Ilkhanids. The most important surviving example – possibly the only one definitively attributable to

19278-517: The sources until after 1260. When Muhammad II of Khwarazm ordered a contingent of merchants, dispatched by the Mongols, to be killed, Genghis Khan declared war on the Anushtegin dynasty in 1219. The Mongols overran the empire , occupying the major cities and population centers between 1219 and 1221. Iran was ravaged by the Mongol detachment under Jebe and Subutai , who left the area in ruin. Transoxiana also came under Mongol control after

19431-526: The spiritual bastion of Shi’ism against the onslaughts of orthodox Sunni Islam , and a repository of Persian cultural traditions and self-awareness of Persian identity. The founder of the dynasty, Shah Isma'il , adopted the title of Persian Emperor Pādišah-ī Īrān , with its implicit notion of an Iranian state stretching from Afghanistan as far as the Euphrates and the North Caucasus, and from

19584-621: The summer. Upon Abaqa 's accession, he immediately faced an invasion by Berke of the Golden Horde, which ended with Berke's death in Tiflis . In 1270, Abaqa defeated an invasion by Ghiyas-ud-din Baraq of the Chagatai Khanate . Abaqa's brother Tekuder sacked Bukhara in retaliation. In 1277, the Mamluks invaded Anatolia and defeated the Mongols at the Battle of Elbistan . Stung by

19737-446: The time the Great Mongol Shahnameh was created. Tiles with verses from the Shahnameh have been found in a Mongol palace, dating from about 1280. It is clear from literary references that there was a pre-Islamic tradition of illustrating stories later included in the Shahnameh in wall-paintings and probably other media, and some Islamic ceramics may well show such scenes. But there are no survivals, or mentions, of illustrated books of

19890-490: The two holy cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina . Even prior to the peace treaty's conclusion, the Ilkhan began sending large and richly-equipped pilgrimage ( hajj ) caravans from Iraq. In 1330 he went so far as to include, at great cost, an elephant in the caravan. He also arranged for his name to be read aloud in the khutba (Friday sermon) in Medina for a time in 1318 and sent the kiswa (the ceremonial cloth covering

20043-552: The unification by the Mongols as a revival of their long-lost dynastic tradition, and the concept of "Land of Iran" ( Irān-zamin ) was considered an important ideology and was further developed by the later Safavid Empire (1501–1736). Similar to the development in China under the Yuan dynasty , the revival of the concept of territorial unity, although not intended by the Mongols, became a lasting legacy of Mongol rule in Iran. According to

20196-504: The vast range of potential moments to illustrate in the Shahnameh , and even allowing for the limited proportion that have survived, the illustrations show unusual choices. The story of Iskandar , a Persianized version of Alexander the Great , is very heavily illustrated, while the longer story of Rustam much less so. Themes given emphasis by the choices of what to illustrate include "the enthronement of minor kings, dynastic legitimacy, and

20349-529: The work produced, but it also inspired new historical works that copied its style and format, such as those of Hamdallah Mustawfi . Among the arts patronized by the Ilkhans, the most important were the arts of the book. The major centers of manuscript production and illumination were Mosul and Baghdad in Iraq. They matched the quality of contemporary production in the Mamluk Sultanate and may have influenced

20502-414: The work was produced and who commissioned it, which many Persian manuscripts have, has been lost. The work has always been located to Tabriz in the late Il-khanid period, and was clearly a massive project commissioned by someone important in the court, probably with the ruler as the ultimate recipient, either through a gift or a delegated commission. Recent studies of the manuscript have been dominated by

20655-615: The works of Amir Khusrow , Sharaf Manayri and Jami, the Masnavi i-manavi of Rumi, the Jām-i Jam of Awhadi Maraghai , the Hakika o Sanā’i , the Qabusnameh of Keikavus , Sa’di's Gulestān and Būstān , and the diwans of Khaqani and Anvari . This intellectual symmetry continued until the end of the 19th century, when a Persian newspaper, Miftah al-Zafar (1897), campaigned for

20808-408: The workshop. They are illustrated in a fairly consistent style, which the Great Mongol Shahnameh builds on and significantly develops. After Rašīd-al-Dīn was executed in 1318 the workshop declined or ceased, but his son Ḡīāṯ-al-Dīn Moḥammad revived it when he rose in the court in the 1330s, and the Great Mongol Shahnameh is assumed to have been created there. Any colophon with details of when

20961-399: The world. Like other Persian manuscripts, it uses paper. Excluding blank margins, the pages are 41 by 29 cm, with the text in six columns of 31 lines where not interrupted by the miniatures. These mostly take the full width of the page, and are placed at various heights within it. None are full page. Some miniatures use irregular "stepped" shapes to suit the subject. Given the history of

21114-414: The wrong part of the work, as Demotte did not expect his new clientele of wealthy collectors to be able to read Persian. This has left the subject of some miniatures still uncertain, as the surrounding text does not match them. Scholars have been very critical of the "infamous" Demotte, and it irked many that the manuscript he treated so brutally carried his name, so the new name of "Great Mongol Shahnameh "

21267-414: Was a Jewish convert to Islam. The Ilkhanid rulers, who were keen to increase their autonomy, supported their Persian bureaucrats' promotion of the traditional Iranian idea of kingship. The Persian concept of monarchy over a territorial empire, or more specifically, the "Kingship of the Land of Iran" ( pādshāhi-ye Irān-zamin ), was easily sold to their Mongol masters by these bureaucrats. A lasting effect of

21420-506: Was also an increased production of copies of the Shahnameh . The most celebrated copy is the Great Mongol Shahnameh , a large manuscript probably produced for Abu Sa'id in the 14th century. Its pages include highly expressive illustrations that reflect influences from across Eurasia, including China and Europe. Some two dozen large-scale Qur'ans have survived and are among the most impressive artistically-produced Qur'ans created up to this point. They were each produced over many years – one of

21573-422: Was another Persian poet, Nizami , a most admired, illustrated and imitated writer of romantic masnavis . Along with Ferdowsi's and Nizami's works, Amir Khusraw Dehlavi 's khamseh came to enjoy tremendous prestige, and multiple copies of it were produced at Persianized courts. Seyller has a useful catalog of all known copies of this text. In the 16th century, Persianate culture became sharply distinct from

21726-437: Was confirmed as ilkhan by Kublai Khan in February 1286. During Arghun's reign, he actively sought to combat Muslim influence, and fought against both the Mamluks and the Muslim Mongol emir Nawruz in Khorasan. To fund his campaigns, Arghun allowed his viziers Buqa and Sa'd-ud-dawla to centralize expenditures, but this was highly unpopular and caused his former supporters to turn against him. Both viziers were killed and Arghun

21879-458: Was describing the Great Mongol Shahnameh . Dust Muhammad traced the style of painting used in his day to a painter called Ahman Musa, and described the Shahnameh as produced by a pupil of his, called Shamsuddin, for Shaikh Awais Jalayir , a ruler of the Jalayirid dynasty reigning 1356–74. If the period of creation was in fact protracted, this account might refer to the later stages of work. The manuscript seems to have remained in Tabriz until

22032-508: Was enriched by the influx of Persian-speaking and Islamic scholars, historians, architects, musicians, and other specialists of high Persianate culture who fled the Mongol devastation. The sultans of Delhi , who were of Turko-Afghan origin, modeled their lifestyles after the Persian upper classes. They patronized Persian literature and music, but became especially notable for their architecture, because their builders drew from Irano-Islamic architecture, combining it with Indian traditions to produce

22185-423: Was enthroned in 1316. He was faced with rebellion in 1318 by the Chagatayids and Qara'unas in Khorasan, and an invasion by the Golden Horde at the same time. An Anatolian emir, Irenchin, also rebelled. Irenchin was crushed by Chupan of the Taichiud in the Battle of Zanjan-Rud on 13 July 1319. Under the influence of Chupan, the Ilkhanate made peace with the Chagatais, who helped them crush the Chagatayid revolt, and

22338-464: Was murdered in 1291. The Ilkhanate started crumbling under the reign of Arghun's brother, Gaykhatu . The majority of Mongols converted to Islam while the Mongol court remained Buddhist . Gaykhatu had to buy the support of his followers and as a result, ruined the realm's finances. His vizir Sadr-ud-Din Zanjani tried to bolster the state finances by adopting paper money from the Yuan dynasty , which remained largely unsuccessful. Gaykhatu also alienated

22491-432: Was of good quality but not as fine and as diverse as pottery from the preceding century. The type most commonly attributed to Ilkhanid Iran is the so-called "Sultanabad" ceramics. These were made of a softer white paste with a green or gray-brown slip . Bowls of this type were typically underglaze -painted with animal figures with a background of leaves. Kashan remained an important center of lustreware production until

22644-664: Was officially known as the Land of Iran or simply Iran . It was established after Hülegü , the son of Tolui and grandson of Genghis Khan , inherited the West Asian and Central Asian part of the Mongol Empire after his brother Möngke Khan died in 1259. The Ilkhanate's core territory lies in what is now the countries of Iran , Azerbaijan , and Turkey . At its greatest extent, the Ilkhanate also included parts of modern Iraq , Syria , Armenia , Georgia , Afghanistan , Turkmenistan , Pakistan , part of modern Dagestan , and part of modern Tajikistan . Later Ilkhanid rulers, beginning with Ghazan in 1295, converted to Islam . In

22797-496: Was promoted, and has generally won acceptance. Currently, 57 miniatures from this manuscript have been identified in museums around the world, including the Freer Gallery of Art , which has the largest group at 16 pages, Chester Beatty Library (11 folios with 7 miniatures), the Louvre (2), British Museum , Metropolitan Museum of Art (2), and museums in Berlin , Boston (2), Cleveland , Detroit , Geneva (3), Montreal , and other cities, as well as private collections including

22950-399: Was the case, Ḡīāṯ-al-Dīn Moḥammad might very well have still been responsible for fulfilling the commission. The miniaturist Dust Muhammad wrote a history of Persian painting in about 1544, over 200 years later, in which he refers to an important royal Shahnameh , which he describes as "square" in format, which the Great Mongol Shahnameh is not. Nevertheless, many scholars have thought he

23103-506: Was the everyday speech of the people, Persian was the language of the court, while Persian literature and Persian culture reigned supreme. It is to the Seljuqs with whom they were thus fused, that the Ottomans, strictly so called, owe their literary education; this therefore was of necessity Persian as the Seljuqs knew no other. The Turks were not content with learning from the Persians how to express thought; they went to them to learn what to think and in what way to think. In practical matters, in

23256-483: Was the first khan of the Ilkhanate. Immediately after his brother Möngke's accession as Great Khan in 1251, Hulagu was appointed as administrator of North China, however in the following year, North China was assigned to Kublai and Hulagu tasked with conquering the Abbasid Caliphate . He was given a fifth of the entire Mongol army for the campaign and he took his sons Abaqa and Yoshmut along with him. Hulagu also took with him many Chinese scholars and astronomers, from whom

23409-425: Was under the Seljuks , the following year. By 1237 the Mongol Empire had subjugated most of Persia (including modern-day Azerbaijan), Armenia, Georgia (excluding Abbasid Iraq and Ismaili strongholds), as well as all of Afghanistan and Kashmir . After the battle of Köse Dağ in 1243, the Mongols under Baiju occupied Anatolia , while the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm and the Empire of Trebizond became vassals of

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