Ilkhanate

The Mongol state in Iran, which arrived as a destroyer and within two generations had become Persian and Muslim. Hulegu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, was sent west in the 1250s to finish the conquest of the Islamic world: he destroyed the Assassins in their fortresses in 1256 and sacked Baghdad in 1258, killing the last Abbasid caliph, reportedly by rolling him in a carpet and having him trampled so that no royal blood touched the ground. The libraries and the canal system of Iraq were wrecked. His advance was stopped by the Mamluks at Ain Jalut in 1260, and the two states fought for decades afterwards. The title ilkhan meant subordinate khan, acknowledging the great khan in the east, though the connection soon became nominal. The regime governed through Persian bureaucrats and initially favoured Buddhists, Christians and Jews over Muslims, and it negotiated with European powers for a joint attack on the Mamluks that never happened. Ghazan converted to Islam in 1295 and the state became a Muslim Persian monarchy. His minister Rashid al-Din wrote a history of the world that is among the first attempts anywhere at a genuinely universal history. Chinese motifs entered Persian painting under Ilkhan rule. The observatory at Maragheh advanced astronomy. The state collapsed into rival factions after 1335. The state ruled Iran, Iraq, the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia from 1256 to 1335. Tabriz and Sultaniyya served as capitals. The mausoleum at Sultaniyya carries one of the largest brick domes ever built and is a World Heritage site. Persian was the language of its administration.

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