The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Ilkhanids (1256–1336)

The descendants of Chingiz Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire (d. 1227), ruled in Iran as the Ilkhanid dynasty, the term “Il-khan” denoting “subject” or “subservient” khan—that is, acknowledging the sovereignty of the Great Qa’an (Khan). The first Il-Khan was Hulagu (r. 1256–65), grandson of Chingiz Khan and brother of the Great Qa’an, Mongke (r. 1251–59), who had dispatched Hulagu to complete the conquest of Iran in 1256. Mongke was the last Qa’an to rule from the Mongol capital at Qara Qorum, in the steppes; he was succeeded by another brother, Qubilay Khan (d. 1294), who established the imperial capital in China. The Ilkhanid dynasty was thus part of the Mongol Empire, which derived its legitimacy from the conquests and political dispensation of Chingizs Khan and owed nothing to Islamic political traditions. The chief aim of Hulagu’s invasion was the subjugation of the Abbasid caliphate, and this was achieved by the conquest of Baghdad and the death of the caliph in 1258. Hulagu was a shamanist with a Christian wife; his successors in Iran maintained more or less close connections with their cousins in China and a sense of Mongol solidarity, as witnessed both by their coinage and also by their continuing rule according to Mongol tradition, the khan being served by a closely regulated household of loyal officers who acted both as bodyguards and government agents.

The political theorists of the Ilkhanid period, therefore, were confronted with the total collapse of Islamic norms and the need to dispense with the previous formulation of “usurped” coercive rule being exercised by authority delegated from the caliph. The establishment of a “shadow” Abbasid caliphate in Cairo allowed the jurists to maintain the fiction of caliphal authority in the Mamluk Sultanate for a time, but in Iran this theoretical construct was never to return, even once the Mongols officially converted to Islam under Ghazan Khan (r. 1295–1304). Instead, the political advisers of the Ilkhans, such as the philosopher Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, emphasized the practical aspects of good government, expressed largely in terms of encouraging sound economic and fiscal policies following the destruction of the Mongol conquests, and a glorification of the person of the monarch, modeled on the image of the legendary rulers of pre-Islamic Iran, particularly the Sasanians (224–642). Although the new vision of rule was both Iranian and secular, the Ilkhanate was still conceived as a dispensation sanctioned by God, and the promotion of Islamic ideals and the religious law was upheld as an important kingly virtue, especially under the Muslim Ilkhans. The most important royal quality, however, was justice. The ideal of just rule was not dependent on godliness but required the strength to maintain the stability of society and the protection of the weak from the tyranny of oppression. The exercise of justice was also assisted by the advice of wise counselors or the service of experienced ministers (especially the vizier), a formulation expressed in numerous historical works, including those written by prominent Persian bureaucrats such as ‘Ata-Malik al-Juwayni (d. 1283) and Rashid al-Din al-Hamadani (d. 1318), whose chronicles sought to portray the Mongol rulers as conforming to the norms of Perso-Islamic political traditions. The didactic element of these works essentially provided a model of political thought close to the exemplary Mirrors for Princes, or handbooks of advice to kings, that had such a long history in Indo-Persian “wisdom literature.” The fact that the acculturation of the Ilkhanid regime to Iranian conditions was still not achieved by the death of the last recognized ruler, Abu Sa‘id (r. 1317–35), is shown by the events of the next 20 years, during which a series of would-be Ilkhans struggled unsuccessfully to win the throne in a manner reminiscent of the tribal politics of the Inner Asian steppe. The last Chingizid ruler was murdered in 1353, by which time descent from the conqueror was also devalued as a source of legitimacy, and the sword remained the ultimate sanction for political authority.