Rashīd Al-Dīn and the Making of History in Mongol Iran
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Rashīd al-Dīn and the making of history in Mongol Iran Stefan T. Kamola A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee: Joel Walker, Chair Charles Melville (Cambridge) Purnima Dhavan Program Authorized to Offer Degree: History ©Copyright 2013 Stefan Kamola University of Washington Abstract Rashīd al-Dīn and the making of history in Mongol Iran Stefan T. Kamola Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Joel Walker History The Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh (Collected histories) of Rashīd al-Dīn Ṭabīb (d. 1318) has long been considered the single richest witness to the history of the early Mongol Empire in general and its Middle Eastern branch, the Ilkhanate, in particular. This has created a persistent dependence on the work as a source of historical data, with a corresponding lack of appreciation for the place it holds within Perso-Islamic intellectual history. This understanding of Rashīd al-Dīn and the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, however, does not match certain historiographical and ideological strategies evident in the work itself and in other works by Rashīd al-Dīn and his contemporaries. This dissertation reads beyond the monolithic and uncritical use of the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh that dominates modern scholarship on Mongol and Ilkhanid history. Instead, it fits Rashīd al-Dīn and his work into the difficult process of transforming the Mongol Ilkhans from a dynasty of foreign military occupation into one of legitimate sovereigns for the Perso-Islamic world. This is the first study to examine a full range of Persianate cultural responses to the experience of Mongol conquest and rule through the life and work of the most prominent statesman of the period. Drawing on the example of cultural projects undertaken in the early decades of the Ilkhanate, Rashīd al-Dīn canonized a narrative of Ilkhanid history in which his patrons embodied a model of sacred kingship that adhered both to contemporary intellectual trends in the Middle East and to Mongol dynastic traditions emphasizing descent from Genghis Khan. This new model, which first enters political discourse in the writing of Rashīd al-Dīn in response to the vacuum of authority created by the fall of the Abbasid caliphate, laid the groundwork for later Timurid, Safavid and Mughal court ideologies. By fitting Rashīd al-Dīn and his works within their historical context, this dissertation disentangles seven centuries of literary elaboration that have accrued to his historical memory. Table of Contents List of figures vi Note on transliteration vii Acknowledgments viii Introduction 1 Error! Not a valid result for table. 27 Chapter One. The Middle East in the Mongol Empire 33 Chapter Two. Early Ilkhanid cultural production 54 Chapter Three. The time of trouble, 1284-1298 79 Chapter Four. The biography of Rashīd al-Dīn 102 Part Two: Rashīd al-Dīn and Ilkhanid historiography 129 Chapter Five. The Mongol dynasty and the Iranian state 135 Chapter Six. Converting history: Rashīd al-Dīn’s theological works 171 Chapter Seven. The historiographical setting of Rashīd al-Dīn 222 Chapter Eight. Ḥamd Allāh Mustaufī and the making of Rashīd al-Dīn 257 Conclusion 280 Appendix A. The works of Rashīd al-Dīn 285 Appendix B. The conversion of Ghazan Khan 294 Bibliography 299 v List of figures 1. Greater Iran and environs at the time of the Ilkhanate 23 2. Seasonal camps of the Ilkhans 24 3. Partial tree of the Mongol royal family 25 4. The dispensation of Genghis Khan 36 5. Vaṣṣāf’s description of the Jāmiʿ al-taṣānīf, compared to that of Rashīd al-Dīn 242 6. Rashīd al-Dīn’s collected works, the Jāmiʿ al-taṣanif al-rashīdī 286 7. Publication history of the Tārīkh-i mubārak-i ghāzānī 292 vi Note on transliteration and translation For Arabic and Persian words, names, and text I have adopted the transliteration system of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES). When titles of works are Arabic constructions (such as Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh), I have used the Arabic transliteration scheme, even when the text of such works is in Persian. For Turkic and Mongolian words and names, I have adopted a simplified transliteration, avoiding diacritics for consonants and indicating hard and soft vowels for Turkish short vowels only (u/ü, o/ö, ı/i). For the Eastern Turkic text treated in Chapter Five, I have followed Mehmet Ölmez’s transliteration, which preserves certain additional aspects of Uyghur orthography, such as the soft ġ. Arabic, Persian, Turkic, and Mongol words and titles not in common usage in English have been kept in italics and are explained the first time that they appear. When titles refer to specific individuals, they are given in Roman type with initial capital. Thus amīr, but Amīr Qutlughshāh; sulṭān, but Öljeitü Sulṭān. Qurʾān citations are Ṣaḥīḥ International. All other translations are my own unless otherwise noted. vii Acknowledgments The seed of this dissertation was planted during a graduate seminar on the Mongol Empire co- taught by Joel Walker and Florian Schwarz in the winter of 2008. In an assignment for that class, I identified certain literary parallels between Rashīd al-Dīn’s account of Ghazan Khan’s youth and Xenophon's Cyropaedia. From that beginning, Professor Schwarz encouraged me to pursue further intertextual analysis of the Tārīkh-i mubārak-i ghāzānī as a dissertation project. When he left the University of Washington, Professor Walker stepped into his shoes as my advisor. Over the past few years, Professor Walker has been both an advocate and a model for exploring the material and intellectual ties that bind cultural spheres to one another. Between Professor Schwarz’s insistence that literary analysis belongs in historical research and Professor Walker’s strategic eye for building a project that is both innovative and engaging, my own skepticism about this dissertation has been frequently overridden by the sustained encouragement of good mentoring. I owe a debt of incredible gratitude to Charles Melville of Cambridge University, who agreed to provide topical expertise for the project and who in many respects acted as a thesis supervisor in the British tradition, even though he could not sit as chair of my committee in the American sense. It is safe to say that, without Professor Melville’s contribution, my grasp of the material and the field (not to mention my bibliography) would be woefully inadequate for the task I had taken up. Purnima Dhavan similarly stepped into an advising role after the departure of another original committee member. The way Professor Dhavan keeps her thumb on the pulse of Persianate studies has been instrumental in helping me find relevance for my work; her fine editorial eye has saved me from several lapses of judgment and style. viii Any such lapses that remain, of course, reflect my own shortcomings. Shahrzad Shams has been generous with her time and her enthusiasm for Persian literature in helping to unlock obstinate passages of text. Across the hall from her, Selim Kuru has shared my almost unhealthy fascination with the peculiar trivia of manuscripts. These two, while not in my department or on my committee, have been a great source of encouragement and assistance, particularly in the final year of the process. Intellectual history is, at its root, the study of how ideas are passed around and preserved. I would be remiss, then, not to mention the assistance of numerous librarians, most importantly Mary St. Germain at the University of Washington and Ursula Sims-Williams of the British Library. The staff of these two libraries, and of other libraries worldwide keep the wheels of scholarship moving. A number of academics have offered guidance in particular matters, sometimes in response to unsolicited e-mails. In this regard I thank Wheeler Thackston, David Roxburgh, Sheila Blair, Birgitt Hoffmann, Jo-Ann Gross, and Nadia Eboo- Jamal. Kazuo Morimoto provided valuable assistance with the works of Ibn ʿInaba and, along with Naofumi Abe and Osamu Otkuda, opened my eyes to a world of Japanese scholarship, the surface of which I have only been able to scratch. The most thankless task in this process has probably belonged to the members of my dissertation writing group. Amanda Swain, Mira Green, and Catherine Warner have read some rather raw versions of several of these chapters. Their patience and valuable suggestions are largely responsible if any of what follows makes sense. Other colleagues, particularly Jen Webster, Monica Meadows, and Oscar Aguirre Mandujano have left their mark on my life and thought in ways I probably haven’t yet recognized. ix Most of this dissertation was written during periods of fellowship funded by the Roshan Cultural Heritage Foundation and the University of Washington Graduate School. The Maclyn P. Berg Graduate Student Scholarship Fund and the Ancient India and Iran Trust at Cambridge also provided funding to offset travel costs to undertake research in Cambridge and London in January 2010. Additional financial assistance has been extended by the family of Dr. Hossein Naficy and Mrs. Malek Naficy-Sanjideh. The Andy Studebaker and Eric Weissman Funds, administered by the University of Washington Department of History, made it possible for me to attend the MESA 2011 and ISIS 2012 conferences, where several of the ideas in this dissertation were developed in presentation and in discussion with colleagues from around the world. Many members of my immediate and extended family have been involved in this process in ways too numerous to list. In a noteworthy but not entirely uncharacteristic act of foresight, my great-uncle Vern Faillettaz sent me my first book about al-Ghazālī when I was a sophomore in college, long before I had any reason to know about al-Ghazālī.