De Nicola, Bruno. 2018. Letters from Mongol Anatolia: Professional, Political and Intellectual Connections among Members of a Persianised Elite. Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 56(1), pp. 77-90. ISSN 0578-6967 [Article] https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/22864/ The version presented here may differ from the published, performed or presented work. Please go to the persistent GRO record above for more information. If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Goldsmiths, University of London via the following email address:
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[email protected] Letters from Mongol Anatolia: professional, political and intellectual connections among members of a Persianised elite1 Bruno De Nicola Goldsmiths, University of London / Austrian Academy of Sciences 1. Introduction Since the defeat of the Byzantine troops at the hands of the Seljuq Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the Anatolian peninsula underwent a slow but steady process of Islamisation and cultural transformation.2 By the time the Mongols entered the peninsula in the 1240s, the local Seljuq dynasty of Rum was ruling over a multifaith, multiethnic and multicultural society where different conceptions of Islam (Hanafi, Shafiʿi and Sufi) and Christianity (mainly Greek Orthodox and Armenian but also inivisual Catholics) cohabited with the semi-nomadic