The Ilkhanate, often seen as the most stable of the Mongolian khanates that emerged after
the breakup of the empire, was also the first to collapse. Previously we
have talked about the events that led to the end of the Mongol rule in China and Russia
and in today’s episode in our series on the fall of the Mongol Empire,
we will explain how Chinggisid rule in the Middle East came to a violent end.
They probably should have taken steps to prevent these losses while they had the chance,
and the same goes for when you’re losing hair - you’ll need the sponsor of our video, Keeps.
Two out of three men experience hair loss by the time they are thirty-five,
and you need to take action now to avoid this fate. Keep’s provides a subscription
service that delivers clinically approved hair loss treatments right to your door,
at half the cost of pharmacy prices. Our lead historian probably could have
used this a while back, and now it’s too late - early prevention is key.
Keeps will set you up with clinically backed treatments to prevent hair loss and encourage
growth, with most users seeing results after 6 months. Plus the treatment plan includes
unlimited, round-the-clock messaging with on-staff medical professionals to
tailor your own hair-care system with personal recommendations.
You can add their award-winning thickening shampoo and conditioner to help even further,
and all their products get refill reminders to make sure you’re always good to go.
Hair loss stops with Keeps. To get 50% off your first order
go to keeps.com/kings or click the link in the description. That’s K-E-E-P-S dot com slash kings.
Established in the 1260s by Hülegü, the sacker of Baghdad, the Ilkhanate is perhaps one of the
best understood of the Mongol khanates with a rich body of surviving primary source material.
The greatest is the chronicle of Rashīd al-Dīn, an Ilkhanid vizier who wrote the immense Jāmi’
al-Tawārīkh, which forms not only one of the most important sources on the Mongol Empire,
but also of the Ilkhanate’s history up to the early fourteenth century. Generally,
Rashīd al-Dīn portrayed the early Ilkhanate as a period of instability, with khans more
interested in hunting, feasting and drinking rather than governing, allowing greedy viziers
and military commanders to have their way. This was punctuated with succession struggles
affected by an increasingly powerful noyad. The noyad were the descendants of the non-Chinggisid
generals who served alongside Hülegü, and had been granted lands and peoples to support themselves.
They took keen interest in khans who were kinder to their privileges. This was coupled with
famines, economic woes from intense corruption and foolish policies, including a failed attempt
to introduce paper money, as well as expensive, periodic wars with the Ilkhanate’s neighbours.
To Rashīd al-Dīn, this instability ended with the accession of Ghazan as Il-Khan in 1295.
Though Rashīd likely exaggerates the previous instability in order to glorify his patron Ghazan,
there seems to be strong support for a redirection of the Ilkhanate. Aside from the most obvious,
which was Ghazan’s conversion of Islam and efforts to tie the legitimacy of the Ilkhanate to it,
Ghazan oversaw economic revitalization. A major effort was directed to reducing abuses of the
empire’s agricultural base and farming population. From limiting the numbers of officials, clerks and
Mongols who sought to provide for themselves by extraordinary demands on the population,
to stamping out bandity with highway patrols. These were accompanied by monetary reforms and
new silver currency, bearing not Mongolian inscriptions but the shahada and Ghazan’s title
of padishah-i islam. Measurements and weights throughout the Ilkhanate were ordered standardized
based on those in Tabriz to facilitate trade between regions. Canals and underground waterways
were built to provide water for cities and irrigation. He also forbid the practice of
enticing young women into prostitution. He must have had some success, as he soon had
the funds for massive new construction projects at Tabriz, including a magnificent tomb for himself.
Along the Ilkhanate’s borders, he concluded a peace treaty with Toqta Khan of the Golden Horde,
and invaded the Mamluk Sultanate, scoring the only notable victory of the Mongol-Mamluk war near Homs
in December 1299 [Wadi al-Khaznadar], though ultimately withdrew before the onset of summer.
In 1304 Ghazan, like all good Mongol princes, died in his early 30s. During his reign,
he had succeeded in killing a great many potential rivals to the throne, but produced no heirs. His
brother Öljeitü [r. 1304-1316] thus succeeded him, and continued many of Ghazan’s policies;
unlike him, he wavered between multiple faiths and won no victories over the Mamluks,
but with the other khanates he recognized the overlordship of the Great Khan in the great
Mongol peace of 1304. So was the pax mongolica finally, if briefly, instated.
Öljeitü’s greatest success compared to his brother was that he actually had a son to succeed him.
When Öljeitü died in 1316, aged 36, his 12 year old son Abū Sa’īd was raised to the throne under
the guidance of the regent, the powerful noyan Choban. Abū Sa’īd never wavered in his faith;
he was the first Ilkhan who was raised, and would die, a Sunni Muslim, who unlike his father and
uncle never showed interest in Shi’ism. Choban, as described by the great scholar of the Ilkhanate
Charles Melville, saw himself as a servant of the Chinggisid dynasty, albeit an exceptionally
powerful one, who combined adherence to the khans with observing shari’a law. So Choban protected
the young Abū Sa’īd and ensured he had a proper Islamic education, teaching him to read, write
and speak Persian and Arabic, while also versing him in the history and genealogies of the house of
Chinggis Khan and the noyad. Abū Sa’īd throughout his life maintained a love of poetry and music,
and after peace was reached with the Mamluks, exchanges poems with the Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad.
Abū Sa’īd Il-Khan’s early reign was often tumultuous. Dominated by Choban Noyan,
the two fought off Chagatayid and Golden Horde invasions and internal rebellions, during which
the young Abū Sa’īd earned the epithet ba’atar for his courage after throwing himself into battle.
Despite working well together and achieving peace with the Mamluks,
Abū Sa’īd’s desire for Choban’s daughter, the beautiful Baghdad Khatun, resulted in Abū Sa’īd
killing almost all of Choban’s family, including the great noyan himself. After Choban’s death,
Abū Sa’īd’s sole rule was remembered as a golden age by succeeding generations.
It was in this period that the famous traveller Ibn Battuta passed through the Ilkhanate,
remarking that Abū Sa’īd was still a beardless youth, and the most beautiful of God’s creatures.
Yet despite no lack of effort on his part, the khan failed to produce an heir. When it became
clear that no child would form in Baghdad Khatun’s belly, Abū Sa’īd’s eyes wandered,
and fell onto Dilshad Khatun. She was a daughter of Dimashq Khwājā; Baghdad Khatun’s brother,
who Abū Sa’īd had murdered several years prior. With a new target for his affections, he began to
ignore Baghdad Khatun, particularly when Dilshad Khatun became pregnant with his first child.
As Baghdad Khatun’s influence waned, Abū Sa’īd did not realize the mistake he had made.
In November 1335, when Abū Sa’īd was marching north to confront a Golden Horde attack,
Baghdad Khatun is alleged to have made her move. In the account of Ibn Battuta’s —a man,
it should be noted, who greatly enjoyed a good yarn— after one last bout of sexual intercourse,
Baghdad Khatun wiped down Abū Sa’īd with a poisoned handkerchief. Regardless of the veracity
of Battuta’s tale, as this was far from the only exaggerated story he told of women and sex,
Abū Sa’īd was dead, only 30 years old. This is popularly cited as the end of the Ilkhanate.
With Abū Sa’īd’s death, the line of Hülagü became functionally extinct. Abū Sa’īd’s uncle Ghazan,
had pruned the lineage, and alcoholism took care of much of the rest. The fact that few Il-Khans
lived past 35, with fewer and fewer heirs each generation, has led many to search for underlying
causes beyond just alcohol. Scholars such as Anne Broadbridge have suggested this was a consequence
of inbreeding, given the Il-Khans’ preferences for marrying into the same families over generations.
The combined effects of rampant alcohol abuse among both men and women and the consanguinity
may explain the alarming drop off in fertility of the Ilkhanid elite over the last decades of
the thirteenth century. While Hülagü had produced quite the brood of little Chinggisids—at least 25
sons and daughters— by the end of the century Ghazan had only a daughter survive childhood,
while his brother Öljeitü had numerous children stillborn or dying young. From his twelve wives,
Öljeitü only had three children ever reach marriageable age; Abū Sa’īd and two daughters, one
of whom still predeceased him. Abū Sa’īd himself, despite considerable efforts, only succeeded in
impregnating his widow Dilshad Khatun. There were no surviving brothers, sons or clear male
figure of the line of Hülagü to head the state. Yet the explanation of Abū Sa’īd’s death without
heir directly causing the fall of the Ilkhanate has been, in the opinion of scholars like Charles
Melville, somewhat overstated. The image of the Ilkhanate falling without a decline —a counter to
Edward Gibbon— encourages us to overlook problems which had developed. Essentially, Melville notes,
a gap had widened between the military elite, the noyad, and the Il-Khan, which accompanied
a lack of respect for the Chinggisids. The death of a monarch with no clear heir was hardly a new
issue in the Mongol Empire. The quriltai system wherein a candidate was confirmed by the princes
could supply new khans at need, with a regent heading things until this could be sorted out.
The unified Mongol Empire and other khanates were ruled in this fashion at times. In the
form of Baghdad Khatun the Ilkhanate certainly had a powerful woman to step into the role.
The well-connected Baghdad Khatun was described as an intimidating, intelligent and proud woman,
who openly walked around with a sword strapped to her waist and greatly influenced matters of state.
In the opinion of some, Abū Sa’īd was bossed around by her. In a more classic Mongolian system,
Baghdad Khatun would have been an obvious regent. But as Melville argues, the actions of the khans
from Ghazan onwards had alienated the military elite. More or less, they must have felt
disenfranchised from the government and that the old Mongolian way of life was being abandoned.
Certainly, Islamization was the most obvious demonstration of this. Ghazan and Öljeitü both
abandoned the traditional secret burials of Mongol Khans in favour of massive, expensive,
and very public mausoleums. The quriltai as a means of choosing the next ruler and affecting
major decisions was abandoned, and even the end of the war with the Mamluks —not by conquest, but
by diplomacy— must have felt like a betrayal of Mongol imperial ideology. By removing their stake
in government, and not replacing it with a new loyalty to adhere to in the replacement system,
the Il-Khans had gradually undermined the need of the noyad to maintain Chinggisid ideology or rule.
When Abū Sa’īd came to the throne in 1317, he was but a 12-year-old boy. The long period of Choban’s
regency further reduced the khan’s authority and increased that of the military elite.
Only after Choban’s death in 1327 did Abū Sa’īd really rule in his own right, and did so for
only eight years. His vizier, Ghiyath al-Dīn Muhammad, the son of the late Rashīd al-Dīn,
sought to enforce tax reforms that would have strengthened the hand of the central government
towards the regional princes and their appanages. It seems to have been an ineffective measure that
only angered these military princes. Per Melville’s theory, the only outcome of such
failed measures was only widening the gap between the Il-khan and the military elite.
On Abū Sa’īd’s death in November 1335, it fell to the vizier Ghiyath al-Dīn Muhammad to try
and steer the ship in the face of Özbeg Khan’s invasion. Only five days later, on December 5th,
Ghiyath al-Dīn orchestrated the enthronement of the new Khan, a man named Arpa Ke’un. Arpa
was not a descendant of Hülagü, but of Hülagü’s younger brother Ariq Böke. Plucked from obscurity
by Ghiyath al-Dīn, he was chosen for his ability to lead the army, for all indication is that Arpa
Khan was a man of military background, an “old school Mongol,” in the words of every
secondary source that mentions him. Arpa was given command of the Ilkhanid army, and in winter 1335
forced Özbeg back to the Golden Horde. Arpa Khan returned triumphant, and Ghiyath al-Dīn
had high hopes for his new protege. Arpa was a competent commander proven in his defence of the
Ilkhanate, a promising figure to rally the Mongols around. Apparently, he had little taste for court
procedure or niceties, and it is unclear if he was a Muslim. One anonymous Armenian chronicler
asserts Arpa was a Christian, and at the very least he was very proud of the “old ways.” We
might wonder if Ghiyath al-Dīn was deliberate here too, choosing a man who would be more palatable to
the noyad due to his distaste of courtly life. In the opinion of Oleg Grabar and Sheila Blair,
it was shortly after Arpa’s ascension that Ghiyath al-Dīn ordered the commission of a Great Mongol
Shahnama, a wonderfully illustrated version of the Persian national epic by Firdausi. An undertaking
of massive expense, given the large and lovingly detailed artwork, it certainly indicates that the
top levels of the Ilkhanid elite did not imagine they were entering into a crisis anytime soon.
But Arpa Khan was not on solid footing. Abū Sa’īd’s widow, the pregnant Dilshad Khatun, had
fled to ‘Ali-Padshah, the governor of Diyarbakir. ‘Ali-Padshah’s sister, Abū Sa’īd’s mother Hajji
Khatun, also opposed Arpa’s enthronement. In an effort to shore up his legitimacy,
Arpa Khan was married to Abū Sa’īd’s sister, Sati Bey; commanders who had been alienated or
jailed by Abū Sa’īd were given expensive gifts or freed from prison. And the blame for Abū Sa’īd’s
death was laid squarely on Baghdad Khatun, who never had the chance to assume the regency.
Accused not just of poisoning Abū Sa’īd, but of treason with the Golden Horde,
Baghdad Khatun was executed, supposedly beaten to death by a Greek slave with a club.
Arpa Khan still looked for enemies in the wrong direction. ‘Ali-Padshah rallied those unhappy
with Arpa’s placement as Khan, an energetic man who might reduce their privileges. Dilshad
Khatun had finally given birth to Abū Sa’īd’s only child, a girl, but this did not stop Ali-Padshah's
manoeuvring. At the start of 1336 ‘Ali-Padshah raised his own candidate, Musa, as Il-Khan.
Supposedly a grandson of a former Il-Khan, Musa was entirely a puppet of ‘Ali-Padshah.
In alliance with Hajji Khatun and Shaykh Hasan Jalayir,
who had once been forced to give up his wife Baghdad Khatun to Abū Sa’īd,
‘Ali-Padshah in the name Musa Il-Khan armed a revolt against Arpa Il-Khan. In the April of 1336,
Arpa’s army was defeated in the field. He and Ghiyath al-Dīn Muhammad were soon captured
and killed. So ended the reign of Arpa Khan, the final Il-Khan to wield any individual authority.
Arpa’s death can be considered the true end of the Ilkhanate, for it removed any attachment the
regional commanders held to the Ilkhanid state. ‘Ali-Padshah’s enthronement of Musa Khan gave all
of them the realization that each, too, could rule through his own puppet Chinggisid, if he happened
to have one on hand. From 1335 until 1343, no less than 8 Il-Khans were declared by these commanders.
Most are known only by their names and who controlled them. The allies who had taken
down Arpa Khan immediately fought each other and appointed their own candidates. By 1338,
a grandson of Choban named Hasan-i Küchik - Little Hasan enthroned his grandfather’s widow Sati Bey,
daughter of the late Il-Khan Öljeitü, sister of Abū Sa’īd and also the widow of Arpa Khan.
For the first time, late in 1338, a Chinggisid woman became Khan.
Coins were minted in her name bearing the title of khan, the khutba was read in her name and she was
officially the ruler of the Ilkhanate, such as it was. But Sati Bey Khan, the only Chinggisid female
Khan, held no real power, and largely was a tool through which Little Hasan maintained his power.
By the middle of 1339 she was married off to the next puppet khan before disappearing in the 1340s.
The pretext of an Ilkhanate was maintained until the 1350s, when the final puppet ruler was deposed
in 1353. The new Persianized Turko-Mongolian Dynasties in northwestern Iran and Iraq,
the Chobanids and Jalayirids, claimed descent and legitimacy from being generals of Il-Khans,
but did not take the title themselves. Eastwards, rule fell to local dynasties and warlords,
while westwards new Turkic beyliks, from the Qara Qoyunlu to the Osmanli,
rose. Chinggisid legitimacy as the basis for rule did not long outlast Abū Sa’īd, and it took a
surprising figure to reinstate its legitimacy in the region; Temür-i-lang, or, Tamerlane.
We are planning more videos on the history of the Mongols,
so make sure you are subscribed and have pressed the bell button to see it.
Please, consider liking, commenting, and sharing - it helps immensely. Our videos would be impossible
without our kind patrons and youtube channel members, whose ranks you can join via the links
in the description to know our schedule, get early access to our videos, access our discord,
and much more. This is the Kings and Generals channel, and we will catch you on the next one.