Muslims And Mongols

An epic historical consideration of the Mongol conquest of Western Asia and the spread of Islam during the years of non-Muslim rule The Mongol conquest of the Islamic world began in the early thirteenth century when Genghis Khan and his warriors overran Central Asia and devastated much of Iran. Distinguished historian Peter Jackson offers a fresh and fascinating consideration of the years of infidel Mongol rule in Western Asia, drawing from an impressive array of primary sources as well as modern studies to demonstrate how Islam not only survived the savagery of the conquest, but spread throughout the empire. This unmatched study goes beyond the well-documented Mongol campaigns of massacre and devastation to explore different aspects of an immense imperial event that encompassed what is now Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Afghanistan, as well as Central Asia and parts of eastern Europe. It examines in depth the cultural consequences for the incorporated Islamic lands, the Muslim experience of Mongol sovereignty, and the conquerors’ eventual conversion to Islam.

The period from about 1100 to 1350 in the Middle East was marked by continued interaction between the local Muslim rulers and two groups of non-Muslim invaders: the Frankish crusaders from Western Europe and the Mongols from northeastern Asia. In deflecting the threat those invaders presented, a major role was played by the Mamluk state which arose in Egypt and Syria in 1250. The Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies has, from 1917 onwards, published several articles pertaining to the history of this period by leading historians of the region, and this volume reprints some of the most important and interesting of them for the convenience of students and scholars.

The Ilkhanate: from Tegüder Aḥmad to Öljeitü -- Muslim Ilkhans, the Buddhists and the People of the Book -- Rashīd al-Dīn, Islam and the Mongols -- The Islam of Ghazan, his generals and his minister: the view from outside -- EPILOGUE -- Legitimation by Chinggisid descent -- Allegiance to Mongol norms and institutions -- Turkicization -- The exodus of Muslims from the Mongol world -- The spread of Islam across Eurasia -- The movement of peoples and the emergence of new ethnicities -- The integration of Eurasia within a single disease zone: the Black Death -- CONCLUSION -- APPENDIX 1 Glossary of Technical Terms -- APPENDIX 2 Genealogical Tables and Lists of Rulers -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX

The period from about 1100 to 1350 in the Middle East was marked by continued interaction between the local Muslim rulers and two groups of non-Muslim invaders: the Frankish crusaders from Western Europe and the Mongols from northeastern Asia. In deflecting the threat those invaders presented, a major role was played by the Mamluk state which arose in Egypt and Syria in 1250. The Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies has, from 1917 onwards, published several articles pertaining to the history of this period by leading historians of the region, and this volume reprints some of the most important and interesting of them for the convenience of students and scholars.

This volume offers a wide-ranging account of the Mongols in western and eastern Asia in the aftermath of Genghis Khan’s disruptive invasions of the early thirteenth century, focusing on the significant cultural, social, religious and political changes that followed in their wake.

The first section of this volume brings together five studies on the Mongol empire. The accent is on the ideology behind Mongol expansion, on the dissolution of the empire into a number of rival khanates, and on the relations between the Mongol regimes and their Christian subjects within and potential allies outside. Three pieces in the second section relate to the early history of the Delhi Sultanate, with particular reference to the role of its Turkish slave (ghulam) officers and guards, while a fourth examines the collapse in 1206-15 of the Ghurid dynasty, whose conquests in northern India had created the preconditions for the Sultanate's emergence. The final three papers are concerned with Mongol pressure on Muslim India and the capacity of the Delhi Sultanate to withstand it.

A new understanding of the transformation of Anatolia to a Muslim society in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries based on previously unpublished sources.