Rashid al-Din

Harikha Kota

Professor Bertram

April 23, 2017

Rashid Al- Din

The turn of the millennium saw a lot of changes in the Persian heartland. By the late 1000’s and 1200’s AD the Seljuk dynasty was being established, made of the Seljuk Turks originating from Mongolia. They were part of a large wave of Turkic Tribes which erupted from the Asian Steppes north of the Caspian Sea invading Persia and Mesopotamia 1021 onwards. Rashid al- Din was a statesmen and historian during this time of great change in this Persian Empire. Born in 1247 to a Jewish family of Hamadan, he later, at the age of thirty, converted to Islam and joined the Court of the Mongol ruler of Persia Il-Khan Abaqa as a physician. He eventually rose to the rank of vizier who went onto support and protect the followers of the faith he had adopted. With his high status and power he became the owner of vast estates in every corner of the Il-Khan’s realm; from orchards in Azerbaijan to plantations in Southern Iraq and arable land in Western Anatolia. The State and its administration was almost a “private monopoly of his family.” Out his fourteen sons, eight of them were governor of various different provinces, including the Whole of Western Iran, Georgia, Iraq and the greater part of what is now Turkey. Immense amount of money was at his disposal for expenditure on both public and private enterprises. In many places including Tabriz, he built suburbs with magnificent mosques, madrasas, and hospitals. The suburb in Tabriz he named after himself as the Rab’-i Rashid. Around 1312 his colleague Sa’d al Din was disgraced and sentenced to death, with this instance Rashid also was put under scrutiny and was put in danger of the facing the same fate as his friend. Around the time of his friend’s death, a letter was discovered purporting to be written by Rashid himself, where he urges his correspondent, his Jewish protege of one of the Mongol emirs, to administer poison to the Il-Khan. Fortunately he was able to prove that, it was never written by him and escapes the death penalty. However his problems were just beginning, as he started having issues with his new colleague Taj al-Din Ali Shah. Their feud led to Il-Khan dividing his empire into two administrative spheres, where Rashid was responsible for the Central and Southern Iran, while Ali Shah was placed in charge of North-western Iran, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Despite having different administrations to head, their antagonism towards each other only grew. He was attacked once again by Ali Shah and his party was accused of having poisoning Il-Khan. According to many Mamluk sources, Rashid admitted going against the advice of many other physicians and prescribed a purgative for his disorder, a disorder with the symptoms of which do appear to have been consistent with metallic poisoning. With his own admission he was found guilty and was cruelly put to death. This also surprising brings up the question of if he did indeed also plot to kill Il-Khan the first time he was accused of this crime.

Under the Ilkanate empire he wrote the book Jami’ al-Tawarikh which translates to “Compendium of Chronicles” and it was commissioned to write by Ghazan, the emperor at the time. It was meant to be about the Mongols and their dynasty, but gradually expanded to include all of history from the time of Adam to Rashid’s time. His history covered a vast field even outside the Muslim world. Volumes I and II have survived till today and hold a lot of significance historiographically due to Rashid’s details into the Ilkanate empire. Volume I of his book is mainly about the history of the Turkish and Mongolian tribes, which included their tribal legends, genealogies, myths and the history of the Mongol conquests starting with Genghis Khan till the end of his reign. The first volume also went onto describe all the other Mongol reigns until the Reign of Ghazan. His second volume which was commissioned by Ghazan’s successor  Oljeitu consisted mostly of the history of the people that the Mongols had or with whom they had alliances. The volume was a compiling of the general history of all the Eurasian people, beginning with Adam and the patriarchs, recounting the history of the pre-Islamic kings of Persia. It went onto describe Muhammad and the Caliphate down to its extinction by the Mongols around 1258. Volume II is referred to and in fact the first universal history. It was the very first time someone attempted a faithful account of the history of the world.  His main source for this volume was Ata- Malik Juvayani, who was another major Mongol historian of the time, and Rashid references Juvayani’s historical work throughout his book. 

The third volume with the title Suwar al Aqalim is a mystery, it is either believed to have been lost or that Rashid never got to finish it. It supposedly was a geographic compendium that not only consisted of geographical and topographical description of the globe as it was then known, but also an account of the system of highways in Mongol empire with mention of the milestones erected at imperial command, including a list of postal stages. A fourth volume, which was technically volume III of the second version, bearing the title Shu’abi-i Panjgana has survived in a unique manuscript, which was discovered by a Professor in 1927 in the Topaki Sarayi Library in Istanbul. It was a book of genealogies of the ruling houses of five nations, which were the Arabs, Jews, Mongols, Franks and Chinese.

Despite the incompleteness of all the volumes, the book was and is even today the most important historiographically legacy of its documentation of the cultural mixing and the dynamism that continued the greatness of the Persian and the Ottoman empires. Many aspects of these great empires were eventually transmitted to Europe and greatly influenced the Renaissance. Rashid al-din was technically the first historian to write down the history of the world, but unfortunately him and his work have gotten lots in time, and haven't gotten the prominence they deserve, but they are the best resources that help historians get a better idea of Mongolian empire and the vast alliances and reigns that were significant in the middle east during this time.

Sources

Boyle, John Andrew. “Rash'd Al-Din: The First World Historian." Iran 9 (1971): 19-26. JSTOR. Web. 23 April. 2017.

Robinson, B. W. "Rashid Al-Din's World History: The Significance of the Miniatures." Cambridge University Press, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2017. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25211170>.

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "Rashid Al-Din." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 17 Aug. 2012. Web. 23 Apr. 2017.

Rashid Al-Din : Google Images

The Suburb Rashid built outside of Tabriz : Google Images 

Statue of Rashid in Iran: "Rashid-al-Din Hamadani." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Apr. 2017. Web. 23 Apr. 2017. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid-al-Din_Hamadani>.

Exhibition of his book and Illustrations/paintings from book: "The World History of Rashid Al-Din, 1314. A Masterpiece of Islamic Painting." Library & University Collections. N.p., 18 July 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2017. <http://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/blog/2014/07/14/the-world-history-of-rashid-al-din-1314-a-masterpiece-of-islamic-painting/>.

The Top 4 are illustrations from the his Book Jami' al-Tawarik:
 "Rashad Al-Din." The University of Edinburgh. N.p., 20 Aug. 2015. Web. 24 Apr. 2017. <http://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/islamic-middle-eastern/news-events/visual-world-persian-culture/rashad-al-din>.

also Google Images.