Ilkhanid Capital Cities: Transcultural Interactions

Ilkhanid Capital Cities studies the capital cities founded by the Mongol Ilkhans in Iran during the Ilkhanid period (1256–1335). It primarily focuses on two major cities in the northwest of Iran, Ghazaniyya and Sultaniyya, and examines how the court-sponsored urban projects in these two cities reflected the interactions between Perso-Islamic sedentary concepts and Mongolian nomadic traditions. Questioning the earlier reductive scholarly framework that positioned the Mongols as uncultured barbarians, this study stresses the active role of the Mongol elite not only as agents, but also cultural donors in the Perso-Mongol cultural zeitgeist of late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Iran. It provides a fuller and more convincing picture of the Ilkhanid city, which is characterized by a hybrid quality injected not only into the physical structure of the city, but also into the taste, motivations and world views of its patrons.