The Mongol invasion and destruction of Baghdad in 1258 constitutes not only one of the greatest catastrophes in the collective memory of Muslims, but also represents a paramount turning point in the Islamic history. Therefore, the introduction of an excerpt of a few pages length that appeared in some manuscripts of Juvayni’s Persian Tarikh-i Jehan Gusha, describing the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols, allegedly attributed to the famous Isma‘ili-Shi‘ite philosopher, mathematician and astronomer Nasir al-din Tusi, aroused considerable interest among the scholars. Motivating this interest was the lack of eye-witness accounts to this pivotal event in Muslim collective memory and history. Hulagu Khan’s official historian Juvaini’s Jehan Gusha covers the events until 1257, just before the conquest of the ‘Abbasid capital. Other contemporary works of historians are clearly not eye-witness, but rather later written accounts relying on other sources. Thus, a primary source of paramount importance on the invasion of Baghdad was to emerge via the eye-witness account of al-Tusi. Through the studies, translations and meticulous interpretive analyses of Boyle and Wickens in the 1960s, this primary source was introduced to academic scholarship. However, a close reading of the excerpt casts doubt on its authenticity. Most evidently, the account seems to refer to the Nizari Isma‘ilis as heretics. Many historical details are omitted in the account; evidently, an effort has been made to shape the collective memory relating to the fall of Baghdad via the authority of al-Tusi. This paper aims to re-evaluate the authenticity and the general historical features of the account attributed to al-Tusi through a critical interpretive approach.

The Jami' al-Tavarikh of Rashid al-Din (d. 1318) was part of the Mongol Ilkhans’ effort to justify themselves as rulers in the Middle East. In the spiritual and political vacuum left by the end of the caliphate and under pressure from indigenous Iranian administrative elites to adopt local cultural signifiers, the Ilkhans embraced both Islamic and Iranian cultural traditions in their effort to consolidate the tenuous hold of a conquest dynasty. The dynastic history that Rashid al-Din compiled for his Mongol patrons cleverly integrates the family of Genghis Khan into the historiography of the Middle East. His world history similarly serves as a site of dynastic and imperial propaganda, frequently expressed through geographic and ethnographic notes about the regions of Western Asia. This paper examines one section of Rashid al-Din’s world history to show how he deploys his own scientific interests to explain the world in support of his patrons' political claims. Rashid al-Din’s pre-Islamic history has never been edited or translated because of circumstances surrounding its preservation. However, it provides the context for some of Rashid al-Din’s most creative use of the historical record. This paper begins with a discussion of the various impulses that inspired historical writing in the Islamic world to the time of Rashid al-Din. It then offers several examples from Rashid al-Din’s pre-Islamic history to show how his work was not just a stale rehearsal of previous accounts, but a reimagination of the past with the aim of justifying the Ilkhans' place in the world. Rashid al-Din’s pre-Islamic history sheds light on contemporary domestic and foreign policy concerns of the Ilkhanid state and helps explain why its author’s historical model quickly became obsolete.

Decline paradigms have long dominated the modern historiography of the pre-modern Middle East. In particular, the alleged decadence of the Abbasid caliphate after its loss of military power in the middle of the 10th-century has been seen as an index of the “decline” of Islamic civilization generally. This judgment, however, has usually been taken without much actual reference to the later history of the Abbasids. A thorough examination of the primary sources of medieval Islamic history – Arabic chronicles – reveals a much more nuanced picture of the later caliphate. Each chronicler was in some way connected to a ruling court, and their perspectives vary accordingly. An overemphasis on chroniclers connected to the non-caliphal courts, such as the Buyids (e.g., Miskawayh) and the Salj?qs (e.g., Ibn al-Ath?r), has contributed to the perception of the caliphate as an institution held hostage by outside powers, because those writers were focused mainly on the dynasties that patronized them. A closer reading of all such chronicles reveals that the caliphs’ authority allowed them to bestow titles upon the rulers whom they chose, and amirs and sultans were only legitimate when the caliphs had their names recited in the Friday khut?ba. The caliphs also exercised practical power, especially with the weakening of the Buyid amirate after 1000 C.E. With the caliph al-Q?dir (d. 1030), the Abbasids controlled judgeships, intervened in urban politics and led the struggle for religious orthodoxy. Their increasing power is especially apparent in the works of those writers connected to the caliphate, such as Ibn al-Jawz? (d. 1201) and Hil?l al-??bi’ (d. 1056). The expansion of the caliphs’ wealth and power was not truly interrupted by the coming of the Salj?qs to Baghdad in 1055, and when the Salj?q sultanate fragmented a century later, the caliphs re-emerged as military leaders. In this period, the caliphs co-existed and shared power with various sultans and amirs. However, even in the eyes of the most rigorously orthodox, including the H?anbal? scholar Ibn al-Jawz?, mere co-existence with such “secular” powers did not make a travesty of Islamic government, nor did it mean the impotence of the caliphate. In the later Abbasid period, legitimate Islamic government did not imply caliphal autocracy, and the co-existence of multiple Muslim rulers was not perceived as a cause of “decline.” The Islamic caliphate is still invoked as a concept today, but usually without an understanding of its flexibility in the Abbasid era.

Many sections of Abu Zakariyya al-Azdi’s Tarikh al-Mawsil show the significance of kinship ties and tribal identity in northern Iraq during the early 9th century. A common interpretation of this is that, with the weakening of the state during and after the Fourth Fitna, political contests were increasingly fought at the local level, with the side often apparently determined by competing tribal identities which had carried over from at least the garrison towns of southern Iraq. Carefully noting the patterns of different kinship networks over time within the general political, social, and economic environment, however, reveals that the caliphate had been and continued to be a crucial element shaping the patterns of power and influence within and among kinship networks even as the tribesmen adapted to that element based on their own interests. This paper will focus on three episodes and show the ways in which tribalism in and around early 9th century Mosul was influenced by the caliphate. One of these is the feud between al-Azd and Hamdan, which led to the latter’s exile from Mosul. Evidence from both al-Azdi and Ibn Hawqal indicates that caliphal land grants and formal state offices were crucial to the development of that conflict. The second is the relationship between al-Sayyid b. Anas, a Mosul office-holder, and his bother-in-law, Zurayq b. Ali. The pattern of their cooperation and subsequent conflict highlights the ways in which kinship networks co-existed with the state, leading to distinct forms of state power both within urban Mosul and in mountainous areas beyond its formal domain. The third is the account of a prominent Mosul family whose roots are traced to pre-Islamic Arabia. Viewed alongside parallel accounts in other sources, this narrative shows the manner in which the pre-Islamic Arabian past was marshaled to serve the status claims of an urban Islamic elite, as well as the ways in which that past was adapted to serve that end. Beyond the discussion of Mosul itself, this is intended to make two larger points. The first is that current models of empire can prove useful in explaining the Abbasid caliphate and the durability of Arabo-Islamic culture. The second is that, as social scientists increasingly argue, the state is a social relation, the actual power of which is frequently distributed among a range of networked elites.