This short essay serves as an introduction to a collection of studies for Medieval Worlds 22, entitled The Mongols’ Baghdad: Knowledge Transmission through Manuscript Cultures before and after the Conquest. The contributions to this volume challenge the long-standing narrative of Baghdad’s cultural and intellectual decline following the Mongol conquest of 1258. In this introduction, we provide a brief contextual overview of Baghdad prior to the Mongol arrival, emphasizing its prominent role as the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate and as a major centre of political authority, intellectual activity, and commercial exchange, despite its significant political decline by the 13th century. Although Hülegü’s conquest of the city in 1258 was remembered in Arabic historiography as a profound civilizational rupture, this introduction argues that Baghdad, under Ilkhanid rule (1258-1335), underwent a gradual reconfiguration and remarkable recovery of its political, intellectual, and institutional life. We examine some of the documented efforts to reconstruct the city during the Mongol period, the intellectual climate fostered by the Mongols’ multi-religious and pluralistic outlook, and how this environment shifted following the conversion to Islam of Ghāzān in 1295. Ultimately, this essay seeks to present the various perspectives offered by our contributors and to establish the historical context that shaped the political, intellectual, and cultural milieu of Baghdad under Mongol rule.

Schlagworte: Baghdad, Ilkhanate, manuscript cultures, transmission of knowledge, Mongol Empire

This article explores the presence of Persian literary activity in Baghdad under Mongol rule. It surveys surviving Persian manuscripts produced in Baghdad before, during, and after the Mongol conquest, highlighting their diversity in literary genre, authorship and scribal habits present in these codices. While some evidence points to isolated instances of Persian manuscript production before the conquest, the study shows that Persian literary activity significantly increased under Ilkhanid rule. The article emphasises the role of Mongol patronage and the integration of Persian-speaking elites into Baghdad’s administration as key factors in this shift. It also considers the role of institutions such as madrasas in sustaining manuscript production in Persian alongside Arabic. Despite the profound disruption caused by the conquest, the manuscript record suggests that Baghdad’s intellectual life recovered and was reshaped within the broader cultural and political networks of the Mongol Empire. Ultimately, the article argues that while Arabic remained the dominant scholarly language, Persian emerged as a flourishing medium of literary and intellectual expression, reflecting the city’s incorporation into an increasingly Persianate cultural sphere under Mongol rule.

Schlagworte: manuscript production, scribal practice, Persian literature, Patronage, Mongol rule, Baghdad, 13th-century Iran

Rashīd al-Dīn (d. 1318) left very specific instruction for how his scholarly works, including the historical compendium, the Collected Histories (Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh), were to be reproduced and distributed. However, these plans were disrupted by his fall from grace and execution. Several partial manuscripts of the Collected Histories have survived from Rashīd al-Dīn’s lifetime, but they do not match his instructions. This suggests that additional editorial processes shaped the early production of the text. This article compares the earliest manuscripts of the Collected Histories and the evidence surrounding Rashīd al-Dīn’s book production efforts to better understand the origins of the main manuscripts used in modern editions of his history of the Mongols. This is made possible by the recent reemergence of a previously unstudied manuscript that helps fill in the lacunae of its source manuscript. This new manuscript, part of the collection of the Aga Khan, has never been used in any edition of Rashīd al-Dīn’s history of the Mongols, but it offers great promise in reconstructing the early form of the work. Using that manuscript, this article presents the hypothesis that a group of scholars edited the Collected Histories at a scriptorium in Baghdad in the second decade of the fourteenth century. This may in turn help explain the appearance of certain seemingly contradictory textual additions made to the Collected Histories during the last years of Rashīd al-Dīn’s lifetime.

Schlagworte: Rashīd al-Dīn, ghāzāniyya, Baghdad, manuscript production, Mongol history, Persian historiography, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh

This article presents Baghdad as a site of Sunni hadith scholarship, and demonstrates its con-tinuity under Mongol-Ilkhanid rule, both in known institutions such as the Mustanṣiriyya madrasa or the Caliphal Mosque, as well as in private homes. This ongoing hadith scholar-ship is exemplified by the muḥaddith Sirāj al-Dīn ʿUmar b. ʿAlī al-Qazwīnī (d. 750 AH/1349 CE in Baghdad) and his transmission and teaching of al-Baghawī’s (d. 516/1122) post- canonical hadith collection Maṣābīḥ al-sunna. To this end, the article analyses and compares two sources: first, al-Qazwīnī’s Mashyakha, i.e., his personal collection of books studied and the authoritative lines of transmission (riwāyāt) for them; and second, audition and reading certificates (samāʿāt, qirāʾāt) preserved in two Mongol-era manuscripts with the Maṣābīḥ al-sunna as the main text. Both sources illustrate al-Qazwīnī’s networks within Baghdad, but also with scholars from Mamluk Damascus, a network that included mainly Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī scholars, and provides evidence for the central role of the two Sufi figures ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Suhrawardī (d. 563/1168) and his nephew ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234) for the transmission of al-Baghawī’s works from Khurasan to Baghdad. While both sources provide references to the networks, the audition and reading certificates bring to life hadith sessions in which two people recite the Maṣābīḥ al-sunna with the aforementioned manu-scripts in front of al-Qazwīnī while he compares the text with his own private manuscript, thus allowing us to experience the teaching of hadith in Mongol Baghdad.

Schlagworte: Baghdad, Mongol, al-Qazwīnī, hadith, mashyakha, samāʿ, qirāʾa, riwāyāt

This article examines a renowned work of Ḥanafī jurisprudence (fiqh), composed in 7th/13thcentury Iraq, in light of the development of the Ḥanafī school of law (madhhab) from the pre-Mongol through the Mongol era. In the context of the profound and wide-ranging historical transformations that affected the central and eastern Islamic lands in the Mongol period, the paper will address questions relating to the development of the Ḥanafī madhhab in the transition from the “classical” to the “post-classical” period, using ʿAbd Allāh b. Maḥmūd al-Buldajī al-Mawṣilī’s (d. 683/1284) al-Mukhtār li-l-fatwā as an anchor, rooted in Mongol Baghdad, to look both forwards and backwards.

Schlagworte: Ḥanafī fiqh, primers (mutūn), epitomes (mukhtaṣarāt), commentaries (shurūḥ), Iraq, Mosul, Baghdad, Mongols, manuscripts, al-Mawṣilī, Transoxania, Khurasan

Thābit ibn Qurra (d. 901 CE) was one of the notable scholars studying Greek science and philosophy in the early Abbasid period. He is especially known for his translations of important Greek scientific works. He established a family in Baghdad (the so-called “Ṣābiʾ family”), and the members of this family survived as court scholars, among whom was Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Hilāl al-Ṣābī (d. 994), a great-grandson of Thābit, who became the head secretary of the Buyid court. Most remarkable is the existence of an Arabic manuscript containing three works composed by Thābit, which Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm copied with recourse to an exemplar in Thābit’s handwriting: Istanbul, Köprülü MS 948. Moreover, Ibn al-Qiftī’s Taʾrīkh al-ḥukamāʾcited a list of Thābit’s works composed by Abū ʿAlī al-Muḥassin (d. 1010), a son of Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm. These facts suggest that this family, descended from Thābit, authorised his works by keeping his autograph exemplars and producing copies of his authentic works. In this article, by examining the contents of al-Muḥassin’s catalogue of Thābit’s works, the colophons of Köprülü MS 948 copied by Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm, and the correspondence concerning Apollonius’ mathematical works between Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm and al-Kūhī, I elucidate how the members of this family managed the works of its founder Thābit, protecting his reputation as an authority on Greek science and philosophy by controlling the copying of his works, and how they struggled to maintain their high position at the court by using Thābit’s legacy.

Schlagworte: Thābit ibn Qurra, Ibn al-Qiftī’s Taʾrīkh al-ḥukamāʾ, Köprülü (Istanbul) MS 948, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Hilāl al-Ṣābī, al-Kūhī

Compared to previous nomadic incursions from the Eurasian Steppes into western Islamic lands, the Mongol invasions that conquered Transoxiana and Iran are considered the largest. The speed and extent of the three waves of Mongol invasions surprised the rulers of West Asia and the Abbasid Caliphate. The Mongol invasions brought deep, long-term changes to Islamic political ideology and legitimacy, while also causing immediate cultural destruction in Iran and the broader Islamic world. The raiders’ destruction of libraries exemplifies their vengeful actions after conquering cities. Besides accounts from primary sources, manuscript evidence confirms the destruction of books and libraries during this crisis. This article aims to demonstrate that marginal notes in manuscript No. 16388 from the Marʿashī Library in Qum provide evidence of this destruction. The notes contain direct information about the Mongol invasion of Baghdad and the damage suffered by the library of the last Abbasid caliph. Beyond their political significance, these marginal notes also reveal how scientific and educational use of surviving manuscripts persisted, indicating that although the Mongol invasion disrupted scientific institutions, the scientific traditions of schools and daily life continued after the catastrophe.

Schlagworte: Marʿashī manuscript No. 16388, ʿAbd Allāh al-Qazwīnī, Muḥammad ibn Suleymān, Kitāb al-Sunan, Ibn Mājah, al-Mustaʿṣim bi-’llāh, Mongols, Baghdad

In this article we scrutinize the process of composition of the Tārīkh-i Jahāngushā through a closer look at the manuscript corpus as well as clues from the text to shed some light on the process of its composition and early canonization, as well as the career of ʿAṭā Malik Juwaynī (1226-1283), which is intertwined with it. To that end, a number of textual clues, stylistic observations, and other manuscript evidence is utilized to argue that despite its early can-onization and wide acceptance in an assumed “final” form, the text of Tārīkh-i Jahāngushā suffers from numerous inner inconsistencies and is at least in parts of multiple authorship. We further make a case for it to have assumed its “final” form in Baghdad.

Schlagworte: Juwaynī, Ṭūsī, Baghdad, manuscripts, Ilkhanid, Qazvini

While the historical accounts of the immediate aftermath of the sacking of Baghdad in 1258 CE indicate that some buildings survived or were restored, the overwhelming impression is of a city in ruins. Recently, however, the cataclysmic interpretation of the Mongol conquest has been questioned both in terms of the physical destruction and its effects on cultural life. This prompts questions of how the urban infrastructure was restored and to what extent the city was remodelled to reflect the new political and religious reality. Although the exact extent of the destruction is not clear, modern authors agree that the sacking of Baghdad reduced its status from that of a metropolitan capital to a provincial city. There is, however, some evidence that the city continued to be of considerable cultural importance; for example, many of the library collections survived the conquest. However, within the new political structure, the city was separated from its Arabic cultural network and instead incorporated within a predominantly Persian environment. This paper will assess if and how this transition is reflected in the built environment. In the absence of direct archaeological evidence, this paper uses alternative sources such as historical records and surviving medieval buildings to reconstruct evidence for the destruction but also the preservation of architectural structures, such as the caliph’s palace.

Schlagworte: sacking of Baghdad 1258 CE, Archaeology, architectural evidence, urban infrastructure

This paper examines a set of marginal annotations encountered in Ilkhanid manuscripts of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s (d. 672/1274) Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī. This recension of Claudius Ptolemy’s prominent astronomical compendium, the Almagest, was composed while al-Ṭūsī resided at the Ismāʿīlī citadel of Alamūt and later studied at the Marāgha observatory under Mongol patronage; over time, it became the principal medium through which the Almagest was studied in the eastern Islamicate world, effectively replacing the uncommented base text. Today, the Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī survives in more than 170 Arabic manuscripts, as well as in Persian and Sanskrit translations, and through a rich body of summaries and super-commentaries. In this paper I wish to offer some observations on the kind and purpose of marginal annotations that were already present in copies of the Taḥrīr during al-Ṭūsī’s lifetime. I focus this analysis on the marginalia to Books I and II as they are transmitted through Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Rabīʿ al-Zarkashī, the scribe of the multiple-text manuscript Tehran, Sipahsālār, 4727, a copy finished on 21 Rajab 671 (11 February 1273). A transcription of these annotations, along with comparative references indicating their presence or absence in other manuscripts, is provided in the appendix.

Schlagworte: Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī, Ptolemy’s Almagest, Marginalia, Ilkhanid Persia, manuscript culture, knowledge transmission, astral sciences, textual reception, Arabic scientific tradition