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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iran
Index
After the death of Malik Shah in 1092, Iran once again reverted
to petty dynasties. During this time, Genghis (Chinggis) Khan
brought together a number of Mongol tribes and led them on a
devastating sweep through China. Then, in 1219, he turned his
700,000 forces west and quickly devastated Bukhara, Samarkand,
Balkh, Merv, and Neyshabur. Before his death in 1227, he had
reached western Azarbaijan, pillaging and burning cities along the
way.
The Mongol invasion was disastrous to the Iranians. Destruction
of qanat irrigation systems destroyed the pattern of
relatively continuous settlement, producing numerous isolated oasis
cities in a land where they had previously been rare
(see Water
, ch. 3). A large number of people, particularly males, were killed;
between 1220 and 1258, the population of Iran dropped drastically.
Mongol rulers who followed Genghis Khan did little to improve
Iran's situation. Genghis's grandson, Hulagu Khan, turned to
foreign conquest, seizing Baghdad in 1258 and killing the last
Abbasid caliph. He was stopped by the Mamluk forces of Egypt at Ain
Jalut in Palestine. Afterward he returned to Iran and spent the
rest of his life in Azarbaijan.
A later Mongol ruler, Ghazan Khan (1295-1304), and his famous
Iranian vizier, Rashid ad Din, brought Iran a partial and brief
economic revival. The Mongols lowered taxes for artisans,
encouraged agriculture, rebuilt and extended irrigation works, and
improved the safety of the trade routes. As a result, commerce
increased dramatically. Items from India, China, and Iran passed
easily across the Asian steppes, and these contacts culturally
enriched Iran. For example, Iranians developed a new style of
painting based on a unique fusion of solid, two-dimensional
Mesopotamian painting with the feathery, light brush strokes and
other motifs characteristic of China. After Ghazan's nephew, Abu
Said, died in 1335, however, Iran again lapsed into petty
dynasties--the Salghurid, Muzaffarid, Inju, and Jalayirid--under
Mongol commanders, old Seljuk retainers, and regional chiefs.
Tamerlane, variously described as of Mongol or Turkic origin,
was the next ruler to achieve emperor status. He conquered
Transoxiana proper and by 1381 established himself as sovereign. He
did not have the huge forces of earlier Mongol leaders, so his
conquests were slower and less savage than those of Genghis Khan or
Hulagu Khan. Nevertheless, Shiraz and Esfahan were virtually
leveled. Tamerlane's regime was characterized by its inclusion of
Iranians in administrative roles and its promotion of architecture
and poetry. His empire disintegrated rapidly after his death in
1405, however, and Mongol tribes, Uzbeks, and Bayundur Turkomans
ruled roughly the area of present-day Iran until the rise of the
Safavid dynasty, the first native Iranian dynasty in almost 1,000
years.
Data as of December 1987
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