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University of California Press

About the Book

In the Mongol Empire, the interfaith court provided a contested arena for a performance of the Mongol ruler’s sacred kingship, and the debate was fiercely ideological and religious. At the court of the newly established Ilkhanate, Muslim administrators, Buddhist monks, and Christian clergy all attempted to sway their imperial overlords, arguing fiercely over the proper role of the king and his government, with momentous and far-reaching consequences.
 
Focusing on the famous but understudied figure of the grand vizier Rashid al-Din, a Persian Jew who converted to Islam, Jonathan Z. Brack explores the myriad ways Rashid al-Din and his fellow courtiers investigated, reformulated, and transformed long-standing ideas of authority and power. Out of this intellectual ferment of accommodation, resistance, and experimentation, they developed a completely new understanding of sacred kingship. This new ideal, and the political theology it subtends, would go on to become a central justification in imperial projects across Eurasia in the centuries that followed. An Afterlife for the Khan offers a powerful cultural and intellectual history of this pivotal moment for Islam and empire in the Middle East and Asia.

About the Author

Jonathan Z. Brack is Lecturer in the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is coeditor of the book Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia: Generals, Merchants, and Intellectuals.

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations 
Acknowledgments 
Note on Usage and Transliteration 

Introduction 

1. Indian Prophet or Father of Arabian Paganism? The Buddha and the Buddhists in the 
    History of India
    
2. Perfect Souls, Imperfect Bodies: Refuting Reincarnation at the Mongol Court

3. Converting Fortune: From Buddhist Cakravartins to Lords of Auspicious Conjunction 
   
4. King of Kalam: Öljeitü’s Theological Domestication 

5. From Ancestor Worship to Shrine-Centered Kingship: Ilkhanid Confessional Politics 
    and the Debate over Shrine Visitation
   
Epilogue: Kingship and the Court Debate after the Mongols 

Notes
References
Index 
 

Reviews

“This is undoubtedly a work of major importance. Sure to form the indispensable basis for future research, whether on the conversion of the Mongols or even on conversion more generally, Brack’s persuasive work lies at the cutting edge of current scholarship on the accommodation of the Mongols of the faiths of those they ruled.”—Peter Jackson, author of The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion
 
Afterlife for the Khan is a scholarly work of the first importance that makes a major contribution to our understanding of Islam and Muslim kingship in the post-caliphal era. It is especially commendable for its interdisciplinarity. Brack reads deeply across Islamic and Inner Asian history, philosophy, art history, Sufism, and Buddhism.”—A. Azfar Moin, author of The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam