Jonathan Brack and Stefan Kamola
Synopsis:
Rashid al-Din, known as the “Doctor from Hamadan,” was one of the most prominent personalities of the period of Mongol rule in Iran, from the mid-thirteenth through the early fourteenth century. In addition to his political responsibilities as the advisor and minister to a generation of Mongol rulers, he produced scholarly works in genres as diverse as history, theology, medicine, and agronomy. In this talk, we introduce Rashid al-Din’s life and diverse works, including his famous Jami‘ al-Tawarikh (Compendium of Chronicles). These texts teach us not only about the history of the Mongol Empire and its scion branch in the Islamic world, but also about a remarkable intellectual climate that brought together ideas from across Eurasia.
Selected References:
Atwood, Christopher. “Rashīd al-Dīn’s Ghazanid Chronicle and its Mongolian Sources.” In New Approaches to Ilkhanid History, edited by Timothy May, Dashdondog Bayarsaikhan, and Christopher Atwood, 53–121. Leiden: Brill, 2021. 
Blair, Sheila. A Compendium of Chronicles: Rashid al-Din’s Illustrated History of the World. London: Nour Foundation with Oxford University Press, 1995.
Brack, Jonathan. An Afterlife for the Khan: Muslims, Buddhists, and Sacred Kingship in Mongol Iran and Eurasia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2023.
Carboni, Stefano, and Linda Komaroff. The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256–1353. New York City: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002.
Kamola, Stefan. Making Mongol History: Rashid al-Din and the Jami‘ al-Tawarikh. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
Kamola, Stefan. “History and Legend in the Jāmiʿ al-Tawārikh: Abraham, Alexander, and Oghuz Khan.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 25/4 (2015): 555–577.
Lo, Vivienne, and Wang Yidan. “Chasing the Vermillion Bird: Late-Medieval Alchemical Transformations in the Treasure Book of Ilkhan on Chinese Science and Techniques.” In Imagining Chinese Medicine, edited by Vivienne Lo et al, 291–304. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
Citation:
Jonathan Brack and Stefan Kamola, “Rashid al-Din and the Compendium of Chronicles,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 8 January 2026.
Jonathan Brack (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2016) is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Northwestern University. His first book, entitled An Afterlife for the Khan: Muslims, Buddhists, and Sacred Kingship in Mongol Iran and Eurasia (University of California Press, 2023), explores Rashid al-Din’s intellectual world, religious debates with Buddhism, and conceptions of Mongol sacred kingship. Brack has also published on Rashid al-Din’s Persian translation of Chinese medicine. His current project examines Judaism, Jews, and Jewish converts to Islam in Mongol Iran, including Rashid al-Din’s engagement with Jewish history and the Torah.
Stefan Kamola (Ph.D., University of Washington, 2013) has taught at Princeton University and Eastern Connecticut State University and is currently a research fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies in Vienna. His first book, entitled Making Mongol History: Rashid al-Din and the Jami‘ al-Tawarikh (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), focuses on the historical works of Rashid al-Din and their reception across six centuries of manuscript transmission. His current work continues to explore the intellectual history of Mongol Iran, including the development of popular astrology.