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Paper short abstract:

This presentation examines and reconstructs the physical space of mausoleum-centered endowed cities built by Mongol Khans and their courtiers to explore the public performance of sacred kingship and the crafting of a new body politic in Mongol Iran.

Paper long abstract:

My work explores charitable complexes built by Mongol Khans to historicize sacred kingship in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century Iran. As new converts to Islam, the Mongol Khans deployed divine symbols and rituals to lay claim on their ancestral lineage and the inherited mantel of the Islamic Caliphate. I argue that this project was not limited to the discursive realm but was embodied in the charitable cities the Khans endowed. These mausoleum-centered endowed charitable city-cum-sovereign were the material representations of the Khan’s sacred kingship, the legacy of which was memorialized by subsequent rulers. Inspired by Buddhist temples and Sufi shrines dotting the landscape of the greater Mongol empire, endowed charitable cities came to define sovereign piety and authority and provide a city model that linked imperial legitimacy to the circulation of goods, water, knowledge and people around the sacred body of the Khan. I examine and reconstruct the physical space of mausoleum-centered cities from their extant endowment deeds, ruins and remains to explore the public performance of conversion, sacred kingship, and the crafting of a new body politic. In specific, I explore endowed charitable cites built in or around Tabriz in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. I argue that these building projects, referred to as ‘gateways of charity,’ were the material representation of Mongol Islam that illuminated the confessional politics of shrine-centered kingship popularized in this period.