Apart from the intriguing statement of Ibn Bazzāz (d. 794/1391), that Hülegü embraced Islam together with Berke, Khan of the Golden Horde (r. 654–65/1257-67), by Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Muḥaqqiq al-Tirmidhī, the teacher of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī,Footnote 2 we have two fuller and earlier references to the first Ilkhan's alleged conversion. The simpler one, ascribed to the Baghdadi historian al-Kāzarūnī (d. 697/1298) and appearing in Hülegü’s biography in various Mamluk biographical dictionaries from the mid-seventh/fourteenth century onwards, ascribes the conversion to the request of a Georgian princess.Footnote 3 The second one, which is a fully-fledged conversion story, appears in Mukhtaṣar akhbār al-khulafā’ (“Abridgement of the history of [the Abbasid] Caliphs”), ascribed to Ibn al-Sā‛ī (d. 674/1276), the notable Baghdadi historian, but probably not written by him (see below). A similar version appears in Tiryāq al-muḥibbīn fī sīrat sulṭān al-‛ārifīn Aḥmad Ibn al-Rifā‛ī by Taqī al-Dīn ‛Abd al-Raḥmān al-Wāsiṭī (d. 744/1343-4), a biography of the founder of the Rifā‛iyya order, the members of which allegedly converted Hülegü. I will deal with the two cases separately before trying to reach further conclusions about the functions of these conversion stories.
The Georgian princess's request: The Mamluk Version
This naïve story is ascribed to al-Ẓahīr b. al-Kāzarūnī (d. 697/1298), a Baghdadi historian who wrote a history of the Caliphate and took part in Ilkhanid administration.Footnote 4 He ascribed the story to al-Najm Aḥmad b. al-Bawwāb, the illuminator (naqqāsh), a resident of Marāgha. The latter was a polymath, well-versed in astronomy, mathematics and engineering, who was employed at the Marāgha observatory, had access to Hülegü, and was familiar with the figures mentioned in the story.Footnote 5 The translation below follows al-Dhahabī, whose version seems to have been the source of the other compilers:
al-Najm Aḥmad b. al-Bawwāb the illuminator, the inhabitant of Maragha, told me: Hülegü wanted to marry the daughter of the king of the Georgians [malik al-Kurj]. She said: Only if you will convert to Islam (ḥattā tuslimu). He said: Tell me what I shall say. They presented him the two testimonies (al-shahādatayn) and he acknowledged them, and the Khwājā Naṣīr al-ṬūsīFootnote 6 and Fakhr al-Dīn the astronomerFootnote 7 were his witnesses for that. When she heard of that, she agreed [to marry him]. The qāḍī Fakhr al-Dīn al-KhilāṭīFootnote 8 came [to perform the ceremony]. al-Naṣīr [al-Ṭūsī] vouched for her [the princess] and al-Fakhr the astronomer [vouched] for the sultan. They signed the [marriage] contract in the name of Tāmār Khātūn,Footnote 9 daughter of king David, son of Īwānī, for the sum of 30,000 dinars. Said Ibn al-Bawwāb: I wrote the letter on a white satin fabric.Footnote 10
In the other sources, the story ends here but al-Dhahabī adds:
And I wondered at his [i.e. Hülegü’s] conversion to Islam. I said [i.e. al-Dhahabī]: If this is true, then perhaps he said [the two testimonies] with his mouth, due to his lack of attachment to [any] religion, and Islam did not enter his heart—and God knows best.Footnote 11
Indeed, earlier al-Dhahabī mentions that “in the Mongol manner [Hülegü] was not attached to any religion, although his wife was a Christian”,Footnote 12 there referring probably to Hülegü’s famous wife, Doquz Khāṭūn, and not to the Georgian princess.Footnote 13 Such a Georgian wife is not mentioned among Hülegü’s wives as described by Rashīd al-Dīn or in the Timurid Mu‛īzz al-Ansāb.Footnote 14 The Georgian chronicle also does not mention it; thus no wonder that the Mamluk sources doubt the story. The logic behind it is in any case a bit blurred: why should a Christian princess be interested in Hülegü’s Islamisation? More often the Georgians tried to enforce the Christianisation of those who married their daughters.Footnote 15 The story does not present Hülegü in a favourable light: his conversion is described as lip service motivated by his desire to marry the Christian princess. The people mentioned—all of them well known figures from the Marāgha observatory—indeed knew each other, and Ibn al-Bawwāb, and were close to Hülegü. In other words, the anecdote could be historical, although it is not mentioned in the astronomers’ biographies.Footnote 16 The story might have been invented to slander these astronomers, who were willing to convert Hülegü despite his lack of faith: at least Fakhr al-Dīn al-Khilāṭī is described by al-Ṣafadī—again citing al-Kāzarūnī—as someone who was ignorant of Islam (jahala) and drank wine.Footnote 17 Yet, this is hardly a satisfying explanation. In general the story seems to belong more to the realm of adab (belles-lettres) and literary topoi than to the realm of history.
The Fire Ordeal: The Ilkhanid Version [?]
The second conversion story is more elaborated. Its most extensive version appears at the end of Ibn al-Sā‛ī’s Mukhtaṣar akhbār al-khulafā’. Ibn al-Sā‛ī (d. 674/1276) was a famous Baghdadi historian, and a highly prolific writer, who was active under both the Abbasids and the Ilkhanids. He was the librarian of the Niẓāmiyya college during al-Musta‛ṣim's reign, and of al-Mustanṣiriyya college under the Ilkhanids, until 671/1272-3. He was both a Shāfi‛ī scholar and a Sufi, whose compilations include history, law, traditions (ḥadīth), Qur’ān commentaries, biographies—including those of Sufis—and adab, and was famous especially for his many works on the Abbasid Caliphs. Most of the works ascribed to him, however, have not reached us, perhaps owing to the upheavals surrounding the conquest. Footnote 18 Already Rosenthal doubted the authority of Mukhtaṣar akhbār al-khulafā’, ascribed to him by the Baghdadi publisher on the authority of the Ottoman bibliographer Hajji Khalifa (d.1067/1657).Footnote 19 The unimpressive book does not fit Ibn al-Sā‛ī’s fame as a historian. Moreover, while the book's last page gives the year 666/1267-8 as the date of its completion, the immediately preceding part refers to the contemporaneous Muslim rulers, who include the post-Ilkhanid dynasties of the Chobanids (735-58/1335-57) and Sarbadarids (737-82/1337-81), which rose to power more than half a century after Ibn al-Sā‛ī’s demise. As the conversion story appears immediately before this list of rulers, its date and the identity of its compiler remain obscure. Footnote 20 Moreover, the text refers to the Abbasid Caliph in Cairo as legitimate,Footnote 21 thereby suggesting that the book was written or at least edited in the Mamluk realm, where—unlike Ilkhanid Iran—this Caliph was acknowledged.Footnote 22
The story of Hülegü’s conversion is introduced after the short account of the reign of the last Abbasid Caliph, al-Musta‛ṣim, which focuses on a grisly description of the Mongol conquest of Baghdad, highlighting the role of the Shī‛ī vizier, Ibn al-‛Alqamī, in the Mongols’ arrival. The author then gives a general description of the dynasty (73 caliphs; ruled for 514 (hijrī) years; every sixth caliph was murdered), and cites the tradition, which he ascribes to al-Ṭabarī, according to which ‛Alī b. Abī Ṭālib predicted that the Caliphate would be given to the descendants of Abū al-‛Abbās until it would be taken by the barbarians (‛ilj) from Khurāsān, who have small eyes and broad faces (i.e. Mongoloid features).Footnote 23 He then moves to a description of Hülegü, whom he calls the Tyrant (al-tāghī), saying that he embraced Islam two months before his death, then narrating the conversion story that explains the reason for Hülegü’s Islamisation. The story goes as follows:
The reason for his [Hülegü’s] Islamisation was that when he, with the Mongols and Tatars, destroyed the land and worshippers (‛ibād) and hurt the radiant Islamic religion (al-milla al-bayḍā’ al-islāmiyya) and its adherents, two great Companions of God (wālī) of the Aḥmadiyya order (al-ṭā’ifa al-aḥmadiyya)—who were familiar with Allāh, the Almighty, and with His messenger, may peace and prayer be upon him—devoted themselves to him [Hülegü]. [They were] the master (al-Khāja) Muḥammad al-Darbandī, who was born there, the sheikh of the Caucasus mountain, (whose family was) originally from Wāsiṭ, the scholar and doer of good deeds (al-‛ālim al-‛āmil), and the shaykh Ya‛qūb Maḥdūm al-Jahanāyn (‘he who is served in the two worlds’). They reached him (Hülegü) at Thulth, one of the districts (a‛māl) of Salmās,Footnote 24 together with a great crowd of their followers, the dervishes (fuqarā’). The two advised him, saying: “You are a venerable and wise king; someone like you should believe in the true religion and bring its triumph”. He said: “If you provide me with a definite proof of the validity of the religion of Islam, I will follow it”. They brought him legal proofs based on tradition, and supported it with rational arguments, but in vain. He said: “I want to have clear-cut evidence and irrefutable proof that even these Mongol and Tatar horse-herders can understand”. The two [shaykhs] said: “Do what seems to you [necessary]”. He ordered that a great fire be lit, and a fire that was never seen before in those regions was kindled. He ordered that copper be melted for them and bitter poisons be prepared, and this was done while they were watching. In front of Hülegü was one of his children, who was less than ten years old. The Darbandī master snatched him, and cried out to his Sufi brother, the Shaykh Ya‛qūb. He (Ya‛qūb) ordered those who were with the two (shaykhs) to enter the fire. All of them entered the fire and Hülegü’s son was with them. [Hülegü] was extremely angry, worried and in agony. A few hours passed until the fire was extinguished. The Darbandī, may God sanctify his secret and spirit, came out, and with him [came] Hülegü’s son, holding a green apple in his hand. Hülegü rushed to him and asked him how he was and (the son) said: “I was in a beautiful garden and from its tree I plucked this apple”. They also drank the molten copper and the deadly poison, and it did not hurt them, by the leave of God Almighty. Hülegü embraced Islam, bolstered the Muslim religion, and stopped hurting the Muslims due to the virtuous power (baraka) of the preferred Rifā‛iyya order (al-ṭā’ifa al-Rifā‛iyya al-murḍiyya), may God be pleased with it. More than twenty renowned Aḥmadī shaykhs were present at this ceremony, among them Shaykh Ṣāliḥ b. ‛Abdallāh al-Manī‛ī al-Baṭā’iḥī, Shaykh Thābit b. ‛Abdallāh b. Thābit al-Wāsiṭī, Shaykh Aḥmad b. ‛Alī b. Na‛īm al-Baghdādī al-Ḥanbalī and others, may God sanctify their secrets.
The story ends with a verse that praised the Rifā‛ī Companions of God.
A shorter version of this story appears in al-Rifā‛ī’s biography, Tiryāq al-muḥibbīn fī sīrat sulṭān al-‛ārifīn Aḥmad Ibn al-Rifā‛ī, compiled by Taqī al-Dīn ‛Abd al-Raḥmān al-Wāsiṭī (d. 744/1343-4). The author was a Shāfī‛ī lawyer and traditionalist as well as a Sufi, who spent time in Damascus and Mecca, in addition to his native Iraq.Footnote 25 This version credits the same two shaykhs with converting not only Hülegü but also all his army (jamī‛ ‛asākirihi), an act that put an end to the Mongols’ atrocities, thereby saving Islam and the Muslims. According to this version, the Rifā‛ī shayikhs told Hülegü that Islam is the true religion and what he believed in was false: “Hülegü ordered that copper be melted and that the molten copper be given to them and to their disciples to drink. They drank the poison and so did their disciples. Then they entered into the great fire, and it was extinguished—and God has reinforced the sunna and with them. He supported the religion (al-milla). Hülegü and his people converted to Islam and ceased from hurting Islam”.
The Tiryāq version includes the fire ordeal and the copper drinking, but not the part dealing with Hülegü’s son. It also gives more details on the two shaykhs who converted Hülegü and whom I was unable to locate in other contemporary sources. According to the Tiryāq, the two were among the most honourable shaykhs of Fārs, and the disciples of the famous Rifā‛ī shaykh ‛Izz al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Fārūthī al-Kāzarūnī (614/1217-695/1296). The latter, a well-known figure in Mamluk biographical literature, was famous as both a versatile religious scholar—Qur’ān reader, commentator, preacher, traditionalist, Shāfi‛ī lawyer—and a renowned Sufi shaykh, with many disciples and the ability to perform karamāt. Born in Wāsiṭ in 629/1231-2, he went to study in Baghdad. Later he performed the ḥajj, and in 690/1291 reached Damascus, where he was appointed as a preacher and taught at various colleges. While initially winning great respect in Damascus, he was dismissed after a mere year and returned to Wāsiṭ, where he died in 695/1296. He gained success among the Mongols, and was especially close to the famous Ilkhanid merchant and Mongol administrator of Fārs, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Tībī, who used to give him a thousand mithqāl every year and paid his debts.Footnote 26 As far as I can tell, however, the two converting shaykhs (or Hülegü) are mentioned neither among al-Farūthī’s disciples in the biographical literature nor in al-Farūthī’s surviving Sufi writings.Footnote 27 The two shaykhs are mentioned in other Rifā‛ī works only on the basis of the Tiryāq or later Rifā‛ī works.Footnote 28 I was unable to positively identify the other shaykhs mentioned in the pseudo-Ibn al-Sā‛ī text.Footnote 29
Before moving from the details to the narrative, a few words about the Aḥmadiyya-Rifā‛iyya are in order. The order, founded by Aḥmad al-Rifā‛ī (ca. 500/1106-578/1182) in the Lower Iraq marshlands, between Wāsiṭ and Baṣra, became highly popular already in the twelfth century, spread rapidly to Egypt and Syria and was highly popular among the Anatolian Turks from the thirteenth century. Whether the founder approved of it or not, already by the twelfth century the order acquired its extravagant reputation for performing miracles such as riding lions, eating snakes and mostly passing through fires. The famous traveller, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, who visited Wāsiṭ in 727/1327, frequently mentions the strange practices of the order's devotees, including fire-walking and fire-swallowing, while the Mamluk theologian Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), who attested to connections between the Aḥmadiyya and the Mongols, often attacked the Rifā‛ī sheikhs for their pyrotechnical activities, which he denounced as tricks rather than miracles.Footnote 30
The Aḥmadiyya appears in another Ilkhanid conversion story, which seems closely connected to Hülegü’s narrative: the tradition about the more historically-sound Islamisation of Hülegü’s son, Aḥmad Tegüder (r. 680–82/1282-84).Footnote 31 According to al-Dhahabī, Tegüder took the name Aḥmad because “one of the shaykhs of the Aḥmadiyya [i.e. al-Rifā‛iyya] went into the fire before Hülegü, and Aḥmad was then a child (ṭifl). The shaykh picked him up and went into the fire. His father called him Aḥmad and presented him to the Aḥmadiyya. They would come to visit him and made Islam attractive to him. He converted while still a youth (shāban)”.Footnote 32 Al-Dhahabī’s testimony was repeated by various Ottoman writers, who also presented Tegüder as martyr for Islam and as a mass converter. Yet, while all of them retained the connection to the Aḥmadiyya-Rifā‛iyya, which was a highly popular order in the Ottoman realm, many omitted the fire trial in order to historicise the tradition.Footnote 33 Indeed most of the Ilkhanid conversion stories—as opposed to their later counterparts in the Golden Horde or the Chaghadayid Khanate—are basically historical accounts devoid of legendary details like those appearing in Hülegü’s and Tegüder's stories.Footnote 34
The features common to both Hülegü’s and Tegüder's stories are the fire trial and Hülegü’s son passing in the fire, while still a youth, together with the Aḥmadī shaykhs. Al-Dhahabī’s short version, however, is basically an etymology of the name Aḥmad, taken by Tegüder—or given to him. It also includes Hülegü’s presentation of Tegüder to the Aḥmadiyya, both elements that do not appear in Hülegü’s story, while the apple incident is missing. Moreover, neither Hülegü nor even Tegüder is converted immediately after the fire ordeal according to al-Dhahabī, who ascribed Tegüder's conversion to the (non-Rifā‛ī) shaykh ‛Abd al-Raḥmān.Footnote 35 Both narratives seemed to be based on a similar stock topos.Footnote 36 In fact, al-Dhahabī’s version can be seen as an extrapolation of Hülegü’s story, more suited to al-Dhahabi's views, since, as we saw in the case of the Georgian princess, he doubted Hülegü’s Islamisation. The fact that Taqī al-Dīn al-Wāsiṭī, the Tiryāq compiler, and al-Dhahabī studied together in Damascus,Footnote 37 reinforces the possibility that the two stories came from a common stock, in either Iraq or Syria. Pfeiffer suggested that relating Tegüder's Islamisation to the Aḥmadiyya in al-Dhahabī’s narrative was meant both to formulate his conversion in understandable terms for his audience and to highlight its bizarre and ‘unorthodox’ nature, as the Rifā‛īyya were notorious for their non-normative.Footnote 38 Hülegü’s narrative, however, probably originated in Aḥmadiyya circles and was certainly meant to praise them. Strangely enough, however, the connection between Aḥmad Tegüder and the order is not mentioned at all in the Rifā‛ī versions of Hülegü’s narrative.
A feature common to the two narratives is Tegüder's young age at the time of the fire trial. Indeed, in his letter to Qalāwūn, Tegüder himself claims that he converted to Islam in his early youth.Footnote 39 However, since according to Rashīd al-Dīn Tegüder arrived in Iran from Mongolia only after Hülegü’s death, in late 666/early 1268,Footnote 40 it is unclear how he could have been given to the Aḥmadiyya (which we have no reason to believe reached Mongolia); nor could he have been present in Salmās in Hülegü’s time as our story claims.
It appears that the attempt to look for the historical background of this legendary story is futile, and not only because fire trials are a common topos in Mongol (and other) conversion stories.Footnote 41 In fact, the whole story of Hülegü’s conversion is a typical karamāt story: The Akhbār story with all its major elements—an infidel king asking for proof of the validity of Islam; a fire ordeal; a shaykh carrying the king's son into the fire with him and bringing him out with an apple (and/or pomegranate) that the child said he had picked from a beautiful garden; and the subsequent drinking of poison—appear as a karāmāt prototype in two seventh/fourteenth-century works: the Sufi guide Nashr al-maḥāsin al-ghāliya fī faḍl al-mashāyikh al-ṣūfiyya by the Sufi and scholar al-Yāfi‛ī (694/1298-768/1367) and the major biographical dictionary of the Shāfi‛īs, al-Subkī’s (d. 771/1370) Ṭabaqāt al-shāfi‛iyya al-kubrā. In al-Yāfi‛ī’s work the story appears twice: in the chapter devoted to samā‛ (hearing spiritual music; Sufi ritual), as many shaykhs used to enter the fire in a state of samā‛,Footnote 42 and in the chapter devoted to the difference between karāmāt and other kinds of miracles (mu‛jiza, a greater miracle than the karāmāt). There the story is brought as an example of a karāma performed in time of need, e.g., when an infidel king is asking for proof of the validity of Islam.Footnote 43 In al-Subkī’s work, the story appears as a part of the classification of karāmāt, inserted under the entry for Abū Turāb al-Nakhshabī (d. 245/859), an early wandering ascetic who was also a traditionalist and a Shāfi‛ī.Footnote 44 Al-Subkī’s description of Abū Turāb's karāmāt leads to a discussion of the karāmāt of the Prophet's companions. Among them, Khālid b. al-Walīd (d. 21/642), the famous general of the Islamic conquests of the first/seventh century, is described as someone who drank poison and was not affected by it. Al-Subkī then furnishes a list of the various kinds of karāmāt, in which the twenty-fifth and last item is titled “immunity to poisons and other kinds of damaging things” (‛adam ta'thīr al-samāmāt wa-anwā‛ al-mutlifāt fīhim).Footnote 45 It is under this heading that the story appears. The wording in al-Subkī’s and one of al-Yāfi‛ī’s versions is very similar, and in both the fire trial is preceded by other miracles (transforming another object into gold and bringing water to a dry land) which, however, do not convince the king, who requires the fire trial and the poison drinking also. While so far I was unable to locate a pre-Mongol version of this story, the references to Abū Turāb al-Nakhshabī and the character of the works suggest that the story was around long before the Mongol period, and that only later was it fitted to Hülegü.
Why, when and where was this karāmāt narrative connected to Hülegü? I suspect that this happened in the 730–40s/1330-40s, perhaps soon after the collapse of the Ilkhanate, that is, more or less when the Tiryāq was being compiled and by the time around which the Mukhtaṣar akhbār al-khulafā’ was compiled or edited. It surfaced in Sufi-Shāfi‛ī circles, in either Iraq or Syria, regions that retained close scholarly connections even while the Ilkhanate and the Mamluks were at war and certainly after the 723/1323 peace treaty.Footnote 46
The question ‘why’ is more complicated and also quite fuzzy. One obvious motive was praising the Rifā‛iyya, perhaps even against the background of Ibn Taymiyya's polemic against them.Footnote 47 But certainly it was also useful to make Hülegü a Muslim for other reasons. First, he was an important Chinggisid, interested in scholarship and religions and aware of their political value, and other faiths also tried to make him their own: In the late thirteenth-early fourteenth century many Christian sources appropriated Hülegü as a ChristianFootnote 48 , while in the letters written to him by Buddhist monks from his Tibetan appanage he was referred to as “The Bodhisatva Prince Hülegü” and taught to observe the popular Buddhist lay practice known as uposatha.Footnote 49 Yet the Muslims also had reasons other than religious competition or prestige for making Hülegü a Muslim. If the destroyer of the Abbasid Caliphate had already embraced Islam before his death, then Islam's conquest of its conquerors became faster, and God's intention in bringing the Mongols into the Muslim world became clearer.Footnote 50 Moreover, if Hülegü converted to Islam, the entire Ilkhanid dynasty, not only the rulers from Ghazan onwards, can be seen as a ‘normal’ Muslim dynasty. The atmosphere in the post-Ilkhanid realm, where the Ilkhanate era looked like a golden age of peace and stability, might have given rise to such narratives. While the scattered references collected in this study suggest that there were several different stories about Hülegü’s Islamisation, they seemed to remain marginal and could not compete with his more prevalent image as the infidel par excellence who destroyed the Caliphate.
Whatever the real reason behind the Hülegü conversion stories, they certainly show that by the mid-seventh/fourteenth century, Mongol conversion was integrated into the Islamic established genre of conversion stories and literary topoi. The famous mythical conversion stories of the ninth/sixteenth century from the Golden Horde and the Chaghadayid realmsFootnote 51 apparently had their modest precedents in the mid-seventh/fourteenth-century post-Ilkhanate sphere.
