The Western and Eastern Neighbours of the Ilkhanid State

Ilkhanid cities did not form in isolation. Bearing this in mind, Chapter 1 delves into the broader setting in which Ilkhanid urbanism evolved, namely the medieval Islamic world on the one hand and Mongol Eurasia on the other hand. Thus, the first section of the chapter explores the major structural and conceptual transformations of the cities that developed between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries across a geographic area known as the ‘central Islamic lands’, including today’s Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey, with particular emphasis on the Ilkhanids’s western frontier, Anatolia. In the second section of the chapter, we move our focus to the urban centres built under the patronage of the Great Khans of the Mongol Empire in Central Asia and China. Karakorum, Shangdu (Kaiping Fu) and Daidu (Dadu), three major cases designated as the capitals of the Khans for a certain period during their lifetime, are studied in greater detail. While the focus of attention is the contemporaries of Ilkhanid cities, Chapter 1 touches upon the urban centres that developed under the Seljuqs (1040–1194) and the Khwarazm Shahs (1077–1231), prior to the Mongol invasion, such as Isfahan and Nishapur. This overview sheds some light on the context in which Ilkhanid cities were born.