Letters from Mongol Anatolia: Professional, Political and Intellectual Connections among Members of a Persianised Elite*. Issue 1 (2nd January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: De Nicola, Bruno
• Is Part Of: Iran. Volume 56:Issue 1(2018)
• Page Start: 77
• Page End: 90
• Publication Date: 2018-01-02
• Subjects: Mongol Empire -- medieval Anatolia -- Persianised elites -- letters -- intellectual networks; Iran -- Antiquities -- Periodicals; Iran -- Civilization -- Periodicals; 955.005
• DOI: 10.1080/05786967.2018.1426189
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0578-6967

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In thirteenth-century Anatolia, different confessions of Christian and Muslim followers coexisted within a variety of people of diverse cultural backgrounds, including Greek, Turkmen and Persian. Politically, this multicultural and multireligious environment was accompanied by the raise of several semi-nomadic Turkmen warlords that controlled different regions of the peninsula under the nominal rule of the Seljuq Dynasty of Rum. In this historical context, Anatolia witnessed a burst of literary activity in manuscript form favoured by the economic patronage of the ruling classes. In one of the surviving manuscripts of the period held at the Suleymaniye Library in Istanbul, there is a unique munshaʼat (compilation of letters) written in Persian by a medical doctor of possible Iranian origin appointed in the second half of the thirteenth century to the regions of Kastamonu in north Western Anatolia. By looking at this rare compilation of letters, this paper reconstructs the little-known networks that existed among the members of a Persianised elite in Mongol dominated Anatolia arguing that these letters can offer a novel insight into the cultural life of the region.