Mesopotamia from the Ilkhanids to the Aq Quyunlu: Baghdad as a provincial capital

The frame

The Met's timeline for Iraq names four dynasties in these years: "Ilkhanid dynasty, 1258-1340" and "Jalayirid dynasty, 1340-1411" on the page for 1000-1400, and "Qara Quyunlu dynasty, 1411-1469" and "Aq Quyunlu dynasty, 1469-1508" on the page for 1400-1600, followed by "Safavid rule, 1508-1534". According to the first page, in 1258 the Mongols sacked Baghdad, which became a provincial capital until the twentieth century; the Ilkhanids ruled from the city of Tabriz in Iran. This page brings the four dynasties together, from the end of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad to Safavid rule. Sources 1, 2.

Boundaries and overlaps

The same timeline gives some of the dynasties double dates. It describes the Mongols who sacked Baghdad as "the Ilkhanid branch ruling in Iran (1256-1353)", a wider range than Iraq's 1258-1340; it also gives the Qara Quyunlu 1351-1469 and the Aq Quyunlu 1378-1508, dates of the dynasties themselves rather than of their rule in Iraq. Timur (Tamerlane) seized control of Baghdad in 1393-1394 and sacked it in 1401, within the Jalayirid period, without the list giving him a period of his own. The end is set at 1508, the start of Safavid rule in the list; on the site's Levant timeline, by contrast, the Middle Ages page runs to 1516. On the site's Iran timeline the Mongol and Ilkhanid period ends in 1353, and the Timurid and Turkmen page also ends in 1508. Sources 1, 2.

On this site

Two articles are placed in this period. "Baghdad after 1258: from caliphal capital to provincial capital" reads the Met's timeline on the sack, the killing of the caliph al-Musta'sim and what became of Baghdad afterwards. "The Mirjan complex in Baghdad: a Jalayirid madrasa and caravanserai" reads the same source on the funerary complex of the Jalayirid amir Mirjan, with a madrasa of 1356 and a caravanserai of 1359. No item on this site covers the Qara Quyunlu and Aq Quyunlu decades: according to the timeline, after the death of Pir Budaq in 1466 Baghdad's importance as a center of artistic production declined, and the Aq Quyunlu's patronage remained outside Iraq. Sources 1, 2.