For information on this section, see Credits.

[Genghis Khan] sallied forth, a single man, with few troops and no accoutrement, and reduced and subjugated the lords of the horizons from the East unto the West . . . and when through pride of wealth, and power, and station the greater part of the cities and countries of the world encountered him with rebellion and hatred and refused to yield allegiance (and especially the countries of Islam, from the frontiers of Turkestan to uttermost Syria), then wherever there was a king, or a ruler, or the governor of a city that offered him resistance, him he annihilated together with his family and followers, kinsmen and strangers.
 —^cAla al-Din ^cAta Malik Juvaini, The History of the World Conqueror¹

For nearly two centuries prior to the Mongol conquests of the early thirteenth century, Turkish rulers had dominated Greater Iran (the territories of modern Iran, Afghanistan, and parts of Iraq, the Caucasus, and Central Asia).³ Foremost among these Turkish dynasts were the Seljuqs (1038–1194). Like subsequent non-Iranian rulers, they adopted indigenous practices: the administrative structure, the tax system, and, most significantly, the tradition of kingship and royal authority.⁴ In the process of assimilating Persian culture they became important patrons of art and architecture.

Decorative arts flourished during the two centuries preceding the Mongol invasions.⁵ Ceramic objects show the continued refinement of existing techniques and also benefited from the development of new ones. A new type of artificial ceramic body generally referred to as fritware came into use at this time. Combining ground quartz, glass frit (partially fused glass), and a small proportion of fine white clay, it was intended to approximate the light color and weight of Chinese porcelain. Such fritware was often decorated in one of two overglaze painting techniques, both of which were complicated and costly because they required the ware to be fired at least twice. In the first, luster-painted pottery, the decoration has a lustrous metallic color derived from silver and copper oxides. In the second and more colorful technique, so-called minai (enamel) ware, enamel colors are applied to the previously glazed surface and then fixed in a second firing. The center for the ceramic industry was Kashan in central Iran. Luster vessels and tiles for architectural revetment continued to be made there after the Mongol invasions (figs. 2, 3),⁶ but the minai technique, mainly used to decorate vessels, did not survive the Mongol invasions. It may have evolved, however, into a related technique known as lajvardina after the Persian word for lapis lazuli, lajvard.

Beginning about the mid-twelfth century, luxury vessels and implements of bronze and brass were lavishly inlaid with silver and either copper or gold. Metalwork of this period represents a refinement and a surpassing of earlier techniques. Finely drawn wire and small, thin pieces of precious metal were inserted into designs cut in the surface of the metal object, and the precious metal was then embellished with finer details. Many of these inlaid metal wares, including buckets, candlesticks, pen cases, and inkwells, can be associated with eastern Iran; metalworkers displaced by the Mongols may have carried their art both west and east (fig. 1).⁷ Objects fashioned of precious metal from this period have not survived as well as base metalwork, but numerous references in contemporary texts provide additional information about them.⁸ Vessels, jewelry, and other items of personal adornment were produced in gold and silver. Gold- and silver-smiths were among the craftsmen spared by the Mongols, a circumstance that helped keep these traditions alive in the Iranian world (fig. 4).⁹

Textiles played an essential role in the medieval Islamic world, serving not only as clothing and in all manner of furnishings but also as commodities for commercial exchange. Greater Iran was especially renowned for its luxury textiles, including elaborately patterned silks, sometimes woven with gold-wrapped thread; the most complicated and sumptuous silks were woven on drawlooms. The number of extant textiles of the eleventh to the early thirteenth century is few in comparison to the many textual references to great centers of production, especially in eastern Iran.¹⁰ While the textile industry of eastern Iran did not survive the Mongol invasions, many of its weavers and associated textile craftsmen were transplanted to other locales and played an important part in the subsequent development of the arts under the Mongols.

The tradition of calligraphy and illumination (manuscript decoration) was perhaps the most important and best-established form of art, having begun in the seventh century, when manuscripts of the Koran were first copied in beautiful scripts and decorated with gold. Baghdad, the capital of the ^cAbbasid caliphate and for some centuries the cultural center of the Islamic world, was seminal in the development of calligraphy. This important tradition continued uninterrupted in Baghdad after the arrival of the Mongols in 1258 (fig. 5). The production of illustrated manuscripts of a scientific nature had a long-standing history in the Islamic world; it was prompted by the translation of Greek texts and their amplification with explanatory drawings.¹¹ Few works of literature with illustrations from before the fourteenth century survive, but those that do indicate that book painting had scarcely achieved the creative force and eloquence it would reach under the Mongols and their successors. As the extant pre-Mongol manuscripts demonstrate, a Byzantine-influenced style developed in the ^cAbbasid capital at the beginning of the thirteenth century, while a different style showing pronounced Iranian and Turkic influence was created in the Seljuq-controlled areas.¹² Artists under Mongol rule in Iran would eventually absorb both styles and combine them with the fruits of their encounter with East Asian art, creating one of the most extraordinary moments in the history of Persian painting.

The main architectural achievement of the pre-Mongol period was the development of the classic Iranian mosque type, constructed of baked brick and comprising a central courtyard with four rectangular vaulted chambers, or iwans, aligned along the axes. Fewer secular buildings than mosques have survived. Excavated palaces, mainly from the eastern Iranian world and often lavishly decorated, incorporate a plan like that of the congregational mosques, with four iwans opening onto a rectangular courtyard.¹³ The so-called four-iwan plan continued to be employed under the Mongols in both religious and secular architecture. Splendid patterns and designs, derived from the high-quality brick building material itself, were the primary means of architectural decoration in pre-Mongol Iran. Large-scale, extensive luster tilework began to be used to decorate the interior of religious monuments, especially shrine complexes, about the beginning of the thirteenth century. During the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Mongol period, the role of tile revetment as a kind of colorful decorative skin expanded considerably, extending to the exterior of buildings; at the same time a variety of new techniques and tile types were introduced.

Thus, on the eve of the Mongol conquest of the Iranian world, Persian arts, sponsored by Turkish patrons and built largely on indigenous traditions, had achieved a kind of golden age. The Mongols' devastating invasions of Central and West Asia between 1218 and 1258 brought much of this to an end. What replaced it was an original aesthetic idiom forged by the dramatic confrontation between the nomadic traditions of the Mongols and the urban Islamic culture of Greater Iran, and invigorated and refined by contact with East Asian art. An exhibition presenting the remarkable cultural achievements that followed a period of almost unfathomable destruction may seem an unlikely project. The fact is, however, that the practices of governance, patronage, conscription, and mercantile exchange adopted by the Mongols after their conquest produced a singular environment for artistic creation, and this in turn had a profound impact on the development of art and architecture throughout Eurasia and particularly in the Islamic lands of western Asia.

This exhibition and accompanying catalogue represent the first systematic investigation of the important artistic and cultural achievements that occurred in the Iranian world as a by-product of the Mongol conquest of Asia. They consider the striking new visual language, and its functions, sources, and means of transmission, that developed under the Ilkhanid dynasty (1256–1353) within a vast territory encompassing present-day Iran, Iraq, southern Russia, western Afghanistan, and eastern Turkey. Politically, the invasion of western Asia brought to a decisive end the long period of Arab-centered dominance there—as was underscored by the Mongols' termination in 1258 of the ^cAbbasid caliphate, which had ruled from Baghdad for over 500 years. Culturally, the Mongol invasions and the so-called Pax Mongolica had the effect of energizing Iranian art and infusing it with novel forms, meanings, and motifs that were further disseminated throughout the Islamic world. In uniting eastern and western Asia for over a century, the Mongols created a unique opportunity for an unrestricted cultural exchange that forever altered the face of art in Iran and made it a focal point of innovation and synthesis for the next three hundred years. This, too, was Genghis Khan's legacy.

Credits

This introductory essay was derived from the exhibition catalogue, The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Arts and Culture in Western Asia, 1256–1353 (edited by Linda Komaroff and Stefano Carboni, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2002), available in the online Met Store.

For references, see Works Cited.

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Footnotes

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1. Juvaini 1958, vol. 1, pp. 24–25. 
   
2. Ibid. (Introduction by John A. Boyle), pp. xxvii–xlvii; see also Morgan 1982. 
   
3. "Persia" has long been another name for Iran (it is now somewhat outdated). In this book, while the adjective "Persian" is often used to describe the culture, the land is called Iran. 
   
4. For this period, see Bosworth 1968. 
   
5. See, among many works, Ettinghausen 1970; Hillenbrand 1994. 
   
6. Watson 1985. 
   
7. Melikian-Chirvani 1982, pp. 55–135; Ward 1993, pp. 71–82. 
   
8. See, for example, Melikian-Chirvani 1986. 
   
9. For example, Allsen 1997, p. 96. 
   
10. Serjeant 1972, pp. 87–96, 97–103; Mackie 1996, pp. 86–88. 
    
11. The earliest illustrated manuscript to survive is a copy of the Book of the Fixed Stars by the astronomer ^cAbd al-Rahman al-Sufi (d. 986), who elaborated on the celebrated Almagest by Ptolemy. The book was copied and illustrated with drawings of the constellations in 1009; it is now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (inv. Marsh 144). See Wellesz 1959. 
    
12. The best survey of pre-Mongol book illustration is still Ettinghausen 1962, esp. pp. 59–124. 
    
13. The architecture of this period is summarized in Ettinghausen, Grabar, and Jenkins 2001, pp. 139–63.