ABSTRACT
In the thirteenth century Persia became, and remained for more than a hundred years, part of the most extensive continuous land empire that has ever existed: that of the Mongols. The destruction and slaughter which the establishment of that empire involved were immense, on a scale unparalleled in the previous history of Asia. Persia itself had to endure many Mongol incursions as well as two major invasions, those of Chingiz Khan in the years after 1219 and his grandson Hulegu in the 1250s. From Hulegu's time until the 1330s, Persia itself constituted the major part of a Mongol kingdom, the Ilkhanate; and this was a kingdom whose rulers for its first forty years were not even Muslims. Mongol rule proved to be a grim experience, though it may not have been in every respect an entirely negative one, at least for those Persians who managed to survive.
