ABSTRACT
It is a well-known fact that the cultural evolution of a society is always slower than its material and political development. Moreover the effects of the Mongol conquest were not simple. Their actual direct influence was trifling, and some effect may perhaps be found at most in the realm of folklore and popular beliefs. In religion Asia Minor remained a Muslim country; that is to say, the inter-confessional neutrality of Ilkhanid Iran found no true extension there. The strength of the iranizing current should not however conceal the fact that there was also to some degree the development of an arabizing current, which was favoured by relations, whether good or bad, with Syria. A high reputation was also enjoyed by the great qāḍī and jurist Sirāj al-Dīn al-Urmawī, among whose disciples was Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Hindī, who was born in India and later established himself in the Yemen, living in Rūm during 674-85/1275-86.
