Mongols · a Light

The grandson of Baghdad's destroyer became a Muslim ruler

In 1295 Ghazan, great grandson of Hulagu who had sacked Baghdad, accepted Islam shortly before taking the Ilkhanid throne in Iran, and much of the Mongol army in the region followed. Within four decades of the destruction of 1258 the conquering dynasty had adopted the religion of the conquered, and Ghazan spent his short reign rebuilding: a currency reform, a fixed land tax to stop soldiers extorting villages, roads and post stations, and endowed hospitals and schools in Tabriz. He commissioned Rashid al-Din, a physician of Jewish birth who had become Muslim, to write a history of the world including the Franks, the Chinese and the Indians. It is one of the first histories written on that scale anywhere.

Ghazan Khan · Iran, 1295 CE