Making Mongol History

Stefan Kamola (BA Oberlin College, MA/PhD Washington) is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies in Vienna, pursuing a project on Ilkhanid historiography funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FwF M-3187). His previous research and first book focused on the Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh of Rashīd al-Dīn Ṭabīb (d. 1318). Recently, his scholarship has turned towards the practice of astrology in the Seljuk and Mongol periods.

• Preface Chapter 1. Mongols in a Muslim world, 1218-1280 Chapter 2. The likely course of an unlikely life, 1248-1302 Chapter 3. Mongol dynastic history, 1302-1304 Chapter 4. New projects of faith and power, 1304-1312 Chapter 5. Remaking Mongol history, 1307-1313 Chapter 6. Creating the image of Rashid al-Din, 1312-1335 Epilogue. Rashid al-Din at the court of Shahrokh Appendix A. The Collected Histories and its illustrations Appendix B. A descriptive catalogue of manuscripts of the Collected Histories Bibliography

For anyone using Rashid al-Din – and that means pretty much anyone working on the thirteenth and fourteenth century Iranians, Turks, or Mongols – Making Mongol History is simply a must-have. Kamola’s work supersedes all previous work on the manuscript history of the Jami‘ al-Tawarikh. His new classification of the manu-scripts into recensions will be the framework for all future study of the text. His teasing out of how the Jami‘ al-Tawarikh "bleeds" into and in turn is "bled into" by works from many other authors is a vital reminder of the gap between the conceptions of "work" and "authorship" in manuscript cultures and print cultures. His synthesis of manuscript history with intellectual history is a bravura demonstration of the continuing significance of philology for understanding the human past.