By the might of eternal heaven: lineage, religion, and the stars in Mongol Iran
By the might of eternal heaven: lineage, religion, and the stars in Mongol Iran
Referent
Dr. Stefan Kamola, Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), Wien
Datum und Zeit
17. Februar 2026, 16:15 - 18:00
Ort
Rämistrasse 59, CH-8001 Zürich, Raum RAA-E-08
Inhalt
The imperial Mongols used various strategies to justify their rise to power to the populations over which they ruled and with which they maintained diplomatic ties. As ever, the most successful strategies were those that resonated with values and beliefs among the target population. In turn, the arguments made by and for the Mongols influenced the further development of notions of political power in the conquered societies. One core strategy for justifying kingship found across Eurasia was the notion of a heavenly mandate for secular rule, a basic idea that underpinned the legitimacy of sovereigns from the Holy Roman Emperor to the Son of Heaven.
This talk will explore how the descendants of Chinggis Khan who ruled in Iran, as well as the Perso-Islamic scholars and administrators who worked under them, adopted and adapted ideas about heavenly sanction to understand, justify, and perpetuate their new geo-political reality. Specific attention will be given to ideologies from the Inner Asian steppe, Persian historical traditions, Islamic political philosophy, and Greco-Arabic science. Each of these areas understood the ‘might of eternal heaven’ in its own way, and each was reshaped by the Mongol moment. In the end, the experience of and intellectual engagement with Mongol rule created a new vocabulary and rhetoric of political authority for the post-caliphal Islamic east.
Organisation
Asien-Orient-Institut - Islamwissenschaften