Daily Life in Ilkhanid Communities: Households, Work, and Worship

From the Mongol conquests of the mid-thirteenth century until 1335, Ilkhanid Iran and Iraq contained mobile royal households, farming villages and cities with specialist workers and religious institutions. Court movement followed seasonal pasture, while settled communities produced food, textiles and tax revenues. In Tabriz, the detailed endowment of Rab’-e Rashidi describes how housing, wages, meals, treatment and worship fitted together within a large urban foundation.

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Pastoral rule and settled lives

Ilkhanid rulers moved between winter quarters in warmer lowlands and summer pasture in the highlands. Travelling required animals, tents, servants and supplies. A royal ordo comprised this household community and its resources, rather than just the ruler’s tent. High-ranking women could control herds, goods and attendants within such households, giving family position an important economic dimension.

Bulughan Khatun, wife of Abaqa and later Arghun, helped raise Ghazan and maintained her own ordo. Her death in 1286 did not dissolve its resources: the household continued under later holders. Fosterage, marriage and succession therefore affected who controlled people and wealth. Alongside these mobile establishments, urban endowments supported communities whose work was tied to particular buildings and land.

An endowed institution and its daily machinery

Rab’-e Rashidi’s endowment deed, dated 9 August 1309, assigned income to a school, library, hospital, mosque, Sufi lodge, kitchens, bathhouse and residential quarters. A trustee managed the property and expenditure. Records, salaries and supply allocations connected the foundation’s revenue-producing assets with the needs of its residents and staff.

Work there ranged from teaching, medicine, and book copying to gardening, baking, cleaning, and guarding. The endowment provided for paid specialists and students as well as enslaved workers. It lists 220 enslaved people, many assigned to gardening and other labor. Their presence shows that the institution relied on unfree labor as well as salaried service. The deed also set provisions and food allotments for different groups, making status visible in both duties and entitlements.

The kitchens and bakery turned stored grain into regular meals. The deed specified wheat for bread, and wheat, groats (hulled or broken grains), pulses and meat for cooked dishes. Recipients received different portions according to their positions. Hospitality for visitors lasted three days, while another provision fed 100 people in need daily. Cooking and distribution required continuing fuel, grain, water and labour.

Ilkhanid households, work and social obligations

Household experience depended on a person’s work and standing. The Rab’-e Rashidi’s plan included housing for employees and their families, as well as quarters for workers assigned to the foundation. Salaried teachers, doctors, and administrators occupied a different position from laborers and enslaved people. Duties could be specified by occupation, while pay, housing, and food provisions varied by role. The endowment thus reveals a managed community whose residents’ routines were shaped by both household needs and institutional obligations.

Some labor was tied to the surrounding landscape as well as the buildings. Gardeners maintained cultivated spaces, and water channels supported the complex’s gardens and other needs. Other workers prepared food, maintained rooms, and guarded supplies. Book production also required skilled labor: the foundation supported a library and a workshop for making books, alongside arrangements for copying religious and historical works. These activities relied on materials, specialist knowledge, and the continuing supply of labor and funds.

Copying books was another organised sequence. Scribes worked from an authoritative text; supervisors compared completed copies before binding, registration and distribution to schools. The work depended on paper, prepared ink, leather and trained hands, supported by the same stores, housing and kitchens as other residents.

Food, dress, worship and travel in the Ilkhanate

In the hospital, a physician’s written prescription controlled the issue of medicines. Dispensing arrangements included a locked store and a grille, with medicines distributed on specified days under supervision. Physicians also attended patients outside the institution. Medical care thus involved control of supplies and practical visits as well as the preparation of learned texts.

Layered clothing included shirts, trousers, belted coats and boots or shoes. The terlig, a front-opening coat shaped at the waist, gave its skirt room to move while riding. Fine woven patterns and applied bands could distinguish formal robes. Elite Mongol women’s tall boqta headdresses used a light covered framework to support their conspicuous shape.

Potters produced vessels for serving, storage and display. Stonepaste combined silica, white clay and glass frit, a prepared glass material into a pale body for decoration. Underglaze-painted bowls carried birds and foliage, while deep-blue lajvardina wares received additional colours and gold in another firing. Such different stages linked the finished surface to careful preparation and control of heat.

Everyday worship and religious communities in the Ilkhanate

Religious patronage changed sharply during the dynasty. Buddhist advisers had influence at court before Ghazan’s conversion to Islam in 1295. Islamic institutions then gained new support, while Christians, Jews and Buddhists faced changing restrictions and obligations. These shifts affected buildings, revenues and access to rulers as well as public statements of belief.

At Rab’-e Rashidi, Quran recitation and worship required staff and supplies. Attendants cleaned the tomb precinct, filled lamps with sesame oil and lit candles for special nights; sweets formed part of the provisions. A Sufi lodge housed devotional activity associated with Islamic mystical practice alongside the school and hospital. Religious observance was sustained through repeated work as well as endowed income.

Christian worship also took place in mobile and settled settings. The account of Rabban Sauma describes a 1291 feast of Mary at the royal camp in Alataq, with the patriarch celebrating the Eucharist, the service of thanksgiving and communion using consecrated bread and wine. Sauma later moved service vessels and vestments to a church at Maragha and provided income for regular worship.

Rashid al-Din’s execution in 1318 was followed by a decline in the Rab’-e Rashidi’s fortunes. His son Ghiyas al-Din renewed activity there during the 1330s, a later phase of patronage distinct from the foundation’s earlier operation under Ilkhanid rule. Ghiyas al-Din was killed in 1336, after the dynasty’s end in 1335, and the complex was looted. Its endowment records nonetheless preserve an unusually detailed account of how work, welfare, learning, and worship could be organized in one Ilkhanid urban community.

For the wider setting, see Ilkhanate.