Artisans and Workshop Life in the Ilkhanate: Craft Production and Labor

From the Mongol conquest of Iran and Mesopotamia through the end of Ilkhanid rule in 1335, craft production served households, religious and educational institutions, and elite patrons across a wide region. Potters made vessels and architectural tiles using established skills adapted to changing designs. Scribes and painters collaborated on manuscripts in specially organized settings. These activities depended on materials, trained workers, and arrangements for paying or provisioning labor. The surviving evidence is especially detailed for ceramics and book production; it also shows how textile designs and metal materials could enter these crafts.

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Patrons, workers, and the organization of craft

Craft production did not follow one uniform model. The evidence points both to specialists whose expertise could be passed through families and to institutional workshops supported by a wealthy patron. The potter Abu’l Qasim al-Kashani, whose treatise dates to 1301, came from a family of potters. His account preserves recipes and production knowledge, showing how a craftsperson could record techniques developed within a professional tradition.

Rashid al-Din’s Rab’-e Rashidi foundation in Tabriz organised staff, supplies and work under an endowment deed dated 9 August 1309. It provided support for more than a hundred employees as well as 220 enslaved workers. Salaries and bread allowances differed by post and status. Book production formed one activity within this larger residential and charitable institution.

The workforce combined teaching and religious posts with cooking, cleaning, water carrying and gardening. Thirty enslaved workers were assigned to clear underground water channels and 150 to gardening. These duties sustained the institution that housed its specialists. Craft work depended on service and maintenance as well as on the person who finished an object.

Making decorated ceramics

One distinctive Ilkhanid-period ceramic tradition is known as lajvardina, a name derived from the Persian word for lapis lazuli. The name describes the deep blue appearance, not necessarily the ingredients: cobalt was commonly used to produce the blue glaze, though analysis of one thirteenth-century Iranian jug has also found lapis lazuli in a glaze. The contrast illustrates why a finished object’s appearance does not always disclose its materials.

Stonepaste, or fritware, mixed silica, white clay and glass frit. Preparing the mixture gave makers a pale body for vessels and tiles. Abu’l Qasim al-Kashani’s 1301 treatise described recipes for bodies, glazes and firing. His family’s involvement in pottery connected written technical knowledge with practical craft experience.

For the characteristic blue decoration, potters applied a dark blue glaze and then added details in a further layer of glaze. White, red, and black could be used alongside pieces of cut gold leaf. The decorated object was fired again, a process that required the maker to coordinate the body, glaze, applied colors, and firing. Lajvardina designs often favored dense patterns of foliage and geometric forms, though some tiles and vessels also carried birds or other figures.

Firing posed practical risks. Abu’l Qasim recommended protective ceramic containers, called saggars, to keep smoke from spoiling overglaze decoration. He described fuel choices too: soft wood at Kashan and barkless willow at Tabriz and Baghdad. Choosing fuel and shielding the decorated surface were part of controlling the kiln, alongside deciding when to fire again.

Large tile commissions connected potters with architectural patrons. Makers prepared pieces to fit repeating panels, with star and cross shapes combining into a larger surface. Colours, inscriptions and motifs had to work across adjoining pieces as well as within a single tile. Producing a panel involved coordination between design, shaping, decoration and installation.

Vessels, designs, and disputed workshop locations

“Sultanabad ware” is a convenient name for a group of Ilkhanid-period ceramics, not secure proof that the wares were made in Sultanabad. Many examples were found in the surrounding region, but kiln evidence has not established that the town itself was their production center. Their origin remains debated.

These wares are described as relatively heavily potted, often with a thick, translucent glaze. Some examples combine black painting and shaded effects with a white slip, a thin coating applied to the vessel’s surface before glazing. Others use a white slip beneath a greenish or grey coating, with black-painted designs and occasional raised details. Foliage, birds, hares, and deer appear among the motifs; human figures are less common. These varied surfaces reflect choices made across the stages of preparing the body, applying slips and designs, and glazing the finished vessel.

Designs on Ilkhanid ceramics could draw on visual forms circulating in other media. Some motifs associated with Chinese art, including lotus flowers and other scrolling plants, may have reached ceramic decoration through textiles rather than through direct copying of Chinese pottery. This possibility points to the movement of patterns between crafts, without identifying a single route by which a particular design travelled.

Books made through coordinated work

Manuscript production brought together workers with different tasks. The Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, or Compendium of Chronicles, makes this collaboration especially visible. Rashid al-Din began the project under the patronage of Ghazan, whose interest included preserving an account of Mongol history. After Ghazan’s death in 1304, his successor Öljeitü asked Rashid al-Din to expand the work into a broader history. The expanded project was completed between 1306 and 1311.

Producing a manuscript required the text to be copied and prepared for illustration. Scribes wrote the text, while painters added images in relation to particular passages. Surviving illustrated pages use ink and watercolor washes; some also used silver highlights. The works show different artistic hands, evidence that a single manuscript could involve several painters rather than one maker carrying out every stage. Rashid al-Din directed the project, but its production was collective.

The foundation’s copying scheme specified paper, handwriting and comparison with an authoritative original. Supervisors checked the completed text before leather binding, registration and distribution to schools. The sequence gave separate workers responsibility for accuracy, appearance and durability. Later owners could add paintings or text to manuscripts, so individual books acquired more than one phase of work.

Rab’-e Rashidi as a center of production

Rab’-e Rashidi provides a rare view of craft work within a larger institution. Its facilities included a library, a paper-making facility, workshops, classrooms, a hospital, and kitchens. The foundation supported the people who worked and studied there with salaries and food provisions. These facilities joined the supply of materials and the organization of labor to institutional purposes, rather than leaving every stage of production to an isolated artisan.

Early copies of the Compendium of Chronicles were made at Rab’-e Rashidi. The project combined a patron’s instructions with the work of copyists, painters and supervisors. Bound books travelled to other schools for reading and further copying, carrying both the historical text and its visual presentation beyond the workshop.

Taken together, the ceramic recipes, decorated vessels and tiles, and Rab’-e Rashidi’s manuscript program reveal craft production as a combination of materials, practical knowledge, skilled hands, and institutional or household livelihoods. They also show that the evidence differs by medium: ceramic treatises record ingredients and firing, while manuscripts and foundation provisions reveal coordinated copying, illustration, staffing, and patronage. These varied forms of work connected makers to the people and institutions that commissioned, used, and supported their products.

For the wider setting, see Ilkhanid Households, Work and Social Obligations in Iran and Iraq.