Ilkhanid Homes and Household Goods: Domestic Spaces, Ceramics and Furnishings

Between the mid-thirteenth century and 1335, Ilkhanid households used portable goods alongside buildings and residential quarters. A bowl could serve food, a jar hold supplies and a floor covering furnish a room. Courtly camps required possessions that could move with people and animals, while an urban foundation organised lodging and services in permanent buildings. Surviving objects and the records of Rab’-e Rashidi in Tabriz reveal these settings in detail.

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Mobile life and settled spaces

The Ilkhanid state combined mobile ways of life with urban institutions. Mongol routes extended through central Iraq, northwestern Iran, Azerbaijan and Armenia, while Tabriz became a major political and commercial center. Household arrangements consequently varied with location and purpose. A residence within a city, a room assigned to a student or worker, and a dwelling connected to a mobile household were not interchangeable settings.

Rab’-e Rashidi was the endowed complex founded by Rashid al-Din in Tabriz. Its 1309 deed provided accommodation for employees, students and guests alongside teaching, religious services and medical care. Housing was linked to work and support: staff needed somewhere to live while administrators had to maintain the buildings and supplies.

At Takht-e Soleyman, a civilian settlement called Saturiq developed beside the palace, with a bazaar near the northern entrance. After royal use ended, residents occupied former palatial spaces and reused stone and tile fragments in houses. Those later fourteenth-century houses belong to the site’s subsequent history. The sequence shows how residence and reused materials changed as a courtly centre lost its patron.

Ceramic vessels and decorated surfaces

Ilkhanid ceramics included vessels suited to domestic use as well as elaborate pieces and tiles made for display. Sultanabad ware is a conventional name for a group of ceramics associated with the Ilkhanid period. Bowls in this style could have a soft, pale body, a greenish or grey-brown surface coating, and decoration painted beneath the glaze. Foliage often fills the background, with birds, hares, deer or other animals among the designs. Some pieces also use dark outlines and pale blue or turquoise glaze.

The Metropolitan Museum’s Bowl with Flying Bird Design, dated to the second half of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, has a thin-walled rounded body on a low foot. Blue, black and turquoise decoration lies beneath a transparent glaze. The open shape gave access to its contents, while the foot supported it on a surface. A flying bird and lotus-like exterior petals added imagery to the vessel’s practical form.

Other decorated ceramics used lajvardina, a technique named for its lapis-like deep blue. A stonepaste body mixed silica, white clay and glass frit, finely prepared before shaping. After glazing, makers added coloured decoration and gold leaf and fixed these in another firing. These operations produced bowls and tiles with rich surfaces.

The British Museum’s early-fourteenth-century albarello is a tall ceramic medicine jar decorated with lotus medallions. Such a storage form differs from an open serving bowl: its height and narrower opening suited keeping contents rather than presenting a broad surface for eating. The museum dates it around 1300–1350, across the final Ilkhanid and early successor years.

Food, water and lighting at Rab’-e Rashidi

The provisions for Rab’-e Rashidi offer a detailed view of how an institutional household was meant to function. Its kitchens and dining facilities served people who lived or worked in the complex, including staff and students, as well as guests and others receiving food. The foundation’s arrangements included the distribution of bread and other food to staff; food was also provided to people attending the tomb at designated times, and a daily allocation was made for poor people. Gardeners and other workers helped maintain the foundation’s supplies.

Storage and water supply required continuing work. Grain stores kept supplies available for kitchens and bakeries. The foundation assigned water carriers to its sections, while other workers maintained underground conduits. Religious observances at the tomb required lamps to be filled with sesame oil and large candles lit. An oil lamp produced light by feeding fuel to a burning wick; attendants had to replenish it.

Floor coverings furnished spaces used for residence, reception and worship. Carpets had a raised surface of pile, while kilims were flat-woven. Both were portable and could be moved or stored as rooms changed use. Custodians at Rab’-e Rashidi were responsible for valuable textiles and other goods, joining their everyday use with care and safekeeping.

Textiles and portable possessions

Ilkhanid workshops also produced fine silk textiles, although surviving examples chiefly attest to luxury and courtly use rather than ordinary household furnishing. A large textile fragment associated with a burial robe for Duke Rudolf IV of Austria bears the name and titles of Abu Sa’id, who ruled from 1316 to 1335. It is thought to have been made in an Ilkhanid state workshop, probably in Tabriz. Its patterned bands include vegetal designs, peacocks and inscriptions, with gold thread among the materials.

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