High Middle Ages · Middle East · Religion
1295
Ghazan converts the Ilkhanate to Islam
1295
The Mongol Ilkhan of Persia, Ghazan, formally converted to Islam and ordered his army to follow. The ruling house that had sacked Baghdad forty years earlier now patronized mosques and madrasas. Persian culture absorbed the Mongols as it had absorbed earlier invaders. Ghazan's conversion completed the Islamization of the western Mongol khanates and reconciled Iran's population to their foreign rulers for the first time.