Islamic Monarchy

The most nomadic famous recipient of divine favor was the Mongol Temüchin, or Genghis (Chinggis) Khan (d. 1227). Genghis Khan rose from a noble but impoverished background to absolute rule and was thought to possess the power bestowed by God in the form of a divine mandate, which later passed to his descendants. According to the divine mandate, God had granted universal rule to the Chinggisids, who were charged with implementing that rule on earth through territorial conquest. The divine mandate passed to all Chinggisids, male and female, although only men reigned openly; women ruled primarily as regents for their sons. The position of Great Khan was usually limited to the sons of a chief wife, but within this restriction such factors as primogeniture, ultimogeniture, the preference of the current ruler, and the approval of the Genghisid family and the Mongol nobility all could play a role. As a result of this new and powerful model of kingship, the death of the Abbasid caliph al-Musta'sim at Mongol hands in Baghdad in 1258 therefore spelled for many a sea-change in understandings of rule. Despite the hasty revival of an Abbasid caliphate in Cairo (1261–1517), not all Muslims recognized it as legitimate. At first, Muslim kings and their advisors focused on the military defense of the Islamic world against the pagan Mongol invaders. When the religious scholar Ibn Jama'ah (d. 1333) wrote an advice work in the early thirteenth century, he elaborated in great detail on the king's responsibility for defending the community.

But soon Mongol sovereigns themselves began to convert to Islam and employ Islamic models of kingship. Among these new Muslims were the khans of the Golden Horde in southern Russia and central Asia (1241–1480) and their Ilkhanid cousins in Iran (1258–1335). Their conversions led to important changes in the development of Islamic monarchies, since Muslim Mongols ruled both as divinely chosen descendants of Genghis Khan and as Muslim sovereigns, advised by Islamic scholars. Theories of rule in this era drew not only on the well-established Persian Islamic models but also on Greek philosophical thought, which was embodied by the work of authors such as al-Razi (d. 1256), al-Tusi (d. 1274), and Kashifi (fl. 1494–1495). These ideas envisioned a society divided into four distinct classes: men of the sword, men of the pen, merchants, and cultivators. In this model the ruler functioned as an enlightened philosopher king, whose task was to maintain each class in its proper place through the just application of Islamic law.