A dynasty of Mongol rulers in Persia (c. 1261-1353), founded by Chinggis Khan’s grandson Hülegü, and viewed as possible allies of the Christian West in the war against the Mamlûk sultanate of Egypt.
The term “Ilkhan” appears to mean “subordinate khan.” Some uncertainty surrounds the creation of the Ilkhanate around the year 1261, as the Mongol Empire dissolved in civil war. Mamlûk sources allege that Hülegü, hitherto merely lieutenant on behalf of his brother, the Great Khan Mongke, now usurped control over Persia and established himself as a khan on a level with the other regional Mongol rulers. But according to the Ilkhanid minister and historian Rashīd al-Dīn, Mongke had privately intended Hülegü and his descendants to rule the country in perpetuity. The Ilkhans were repeatedly called upon to repel invasions from north of the Caucasus by their relatives, the khans of the Golden Horde, who claimed the pasturelands of Azerbaijan and northwestern Persia. Hülegü and his successors, prevented from devoting their full attention to the war against the Mamlûks, therefore negotiated with the pope and Western monarchs for concerted action against Egypt.
These exchanges became more frequent in the reign of Hülegü’s son and successor Abaqa, who was in touch with the Crusade of the Lord Edward of England (1270-1272) and whose envoys attended the Second Council of Lyons (1274). Renewed after a brief hiatus in the reign of the Muslim Ahmad Tegüder, they peaked under Arghun (1285-1291). The ambassadors to the West were often Christians, either Nestorians like Rabban Sawma (1287) or expatriate Italians like Buscarello di’ Ghisolfi (1289), and they emphasized their master’s readiness to embrace the Christian faith. Yet no Ilkhan became a Christian, and no synchronized campaign ever occurred. Some Hospitallers from Margat joined an invading army sent into northern Syria by Abaqa in 1281, and King Henry II of Cyprus and the Templars endeavored to collaborate with the Ilkhan Ghazan when his forces drove the Mamlûks temporarily from Syria and Palestine in 1299-1300, an episode greeted with widespread and unrealistic enthusiasm in Western Europe.
Ghazan’s successor Oljeitü (1304-1316), the last Ilkhan to launch an invasion of Syria or to make overtures to the West, was followed by Abû Sa‘īd, who in 1323 made peace with the Mamlûks.Ilkhanid efforts to secure Western cooperation had failed for various reasons, including logistical difficulties and residual Latin distrust of Mongol rulers who were as yet unbaptized. That Ghazan and Oljeitü were Muslims was apparently unknown in the West, perhaps in part because it did not affect their foreign policy.