FOURTEEN

Persia after the Mongols

139

The Karts or Kurts

643–791/1245–1389

Eastern Khurasan and northern Afghanistan

The Karts (a presumably Iranian name of unknown significance) were an indigenous line of Maliks of Afghan stock, from the clan or family of the Shansabānīs of Ghūr (see below, no. 159); the founder, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad I, had married a Ghūrid princess, so that the Karts could claim to be, in some measure, heirs of the Ghūrids, ruling also as they did from the former centres of the Ghūrids, Herat and fortresses within Ghūr.

The incoming Mongols allowed Shams al-Dīn I Muḥammad to retain his lands as a vassal prince, and, ensconced in their nucleus of territories in Herat and the inaccesible mountains of Ghūr, the Karts generally remained loyal allies of the II Khāns. The decay of II Khānid power in Khurasan after Abū Sa‘īd’s death enabled Mu‘izz al-Dīn Pīr Ḥusayn Muḥammad to raise his principality, which now reached to western Khurasan and the Sarbadārid territories (see below, no. 143), to new heights of power and splendour. But the rise of Tīmūr cut short Kart power, and, on the death of his tributary Ghiyāth al-Dīn II Pīr ‘Alī, Tīmūr annexed the Kart territories to his empire.

Lane-Poole, 252; Zambaur, 256–7; Album, 50.

EI² ‘Kart’ (T. W. Haig and B. Spuler); EIr Āl-e Kart’ (B. Spuler).

B. Spuler, Die Mongolen in Iran. Politik, Verwaltung und Kultur der Ilchanzeit 12201350, 4th edn, 129–33.

L. G. Potter, The Kart Dynasty of Herat. Religion and Politics in medieval Iran, Ph.D diss., Columbia University, New York 1992, unpubl. (UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbour).