142
740–835/1340–1432
Iraq, Kurdistan and Azerbaijan
|
⊘ 740/1340 |
Shaykh Ḥasan-i Buzurg b. Ḥusayn, Tāj al-Dīn |
|
⊘ 757/1356 |
Shaykh Uways I b. Ḥasan-i Buzurg |
|
⊘ 776/1374 |
Ḥusayn I b. Shaykh Uways I, Jalāl al-Dīn |
|
⊘ 784/1382 |
Sulṭān Aḥmad b. Shaykh Uways I, Ghiyāth al-Dīn, k. 813/1410 |
|
(784–5/1382–3 |
Bāyazīd b. Shaykh Uways I, in Kurdistan) |
|
813/1410 |
Shāh Walad b. ‘Alī b. Shaykh Uways I |
|
814/1411 |
Maḥmūd b. Shāh Walad, first reign, under the tutelage of Tandu Khātūn |
|
⊘ 814/1411 |
Uways II b. Shāh Walad |
|
⊘ 824/1421 |
Muḥammad b. Shāh Walad |
|
824/1421 |
Maḥmūd b. Shāh Walad, second reign |
|
⊘ 828–35/1425–32 |
Ḥusayn II b. ‘Alā’ al-Dawla b. Sulṭān Aḥmad |
|
835/1432 |
Qara Qoyunlu conquest of southern Iraq |
The Jalāyirids were one of the successor-states to the II Khānids, succeeding to their territories in Iraq and Azerbaijan. The Jalāyir were, it seems, originally a Mongol tribe in Hülegü‘s following. The founder of the dynasty‘s fortunes was Ḥasan-i Buzurg (called ‘Great’ to distinguish him from his enemy and rival from the Chopanid family of Amīrs, Ḥasan-i Kūchik ‘the Small’), who had been governor of Anatolia under the Il Khān Abū Sa‘īd. He eventually prevailed over the Chopanids and made Baghdad the centre of his power; nevertheless, he continued to recognise various Il Khānid fainéants up to 747/1346, and it was left to his son Shaykh Uways to assume full personal sovereignty.
Shaykh Uways at first recognised the dominion of the Golden Horde (see above, no. 134) over Azerbaijan, but then in 761/1360 conquered it for himself. He also imposed his overlordship in Fars on the disputing Muẓaffarids (see above, no. 140), but his successors had to cope with the rising power of the Qara Qoyunlu Türkmens in Diyār Bakr (see below, no. 145) and an invasion through the Caucasus into Azerbaijan of the Golden Horde Khāns. Shaykh Uways’s son Sulṭān Aḥmad opposed Tīmūr when the latter appeared in northern Persia and Iraq, and had to flee into exile with the Mamlūks in Syria, and he only returned permanently to his capital Baghdad after Tīmūr’s death in 807/1405. However, the shock of the Tīmūrid invasions had much weakened the Jalāyirids‘ position. Azerbaijan quickly fell to the Qara Qoyunlu, and Baghdad itself was captured by them in 814/1411. Only in Lower Iraq, at Wāsit, Basra and Shushtar, did minor Jalāyirid princes survive as vassals of the Tīmūrid Shāh Rukh, until Ḥusayn II was killed at Ḥilla in 835/1432.
The Jalāyirids, on the evidence of their preferences for personal names, may have had some Shī‘ī sympathies, although this evidence is not in general strong. Their rule and patronage in Baghdad and Tabriz was of considerable cultural sigificance, especially in such spheres as architecture and miniature painting, traditions which were regrettably uprooted by the devastations and deportations of Tīmūr.
Lane-Poole, 246–8; Zambaur, 253; Album, 49.
EI2 ‘Djalāyir, Djalāyirid’ (J. M. Smith Jr).
H. R. Roemer, in The Cambridge History of Iran, VI, 5–10, 64–7.