The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion.

• Author: Timothy, May
• Position: Book review

The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion. By PETER JACKSON. New Haven: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2017. Pp. xxi + 614. $40.

The subject of the Islamization of the Mongol empire has been in the forefront of scholarship on the Mongol empire for the past two decades. Most of the studies have been isolated, with emphasis on the conversions of individual rulers and reactions to their conversion. While scholars have concluded that the conversion process was not top-down, i.e., the ruler converted and the rest of the Mongols followed, the actual process of conversion has not been examined in detail. Furthermore, no study has attempted to examine the topic across the empire in both time and space--at least none until the appearance of Peter Jackson's magnum opus, The Mongols and the Islamic World.

The book consists of thirteen chapters as well as an introduction, epilogue, and conclusion. Two appendices also accompany the text, listing technical terms and then genealogies and lists of rulers. Jackson's book is adequately illustrated with black-and-white plates as well as eight maps. The latter depict pre-Mongol Asia and Mongol campaigns in the Islamic world, and there are three of the post-dissolution Mongol khanates: the Jochids, the Ilkhanate, and the realms of Qaidu and the Chaghatayids. These are particularly useful as they are sufficiently detailed and collected in one volume, although a map of the Yuan empire would have also been appreciated for complete coverage of the empire from a pedagogical perspective.

Jackson approaches his topic chronologically and thematically. The first eight chapters are primarily organized chronologically as the author explores his topic. The remaining chapters proceed to move back and forth through time and space as Jackson focuses on particular themes related to Mongol involvement in the Islamic world: the devastation of the Mongol campaigns, Inter-Mongol warfare, the Pax Mongolica, client kingdoms and Mongol rule, and the issue of conversion and Islamization of the Mongols. This organization works well, as it permits Jackson to focus on a topic without having to cut it short due to coverage of other related matters. In addition, he is then able to reference earlier points and build his argument without losing the reader in minutiae. This is a particularly useful approach for dealing with matters of conversion as well as with the complexity of infidel Mongols ruling over Muslims and their...