Nasir al-Din Tusi and the Mongols

Nasir al-Din Tusi (d. 1274) was one of the most prominent scholars of medieval Islam, with a remarkable political career. He abandoned his Ismaili patrons to join the victorious Mongol armies, taking part in the Fall of Baghdad and the execution of the last Caliph. The accounts of his life in Arabic and Persian at times laud him as an outstanding scholar and prudent politician; at other times, they condemn him for his treachery and anti-Islam activity.Hadi Jorati sheds new light on Tusi’s political and scholarly career, together with a micro-history of the Maragha Observatory, a prominent medieval Islamic scientific institution that Tusi founded and directed under the Ilkhans of Iran. Jorati gives us a new interpretation of the role of court patronage of intellectual enterprise, revealing the entangled nature of scholarly and public life and providing a window into the social and intellectual history of the Medieval Islamic world.