Hirotoshi Shimo
Toyo Bunko
The Central Organization Of Il-Khanate Governments
35th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, 1992
Persian historians of the Mongol period clearly describe how the political center of the nomadic empire was organized but their accounts are little understood. Chiefly concerned with the Il-Khanate, they indicate to us the following:
Amir-i buzurg translates Mongolian nökör, an official term for a vassal personally serving his patriarch, Chinggis Khan. Amir-i mu’tabar, too, means, not just an important amir, but a hereditary vassal of an especially high rank. The relationship between the khan and the vassal had become hereditary among their respective descendants by the II-Khanate times. The political center of Il-Khanate government was formed by the descendants of such hereditary vassals who came to Persia with Hulagu and were treated as in-laws and relatives of the dynasty. Compared to those quasi-imperial kinsmen, other ordinary vassals including chiliarchs since Chinggis Khan’s time had weaker ties with the House of Hulagu, and their power did not last through the end of the II-Khanate. The Mongol Empire was a collection of the Chinggisid family estates, and the center of its component khanates was occupied by those hereditary vassals with especially close ties with the Chinggisid.