Death of Abu Sa’id and the break-up of the Ilkhanate

Abu Sa’id came to the throne as a boy in 1316, and for a decade the amir Chupan governed in his name: in these years Rashid al-Din was executed (1318), a revolt of amirs was crushed and peace was made with the Mamluks. In 1327 the young Ilkhan had Chupan’s son killed, and Chupan himself was put to death on his orders; Abu Sa’id then took the government into his own hands and forced the Jalayir amir Hasan to divorce Chupan’s daughter Baghdad Khatun so that he could marry her. The Great Mongol Shahnameh, one of the masterpieces of Persian painting, was illustrated during his reign. In 1335 he set out against a new invasion by Özbeg and died on the way, on 30 November (some sources give 1 December); his body was taken to Soltaniyeh for burial. Ibn Battuta, who had travelled with his camp in 1327, wrote that the jealous Baghdad Khatun had poisoned him; some modern historians think he may have died of plague.

His death without an heir opened a scramble for power. The vizier Ghiyath al-Din, Rashid al-Din’s son, enthroned Arpa Ke’un, a descendant of Ariq Böke; within months Arpa was defeated and killed (1336); then the ‘Great’ Hasan of the Jalayirids and the ‘Little’ Hasan of the Chobanids set up rival puppet khans of the house of Hulagu, while Fars passed to the Injuids and the Muzaffarids, Khorasan to the Sarbadars and Herat to the Kartids. In 1357 Jani Beg of the Golden Horde took Tabriz from the Chobanids, ending the last remnant of the Ilkhanate. Coming back through Iran and Iraq in 1347–1348, Ibn Battuta marvelled that so mighty a realm had dissolved so quickly.