Ghazan promotes Rashid al-Din

1299

The Ilkhan Ghazan elevated his Jewish-born physician and polymath Rashid al-Din to vizier. From that office Rashid would direct the empire's finances and commission the monumental Jami al-Tawarikh, the world's first attempt at a truly universal history in Persian. His suburb of Rab-e Rashidi outside Tabriz became a scholarly colony where scribes copied his universal history into Arabic, Persian, Chinese, and Mongolian editions.