Sultaniyya

Sultaniyya is a town in the northern part of the mediaeval Islamic province of Jibal, about 50 km south-east of Zanjan, at latitude 36 24 N and longitude 48 50 E. ¹ The Mongol Ilkhans founded it towards the end of the seventh/thirteenth century, and for a time in the next century it served as their capital. ¹ It stands about 5,000 to 5,500 feet above sea level, and its cool summer climate and rich plateau pasture and game must, the article says, have held a special attraction for the Mongols. ^{1 2}

The older Persian name of the district was apparently Shahruyaz, or Sharubaz, and it was originally a dependency of Qazvin. The Mongols called it Kongkur Oleng, "the pasture ground of the Alezans". ¹ A village called Oleng still stands to the south-east of the town. ¹ The article adds, citing Hafiz-i Abru, that the Ilkhan Abu Said built his own tomb at Shahruyaz, next to Sultaniyya. ¹

Arghun began the construction of a town whose wall measured 12,000 paces in circumference. His son and later successor Oljeitu, who ruled from 704/1304 to 716/1316, began in 705/1305, to celebrate the birth of his son Abu Said, to enlarge it to a circuit of 30,000 paces and made it the capital, or more accurately the chief seasonal residence, of his kingdom. ² The article on the Ilkhans, in listing the capitals of Azerbaijan, gives 1307 as the date from which Sultaniyya, near Qazvin, served alongside Tabriz and Maragha. ^{2 4} The two articles thus give different dates for its rise to capital status.

The sovereign and his ministers vied in embellishing the town. The vizier Rashid al-Din alone built a quarter of 1,000 houses, the Rab'-i Rashidi. ² The building of the town was finished in 713/1313 and was celebrated solemnly. After his conversion to Shi'ism, Oljeitu thought of bringing to Sultaniyya the remains of Ali and of the Imam Husayn. ² Hamd Allah Mustawfi says that nowhere except Tabriz could so many splendid buildings be seen as in Sultaniyya, and makes five great roads radiate from it as the centre of Iran. The article calls the last claim an exaggeration and suggests that the "inconvenient" site, in the words of the traveller Pietro della Valle, was the chief cause of the city's decline. ²

Like most Persian cities, Sultaniyya had an inner citadel surrounded by a moat and an outer city surrounded by ramparts. The square citadel was of dressed stone, with sixteen towers, a machicolated parapet and an iron gate. ^{2 3} Its centrepiece, and the main building to survive, is the tomb of Oljeitu, an enormous octagon of 38 m across with an adjoining hall to the south. The central domed chamber is 50 m high and 25 m across, held up by walls 7 m thick and ringed by eight towers, and a gallery runs round the outside under the base of the dome. ³ The exterior was decorated in tile mosaic, and the interior twice: first in glazed brick, tile, stucco and terracotta, and then largely in painted plaster. The tomb seems to have been dedicated in 713/1313-14 and redecorated shortly before Oljeitu's death three years later. The article says several explanations have been proposed for the quick redecoration, none of them convincing. ³

The tomb was part of a pious foundation with places for prayer, Qur'an reading, meditation and residence, set around a court with four iwans in a garden. According to a teacher at the foundation, Shams al-Din Amuli, its endowment exceeded 100 tumans. A huge thirty-part Qur'an copied at Baghdad between 706 and 710/1306-13 was endowed to it. ³ The article reconstructs other lost buildings of the citadel from descriptions: a large congregational mosque with a monumental portal, a palace with a marble court, bazaars, hostelries and gardens. ³ It also describes the Rab'-i Rashidi, with its madrasa, hospital and khanaqah, and the lavish palace and stone bazaar built by Rashid al-Din's rival Taj al-Din. ³

Several hundred metres south-west of Oljeitu's tomb survives an octagonal tomb tower with an adjoining khanaqah, commonly called the tomb of Chelebi Oghlu, but actually marking the grave of Shaykh Burak, a leading Sufi killed during Oljeitu's invasion of Gilan in 706/1306. The tomb was built at royal command soon after his death, and the site was an important Sufi centre until at least the next generation. ³ Another octagonal tomb nearby, of the early Safavid theologian and poet Mulla Hasan Kashi Shirazi, was built in 963/1565-6. ³

Oljeitu died at Sultaniyya and was buried in the famous mausoleum there. ² The kurultay of Abu Said was held in Sultaniyya, although the minister Ali Shah's beginning a magnificent mosque at Tabriz suggests that the old capital was regaining its pride of place. European envoys and merchants were found at Sultaniyya, and in 1318 the Pope created an archdiocese there. ²

After the Ilkhanids fell, possession of the city was disputed between the Chubanids, the Jalayirids and the Muzaffarids. A former captain of Shaykh Uways Jalayir called Sarik Adil fortified himself there in 781/1379. ² He defeated the Muzaffarid Shah Shuja' but finally submitted to him and kept his position. A little later he proclaimed Bayazid Jalayir sultan at Sultaniyya; Bayazid's brother Sultan Ahmad complained of this to Shah Shuja', who removed Sarik Adil from the city. ² Timur's forces took the city from the sons of Ahmad in 786/1384 and confirmed Sarik Adil as governor, apparently respecting Oljeitu's tomb. In 795/1393 Sultaniyya formed part of "the fief of Hulegu" that Timur gave his son Miran Shah. ²

The envoy Clavijo, who visited in 1404, says Miran Shah, afflicted with madness from 798/1395 and given to destroying monuments, had plundered the town and citadel and profaned Oljeitu's tomb, yet the city still had many inhabitants and more trade than Tabriz. ² Under the Safavid Shah Tahmasp I the mausoleum was restored, and the travellers Pietro della Valle and Olearius found it well preserved. Trade gradually returned to Tabriz, and the move of the political centre to Isfahan completed the ruin of Oljeitu's capital. ² Under the Qajar Fath Ali Shah a hunting palace, a new Sultanabad, was built nearby with materials taken from the old city, and it was abandoned after the Russo-Persian war of 1828. ²

Houtum-Schindler counted 400 to 500 houses there in 1880. The modern Sultaniyya lies in Zanjan province, had a population of 5,114 in 1991, and has grown somewhat because it lies near the Qazvin-Zanjan-Tabriz highway. ²

The museum has another record titled al-Sultaniyya Mausoleum, a Mamluk tomb in Cairo, which is a different monument and not Oljeitu's mausoleum. A separate record for Oljeitu's tomb at Sultaniyya has not yet been created.