Loss of Influence and Death
In 1312, his colleague, Sa'd al-Dawla, fell from power and was replaced by Ali Shah, who soon began intriguing to bring down Rashid al-Din. Then, in 1314, Mohammed Khodabanda (also known as Muhammad Khodabandeh, or most commonly, Öljaitü) died and power passed to his son, Abu Sa'id. Young and inexperienced, Abu Sa'id sided with 'Ali Shah. In 1318, Rashid al-Din was charged with having poisoned Oljeitu. During the trial, Rashid al-Din proved that the letter cited against him in evidence was a forgery, but he was convicted anyway and executed on July 13, at the age of seventy.
His property was confiscated and—even worse from the standpoint of both art and history — Rab'-e Rashidi, with its scriptorium and its precious copies, was turned over to the Mongol soldiery. Only two fragments of the Jami' al-Tawarikh have survived, one of them the manuscript sold at Sotheby's in 1980. A century later, during the reign of Timurlane's son Miranshah, Rashid ad-Din's bones were exhumed from the Muslim cemetery and reburied in the Jewish cemetery.
Read more about this topic: Rashid-al-Din Hamadani
Famous quotes containing the words loss of, loss, influence and/or death:
“Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn’t stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband—it creeps up insidiously ... step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realises that it is gone.”
—Baron Lane (b. 1918)
“Claudio. The old ornament of his cheek hath already stuffed tennis-balls.
Leonato. Indeed, he looks younger than he did, by the loss of a beard.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country’s God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.”
—John Donne (1572–1631)