Rashid-al-Din Hamadani - Loss of Influence and Death

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.