User:HistoryofIran/Ata-Malik Juvayni

Ata-Malik Juvayni was a bureaucrat and historian from the Juvayni family who served under the Mongol Empire. He is known for composing the Tarikh-i Jahangushay ("History of the World Conqueror"), an important account on the history of Central Asia and the 13th-century Mongol invasion of Iran.

Background
Born in 1226, Ata-Malik belonged to the Persian Juvayni family, whose history of bureaucratic service goes back to the Seljuk era.

Early career
From 1243 and henceforth, Ata-Malik served under the Mongols, in the entourage of Arghun Aqa until 1256. Later Persian chroniclers noted that Ata-Malik had gained considerable respect in the Mongol court during this period, especially with the Mongol khagan (emperor) Möngke Khan ((r. 1251 – 1259)). In 1246/7 Ata-Malik and Arghun Aqa went to Mongolia together, and in 1249/50 Ata-Malik visited Mongolia again. In 1251/52, he made a third, longer visit to Mongolia, where he went to its capital Karakorum. It was there that he was convinced by friends to start writing the Tarikh-i Jahangushay to record the history of the the Mongol rulers and their conquests.

After returning to Iran, Ata-Malik continued working as Arghun Aqa's secretary until the arrival of the royal Mongol prince Hulegu Khan in 1256, at which point Arghun Aqa dispatched him, along with his own son Kiray-Malik and secretary Amir Ahmad Bitekchi, to assist Hulegu in the administration of Iraq, Khorasan and Mazandaran. Ata-Malik grew in prominence under Hulegu, and he marched alongside him to besiege Baghdad in 1257. A year after Baghdad was taken, in 1259, Hulegu appointed Ata-Malik as the governor of the city.

Governorship of Baghdad
During the reign of Hulagu's son and successor Abaqa Khan ((r. 1265 – 1282)), Ata-Malik remained the administrator of Baghdad, even though the Mongol general Amir Sunjaq was given the post of chief governor of the provinces of Baghdad and Fars. Ata-Malik worked hard to raise the standard of living for farmers and bring wealth to the land during the seventeen years of Abaqa's rule. Taxes were lowered, new villages were established, a caravanserai was created in Najaf, and new canals were created, the most well-known of which being the canal that connected Anbar on the Euphrates to Kufa and Najaf and cost him over 100,000 gold dinars of his personal wealth.

Ata-Malik and Shams al-Din returned to prominence during the brief rule of Tekuder ((r. 1282 – 1284)). Reinstated as governor of Baghdad, Ata-Malik was also given the responsibility of overseeing the waqf earnings from Mecca and Medina. Ata-Malik died on 5 March 1283 in Mughan, and was buried in the Charandab Cemetery in Tabriz. Although his death was attributed to a fall from a horse, it was generally accepted that a few months prior, when Arghun had started to harass and arrest his people and reignite allegations of embezzlement, he had severely traumatized him. In the process of looking for proof, the body of a recently deceased friend, Najm al-Din Asfar, had been dumped carelessly on the road. It was thought that Ata-Malik's severe headaches from the distress created by this incident was the actual reason for his death.

He was survived by at least one son, Mansur (died 1293) and a daughter who became the wife of the Sufi shaykh Sadr al-Din Ibrahim Hamuwayi, who played a key role in converting the later Ilkhanate ruler Ghazan to Islam.

Work and legacy
The name of the important Persian chronicle Jahangosha-ye Naderi—which describes the events during the reign of Nader Shah ((r. 1736 – 1747))—is a reference to the Tarikh-i Jahangushay.