Brack, Jonathan

His new book project is titled “Ever Closer Encounters: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the Mongols’ Middle East.” Ever Closer Encounters investigates theintricate interplay between Muslims, Jews, and Christians, exploring how Mongol domination impacted both patterns of religious and communal distinction, and intellectual cross-fertilization and social embeddedness between religious communities in the eastern Islamic world under Mongol domination.

He coedited the volume Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia: Generals, Merchants, and Intellectuals (University of California Press, 2020), and a special issue in the journal Mamlūk Studies Review (Mamluks and Mongols: Studies in Honor of Reuven Amitai, 2024).

Areas of Interest

Medieval Iran, Mongol Empire, Eastern Islamic world, Religious exchange

Historical Periods of Interest

13th–14th centuries, Mongol period, Ilkhanid period

Positions

Education

Awards and distinctions

Publications

Book:

Jonathan Brack. 2023. An Afterlife for the Khan: Muslims, Buddhists, and Sacred Kingship in Mongol Iran and Eurasia (University of California Press).

Articles :

Jonathan Brack, Reuven Amitai, and Michal Biran. Forthcoming. “Back to Basics: A Re-examination of a Re-examination of the Mongol Conquest of Baghdad in 1258,” Medical History .

Jonathan Brack. 2023. “Rashid al-Din and the Jews: A Re-Examination,” ABA: Journal for the Study of the Jews of Iran, Bukhara , and Afghanistan , 13: 16-34.

Jonathan Brack. 2022. “Chinggisid Pluralism and Religious Competition: Buddhists, Muslims, and the Question of Violence and Sovereignty in Ilkhanid Iran,” Modern Asian Studies , 56: 815-39.

Jonathan Brack. 2021. “Disenchanting Heaven: Interfaith Debate, Sacral Kingship, and Conversion to Islam in the Mongol Empire, 1260-1335,” Past & Present , 250: 11-53.

Jonathan Brack. 2019. “A Mongol Mahdi in Medieval Anatolia: Reform, Rebellion, and Divine Right inthe Post-Mongol Islamic World,” Journal of the American Oriental Society , 139(3): 611- 29.

Jonathan Brack. 2019. “A Jewish Vizier and his Shīʿī Manifesto: Jews, Shīʿīs, and the Politicization of Confessional Identities in Mongol-ruled Iraq and Iran (13th to 14th centuries),” Der Islam , 96(2): 374-403.

Jonathan Brack. 2018. “Theologies of Auspicious Kingship: The Islamization of Chinggisid Sacral Kingship in the Islamic world,” Comparative Studies in Society and History , 60(4): 1143-71.

Yoni Brack. 2011. “A Mongol princess making hajj: the biography of El Qutlugh daughter of Abagha Ilkhan (r. 1265-82),” Journal of Royal Asiatic Society , Series 3, 21(3): 331-59.

Chapters in Collective Volumes:

Jonathan Brack. 2020. “Rashīd al-Dīn: Buddhism in Iran and the Mongol Silk Roads,” in Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia : Generals, Merchants, and Intellectuals , edited by Michal Biran, Francesca Fiaschetti and Jonathan Brack (University of California Press), 215-37.

Jonathan Brack, Michal Biran, and Francesca Fiaschetti. 2020. “Introduction,” in Along the Mongol Silk Roads , 1-24.

Jonathan Brack. 2016. “Was Ede Bali a Wafāʾī Shaykh? Sufis, Sayyids and genealogical 2creativity in the early Ottoman world,” in Islamic Lite rature and Intellectual Life in Fourteenth and Fifteenth -Century Anatolia , edited by Andrew Peacock and Sara Nur Yildiz (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag), 333-60.

Editorship of Collective Volumes:

Jonathan Brack, Michal Biran and Francesca Fiaschetti, eds. 2020. Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia : Generals, Merchants, and Intellectuals (University of California Press). – Published in Korean as 몽골제국, 실크로드의 개척자들: 장군, 상인, 지식, Mongol jegug, Silk Road -eui gaecheokja deul: janggun, sang’in, jisik’in [The Mongol Empire and the Pioneers of the Silk Road: Generals, merchants and Intellectuals]. Tr. by Yi Jaehwang. Seoul: Chaekgwa hamggye (Cum Libro), 2021.

Book Reviews:

Jonathan Brack. 2021. Alan Strathern, Unearthly Powers: Religious and Political Change in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). Journal of Early Modern History 25: 580-83.

Jonathan Brack. 2021. Ali Anooshahr, Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires: a Study of Politics and Invented Traditions (Oxford: University Press, 2018). The Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association , 7(2): 259-63.

Jonathan Brack. 2019. Bruno De Nicola and Charles Melville, eds., The Mongols’ Middle East: Continuity and Transformation in Ilkhanid Iran (Leiden: Brill, 2016). Journal of the American Oriental Society, 139(3): 749-50.

Jonathan Brack. 2018. Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 81(2): 345-7.

Jonathan Brack. 2017. Patrick Wing, The Jalayirids: Dynastic State Formation in the Mongol Middle East (Edinburgh, 2016). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , 80(1): 149-50.

Jonathan Brack. 2014. Zeynep Yürekli, Architecture and Hag iography in the Ottoman Empire: the Politics of Bektashi Shrines in the Classical Age (Ashgate, 2012). Der Islam , 91(2): 450-58.

Jonathan Brack. 2011. Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, edited by William W. Fitzhugh, Morris Rossabi and William Honeychurch (Washington, 2009). Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 21(2): 229-31.

Foto Copyright: LMU/ Manu Theobald