Sa'd al-Dawla

Origins and early life

Sa'd al-Dawla al-Safi ibn Hibat Allah was born about 1240 at Abhar in Persia into a Jewish family, trained as a physician, and never converted; he remained a professing Jew throughout his career, which the contemporary chroniclers Bar Hebraeus and Wassaf record as itself a source of resentment among Muslim officials at the Mongol court.

Work and career

He began in the financial administration of Baghdad, where his command of Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Mongolian and his skill with accounts brought him to notice, and he entered the service of the Ilkhan Arghun Khan as a physician. Appointed to reform the revenues of Baghdad, he uncovered large-scale embezzlement, and in 1289 Arghun made him grand vizier with authority over the finances of the whole Ilkhanate, from Anatolia to the Oxus.

He reorganised taxation, curbed the abuses of provincial governors, and appointed Jews and Christians to office, and Bar Hebraeus writes that during his ministry Jews flocked to Baghdad from all parts of the world. His success made him hated by dispossessed Mongol emirs and by Muslim notables, and pamphlets circulated accusing him of favouring his co-religionists.

Later years

When Arghun fell mortally ill in the winter of 1290 and 1291, his enemies moved: Sa'd al-Dawla was arrested and executed on 5 March 1291, and his death was followed by anti-Jewish reprisals in Baghdad and Tabriz, one of the first such pogroms recorded in Mongol Persia.