During the period of the disruption of the Mongol Empire two Shaykh Ḥasans play a prominent part, the one known The Jalá'ir or Ílkání Dynasty as “the Great” (Buzurg), the other as “the Little” (Kúchak). The latter was the grandson of the great Amír Chúbán, whose power and influence were still further increased by his marriage in 719/1319 with Sátí Beg, the daughter of Úljáytú and sister of Abú Sa'íd, who bore him three sons, besides the six sons and one daughter (Baghdád Khátún) born to him by another wife. Of these ten children the most celebrated were Amír Ḥasan, Timúr-Tásh, Dimashq Khwája, and Baghdád Khátún. Amír Ḥasan and his three sons, Tálish, Ḥájji Beg and Ghúch Ḥusayn, all died violent deaths about 727-8/1327-8. Timúr-Tásh rebelled and fled to Egypt, where he was at first well received by al-Malik an-Náṣir, who, however, becoming alarmed at his increasing influence and evident ambition, put him to death in 728/1328. He was the father of the above-mentioned Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Kúchak (“the Little”), also called after his grandfather “Chúbání,” and of Malik-i-Ashraf. Dimashq Khwája, the third of Amír Chúbán's sons, was put to death by Abú Sa'íd in 727/1327 (a year very fatal to this family) on a charge of carrying on an intrigue with one of the widows of the late king Úljáytú. His daughter Dilshád Khátún and her aunt Baghdád Khátún were both ladies of considerable note, and, extraordinary as it appears, both were married at one time in their lives to the Sulṭán Abú Sa'íd and at another to the rival Shaykh Ḥasan, called “the Great” (Buzurg). Baghdád Khátún is said to have been remarkable for her beauty, and was married in 723/1323 to Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Buzurg, but unfortunately Abú Sa'íd saw her, was smitten by her charms, and conceived so violent a passion for her that in 727/1325 he compelled her husband to divorce her so that he might marry her himself. On Abú Sa'íd's death in 736/1335-6 and the elevation to the throne of Arpa, she was put to death privily by the new Sulṭán on suspicion of having poisoned her late husband, and Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Buzurg compensated himself by appro­priating the late monarch's other widow Dilshád Khátún. * She bore him Sulṭán Uways, whose power she subsequently shared, and, like him, was the subject of many panegyrics on the part of the poet Salmán of Sáwa.

Shaykh Ḥasan “the Great” was the son of Ḥusayn, the son of Áq-Búghá, the son of Aydakán, and claimed descent Shaykh Ḥasan­i-Buzurg from Húlágú, whence, I suppose, the title of Ílkání (<text in Arabic script omitted>, Íl-khání, though probably a mere variant of it) by which, as well as Jalá'ir (the tribal name) the dynasty was known. For about eight years (736-744/1335-1343) after the death of Abú Sa'íd the history of Persia consists largely in the struggles and intrigues of these two houses (of Chúbán and Jalá'ir) for the supreme power, their ambitions being thinly masked by the puppet-princes of the race of Húlágú whom they successively raised to a nominal and generally very brief sovereignty. By 737/1337 Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Buzurg was in possession of Baghdád and Tabríz, the two capitals of the Mongol Íl-kháns and afterwards of the Jalá'irs, who would therefore appear to have represented most directly the older dynasty; but his tenure only became relatively secure on Rajab 27, 744 (Dec. 15, 1343), when his rival Murder of Shaykh Ḥasan­i-Kúchak by his wife Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Kúchak was murdered by his unfaithful wife in a very horrible manner, which nevertheless called forth a savage and untrans-lateable epigram from Salmán of Sáwa, the panegyrist of the Jalá'irs, of which the text has been already given on p. 60, supra.

The Jalá'ir or Íl-khánídynasty founded by Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Buzurg endured for some 75 years, and, though much harassed by Tímúr during the last fifteen or twenty years of its existence, was never entirely crushed by him like the Muẓaffarís. Shaykh Ḥasan and his son Shaykh Uways, whose mother was Dilshád Khátún, each reigned about twenty years (A.H. 736 or 737 to 757 and A.H. 757 to 776 respectively); and all three seem to owe much of their fame and good repute to their indefatigable panegyrist Salmán of Sáwa, most of whose poems are consecrated to their praise. The portrait of them presented by most historians and biographers is therefore a very flattering one, and, though their virtues may have been exaggerated, there seems no reason to believe that it is altogether unfounded. After the death of Sulṭán Uways, however, on the 2nd of Jumáda 1, 776 (Oct. 9, 1374), the fortunes of the dynasty began to decline. On that same day the late ruler's eldest son Ḥasan was put to death by the nobles, and the younger son Ḥusayn was placed on the vacant throne at Tabríz, whence he was driven out, after a successful war with the Turkmáns, for a space of four months by Sháh Shujá' the Muẓaffarí. Shortly after this his authority was resisted by his brother 'Alí, and finally in Ṣafar, 784 (April-May, 1382), he was killed by another brother, Aḥmad, who in turn was proclaimed king, and became involved almost immediately in a fratricidal conflict with yet another brother named Báyazíd. A partition of the kingdom was finally effected, Ádharbáyján being assigned to Aḥmad and 'Iráq to Báyazíd, but soon fresh conflicts occurred between the two brothers in which the aid of Sháh Manṣúr the Muẓaffarí was invoked first by one and then by the other. These unedifying squabbles were brought to an end by the approach of Tímúr's army, which, after a protracted resist­ance on the part of Aḥmad, finally compelled him and Qará-Yúsuf the Turkmán to seek refuge with the Turkish The Ottoman Sulṭán Báyazíd “the Thunder­bolt.” Sulṭán Báyazíd, known as Yildirim, “the Thunder-bolt.” Thence they passed to Egypt, the ruler of which country was preparing to make his peace with Tímúr by surrendering them to him when, fortunately for them, news arrived that that sanguinary conqueror was dead. Shortly afterwards Aḥmad's bad faith led to a rupture between him and Qará-Yúsuf, who defeated him near Tabríz on the 25th of Rabí' II, 812 (Sept. 6, 1409). The same night he was captured and put to death, after a troubled and turbulent reign of twenty-seven years, by his conqueror, and with him practically ended the Íl-khání or Jalá'ir dynasty, though its final extinc­tion at the hands of the Qará-qoyúnlú or “Black Sheep” Turkmáns did not take place until a year or two later.