The presence of a Mongol in the Mamlūk mint of Cairo would be totally unexpected since the Mongols and Mamlūks were often at war with each other,Footnote 1 but such an event is a possibility. The mystery at the mint emerges from a series of monetary weights containing a specific person's name and the dates 650 and 651 ah/1252 and 1253 ad. There are no literary sources describing mint activity, so any information about it must be gleaned from disparate artefacts like these, other weights, coins, and capacity measures. Although understanding the administration of the treasury is tentative without corroborating material like a mint manual, the sheer number of products provides a general indication of monetary policy. In the case of the individual of interest here, the items were glass weights that are part of over 2,000 pieces studied in 29 collections from the Middle East, the United States, and Europe.Footnote 2 Even so, his items are scarce: only ten are known, located in six museums from Cairo to California.Footnote 3 The objects are made of round translucent glass the size of a large coin with clear legends written in Arabic script as well as Coptic numerals for one of the years. Despite their rarity, enough samples survive to show that the issues made a complete set of the double, single, and half units to measure the unstandardised silver coinage of the Mamlūks in this period. He, like other officials with their names on glass weights, did not actually produce them, leaving that to specialist workshops, but he was responsible for their reliability, both for a durable substance and for accuracy.
The unusual person was إلقاي علي / Ilqāy ʿAlī whose work is attested by several different inscriptions, the most complete being ‘Ilqāy ʿAlī fī sana aḥda (wa) khamsīn/ Ilqāy ʿAlī in year 51’Footnote 4 on the double unit. Another one on the single unit standard states ‘Ilqāy sana 650’ with the date in Coptic numerals (see Figure 1).Footnote 5 Only these two specimens provide a year and just one includes his Muslim name, ʿAlī. Eight others hold another inscription of Ilqāy alone, which appears on the half unit weights.Footnote 6 No more information was included on them. Nevertheless, Ilqāy is a Mongol name that raises questions about such a person's activity in a distant Arab land and deserves an examination of who he might have been. The following pages consider the name Ilqāy, his possible political relationships that led to his suspected move from Mongol to Mamlūk regions, the way in which he could have attained his mint experience and his position among other treasury officials in Cairo. Much personal background is speculative, but his actual existence and work is secure.
Mamlūk glass weight, British Museum no. OA+5048. Source: © Trustees of the British Museum.
The mint in Cairo: structure and relationships
In 650/1252, Ilqāy appears to have been involved in the complicated financial system of Egypt. The Ayyūbids had been overturned just two years earlier in 648/1250 by troops originally brought into Egypt as young slaves or Mamlūks. Each Ayyūbid ruler purchased new slaves, who were mostly Turkish, from the steppes of southern Russia. They were trained for military roles and eventually dominated the court. The Mamlūk Sulṭānate lasted until the Ottoman conquest in 923/1517. Being initially trained by the Ayyūbid establishment, Mamlūk rulers inherited many of the former regime's administrative structures, including the monetary system, which they did not change for over a century.Footnote 7 Indeed, creating political stability was their chief concern, not changing financial affairs: for 11 years, from 648–658/1250–1260, there were five rulers who came in and out of power until Baybars (r. 658–676/1260–1277) secured the throne. As a result, the state and public had to deal with myriad types of coinage, especially silver, that circulated in the capital and empire. Former currency moved alongside new issues, and even foreign coins were easily circulated, while the weight and purity of each varied.Footnote 8 Since the government was not able or willing to call in all the types for re-coining, officials focused on providing a reliable and state-authorised measure in order to allow transactions to take place. Glass weights solved this problem, a policy that had existed in Egypt even before the Muslim period, although the objects then contained limited information.Footnote 9 For the duration of the practice, each coin weight was carefully made to measure a precise amount. That version continued until 792/1390 when it was cancelled soon after Barqūq (r. 791–801/1390–1399) gained the throne as the first Jirkis (Circassian) or Burjī sulṭān.Footnote 10
However, the organisation in which Ilqāy found himself had moved from providing governors’ names or royal titles on these objects to citing only ordinary individuals and sometimes dates and locations. This change had begun under the Ayyūbids, probably during the monetary reform of al-Malik al-Kāmil Muḥammad (r. 615–635/1218–1238) in 622/1225.Footnote 11 Earlier, oversight of the mint had been removed from the chief qadi (or the top religious and legal authority) to a new ministry of finance or Bayt al-Mal.Footnote 12 It seems, however, that the ministry continued to follow the practice of the legal profession by attaching salaries to government posts.Footnote 13 Therefore, Ilqāy most probably was a paid treasury official working in a crucial position in the department of the mint.
After al-Kāmil's reform, the ministry tried several styles of glass weights, including anonymous ones with geometric designs and simulated kufic epigraphy, before settling on a style with personal names in 637/1239.Footnote 14 To bolster the beginning of this new style, some of the initial people named on the weights had impressive religious titles, such as al-ḥajjī/the pilgrim to Mecca,Footnote 15 al-qafī/the charitable one,Footnote 16 al-sharbātī/the one who provided a cool drink after Friday prayers,Footnote 17 al-dāʿī/the preacher,Footnote 18 and even al-mahdī/the rightly guided one.Footnote 19 However, the weights list only a single name or, rarely, one ibn or patronymic so that these people are not found in biographical dictionaries even if they deserved acknowledgement. This holds true for Ilqāy ʿAlī, who also cannot be found in any other source.Footnote 20 Moreover, their rank was not as high as that of the muḥtasibs, the regulators of the markets, ensuring commercially, morally, and politically good behaviour. That position was one of the most powerful and respected in any city so that holders were often recognised in literary sources.Footnote 21 Even al-Maqrīzī (764–845/1362–1442) and al-ʿAynī (762–855/1360–1451) were muḥtasibs, but treasury officials played a quieter role. Nevertheless, these lesser officials assured merchants and the general public that the monetary system was regulated by notables of high moral standing and was also approved by the legal establishment. Because the religious people at the mint encouraged the acceptance of the new type of weights, it seems to have been preferred that the mint masters be Muslim, even if they were not native Arabs. Therefore, Ilqāy qualified with the name of ʿAlī even though he was a convert. When he converted is unknown, perhaps earlier in his career, but only one weight has his Muslim name, suggesting that he was better known simply as Ilqāy. In the immediate environment of political and financial transition, he undertook a major public responsibility.
As might be expected at this time, there were various administrative pressures that were reflected in personnel changes. Since the Mamlūks had just come to power in 648/1250, Ilqāy and several other mint officials worked together at about the same time. In fact, ten others besides him issued weights for 15 years from 637–651/1239–1253. Of the six at the beginning of the Mamlūk period for which there are dates—namely Aḥmad (640–648/1242–1250), Saʿīd (648/1250), Qilāj al-ʿAwdhī (645–649/1247–1251), Muḥammad b. al-ʿAwdhī (646–661/1248–1262), Ḥusayn al-Mahdī (647–655/1249–1257), and Ilqāy ʿAlī (650–651/1252–1253)—three continued after 648/1250 from the Ayyūbid regime. Then with the quick departure of Qilāj al-ʿAwdhī in 649/1251, there were still two carry-overs: Muḥammad b. al-ʿAwdhī and Ḥusayn al-Mahdī. It was at this point in 650/1252, two years after the regime began, that a new Mamlūk appointee appeared, namely Ilqāy. He was the only official in 651/1253, while no one at all seemed to have issued weights in 652/1254 since there are none from that date. Nevertheless, it is possible that he was in charge in late 650/1252 and continued into early 652/1254, since eight of the ten specimens associated with him have no date on them and could have been issued in 652/1254. As a result, he filled a gap from 650/1252 to perhaps 652/1254, therefore being responsible wholly or in part for at least two years, and perhaps three, for keeping the monetary system of Egypt ticking along. Then, one Ayyūbid, Muḥammad b. al-ʿAwdhī, who had worked in 650/1252 returned in 653/1253; and another, Ḥusayn al-Mahdī, who had also worked in 650/1252 returned in 655/1257. One was a TurkFootnote 22 and the other a religious figure, clearly illustrating the structure of the administration. These two groups were occasionally, but briefly, later augmented by other agents who did not give hints about their affiliations.
Although it might seem that internal power struggles cut his employment short, Ilqāy ʿAlī was certainly not the only one to have a truncated career at this time. For example, a few others left only one weight specimen that has survived, suggesting much shorter careers. On the other hand, several people in this post had rather long tenures, sometimes up to 30 years,Footnote 23 indicating that the position could be much more stable than that of the market inspector or muḥtasib. Moreover, it does not seem that Ilqāy would have been sidelined because he was a Mongol. Turks often held the position: the person who ordered most of the weights in the period—Muḥammad b. al-ʿAwdhī—had an older brother named Qilāj, meaning ‘sword’ in Turkish, who had issued just before Ilqāy had, as already noted. These two and other al-ʿAwdhīs never acquired any religious titles, implying that, as Turks, they also were not part of the original coterie of officials who had launched the programme. The family continued in this post intermittently until the end of the century, an indication of the major role Turks and the Turkish language played in the administration. Having another foreigner, even a Mongol, in the mint then would not necessarily have been anything to worry about.
The name Ilqāy
All references to the name Ilqāy point to it being a specifically archaic Mongol name. It does not appear today. In old Mongolian, Ilqāy meant ‘horse herd’.Footnote 24 Such a picturesque idea reflected a common practice in Mongolia of naming a newborn after the first thing a mother saw upon leaving the birthing tent. Another instance is that of Hülāgü, which means ‘a brave and loyal horse’.Footnote 25 As some names like Möngke (meaning ‘eternal’) were particularly favoured then and still are today, Ilqāy also had a long and glorious pedigree within the Mongol state. At this time, Ilqāy shared it with two Mongol generals, Köke-Ilge and Ilgei. The name Köke-Ilge, or ‘Blue Horse Herd’, also followed a custom that can be traced back at least to the tenth century: one group entitled itself ‘the tribe of the Chur with bluish horses’.Footnote 26 Köke-Ilge is clearly identified as leading one of the first Mongol assaults on the Ismāʿīlīs in 651/1253.Footnote 27 Five years later, another general, Ilgei, was instrumental in the conquest of the area around Amida (Diyarbakir) during Hülāgü's campaigns in Iraq in 656/1258.Footnote 28 Moreover, this Ilkei/Ilge (or even Ilghay, as written in various sources) was the ancestor of the later Jalayr regime in ʿIraq from 740–835/1340–1432. This branch of the Jalayr tribe was closely connected to the Il-Khāns of Greater Iran.Footnote 29 During his lifetime, then, the Ilqāy in Cairo had some prestigious Mongol namesakes in the Middle East.
However, the name went back further, to the founding of the Mongol Empire itself. It can be traced to the son of a person who served both Chingiz Khān (602–626/1206–1229) and his son and successor, Ögödei (626–639/1229–1241). Chingiz Khān transferred not only conquered lands but also the service of one of his Jalayr attendants, Qada’ān, to Ögödei as part of his patrimony. One of Qada’ān's sons was Ilūgā, who was a tutor of the young Ögödei. Later, under Ögödei, Ilūgā became a commander of 1,000 men as a personal guard of the khān, a great honour.Footnote 30 The family's significance grew substantially because he had both an influential brother and a son who retained their connection to the Ögödeids.Footnote 31 Importantly, this loyalty was strongly emphasised by Ilūgā's brother, Ilchīdāy, who roundly denounced Möngke's (649–658/1251–1260) accession as a Toluid to the imperial throne. Ilūgā's son continued to serve the Ögödeid house after the Toluid purge in the civil war of 647–649/1248–1250. The son, Dānishmand, was an envoy from Qaydū (late seventh/thirteenth century), the most prominent Ögödeid left, to Abāqā Khan (663–680/1265–1282), the Toluid ruler in the Il-Khānate.Footnote 32 Therefore, the name had an impressive heritage and representation in the Mongol world, especially among the Jalayr clan. Nevertheless, it is not clear to which clan Ilqāy ʿAlī himself belonged.
Treasury experience: a hypothesis
Ilqāy could not have been given responsibility for weights and measures, a key post in the Mamlūk treasury, without substantial prior experience. His early career, like that of all agents, is unknown, but perhaps his can be suggested because of his distinctive Mongolian name. We can assume that to have been given that name, he first lived in Mongolia and might have gained experience within the expanding empire. If so, his career may have started 15 years earlier with the imperial coinages of Ögödei and his son, Güyük (644–646/1246–1248). A major financial reform created the first Islamic style of money when Ögödei issued silver in his capital of Qarā Qorum in 635/1237–1238.Footnote 33 It was an important innovation, something the Mongols had never done before in the homeland, intended to relay a strong message of legitimacy and sovereignty. With this reform, monetary concepts were imported from the Middle East that included weight and purity standards as well as inscriptions. On one side, a simple legend stated Allāh in Arabic script with Ögödei's insignia or tamgha of a large sinuous backward-S to the left, while at the bottom was another simple word of töre, written in cursive Uighur script. The margin contained the date in Arabic. The other side mentioned the mint at the top in Arabic, but the main field gave the title of the caliph in Baghdad of al-Imām al-Aʿẓam/The Greatest Leader.Footnote 34 Only Ögödei's insignia and the word töre indicate that it was official Mongol coinage. After this, there is no other imperial-style coinage securely attributable to Ögödei. Any mint official involved, however, was paving the way for a unified system. Even so, a number of sites in Transoxiana and Adharbayjan struck their own local Mongol types during his reign. The imperial type, nevertheless, expressed a clear concept of the state, drawing from a long-standing steppe tradition, legalising Mongol suzerainty with the word töre. This type was expanded by his son, Güyük, who issued coins from Qarā Qorum to cities across the steppe. Basing his style on that of his father, Güyük too did not have his name on the coinage. Instead, he used his insignia of two connected circles, but the word töre was on both sides of the coin. Although some coins had and some did not have a mint, much less a date, they certainly circulated across the steppe since they were found as far from Qarā Qorum as the Syr Darya basin in the Otrar hoard.Footnote 35 As the concept of state power was emphasised twice in official Uighur script on Güyük's money, it is this silver coinage that would have been the responsibility of a mint master sent out to major cities by the central government. He would have supervised the amount of silver in each coin or purse and the purity of the alloy, making sure they met certain standards. If Ilqāy was that person, he would have gained invaluable experience. Indeed, as Güyük was finally enthroned in 644/1246, the official and his small entourage had a busy schedule to implement the new types before Güyük's death in 646/1248.
Whoever the mint master was, he was probably involved with another type of coinage as well, this time in Güyük's name. As an official checking production in the Syr and Amu Darya regions, he would have had little further to travel to the other side of the Caspian Sea into Adharbayjan and then into Georgia. In fact, he may well have accompanied Güyük's representative, Eljigidei, who was responsible for Georgia, Armenia, Aleppo, and Mawsil. Eljigidei headed reinforcements for the Mongol contingents already there in order to make sure that vassals dealt directly with him in paying their tribute.Footnote 36 This required someone who could check the quality of money and certify its weight. Although Eljigidei only reached the Caucuses, certainly some imperial person was instrumental in the Gurjistani treasury when the vassal, David, issued silver in 645/1247. The legend in Arabic script read ‘By the power of God/the dominion of Güyük/Qā’ān, the servant/King David’. On the other side was a sedate horse ridden by a king wearing a style of Byzantine crown—definitely not a Mongol. Even though the image and inscriptions indicated that the central authorities allowed the local region to produce its own currency, Mongol treasury officials would have made sure that proper acknowledgement of the khān existed. At this point, Ilqāy could have been part of that mission, inspecting the coinage and accepting the required tribute, especially since Güyük was marching his armies towards the Russian steppe and probably needed money. Shortly thereafter, the Georgians allied themselves more closely with the Rum Saljuqs of Anatolia. Both were semi-independent, having their local rulers confirmed by the khān, and both had significant trade in slaves, honey, and furs with the Golden Horde in southern Russia.Footnote 37 As a result, the mint master of Tiflis took the 645/1247 design of the Georgian horseman to the Saljūq capital of Sivas and imposed another horseman on its new silver currency in 646/1248. This coinage, however, made no mention of Güyük and had no indication of Mongol suzerainty.Footnote 38 By the next year, as the position of Güyük's party grew more and more desperate after Güyük's death, one treasury official, who had served the Ögödeids, might have sensed that it was safer to stay with the Rum Seljuqs than to return to Mongolia. Moreover, according to the next coinage in 649/1250, the new khān, Möngke, who opposed the Ögödeids, re-established a more central monetary authority in the region.Footnote 39
Leading up to 648/1250 then, the Toluid reach was coming closer to Ilqāy, especially if he were an Ögödeid loyalist working for its treasury. The ensuing purges were systematic and violent. Eljigidei was executed as well as two of his sons.Footnote 40 Realising his peril (if he had been with the treasury), Ilqāy had few alternatives to secure his life. For one, he would not have travelled to Sarai on the lower Volga River, Batu's capital, since Batu had confronted Güyük and was the major power supporting Möngke. Moreover, Ilqāy probably had no local support or contacts once the military power in Anatolia vanished. Rather, Ilqāy could have chosen to migrate to Egypt. The route most easily taken would have been first to negotiate passage from, perhaps, Sivas through Cilicia or Lesser Armenia in western Anatolia, which supported the Mongols but was not fully incorporated.Footnote 41 From there, he could have managed to contact some Genoese merchants trading goods from the steppe and taken a boat with them to Egypt.Footnote 42
This hypothetical career, moreover, is reflected in other cases. Indeed, he would not have been the only Mongol to leave the empire and seek refuge in Egypt. The migration of some Oirats, usually individuals or small families, had begun in the 640s/1240s.Footnote 43 Other larger contingents came later, especially in 660/1262 and 696/1296, fleeing persecution. These later Mongol refugees or wāfidīyah were given military contracts. Nevertheless, perhaps Ilqāy is an early example of the individual presence of Mongols in the Mamlūk hierarchy. Indeed, later, Baybars (658–676/1260–1277) and then Qalāwūn (678–689/1279–1290) had marriage alliances with high-ranking immigrant Mongol families of the wāfidīyah.Footnote 44 On the other hand, some Mongols had been captured or sold to the sulṭānate but could still rise to the top echelons of power, for instance, Sulṭān Kitbugha (694–696/1294–1296).Footnote 45 However, it is unlikely that Ilqāy was a Mamlūk himself since the treasury post required special administrative abilities for supervising production and distribution of the weights, something in which the military elite was presumably not interested, and the role was backed by community consensus and understanding of a person's qualifications.
Apparently, then, Ilqāy made a different type of journey from the later wāfidīyah. Especially if he had travelled with slave merchants who supplied the court, he would have been able to contact influential people. Members of the court could have judged his experience and acknowledged his usefulness to the treasury because he would have needed a patron to guide him through the bureaucracy. Moreover, since the Mamlūks had been taken from the Qipchaq steppe, their language and culture were Turkish,Footnote 46 which were closely related to his own. Since Ilqāy would have been exposed to both, perhaps absorbing some of the language, his transition would probably have been rather easy. The move seems to have been planned as carefully as possible, despite the political uncertainty in Egypt as the Mamlūks took over. More than likely, as a treasury official, he would have accumulated enough financial resources to pay for the journey, solicit introductions to the court, and perhaps even pay for his appointment to the position.
Although the previous analysis is conjectural, there is no doubt that Ilqāy was the first Mamlūk appointee as mint master. He broke the control of the previous Ayyūbid officials, the Turkish family, and religious authorities; yet their inclusion was still necessary, and Muḥammad b. al-ʿAwdhī and Ḥusayn al-Mahdī were reinstated so that the entrenched bureaucracy continued to manage the system after Ilqāy left. Nevertheless, according to his weight dates and number of types, he attained a better position than several other masters at the time. Moreover, he could have had a reasonable tenure since the two whom he interrupted ultimately held the post for 9 and 16 years respectively. However, he had neither of their backgrounds, which may have caused his dismissal. Also, he might have taken another post in the treasury, but there is no source material that lists various officials and their responsibilities. After he left the mint, Ilqāy probably did not join the 200 new Mongol migrants who arrived eight years later in 660/1262 with the permission of Baybars. The group was mainly a military unit, likely housed outside Cairo or on the island in the middle of the Nile. The roles were completely different, and other loyalties differed, even though both rejected Toluid rule. Unfortunately, at this point, all conjecture about Ilqāy's fascinating biography must cease: no more information can be gleaned from any internal Mamlūk sources or other events.
Conclusion
The hypothetical biography proposes that early in his career Ilqāy ʿAlī was a Mongol treasury official loyal to the Ögödeids, working first in Qarā Qorum, the Mongol capital, under Ögödei and then Güyük. Ilqāy may have taken the imperial style with töre on it across the steppe, striking silver, and then helped to organise vassal coinages in Georgian and Rum Seljūq territories in 645 and 646/1247 and 1248. Because of the harsh civil war among the Chingizids after Güyük's death, he may have offered his services to the Mamlūks. In Cairo, he was appointed to one of the highest positions in the treasury in 650/1251 as the court began to employ new staff while also keeping former officials of the Ayyūbid regime. As a result, some small objects with a strange name have required an investigation that followed a numismatic trail from Qarā Qorum to Cairo, considered monetary movements as well as messages of legitimacy and rulership, and explored the mint structure in Cairo. In his early career, Ilqāy would have grown more financially sophisticated as he implemented various policies in each new region until he appeared in Cairo as head of the mint. Beyond the two years listed on his glass weights as mint master, almost all else must remain truly unknown. No matter what his detailed biography really is, he spent his life surviving dramatic regime changes throughout Central Asia and the Middle East. Without any literary evidence for his life or even mint activity, only circumstantial clues provide information; yet, a small but poignant glimpse of a possible Mongol refugee has emerged from ten pieces of glass, each the size of a coin.
