Head of the civil administration (ṣāḥib-dīwān) of the Mongol Ilkhans for more than twenty years and patron of scholars, for whom al-Kātibī wrote al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya and after whom it is named.
Life
Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Juwaynī came from a family of Persian administrators; his brother was ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAṭāʾ Malik al-Juwaynī, the historian of the Mongol conquests. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi the Ilkhan Hülegü appointed him ṣāḥib-dīwān, head of the financial and civil administration, in 661/1263, and he kept the office under Abaqa (1265–1282). In 676/1277 Abaqa sent him to Anatolia to put down the revolt of Jimrī and restore order there. Aḥmad Tegüder restored him and his brother to their posts; under Arghun he lost favour, was imprisoned and was put to death near Ahar, between Qazvin and Zanjan, on 4 Shaʿbān 683/16 October 1284. He was buried at Charandāb near Tabriz, where his brother and six of his children also lie.
He was known as a generous patron. The poets Saʿdī and Humām-i Tabrīzī praised him, and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī and Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Urmawī dedicated works to him. He also wrote letters (munshaʾāt) and some Arabic poems.
For his importance is a single dedication. Najm al-Dīn al-Kātibī wrote his handbook at the request of ‘Shams al-Milla wa-l-Dīn … Muḥammad’, son of the ṣāḥib-dīwān Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad, and named it after him al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya, ‘the treatise for Shams (al-Dīn)’. In the preface al-Kātibī praises the patron who ‘despite his youth’ excelled in virtue and asked for a book that would gather the rules of logic. Tony Street notes that the dedication dates the book to after Shams al-Dīn’s rise to power in 1262.
Uncertain or disputed
- The TDV gives the year of his appointment as 661/1263; Street speaks of his ‘accession to power in 1262’. The book can therefore be dated only to after 1262–63 and before al-Kātibī’s death in 675/1277.
- His year of birth is not given in the sources consulted. The TDV does not mention the dedication of the Shamsiyya in its article on him; its article on the Shamsiyya does.
Reception
Through the title al-Shamsiyya his honorific is repeated in every madrasa where the book, its by Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī and its glosses were read, from the Ottoman lands to India.
Sources (3)