DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

Interests

Geographic Field(s):  Asian History; Global History; Middle Eastern and North African History; Medieval and Early Modern European History

Thematic Field(s):  Religious History; War and Empire in History

Principal Research Interest(s):  Mongol Empire, Central Asia, Iran, Comparative Empires, History of Religions and Conversion

Biography

Jonathan Brack is a historian of medieval and early modern Iran and the Mongol Empire. His research focuses on religious exchanges, conversion, and comparative empires. His first book is An Afterlife for the Khan: Muslims, Buddhists, and Sacred Kingship in Mongol Iran and Eurasia (University of California Press, 2023). He coedited the volume Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia: Generals, Merchants, and Intellectuals (University of California Press, 2020).

Before coming to Northwestern, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and a postdoctoral fellow at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He is currently working on his second book, which explores the relationship between science and religion in Mongol dominated Eurasia. Another project examines the place of Judaism and narratives about the Israelites in Islamic Persianate empires, from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and from Iran to Central Asia and India.

Publications

• An Afterlife for the Khan: Muslims, Buddhists, and Sacred Kingship in Mongol Iran and Eurasia. University of California Press, 2023.
• Jonathan Brack, Michal Biran and Francesca Fiaschetti, eds. Along the Silk Roads in
  Mongol Eurasia: Generals, Merchants, and Intellectuals. University of California Press, 2020.

Articles

• Jonathan Brack, Reuven Amitai, and Michal Biran, “Back to Basics: A Re-examination of a Re-examination of the Mongol Conquest of Baghdad in 1258,” Medical History (Forthcoming January 2024).  
•  “Chinggisid Pluralism and Religious Competition: Buddhists, Muslims, and the Question of Violence and Sovereignty in Ilkhanid Iran,” Modern Asian Studies, 56 (2022): 815-39.
•  “Disenchanting Heaven: Interfaith Debate, Sacral Kingship, and Conversion to Islam in the Mongol Empire, 1260-1335,” Past & Present, 250 (2021): 11-53.   
•  “A Mongol Mahdi in Medieval Anatolia: Reform, Rebellion, and Divine Right in the Post-Mongol Islamic World,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 139(3) (2019): 611-29.  
•  “Theologies of Auspicious Kingship: The Islamization of Chinggisid Sacral Kingship in the Islamic world,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 60(4) (2018): 1143-71.