Dirham - 'Ilkhan' Hulagu Khan

Hulagu Khan's westward campaign culminated in the sack of Baghdad in 1258 — the destruction of the Abbasid caliphate after five centuries — and his subsequent coins present a direct numismatic record of that seismic rupture in Islamic political order. Early Ilkhanid dirhams from this period retained Abbasid calligraphic conventions while substituting Mongol authority, a deliberate choice that signals administrative pragmatism over ideological rupture.

Hulagu never converted to Islam; his primary wife was Nestorian Christian, and he maintained close ties to the Mongol shamanist tradition. The mint output under his name reflects a regime still working out what an Ilkhanid coin should actually look like.