The Mongol invasions of Iran and the collapse of the ʿAbbasid hegemony gave a great impetus to Persian historical writing in the late thirteenth century, expressed both in the patronage of the rulers and senior ministers of the court, and in the provincial centers on the peripheries of the Iranian plateau. After surveying the Persian histories of the Mongol invasions and early Ilkhanate, the chapter covers the rich literature that evolved following the conversion of the Mongols to Islam. The history of the period was also written by later authors, sometimes drawing on sources now lost, or consolidating the information provided by their predecessors but now presented with a new underlying narrative, with the benefit of looking back on the more distant past. The survey concludes with the work of some historians of the Timurid period, who narrate the history of the Ilkhanate in the longer perspective of Persian history.

Historical studies of the dead, anatomisation and the use of bodies for research processes have become increasingly numerous since the early 2000s. Adopting theories and methodological approaches drawn from cultural studies, ethnography, social history, sociology, anthropology and intellectual history, writers have given us an increasingly rich understanding of cultures of death, the engagement of the medical professions with the dead body and the wider culture of body ethics. It is unfeasible (and not desirable) to give a rendering of the breadth of this field, given its locus at the intersection of so many disciplines. To do so would overburden the reader with a cumbersome and time-consuming literature review. Imagine entering an academic library and realising that the set reading for this topic covered three floors of books, articles and associated material. It could make even the most enthusiastic student of the dead feel defeated. Two features of that literature, however, are important; this chapter thus focusses on them, and in doing so, sets out the main trends in its field of study, the historical gaps there are, and the new contributions being made, to frame this novel book.