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Middle East · Mongols to gunpowder empires

Injuids

Post-Ilkhanid regional dynasty · c. 1304–1357

The Injuids, or House of Inju, take their name from the Mongol word injü, meaning the royal estates — the personal lands and revenues of the Ilkhan. Around 1304, at the beginning of the reign of the Ilkhan Öljeitü, a Persian notable named Sharaf al-Din Mahmud Shah was appointed administrator of the injü lands in the southern province of Fars, ruling from Shiraz.

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Type
Post-Ilkhanid regional dynasty
Existed
c. 1304–1357
Shown on the map
1344–1362
Capital
Shiraz (with Isfahan)
Peak area
~86,000 km²
Region
Middle East

Origins & rise

The Injuids, or House of Inju, take their name from the Mongol word injü, meaning the royal estates — the personal lands and revenues of the Ilkhan. Around 1304, at the beginning of the reign of the Ilkhan Öljeitü, a Persian notable named Sharaf al-Din Mahmud Shah was appointed administrator of the injü lands in the southern province of Fars, ruling from Shiraz. Sharaf al-Din, said to be descended from the eleventh-century Herati mystic Abd-Allah Ansari, gradually turned this administrative office into a hereditary principality; by 1325 he held nearly absolute control of Fars, to the displeasure of the Ilkhan Abu Sa'id, who briefly imprisoned him in Tabriz.

History & key rulers

When Abu Sa'id died in 1335 without an heir, the Ilkhanate collapsed and the Injuids became de facto independent. The succession was bloody: the short-lived khan Arpa Ke'un had Sharaf al-Din executed, and the founder's sons — Kai-Khusrau, Mas'ud Shah, Shams al-Din Muhammad and Abu Ishaq — fought each other and outside powers, notably the rival Chobanids, for control of Shiraz. Order emerged only when the last surviving son, Shaikh Jamal al-Din Abu Ishaq, secured Shiraz in 1343. Abu Ishaq (r. 1343–1357), the dynasty's most famous ruler, was an ambitious patron and would-be conqueror whose attempt to take Kerman and Yazd brought him into fatal conflict with the expanding Muzaffarids of Yazd. Mubariz al-Din Muhammad Muzaffarid besieged Shiraz in 1353; Abu Ishaq's increasingly paranoid purges alienated his own citizens, one of whose quarter-chiefs betrayed a gate to the enemy. The Injuid ruler fled to Isfahan with Jalayirid help, but the Muzaffarids took that city too in 1357, and Abu Ishaq was executed in Shiraz, ending the dynasty.

Government, religion & culture

The Injuids governed as Persianate Sunni Muslim monarchs in the Ilkhanid administrative tradition, but their lasting fame is cultural. Seeking to legitimize their rule, they sponsored a distinctive court literature and a prolific school of manuscript illustration — the "Injuid school of Shiraz" — whose dated Shahnamas (1330, 1333, 1341, 1352–53) made Shiraz the pre-eminent centre of the Persian arts of the book in the fourteenth century. Their painting style, with vivid red and yellow-ocher backgrounds, dynamic action scenes and symbolic peaked mountains, mixed Ilkhanid, Mongol and older Sasanian-Iranian conventions. They also built: the Khuda Khane kiosk of Shiraz's Atigh Friday Mosque (1351) and the superb cut-tile mihrab of Isfahan's Imami Madrasa (1354–55), now in the Metropolitan Museum, survive from their patronage. The age of Abu Ishaq was also the milieu of the poet Hafez and the satirist Ubayd-i Zakani, both attached to the Injuid court.

Peak & territory

At its height under Abu Ishaq the dynasty controlled Fars and Isfahan — a compact realm of roughly 86,000 km² centred on two of medieval Iran's greatest cities, though never extending far beyond them.

Decline & legacy

Swallowed by the Muzaffarids in 1353–1357, the Injuids left a cultural legacy vastly disproportionate to their two decades of independence: the Shirazi painting tradition they founded fed directly into the later Timurid and Turkmen schools, and their court helped shape the classical age of Persian lyric poetry.

Common questions

What were the Injuids?
The Injuids, or House of Inju, take their name from the Mongol word injü, meaning the royal estates — the personal lands and revenues of the Ilkhan. Around 1304, at the beginning of the reign of the Ilkhan Öljeitü, a Persian notable named Sharaf al-Din Mahmud Shah was appointed administrator of the injü lands in the southern province of Fars, ruling from Shiraz.
When did the Injuids exist?
The Injuids existed c. 1304–1357. On this map they are drawn 1344–1362.
What were the capital of the Injuids?
The Injuids were ruled from Shiraz (with Isfahan).
How large were the Injuids at their height?
At its height under Abu Ishaq the dynasty controlled Fars and Isfahan — a compact realm of roughly 86,000 km² centred on two of medieval Iran's greatest cities, though never extending far beyond them.
Who ruled the Injuids?
When Abu Sa'id died in 1335 without an heir, the Ilkhanate collapsed and the Injuids became de facto independent. The succession was bloody: the short-lived khan Arpa Ke'un had Sharaf al-Din executed, and the founder's sons — Kai-Khusrau, Mas'ud Shah, Shams al-Din Muhammad and Abu Ishaq — fought each other and outside powers, notably the rival Chobanids, for control of Shiraz.
How did the Injuids end?
Swallowed by the Muzaffarids in 1353–1357, the Injuids left a cultural legacy vastly disproportionate to their two decades of independence: the Shirazi painting tradition they founded fed directly into the later Timurid and Turkmen schools, and their court helped shape the classical age of Persian lyric poetry.
How were the Injuids governed?
The Injuids governed as Persianate Sunni Muslim monarchs in the Ilkhanid administrative tradition, but their lasting fame is cultural.

Sources

Every source below was consulted while writing this entry.

This entry was written from the sources above and last updated .

This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made

Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.

Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).

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