Jalayirid Sultanate

The Jalayirid Sultanate (Persian: جلایریان, romanized: Jalāyiriyān), also Ilka dynasty or Ilkanids, was a Mongol dynasty which ruled over modern-day Iraq and western Iran after the breakup of the Ilkhanate in the 1330s. It expanded for about fifty years, until disrupted by Timur's conquests and the revolts of the Qara Qoyunlu Turkoman. After Timur's death in 1405, there was a brief attempt to re-establish the sultanate in southern Iraq and Khuzistan. The Jalayirids were finally eliminated by the Qara Qoyunlu in 1432.

The Jalayirids originated from the Jalayir tribe, which was a prominent Mongolian tribe hailing from the area of the River Onon in eastern Mongolia, but in the 14th century in the Middle East they became "largely Turkicized or at least Turkish-speaking". They are credited with bolstering Turkic influence in Arabic-speaking Iraq so much so that Turkic became the second-most-spoken language after Arabic. Still, the Jalayirid bureaucracy used Mongolian, Arabic and Persian in its documents. The Jalayirids were great contributors to Persianate culture: their role as artistic patrons marks an important period in the evolution of Persian art, where it developed major aspects that would serve as the basis of later Persian paintings.