Our last episode dealt with the reign of Ghazan Khan, ruler of the Mongol Ilkhanate from 1295 to 1304. A powerful Muslim monarch, Ghazan’s reign reinvigorated the Khanate, greatly advancing the already underway islamization of the region’s Mongol population. With his death, we enter the final phase of the Ilkhanate’s history.  First, we will look at the reign of Ghazan’s brother and successor, Oljeitu Khudabandah, the penultimate ruler of the united Ilkhanate. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   When Ghazan Khan succumbed to his illness on the 17th of May, 1304, the always thorough Ghazan had been prepared. Leaving no male heirs behind and wishing to avoid having the realm descend into warfare, he had forced the military elite and princes to elect his younger brother Oljeitu as Khan. The 24 year old Oljeitu was duly enthroned that July, under the title of Sultan Ghiyath al-Din. The process was remarkably peaceful, with no resistance or massacres accompanying it- with the exception of Oljeitu preemptively having Prince Ala-Fireng, a son of the former Il-Khan Geikhatu, killed, for he had been seen as a potential rival. As far as Ilkhanid successions went, it was nearly as calm as you could hope for. Granted, Ghazan had killed most potential claimants during his own reign.   Oljeitu was a son of Arghun Il-Khan, born in 1280. He and Ghazan were of different mothers: Ghazan was born to one of Arghun’s concubines, whereas Oljeitu was born to Arghun’s third wife, a Kereit Nestorian Christian named Orug Khatun.  If Oljeitu’s life could be remarked upon for one thing, even before he became Il-Khan, it was experimentation with religion, usually accompanied by a change of name. Firstly, it seems he was born and raised a Buddhist, much like Ghazan and their father Arghun. The name he was originally given is unclear: in some sources it was Oljeitu or Oljei Buqa, a Mongolian Buddhist name meaning “blessed.” Yet in others, he is confusingly called Kharbandah or Khudabandah. The two names confused even medieval sources. Khudabandah in Persian means “servant of God,” and it seems that Oljeitu often went by this name in his adult life. However, he was also called Kharbandah, which means “donkey driver,” or “servant of the donkey.” No one, medieval or modern, has provided a fully accepted explanation for why he bore such competing names. The Mongols had a custom for a child to be named after the first thing the mother saw after giving birth. Ibn Battuta, travelling through the Ilkhanate in the 1330s, reported that Oljeitu’s mother Orug Khatun had first seen a donkey driver. Yet, as none of her other children bore Persian names, it is confusing that she would not have given him the Mongolian equivalent, Qulanchi. Other sources have him first called Kharbandah, and then change it to Khudabandah upon his enthronement, while others have him take Oljeitu at that time, after the reigning Great Khan, Khubilai’s grandson Temur Oljeitu. Historian Timothy May suggests the kharbandah/khudabandah matter was a rude pun given to him by Sunni schoalars upon Oljeitu’s conversion to Shia Islam. Of course, this is not helped by the fact that the main biography of Oljeitu’s life, written by Qashani soon after the Il-Khan’s death, has him also called Temuder at some point in his youth too.    Regardless if Oljeitu had the name of Oljeitu or Khudabandah at birth, when he was around 10 years old he was given another name and religion: Nicholas, after Pope Nicholas IV. Arghun, during negotiations with said Pope, had Oljeitu baptised and given a Christian name, or rather it’s Mongolian form, Nikolya.  The young Oljeitu did not stick with Christianity, as he returned to Buddhism in his teenage years. But this was not to be his final conversion, no sir. He soon joined his brother Ghazan in becoming a Muslim, when he took the name Muhammad. This was not enough for him: first he was an adherent to the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, befor