DYNASTIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE IL-KHĀNS

The chronology of Sultan Muhammad's first contacts with the Mongols is extremely confusing, and it is difficult and sometimes impossible to reconcile the accounts of the various authorities. Sultan Jalal al-Dln remained in India for nearly three years. He was joined, on the very banks of the Indus, by a number of stragglers from his defeated army and after several successful encounters with bodies of Indian troops in the Salt Range found himself at the head of some three to four thousand men. By the virtual extinction of the Isma'ili sect, Hülegü had rendered a great, if unintentional, service to orthodox Islam. The armies passed through the mountain pastures of Ala-Tagh to the east of Lake Van: Hülegü was pleased with this region, afterwards a favourite summer resort of the IL-Khans, and gave it a Mongol name. The terms which Abaqa's emissary transmitted to Baraq were generous enough.