The image of the Mongols in Persian historiography has often been shaped by an emotional approach grounded in the notion of absolute destruction. ʿAṭāmalik Juvaynī’s Tārīkh‑i Jahāngushā, as one of the most significant works contemporaneous with the Mongol invasion, offers—alongside its accounts of violence—a more complex and analytical narrative of the phenomenon of Mongol power. Focusing on the first volume of Jahāngushā, this article seeks to present a positive and analytical rereading of the Mongol identity, arguing that in Juvaynī’s narrative, beyond interpreting events within the framework of divine providence, human, social, political, and military mechanisms play a fundamental role in explaining the Mongols’ rise to power, expansion, and the continuation of their rule.



This study is organized around the following questions: What human mechanisms does Juvaynī employ to explain Mongol authority? What is the position of social and tribal structures, the Yasa, the intelligence system, and the methods of imperial governance in this representation? And how does this image relate to the predominant perspective—rooted in the notion of absolute devastation—in the tradition of Persian historiography? The research method is descriptive‑analytical and based on a critical reading of the text, and the data have been extracted from the first volume of Tārīkh‑i Jahāngushā.



The findings indicate that Juvaynī portrays the Mongols not merely as instruments for the realization of divine will, but as human agents operating through rational, organized, and calculated mechanisms. In his narrative, Mongol power emerges from a combination of organized violence, legal‑political order, informational efficiency, tribal cohesion,