Underwood International College

Associate Professor of Asian History

• Ph.D. in Asian Studies, Australian National University
• B.A. in Politics & History, La Trobe University

Profile

Michael Hope is a historian of the Middle East and Central Asia during the Global Middle Ages. He specialises on the political and cultural history of the Mongol Empire. Michael Hope received his doctoral degree in Asian Studies from the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific in 2013 before spending the next year as a Research Affiliate in the same institution. In 2015 he joined Underwood International College as Associate Professor of Asian History and in 2020 he was promoted to Associate Professor. He is also an affiliate of the Mongolia Institute at the Australian National University and a member of the Mongolia Society. 

Education

Ph.D. in Asian Studies, Australian National University
B.A. in Politics & History, La Trobe University

Courses and Current Research Areas

My research has focused upon the transmission of political authority within the Mongol Empire (1206-1395). I am especially interested in the institutionalisation of authority in the form of offices, rituals, and laws after the death of Chinggis Khan. My first book, Power, Politics, and Tradition in the Mongol Empire and the Ilkhanate of Iran (2016) provides a Weberian perspective of how the charismatic authority of Chinggis Khan was passed to his offspring and household staff. The book provides an exposition of the rising power of non-Chinggisid military families in the Mongol Middle East in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, culminating in the collapse of Chinggisid rule. I have subsequently co-edited The Mongol World as part of the Routledge World Series and am currently working on a history of the short-lived Chubanid amirate, which briefly seized control over north-western Iran, eastern Anatolia, and the southern Caucasus following the disintegration of the Mongol Ilkhanate in 1335. The study will probe the themes of Islamisation and literary production, in addition to providing a new regional framework for viewing north-western Iran during the late Middle Ages.

I offer introductory courses on the History of Islamic Civilisations, the History of the Modern Middle East, and the History of Eastern Civilisations. I also offer upper-level seminars on the Mongol Empire in World History and the Classical Age of Islam.

Selected Publications

Books

Co-edited with Timothy May, The Mongol World, London: Routledge (Forthcoming, 2022).

Power, Politics and Tradition in the Mongol Empire and the Ilkhanate of Iran, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2016).

Articles & Book Chapters

“The Political Configuration of Late Ilkhanid Iran: A Case Study of the Chubanid Amirate (738-758/1337-1357),” Iran, (2021)

“The atabaks in the Mongol Empire and the Ilkhanate of Iran (602-736/1206-1335),” New Approaches to Ilkhanid History, edited by Timothy May, Bayarsaikhan Dashdondog, and Christopher P. Atwood (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 321-345.

“Some remarks about the use of the term ilkhan in the historical sources and modern historiography of the Mongol Empire,” Central Asiatic Journal, Vol. 60 (2017), 273-300.

“The Pillars of State: Some Notes on the Qarachu Begs and the Keshikten in the Il-Khanate (1256-1335),” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Apr. 2017), 181-99.

“Some Notes on the Role of Revenge in the Mongol Empire and the Il-Khanate of Iran,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 137, No. 3 (Jun-Sept. 2016), 551-566.

“The Nawruz King: The Rebellion of Amir Nawruz in Khurasan (688-694/1289-1294) and its Implications for the Ilkhan Polity at the end of the Thirteenth Century,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 78, No. 3 (Oct. 2015) 451-473.

“The Transmission of Charismatic Authority through the Quriltais of the Early Mongol Empire and the Ilkhanate of Iran (1227-1335),” Mongolian Studies, Vol. 34 (2012), 87-116.