The Mongol integration of Eurasia created unprecedented opportunities for cross-cultural exchange. Chinese, Persian, Tibetan, and other medical experts traveled to distant courts to treat the khans and their diasporic communities of migrating experts. This paper examines how a Persian Muslim court physician from the city of Tabriz, at one end of the Mongols’ bustling Silk Roads, engaged with the medical expertise of Chinese and nomadic practitioners, and how he theorized these encounters within Islamic scientific epistemologies. The physician’s experiences with foreign medical practices invites us to reconsider the meaning of Tabriz as a cross-cultural utopia and reflect on the limits of cross-cultural commensurability and the function of cultural brokerage in the Mongol Empire.

Jonathan Brack is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Northwestern University. He is the author of An Afterlife for the Khan: Muslims, Buddhists, and Sacred Kingship in Mongol Iran and Eurasia (University of California Press, 2023). He is currently working on a new book titled Logic of Empire: Science, Religion, and the Supernatural in Mongol Eurasia.