In 1295 the Ilkhan Ghazan converted from Buddhism to Sunni Islam—quite a decision for the great-grandson of Hülagü to take, because it was the latter who had literally put the Abbasid caliph to death in 1258. This irony aside, Ghazan was a cultured and farsighted ruler. But after he died, the first half of the fourteenth century saw the authority of the Ilkhans gradually beginning to fracture, and petty regional emirs began to exercise their own power; by the middle of the century it was barely recognizable as a Mongol state at all.
