SATI BIK (Sati Beg), of the Il-Khanid dynasty (739/1338-9) was the daughter of the Il-Khan Öljeitü (Uljāytu) by his wife Eltüzmiš (Kāšāni, p. 7). She was married by her half-brother, the Il-Khan Abu Saʿid Bahādor Khan, in 719/1319 to the powerful amir Čobān (Čupān) as a reward for his service in suppressing a rebellion, and bore him a son Sorḡon (Surḡān). Left a widow at her husband’s execution in 727/1327, she became an important figure during the turbulent period that followed Abu Saʿid’s death in 736/1335. She was first married to his successor Arpa Khan, who was defeated and killed in 736/1336, and was then used as a pawn in the struggle between the Chobanids and the Jalayerid Šayḵ Ḥasan-e Bozorg.
Proclaimed Il-Khan in Arrān by Čobān’s grandson Ḥasan b. Timurtāš (‘Ḥasan-e Kuček’) at the beginning of 739/July-August 1338 in opposition to Toḡa Temür (Toḡa Timur), Sati Beg was recognized only in Azerbaijan, Hamadān and eastern Anatolia, however and reigned for merely nine months (Ahri, p. 166). Towards the end of 739/circa May 1339, Ḥasan-e Kuček deposed her in favor of a distant kinsman Solaymān, whom she was forced to marry in turn. Nevertheless, coins were struck in her name in Ḥeṣn Kayfā (in mod. Batman Province, southeastern Turkey) in 743/1342-3 and in Arzan (southwestern Armenia) as late as 745/1344-5 (example: Figure 1). She accompanied Solaymān and her son Sorḡon in 744/1343-4 to Diārbakr (Ahri, p. 171) and is last heard of in 746/1345-6, when Sorḡon was defeated by the Chobanid Malek Ašraf and she apparently fled with him to join the semi-independent amir Eretnā in Anatolia (Ahri, p. 172). Although Sati Beg reigned only in name and very briefly, her elevation is symptomatic of the high status that elite women retained in steppe society even when the Islamization of the Mongols had been under way for over two generations.
Bibliography:
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(Peter Jackson)
Originally Published: November 9, 2016
Last Updated: November 9, 2016
Cite this entry:Peter Jackson, “SATI BIK,” Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2016, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/sati-bik-princess (accessed on 09 November 2016).
