The name Ilqāy appears on small monetary weights for 1251 and 1252 in Cairo at the beginning of Mamlūk rule. This person was a high official in the treasury, responsible for regulating monetary transactions. However, the name is not Arabic but Mongolian—and at this point, the Mamlūks and Mongols were contesting the Middle East. This article traces the meaning of the unique name and its appearance in Mongol history. It then discusses the hypothetical way in which Ilqāy developed Mongol coinage in his early career. The violent purges of the Mongol civil war may have forced him to escape and enter Egypt's financial system. This biography is hypothetical since there is no literary evidence for mint activity and personnel at this time. Nevertheless, the unusual name and timing create a mystery that invites special consideration.

The following joint article is a departure from standard studies, in thathistorical research is put side-by-side with numismatic evidence. Itreflects the growing awareness of the underlying concepts of steppe societythat significantly shaped the formation and endurance of the Mongol Empire.With new analysis, it is apparent that the society was clear about theseconcepts and expressed them in very public pronouncements. They are mostevident in the early period of the empire; during the formation of the stateby Chinggis Khan and his first two successors, Ögödei (r. 1229–41) and Güyük(r.1246-48). However, the cataclysmic civil war in the middle of thethirteenth century between the Ögödeyids and Toluids removed directacknowledgment of such a social ethos. Indeed, after 1250 khans stronglyfocused on pragmatic issues and relied less on philosophical theories oflegitimacy, at least Mongolian ones. By contrast, the first three rulerswere keenly aware of the theory of the state and the way society functionedwithin it. They developed this ethos into a fairly cohesive form thatprovided moral strength to a nascent regime. The evidence for thisdevelopment emerges from the study of two particular words, tengri,“Heaven”, and especially töre, “grand principle”. Töre in this usage was theequivalent of the ‘binding and unbinding’ and the sunna of the messenger,Muḥammad, in medieval Islamic societies and of democracy in modern times.Tengri and töre are culturally defined theories closely related to theAristotelian sense of positive law. In all cases, reality required variousapproaches to them at a given period of time. As a result, the concept oftöre had existed before the empire and continues to this day, alwaysimplying the correct order of good governance.

Inhabitants of the Mongolian Plateau have been staunchly nomadic. Cities rarely existed before the Russian hegemony, and at that point they first attached themselves to pre-existing Buddhist monasteries. The exception to this general pattern was the Uighurs, who had an empire in the eighth and early ninth centuries. They built several cities, extended and maintained a flourishing trade network, established sufficient agriculture and developed urban manufacturing. Although historians have pointed out these significant distinctions, few have fully considered the thoroughly revolutionary impact of this Turkish group on steppe culture. One result in the Orkhon Valley was the foundation for Karakorum, the only permanent seat of the imperial Mongols in the thirteenth century. That city occupied the same site and, in the early seventeenth century, served as building material for the major religious centre of Erdene Zuu accompanying the re-introduction of Buddhism. Therefore, the Uighurs affected the physical heartland of their empire for a millennium and the habits of the people to this day.