“Qeidār” Nabi, Buddhist Ilkhan in position of Abrahamic Prophet

This article explains how and why the (monumental?) tomb of Arghun Khan (r. 683–690/1284–1291), the fourth Ilkhanid monarch of Persia, was converted to the Islamic shrine of Qeidār-e Payambar (Qedar the prophet), and gives a better justification for the origin and etymology of the name “Qeidār”, the supposed prophet/emāmzāda of the same shrine. The earliest occurrences of a “Qeidār-e Payambar” for that place are in Tārikh-e Jahāngir / Preface of afarnāma (822/1419) of Šaraf al-Din AliYazdi, and in afarnāma (828-831 A.H.) of the same author. From then on, Qeidār has been generally identified with “Qeidār (Qedar) son of Ishmael”. This paper shows that “Qeidār” was, in fact, a toponym, and this toponym had its origin in the pre-classical Mongolian word for monastery, i.e. “keyid”; the monastery which, some years after burial of Arghun Khan in Mount Sujās (modern Mount Qeidār), was built on the site(?) by his daughter, UljatāyKhātun. This research uses historical and geographical data, and takes a linguistic approach by etymological analysis of the toponym “Qeidār”.