Mongol Sack Of Baghdad

The siege of Baghdad took place in early 1258. A large army commanded by Hulegu, a prince of the Mongol Empire, attacked the historic capital of the Abbasid Caliphate after a series of provocations from its ruler, caliph al-Musta'sim. Within a few weeks, Baghdad fell and was sacked by the Mongol army—al-Musta'sim was killed alongside hundreds of thousands of his subjects. The city's fall has traditionally been seen as marking the end of the Islamic Golden Age; in reality, its ramifications are uncertain.

After the accession of his brother Möngke Khan to the Mongol throne in 1251, Hulegu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, was dispatched westwards to Persia to secure the region. His massive army of over 138,000 men took years to reach the region but then quickly attacked and overpowered the Nizari Ismaili Assassins in 1256. The Mongols had expected al-Musta'sim to provide reinforcements for their army—the Caliph's failure to do so, combined with his arrogance in negotiations, convinced Hulegu to overthrow him in late 1257. Invading Mesopotamia from all sides, the Mongol army soon approached Baghdad, routing a sortie on 17 January 1258 by flooding their opponents' camp. They then invested Baghdad, which was left with around 30,000 troops.

The assault began at the end of January. Mongol siege engines breached Baghdad's fortifications within a couple of days, and Hulegu's highly-trained troops controlled the eastern wall by 4 February. The increasingly desperate al-Musta'sim frantically tried to negotiate, but Hulegu was intent on total victory, even killing soldiers who attempted to surrender. The Caliph eventually surrendered the city on 10 February, and the Mongols began looting three days later. The total number of people who died is unknown, as it was likely increased by subsequent epidemics; Hulegu later estimated the total at around 200,000. After calling an amnesty for the pillaging on 20 February, Hulegu executed the caliph. In contrast to the exaggerations of later Muslim historians, Baghdad prospered under Hulegu's Ilkhanate, although it did decline in comparison to the new capital, Tabriz.

Background

Baghdad was founded in 762 by al-Mansur, the second caliph of the Abbasid dynasty, which had recently overthrown the empire of the Umayyads. Al-Mansur believed that the new Abbasid Caliphate needed a new capital city, located away from potential threats and near the dynasty's power base in Persia. Incredibly wealthy due to the trade routes and taxes it controlled, Baghdad quickly became a world city and the epicentre of the Islamic Golden Age: poets, writers, scientists, philosophers, musicians, and scholars of every type thrived in the city. Containing centres of learning like the House of Wisdom and astronomical observatories, which used the newly-arrived technology of paper and the gathering of the teachings of antiquity from all Eurasia, Baghdad was "the intellectual capital of the planet", in the words of the historian Justin Marozzi.

During the tenth century, the Abbasids gradually decreased in power. This culminated in Baghdad being occupied, first by the Buyids in 945 and then the Seljuks in 1055, by which time the caliphs had only local authority. They focused their attentions on Baghdad itself, which retained its position as one of the preeminent cities of the world—it was joined only by Kaifeng and Hangzhou in having over a million inhabitants between 1000 and 1200. The caliphate reemerged as a significant power under al-Nasir (), who saw off threats from the last Seljuk rulers and their successors, the Khwarazmians. Muhammad II of Khwarazm's 1217 invasion of the Abbasids failed, and his realm was soon invaded by the armies of Genghis Khan, first ruler of the Mongol Empire.

After the Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire ended in late 1221, they did not return to the region until 1230. In that year, Chormaqan, a leading general under Genghis' successor Ögedei Khan, arrived in Azerbaijan to eliminate the Khwarazmian prince Jalal al-Din, who was killed the following year. Thereafter, Chormaqan began to establish Mongol hegemony in northwestern Iran and the Transcaucasus. After they captured Isfahan in 1236, the Mongols began to test caliphal authority in Mesopotamia, besieging Irbil in 1237 and raiding up to the walls of Baghdad itself the following year. Chormaqan and his 1241 replacement Baiju thereafter raided the region nearly every year. Although Mongol rule was secured elsewhere in the Near East—their victory at the 1243 Battle of Köse Dağ reduced the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum to a client state—Baghdad remained unconquered, and even defeated a Mongol force in 1245. Another problem was the secretive Nizari Ismaili state, also known as the Order of Assassins, in the Elburz Mountains. They had killed Mongol commanders during the 1240s, and had allegedly dispatched 400 Assassins to the Mongol capital Karakorum to kill the khan himself.

Campaign against the Assassins

Möngke Khan was proclaimed khan in 1251 as part of the Toluid Revolution, which established the family of Genghis' youngest son Tolui as the most powerful figures in the Mongol Empire. Möngke resolved to send his younger brothers Kublai and Hulegu on massive military expeditions to subdue rebellious vassals and problematic enemies. While Kublai was sent to vassalize the Dali Kingdom and resume the war against the Southern Song, Hulegu was dispatched westwards to destroy the Ismaili Assassins and to ensure the submission of the Abbasid caliphs. For this task, he was assigned one fifth of the empire's manpower, a figure which has been variously calculated by modern scholars as between 138,000, nearly 200,000, or 300,000 men. The force contained troops from vassalized Armenia, including its king Hetoum I, a thousand-strong corps of military engineers led by Guo Kan, auxiliaries from all over the empire, and generals from all the branches of the Mongol imperial family, including three princes from the Golden Horde, the Chagatayid prince Teguder, and possibly one of Genghis Khan's grandsons through his daughter Checheikhen.

Because of the size of his force, Hulegu's progress from Karakorum was extremely leisurely by Mongol standards. Setting out in October 1253, he spent the next years passing through Transoxiana and received homage from local rulers, including Arghun Aqa at Kish in November 1255; early the following year, he entered the Assassins' heartland of Kohistan. An advanced vanguard under the general Kitbuqa had taken numerous Ismaili fortresses, unsuccessfully besieged the stronghold at Gerdkuh, and sacked the city of Tun between 1253 and 1256. The Grand Master of the Assassins, Ala ad-Din Muhammad, had died in December 1255, and Hulegu sent ambassadors to his young successor, Rukn al-Din Khurshah. The new Grand Master attempted to stall for time, but his fortresses steadily fell to the Mongols and he surrendered from Maymun-Diz on 19 November 1256. Rukn al-Din persuaded the stronghold of Alamut to surrender on 15 December.

Baghdad campaign

Hulegu had expected the Abbasid caliph al-Musta'sim to provide troops for the campaign against the Assassins; the caliph had initially assented, but his ministers argued that the real purpose of the request was to empty Baghdad of potential defenders, and so he refused. Later Sunni writers accused Baghdad's vizier, a Shi'ite named Muhammad ibn al-Alqami, of having betrayed the caliph by opening secret negotiations with Hulegu. In 1256, sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi'a had broken out after a devastating flood, placing Baghdad in a difficult position; however, al-Musta'sim and his ministers were still quite delusional concerning their chances of success.

Hulegu spent the summer of 1257 on or near the Hamadan plain, where he was rejoined by Baiju, who had been subduing restless vassals in the northwest. Baiju brought Seljuk, Georgian, and Armenian vassals, including the princes Pŕosh Khaghbakian and Zak‘arē, to join the Mongol army. In September, Hulegu began a correspondence with al-Musta'sim, described by the historian René Grousset as "one of the most magnificent dialogues in history". His first message demanded that the caliph peacefully submit and send his three principal ministers—the vizier, the commander of the soldiers, and the '' dawatdar'' (keeper of the inkpot)—to the Mongols; all three likely refused, and three less important officials were sent instead.

Al-Musta'sim's reply to Hulegu's letter called the Mongol leader young and ignorant, and presented himself as able to summon armies from all of Islam. Accompanied by disrespectful behaviour towards Hulegu's envoys, who were exposed to taunting and mockery from mobs on Baghdad's streets, this was just antagonistic bombast: the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt was hostile towards the caliph, while the Ayyubid minor rulers in Syria were focusing on their own survival. A further exchange of letters brought no progress save the caliph's concession of a small amount of tribute—al-Alqami had argued for sending large amounts, but the ''dawatdar'' argued that al-Alqami was trying to empty the treasury and win Hulegu's favour.

Losing patience, Hulegu consulted his advisors on the practicalities of attacking Baghdad. The astronomer Husam al-Din prophesied doom, stating that all rulers who had attacked Baghdad had afterwards lost their kingdom. Hulegu then turned to the polymath Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, who simply replied that none of these disasters would happen, and that Hulegu would rule in place of the caliph.

Advance and siege

Flanked on the right wing by the Golden Horde princes, who approached via the Shahrizor plain, and on the left by Kitbuqa in Khuzistan, Hulegu commanded the main Mongol force and sacked Kermanshah on 6 December. After a council of war

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