Baghdad before 1258
Baghdad was founded in the eighth century as the capital of the Abbasid dynasty, and for generations it was one of the largest and most prosperous cities in the world. It was a hub for scholars, merchants and administrators. By the mid-thirteenth century, however, the caliphate’s power had shrunk. The caliph still held the highest religious prestige among many Sunni Muslims and controlled the city and part of Iraq, but regional dynasties held most of the surrounding lands. Baghdad was a symbolic and cultural center more than a major military power.
Why the Mongols came
Mongol interest in the Middle East grew from earlier conquests in Iran and Central Asia. The great khan Mongke, who ruled from 1251, gave his brother Hulegu a large army and a mission to subdue the remaining strongholds in the region. The first target was the Nizari Ismailis, whose mountain fortresses in northern Iran were reduced by about 1256. The next was the caliph.
According to the sources, Hulegu demanded that the caliph, al-Musta’sim, submit and dismantle his defenses. The caliph is said to have rejected the demand, in the belief that the Mongols would not dare to attack the leader of Islam, or that other Muslim rulers would come to his aid. The accounts come largely from later authors, and some details, such as exact messages exchanged, may be embellished. The caliph’s court was also divided, and political rivalries among his officials weakened the preparations.
The siege
In late 1257 and early 1258 several Mongol columns converged on Iraq. Some forces came from the east and others from the north, and some contingents included troops from Mongol vassals, such as Georgian and Armenian soldiers and Persian auxiliaries. An advance force defeated the caliph’s army outside the city, and in the course of the fighting breached dikes, flooding part of the ground, a detail that appears in the sources.
By late January 1258 Baghdad was surrounded. The Mongols built siege engines, including catapults, and bombarded the walls, and they probably used engineers from China and elsewhere, as was their practice. The defenders could not hold out. After roughly two weeks, the walls were breached, and in early February the caliph surrendered. The exact dates differ slightly among sources, but the siege is traditionally dated to about 29 January to 10 February 1258.
The sack
After the surrender, Mongol troops entered the city and, over a period of several days, killed and looted. Contemporary and later writers describe enormous slaughter and the destruction of palaces, mosques and other buildings. Casualty figures in the sources vary widely, from many tens of thousands to figures in the hundreds of thousands or even higher. Modern historians regard the larger numbers as unreliable and likely exaggerated, but they accept that the loss of life was very large and that a major part of the city was damaged. Some residents were spared, including Christians, in part due to the influence of Hulegu’s Christian wife, Doquz Khatun, according to the accounts.
Stories about the fate of the libraries are well known, notably that books were thrown into the Tigris so that the river ran black with ink. These stories come from later sources and may be a literary image, and it is difficult to know how much of the city’s book collection was lost. What is not in doubt is that Baghdad’s institutions of learning, including those linked to the earlier tradition of the House of Wisdom, suffered a major setback. The old translation movement of the early Abbasid period had long since faded, but the city remained a place of scholarship until this point.
The death of the caliph
Al-Musta’sim was executed shortly after the surrender. A widely repeated tradition says he was rolled in a carpet and trampled by horses, a method that allowed the Mongols to avoid spilling royal blood. Other accounts differ, and the story may reflect a belief about how to kill a royal person rather than documented fact. Most of his family and officials were also killed.
This ended the Abbasid caliphate as a ruling power in Baghdad, after more than five centuries. For many Muslims the caliph had symbolized the unity of the community, and his death was a profound shock.
Consequences
Baghdad did not disappear, but it declined. It became a provincial city in the Mongol realm of the Ilkhanate, which Hulegu founded, with its main centers moving to northwestern Iran. Some scholars have argued that the destruction of canals and irrigation systems did long-term harm to Iraq’s agriculture. Others suggest the decline was already under way and was spread over many causes. The scale of damage and its duration remain debated.
Politically, the fall reshaped the region. Hulegu continued into Syria, taking Aleppo and Damascus, but in 1260 the Mamluks of Egypt defeated a Mongol force at Ain Jalut. The Mamluk sultans in Cairo later sheltered a member of the Abbasid family as a nominal caliph, who held a religious rank but little real power. The Ilkhans eventually converted to Islam, beginning with Ghazan around the end of the thirteenth century, and they became patrons of Persian culture.
For later writers the fall of Baghdad served as a symbol of catastrophe, and some regard it as the end of a golden age. Historians generally caution against so simple a reading, since scholarship and culture continued elsewhere, in Cairo, Iran and Spain. Even so, the event stands as one of the most dramatic episodes in the Mongol conquests and a turning point in the history of the Islamic world.