Battle of Baghdad (1258)

At that time, Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate , an Islamic state located on the territory of modern Iraq . The Abbasids were the second Islamic dynasty, in 751 they overthrew the Umayyads , who ruled after the death of Ali in 661 ^[6] . In its heyday, Baghdad inhabited more than 3 million residents and protected 60,000 soldiers. In the middle of the 13th century, the caliphate weakened to such an extent that it became a small state; although the Caliph was controlled by the Mamluks or Turkic military leaders, he remained an important figure in the Islamic world, and rich and educated people lived in Baghdad. Before the siege of Hulagu, the Baiju Mongols invaded Iraq in 1238, 1242 and 1246, but did not enter the city.

In 1253, the Mongol ruler Munke decided to conquer the Abbasid caliphate and create vassal states in neighboring regions. Knowing that Baghdad was a large and well-defended city, Munke ordered that each ulus put in the army two people out of every ten. The 150,000 army gathered by the Mongols was the largest Mongol army of that time. In November 1257, troops under the command of Hulagu , Jalair Elke-noyon, Chinese Vice-Commander headed for Baghdad. ^[7] . The army was attended by a Christian contingent of Armenians , led by its king, and Georgians , who wanted to avenge the destruction of Tbilisi with Jelal ad-Din Khorezmshah several decades earlier. ^{[8] The} other Christians were the French from Antioch . ^[9] An eyewitness to the events, Pers Juvaini, reports the presence of 1,000 Chinese military engineers, Armenians, Georgians, Persians , and Turks . ^[2]

Prior to the siege of Baghdad, Hulagu conquered the Lur and Iranian Ismailis - Nizaris (known as the " Assassins "), taking the impregnable fortress of Alamut without battle in 1256. Then he went to Baghdad.

Munch ordered his brother to spare the caliphate if he obeyed the Mongols. Approaching Baghdad, Hulagu demanded surrender; Caliph Al-Mustasim refused. According to contemporaries, al-Mustasim thoughtlessly reacted to the Mongols and threatened Hulagu, despite the fact that the caliph did not gather an army and did not strengthen the walls of Baghdad. ^[ten]

Hulagu crossed part of the forces across the Tiger and took the city to "ticks". The Caliph army recaptured the Mongol in the west, but the next attack killed her. The Mongols trapped the caliph troops in the lowlands and destroyed the dams that held back the waters. Many caliph warriors drowned.

On January 29, Chinese engineers surrounded the city with a stockade and set about building siege weapons and catapults. The Mongols stormed in their usual style: by February 5, the Mongols recaptured part of the wall. Al Mustasim’s offer of negotiation was rejected.

Baghdad surrendered on February 10th. On February 13, the Mongols broke into the city, and Hulagu gave him to plunder for a week.

There are many facts testifying to the cruelty of the Mongols.

• The House of Wisdom , a library containing manuscripts in many branches of science, especially in medicine and astronomy, was destroyed. Survivors said that the Tiger was black from ink washed off from manuscripts and red from the blood of scientists and philosophers.
• Residents who tried to flee were mercilessly exterminated by the Mongols. Martin Sicker writes about 90,000 dead. (Sicker 2000, p. 111). Others speak of much greater losses. Vassaf claims about several hundred thousand dead. Ian Fraser in The New Yorker calls the figure 200 000-1 000 000 dead. ^[eleven]
• The Mongols burned palaces, mosques, libraries, hospitals. Beautiful buildings that stood for centuries, were destroyed.
• The captured caliph was forced to look at the death of the city. Most sources say that the caliph was trampled. The Mongols wrapped him in a carpet and led his cavalry along him. So, they believed the land would not be offended by them for shedding royal blood. All the caliph’s children were destroyed, but the Mongols spared one son and sent to Munk in Mongolia, where he settled and started a family, but did not play any political role (see The Fall of the Abbasids ).
• The stench from the corpses made Hulag move the stake from the leeward side of Baghdad.

The deserted Baghdad lay in ruins, more than one century was needed to return to its former glory.

Historian Comments

“Iraq in 1258 was significantly different from modern. The channel system has been supported for over a thousand years. Baghdad was a brilliant intellectual center of the world. The fall of Baghdad was a psychological blow from which the Islamic world has not recovered. Islam is locked in, has become more conservative, intolerant of conflicts of faith and reason. With the looting of Baghdad, the intellectual light of Islam has faded. The scale of the losses was comparable to the destruction of Athens, Pericles and Aristotle. The Mongols destroyed the land reclamation canals and left Iraq, which has not recovered. ”(Stephen Dutch)

“They walked around the city, like hungry falcons attacking flying pigeons, like angry wolves attacking sheep, with drawn reins, smirking they sowed horror and destruction, beds and pillows decorated with gold and jewelry were torn and torn to shreds. The girls hiding behind the curtains in the harem were dragged by the hair to the streets and given to the Mongol warriors ... so the population died at the hands of the conquerors. ”(Abdullah Wassaf in the retelling of David Morgan )

Agricultural decline

Some historians believe that the Mongols destroyed the irrigation system that had developed in Mesopotamia for millennia. During the war, the canals were destroyed and never recovered. People digging and repairing canals either died or fled from the Mongols, and faulty canals quickly flooded. This theory was put forward by historian S. Soucek in the book A History of Inner Asia (“History of Central (Inner) Asia”) and was adopted by Stephen Datchem.

Other historians speak of soil salinization as the cause of agricultural decline. ^{[12] [13] [14]}

The following year, Hulagu appointed Juvaini Governor of Baghdad, Lower Mesopotamia , and Khuzestan . Under the influence of Dokuz-Khatun , the wife of Hulag and the Nestorian Christian , Christians were spared by the Mongols. ^{[15] [16]} Hulag granted the Nestorian Catholicos Mar Makikha a palace, and ordered the construction of a cathedral for him. ^[17]

• Siege of Baghdad by the Seljuks (1157)
• Persecution of muslims
• Soil salinization
• Tigro-Euphrates River System

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• ibid. 2006. Croisades et Croisés au Moyen-Age . Paris: Groupe Flammarion .
• Richard Foltz , Religions of the Silk Road: Premodern Patterns of Globalization , revised 2nd edition, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
• Khanbaghi, Aptin. 2006. The fire, the star, and the cross: minority religions in medieval and early modern Iran . London: IB Tauris .
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• Runciman, Steven. A history of the Crusades .
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• Sicker, Martin. 2000. The Islamic World in Ascendancy: From the Arab Conquests to the Siege of Vienna . Westport, Connecticut: Praeger . ISBN 0-275-96892-8 .
• Souček, Svat. 2000. A History of Inner Asia . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-65704-0 .
• Gumilev L.N. Black Legend. Friends and foes of the Great Steppe . - Moscow: Iris-press, 2007. - p. 53. - 576 p. - (Library of history and culture). - 5000 copies - ISBN 978-5-8112-2365-7 .

• Article describing Hulagu's conquest of Baghdad
• Steven dutch article