Muayyad ad-Din Ibn al-'Alkami ( Arabic. مؤيد الدين بن العلقمي ) is a vizier and adviser to the last Abbasid caliph al-Mustashim . He was born according to various sources in 1195 or 1197. Some historians consider it not as an Arab, but as a Persian from Qom . Known for his controversial role during the siege of Baghdad during the Mongol invasion .
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History
In 1253, Hulagu , the grandson of Genghis Khan , left Mongolia, led by a large army with the goal of destroying the formations of the Abbasids and Assassins. Quickly emptying the small princedom-fragments of the state of Khorezmshah , he sent a letter of invitation to Caliph al-Mustasim with a proposal to join his military campaign against the Ismailis , but did not receive an answer. By 1256, almost all of their fortresses, including the Alamut castle, were captured and the forces defeated by the Mongols. In September of this year, during the passage through Khorasan through the Great Silk Road, he submitted to the Caliph an ultimatum demanding the destruction of the outer wall of Baghdad and the surrender to the khan. Having received an evasive answer, the Mongols launched an offensive. In January 1258, they launched an operation to destroy the walls of Baghdad. After the damage of one of the towers of ibn al-Alkami, accompanied by Nestorians (Khulagu had a Christian wife), he tried to agree with the khan on the conditions of surrender, but he refused to accept them (among the Sunnis, there is also a version that he was a traitor and specially set up everything like that launching troops into the city, having previously disbanded the army, releasing the best soldiers from it, leaving only the 10,000th army to defend, although the Mongolian historian Rashid ad-Din denied this and wrote about the vizier’s loyalty to the caliph and his sincere attempts to save the caliph). He also did not heed the warnings about the sad fate of those trying to destroy the caliph and that in the event of the death of the caliph, it would stop raining, grow plants and the sun rise, as the khan’s astrologer predicted him luck. By February 10, he broke into the city and the Caliph, along with 300 officers. individuals and Kadiev hastened to offer an unconditional peace. After 10 days, they were all executed, including the Caliph's family, and the city was put on fire. The disgusting smells of burnt unburied corpses forced Hulag to leave the city for several. days. The destruction was not as severe as that of other cities. Some schools and mosques were spared for perestroika, the Nestorian patriarch received honors from the khan, and the Islamic world was left without a caliph for the first time in history.