Siege of Baghdad 1258: Hulegu, the Caliph's Gold and a Rolled Carpet

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In 1251 Möngke Khan gave his brother Hulegu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, a fifth of the Mongol Empire's manpower and orders to subdue the west, an army estimated at 138,000 to 300,000 men that included Armenian and Georgian troops and Chinese siege engineers. In Baghdad, a city of over a million and home of the House of Wisdom, the Abbasid caliph al-Musta'sim trusted his religious prestige more than his flood damaged walls. He refused Hulegu's request for troops against the Nizari Ismaili fortresses, sent low ranking envoys, threatened him in letters and let crowds mock the Mongol envoys. When his vizier Ibn al-Alqami urged paying tribute, a rival commander, the Dawatdar, called him a traitor, and the caliph kept his treasure.

In January 1258 the Mongols broke canal dikes and flooded the camp of the caliph's field army. They ringed the city with a palisade and trench in a single day, blocked the Tigris with pontoon bridges and bombarded the walls with stones and burning naphtha. The caliph surrendered on February 10, and a week of sack followed. Mongol custom forbade spilling royal blood, so he was rolled in a carpet and trampled by horses. The episode questions the idea that the sack ended the Islamic Golden Age.

• An astrologer warned Hulegu that attacking Baghdad would bring disaster, but Nasir al-Din al-Tusi told him he would simply rule in the caliph's place.
• Because his Christian wife Doquz Khatun interceded, Hulegu ordered Baghdad's Christians spared.
• Hulegu put the caliph's gold in front of him to eat and asked why he had not spent it on soldiers.
• Hulegu claimed about 200,000 dead, later sources claimed up to two million, and plague fleas in the Mongol grain supplies may have added to the toll.
• Within two years libraries and schools in Baghdad had reopened, and the Ilkhanate became a patron of scholars and astronomers.