The Siege of Baghdad, 1258. Islam Nearly Wiped from the Earth. Mongol Expansion. Wholesale Slaughter.

When the Mongols tore through Baghdad, they did not merely sack a city for its plunder or to claim power, this time they dismantled a civilization. The once-great capital of the Islamic world, a center of power, knowledge, and commerce for half a millennium, was left a husk of its former self. Its libraries, once holding the accumulated wisdom of centuries, were reduced to ashes. Its people, once scholars, merchants, and rulers, were slaughtered or scattered. For generations, Baghdad remained...