February 10th: Surrender of Baghdad

Today in 1258 the last sovereign Abassid Caliph, Al Mustasim, surrendered to Hulagu Khan.

Mongke had ordered every tenth man in the whole Mongol Empire to be drafted for this campaign against the Caliphate, Hulagu Khan, ruler of Persia (Il Khanate) gave an ultimatum. The last Caliph Al Mustasim did not even ponder it and threatened Hulagu with the "wrath of God".


The first struggle happened near the Tigris. Hulagu discovered that braking some dikes would cause the Muslim army to be flooded... so the Mongols proceeded to sap them, breaking havoc among the Caliph's troops.

In January 29th, the city had been put under siege, by February 5th the Mongols already controlled a stretch fo the wall. Al Mustasim tried to negotiate but Hulagu refused. Today 752 years ago, the city surrendered.


In February 13th, the Mongols entered the city sacking and destroying it to the ground. Among the destruction accounted was:

• Between 100,000 and one million people were slaughtered and raped
• Everything in the magnificent city was burnt to the ground, including the Great Library of Baghdad - center of the knowledge of that time
• The Caliph was killed along with all his family (except one son that kept the Caliphate nominally in Cairo)

The impact of this outmost destruction of the capital of Islam was tremendous. Iraq was made a shadow of its former splendour, with the canals that feed agriculture destroyed and the country depopulated.

According to Steven Dutch: he Mongol destruction of Baghdad was a psychological blow from which Islam never recovered. Already Islam was turning inward, becoming more suspicious of conflicts between faith and reason and more conservative. With the sack of Baghdad, the intellectual flowering of Islam was snuffed out.

Other events that happened today:

• 1763 - Treaty of Paris divides French posessions in North America between the English (Canada) and Spanish (Louisiana). This last was a compensation for the cession of Florida. Spain never managed to effectively control Louisiana.
  
• 1931 - New Delhi becomes the capital of British India
• 1947 - Italy cedes most of Venezia Giulia (Istria) to Yugoslavia
• 1996 - For the first time in history, a comuter beats a World Champion at a chess game: Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov. See the Wikipedia article for more details. The same day an IRA bomb destroyed partially the WTC of London.

Full list: Wikipedia


Edited by Maju

The impact of this outmost destruction of the capital of Islam was tremendous. Iraq was made a shadow of its former splendour, with the canals that feed agriculture destroyed and the country depopulated.

They did the same in Khorasan, desertified it.  And Afghanistan's poorly state over the last 800 or so years is largely down to the Mongols too. 

I wish Baghdad was not destroyed.

Yes, the Muslim leaders were arrogant and decadent towards the end, I am sad for all of the grand architecture and ancient wisdom and knowledge that was lost.

Arguably, that is the turning point at which Islamic civilisations ceased to be world leaders and slowly turned regressive as opposed to their previous progressive nature. Pre Mongol Persian poetry was very liberal, Iran at that time was more of a liberal society than it is today, it is simply possible to tell because of the literal content in the poems of greats such as Hafez, Sa'adi et al, mentioning wine, getting drunk, women and even sexuality.

Edited by Zagros

I still think he shouldnt have burned baghdad.