1258: The Mongols at Baghdad
The Islamic Golden AgeThe Keeper of the Inkpot
In September 1257 Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan, wrote to al-Musta'sim, the last Abbasid caliph to rule in Baghdad. He demanded three men be sent out to him: the vizier, the army commander, and the dawatdar — literally the keeper of the inkpot, who carried the caliph's writing case and seal. All three refused. Al-Musta'sim's reply called Hulagu young and ignorant and claimed he could summon the armies of Islam. He could not: Egypt's Mamluks were hostile and Syria's Ayyubid princes were busy surviving. Hulagu asked his advisers whether Baghdad was safe to attack. A court astronomer predicted ruin for anyone who tried. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, the mathematician who had entered Mongol service after Alamut fell, said nothing of the kind would happen.
Twenty-five Days
On 16 January 1258 the dawatdar led twenty thousand infantry out and pushed a Mongol advance party back. That night Baiju's men cut the dykes of the Dujayl canal and flooded the camp where the caliph's army was celebrating; many drowned, and the rest were ridden down at dawn. Hulagu reached the eastern suburbs on 22 January. His troops threw a palisade and moat right around Baghdad in a single day, floated pontoon bridges above and below the city so nobody could leave by the Tigris, and hauled stone for the mangonels three days' journey from the Jebel Hamrin, because the plain around Baghdad has none. The bombardment opened on 29 or 30 January. The Ajami tower breached on 1 February; by the 4th the Mongols held the eastern battlements.
The Sack, and the Death of a Caliph
Al-Musta'sim surrendered on 10 February with his family and three thousand dignitaries. The sack began on the 13th and ran a week. Some doors were marked and spared: Christians, for whom Hulagu's Christian wife Doquz Khatun interceded, along with sayyids, scholars, and merchants who had traded with the Mongols. On 20 February the caliph was executed. Most historians follow the version in which he was rolled in a carpet and trampled by horses, spilling royal blood being taboo among Mongols — but a 2020 study by Nassima Neggaz catalogued the medieval alternatives: starvation, molten gold, strangling, hanging, plain execution. Marco Polo's telling — the caliph locked in with his treasure to starve — is a folktale. The record does not settle it.
The Parts Written Later
How many died is not known and probably cannot be. Later Muslim writers give 800,000 to two million; Hulagu, writing to Louis IX of France, claimed 200,000 — and he had every interest in sounding terrible rather than modest. Historians treat all these figures as unusable. The ink is no firmer. The line about so many books thrown in the river that its colour turned black comes from a historian writing roughly three centuries afterwards; nobody who was there records it. Scholars still dispute what al-Ma'mun's bayt al-hikma, the House of Wisdom, even was — palace library, translation bureau, something looser — and there is no good evidence it stood in 1258 to be burned. Later writers blamed the vizier Ibn al-Alqami for treachery; Hulagu reappointed him.
What Was Standing in 1260
Within two years, large libraries in Baghdad were teaching again — Michal Biran showed this from the dated attendance notes scholars wrote into manuscripts. Hulagu had ordered the bazaars reopened before riding north on 8 March. Books went to Maragha, where an observatory began in 1259; its librarian was Ibn al-Fuwati, enslaved in the sack at fourteen. The Mustansiriyya madrasa, finished in 1234, still stands by the Tigris. What those libraries held was itself inherited — Greek, Persian, Indian and Syriac work argued over for four centuries — with copies already in Cairo, Damascus, Córdoba and Konya. The losses were real: the caliphate ended, power moved to Tabriz. But Biran argues Timur in 1393 and 1401, and the Ottomans in 1534, did the lasting damage.
Key Dates to Remember
- September 1257 — Hulagu opens his correspondence with al-Musta'sim, demanding that the vizier, the army commander and the dawatdar be sent out to him.
- 16-17 January 1258 — Baiju's troops cut the Dujayl canal dykes and drown the caliph's field army in its own camp.
- 10 February 1258 — Al-Musta'sim surrenders with his family and three thousand dignitaries; the sack begins on the 13th and runs a week.
- 20 February 1258 — The caliph is executed — most historians follow the carpet-and-trampling version, though medieval writers give at least six.
- 1259 — Work starts at Maragha on the observatory Hulagu funds; al-Tusi will appoint Ibn al-Fuwati, enslaved in the sack at fourteen, as its librarian a few years later.