The Loser Caliph Who Invited the Demise of the Caliphate
Hulagu ordered Caliph Al Musta’sim to submit to Mongol suzerainty and pay tribute. The Abbassids had once been a powerful dynasty that ruled the world’s largest, strongest, and most prosperous empire. However, it was a loser realm, centuries removed from its heyday by the time Al Musta’sim became Caliph. By the 1250s, the Abbasid Caliphate’s sway did not stretch far beyond Baghdad. As to the Caliph, he had been reduced to a mostly ceremonial figurehead loser, a puppet of Turkish or Persian sultans who wielded real power while they acted in his name. What the Caliph did have left was a remnant of spiritual and moral authority, and enough pride to refuse Hulagu’s summons to submit.
The Abbasids were not prepared to face the Mongols, who had conquered bigger and tougher opponents than the small rump that remained of the Abbasid Caliphate. However, Al Musta’sim believed that the Mongols would not be able to seize Baghdad, and that if the city was endangered, the Islamic world would rush to its aid. Hulagu marched on Baghdad, the Islamic world did not rush to its aid, and after a twelve-day-siege, the city fell. The Mongols sacked Baghdad, massacred its inhabitants, burned its vast libraries, and put the city to the torch. Al Musta’sim was captured, but the Mongols had a taboo against spilling royal blood. To execute him, they rolled him in a carpet, and their army rode over him when it marched off to further conquests. Thus, the last caliph was trampled to death beneath Mongol hooves.
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