6. Defiance Coupled With Weakness Turned Out to be a Deadly Mix
The Abbasids had once been a powerful dynasty that ruled the world’s strongest, wealthiest and largest empire. In Al Musta’sim’s era, however, they were centuries removed from their heyday. By the 1250s, the Abbasid Caliphate’s writ did not go far beyond Baghdad. As to the Caliph, he had been reduced to a ceremonial figurehead, a puppet of Turkish or Persian sultans wielding real power and acting in his name. What the Caliph still had was some spiritual and moral authority, and enough pride to refuse Hulagu’s summons to submit. However, he was not prepared to face the Mongols, who had conquered bigger and tougher opponents than the small rump that still remained to the Abbasids.
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. That belief backfired upon the Caliph. 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. So they executed him by rolling him in a carpet, over which their army rode when it marched off to further conquests, their horses trampling the last Caliph to death.
