← Back to the front page

Murder Holes, Machicolations, and Other Medieval Warfare Facts

Khalid Elhassan March 6, 2020 34 min

Pike and shot - Pike and Shot : Campaigns — A pike and short formation, with pikemen protecting those wielding firearms while they reloaded. Pintrest

25. The Mongol Who Terrorized the Middle East

Hulagu leading a charge. Assassins Creed Wiki

Hulagu (1217 – 1265) was a grandson of Genghis Khan and a younger brother of the Grand Khans Mongke and Kublai. He expanded the Mongol domain into Western Asia and the Middle East with a savagery that remains in the region’s memory to this day.

Hulagu destroyed Baghdad and extinguished the Abbasid Caliphate, wrecked medieval Persian culture, conquered Syria, and menaced Egypt and the surviving Crusader states. He also founded the Ilkhanate in Persia, a precursor of modern Iran.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.