22. The Mongol Eruption Reaches the Middle East
Hulagu began his Middle East campaign by first destroying the Assassins, a murderous cult led by a shadowy mystic known as The Old Man of the Mountain. The Assassins had operated from a string of mountain holdfasts, and terrorized the Middle East for over a century and a half. After eradicating the Assassins in 1256, Hulagu turned his attention to the Abbassid Caliphate, based in Baghdad. He ordered its Caliph, Al Musta’sim, to submit to Mongol suzerainty and pay tribute.
The Abbassids, once a powerful dynasty that ruled the world’s largest, strongest, and most prosperous empire, were centuries removed from their heyday by then. By the 1250s, the Abbasid Caliphate’s sway did not stretch far beyond Baghdad. The Caliphs had been reduced to mostly ceremonial figureheads, puppets of Turkish or Persian sultans wielding real power and acting in their 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.
