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Pistol Pete’s Payback and Other Historic Vengeances

Khalid Elhassan October 15, 2020 31 min

World War II - Quisling — Quisling with SS chief Heinrich Himmler. Cotton Boll Conspiracy

21. Payback for Defiance

Hulagu at the Siege of Baghdad. Pintrest

The Abbasids were not prepared to face the Mongols, who had conquered bigger and tougher opponents than the small rump which still remained in their Caliphate. However, Caliph 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 and was ordered executed as payback for his defiance. However, the Mongols had a taboo against spilling royal blood. So they rolled him in a carpet, and their army rode over him when it marched off to further conquests, their horses trampling the last Caliph to death.

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.