The extirpation of the Assassins won for Hulágú Khán the applause of the orthodox Muhammadans, but his next procedure was one which only those whose position rendered it impossible for them to speak freely could mention without expressions of the utmost horror. Six months after the unfortunate Ruknu'd-Dín Khúrsháh had been sent to meet his doom at Qaráqorum, Hulágú Khán, having destroyed the Assassins root and branch, sent from Hamadán, which he had made his head-quarters, a summons to the Caliph al-Musta'ṣim bi'lláh to surrender himself and Baghdád, for five centuries the metropolis of Islám, to the Mongols. Two months later, in November, 1257, Hulágú took the field. He was accompanied by several Muhammadan princes, such as Abú Bakr b. Sa'd-i-Zangí, the Atábek of Shíráz, chiefly known as the patron of the great poet and writer, Sa'dí, and Badru'd-Dín Lúlú, the Atábek of Mosul, to whom Ibnu'ṭ-Ṭiqṭiqí so often refers in his charming manual of history, the Kitábu'l-Fakhrí; also by his secretary 'Aṭá Malik Juwayní, author of the often-quoted Ta'ríkh-i-Jahán-gushá , and Naṣíru'd-Dín Ṭúsí, the astronomer. Already the Caliph had sent Sharafu'd-Dín 'Abdu'lláh ibnu'l-Jawzí as ambassador to Hulágú while he was still at Hamadán, but his reply to the Mongol ultimatum being, as usual, deemed unsatisfactory and evasive, the main Mongol army under Hulágú advanced directly upon Baghdád from the east, while another army under Bájú Noyán fetched a compass from the north by way of Takrít, near Mosul, so as to approach the doomed city from the west. The former army, according to Ibnu'ṭ-Ṭiqṭiqí, * exceeded 30,000 men, while the latter, according to the author of the Ṭabaqát-i-Náṣirí * (who, how­ever, probably exaggerates) was 80,000 strong. The Caliph's available troops, on the other hand, according to the authority last named, amounted only to 20,000 men.

The first encounter took place at Takrít, where the Caliph's soldiers succeeded in destroying the bridge by which Bájú Noyán intended to cross the Tigris. Their success, however, was of brief duration, and soon the Mongols were swarming into Dujayl, al-Isḥáqí, Nahr Malik, Nahr 'Ísá, and other dependencies of Baghdád, while the panic-stricken inhabitants of these places fled to seek refuge in the metropolis. The ferry-men, as we learn from the Kitábu'l-Fakhrí, profited by the panic, exacting from the terrified fugitives for a passage across the river golden bracelets, precious stuffs, or a fee of several dínárs. The next encounter took place at Dujayl on or about January 11, 1258. Here again the Caliph's army, commanded by Mujáhidu'd-Dín Aybak, entitled ad-Dawídár aṣ-Ṣaghír (the Under-Secretary of State), and Malik 'Izzu'd-Dín b. Fatḥu'd-Dín, achieved a trifling initial success, in spite of the numerical inferiority of their forces; but during the night the Mongols, aided very probably by the Chinese engineers whom they had brought with them, succeeded in flooding the Muslim camp, an achievement which not only materially conduced to the defeat of the Caliph's army, but greatly aggravated the ensuing slaughter of the fugitives, especially the infantry. Of this battle, à propos of the invasion of Persia by the Arabs in the seventh century of our era, and the mis­placed contempt of the well-armed and sumptuously equipped Persians for the tattered and half-naked Bedouin, the author of the Kitábu'l-Fakhrí (ed. Cairo, p. 72) gives the following personal account from his friend Falaku'd-Dín Muḥammad b. Aydímir.

“I was,” says he, “in the army of the Under-Secretary when he went forth to meet the Tartars on the western side of the City of Peace (Baghdád), or the occasion of its supreme disaster in the year A.H. 656 (began January 8, A.D. 1258). We met at Nahr Bashír, one of the dependencies of Dujayl; and there would ride forth from amongst us to offer single combat a knight fully accoutred and mounted on an Arab horse, so that it was as though he and his steed together were [solid as] some great mountain. Then there would come forth to meet him from the Mongols a horseman mounted on a horse like a donkey, and having in his hand a spear like a spindle, wearing neither robe nor armour, so that all who saw him were moved to laughter. Yet ere the day was done the victory was theirs, and they inflicted on us a great defeat, which was the Key of Evil, and thereafter there befell us what befell us.”

Most of the fugitives perished in the quagmires produced by the artificial flood already mentioned, except such as succeeded in swimming the river and escaping through the desert into Syria, and a few who, with the Dawídár, succeeded in re­entering Baghdád. The Dawídár and 'Izzu'd-Dín urged the Caliph to escape by boat, whilst there was yet time, to Baṣra, but the Wazír Ibnu'l-'Alqamí (according to the author of the Ṭabaqát-í-Náṣirí, p. 427) opposed this plan, and, while the Caliph still hesitated, the Mongols encompassed the city on every side. The siege proper seems to have begun on January 22: on the 30th a general assault was made, and on February 4 the Caliph again sent Ibnu'l-Jawzí to Hulágú with costly presents and offers of surrender. A few days later, lured by the usual false and specious promises of clemency, he gave himself up, and, together with his eldest and second sons, Abu'l-'Abbás Aḥmad and Abu'l-Faḍá'il 'Abdu'r-Raḥmán, was cruelly put to death by order of Hulágú. As to the manner of his death, great uncertainty prevails, but the story that he was starved to death in his treasure-house, popularised by Longfellow in his poem “Kambalu,” is less probable than the account given by most of the Muslim historians that he was wrapped in a carpet and beaten to death with clubs. Some such fate certainly befell him, for it was against the Mongol practice to shed royal blood, and when one of their own princes was executed they generally adopted the barbarous method of breaking his back.

The sack of Baghdád began on February 13, 1258, and lasted for a week, during which 800,000 of the inhabitants were put to death, while the treasures, material, literary, and scientific, accumulated during the centuries while Baghdád was the metropolis of the vast empire of the 'Abbásid Caliphs were plundered or destroyed. The loss suffered by Muslim learning, which never again reached its former level, defies description and almost surpasses imagination: not only were thousands of priceless books utterly annihilated, but, owing to the number of men of learning who perished or barely escaped with their lives, the very tradition of accurate scholarship and original research, so conspicuous in Arabic literature before this period, was almost destroyed. Never, probably, was so great and splendid a civilisation so swiftly consumed with fire and quenched with blood. “Then there took place,” in the words of the Kitábu'l-Fakhrí, where it describes the storming of Baghdád, “such wholesale slaughter and unrestrained loot­ing and excessive torture and mutilation as it is hard to hear spoken of even generally; how think you, then, of its details? There happened what happened of things I like not to mention; therefore imagine what you will, but ask me not of the matter!” And remember that he who wrote these words (in A.D. 1302, only forty-four years after the even of which he speaks) lived under a dominion which, though Muslim, was still Mongol, that, namely, of Gházán, the great-grandson of Hulágú.

There is a good deal of doubt as to the part played by the Caliph's wazír, Mu'ayyidu'd-Dín Muḥammad ibnu'l-'Alqamí, in the surrender of Baghdád. In the Ṭabaqát-i-Náṣirí (pp. 423 et seqq.) he is denounced in the bitterest terms as a traitor who deliberately reduced the numbers and strength of the garrison, and afterwards induced the Caliph to surrender, his motive in this being partly ambition, but chiefly a burning desire to avenge certain wrongs done to followers of the Shí'a sect, to which he himself belonged, by the Caliph's eldest son. Ibnu'ṭ-Ṭiqṭiqí, on the other hand, warmly defends him against this charge, which, he says, is disproved by the fact (communi­cated to him by Ibnu'l-'Alqamí's nephew, Aḥmad ibnu'ḍ-Ḍaḥḥák) that, on the surrender of Baghdád, the wazír was presented by Naṣíru'd-Dín Ṭúsí to Hulágú, who, pleased with his appearance and address, took him into his favour and associated him with the Mongol resident, 'Alí Bahádur, in the government of the ruined metropolis, which, he argues, he would not have done if he had known him to have betrayed the master whose favour he had so long enjoyed. It must be borne in mind, however, that these two men, Ibnu'l-'Alqamí, the ex-wazír of the Caliph, and Naṣíru'd-Dín Ṭúsí, who, for all his ethical and religious treatises, betrayed his Isma'ílí hosts and fellow-countrymen and helped to compass the Caliph's death to gain the favour of a bloodthirsty and savage heathen like Hulágú, both belonged to the sect of the Shí'a, as did also the worthy author of the Kitábu'l-Fakhrí; and for my part, I fear that the fact reported by the latter must probably be inter­preted in quite the opposite way to that which he has adopted. It would, at any rate, thoroughly accord with all that we know of the Mongols, and particularly of Hulágú, to suppose that Ibnu'l-'Alqamí, seduced by fair promises and blinded by a religious fanaticism which preferred (as is not unfrequently the case) a heathen to a heretic, and possibly acting in conjunction with his co-religionist Naṣíru'd-Dín Ṭúsí, now exalted to the rank of Hulágú's wazír, betrayed Baghdád and the Caliph into the hands of the Mongols, who, as usual, showed him favour until their object was completely achieved and they had made all the use of him they could, and then got rid of him as quickly as possible. This conjecture is, I think, supported by the fact that he died in May, 1258, only three months after his master, whom he is accused of having betrayed. Yet the matter is doubtful, and will, in all probability, never now be certainly cleared up, so let him who will not follow Ibnu'ṭ-Ṭiqṭiqí in praying that God may be merciful to him at least refrain from the curses showered upon him by the author of the Ṭabaqát-i-Náṣirí, who shows a far greater fanaticism for the Sunní cause than does Ibnu'ṭ-Ṭiqṭiqí (a historian of extra­ordinary sense, moderation, and good feeling) for the Shí'a.