Siege of Baghdad (1258)

The **Siege of Baghdad** in 1258 was a victory for the Mongol leader Hulagu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan. Baghdad was captured, sacked, and over time burned.

Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid Empire. This was an Islamic empire in what is now Iraq.  The Abbasid caliph<nowiki/>s were the second of the Islamic dynasties.

The Mongol army, led by Hulagu (also spelled as Hulegu) Khan and the Chinese commander Guo Kan in vice-command, set out for Baghdad in November of 1257. Hulagu marched with what was probably the largest army ever fielded by the Mongols.  By order of Mongke Khan, one in ten fighting men in the entire Mongol Empire were gathered for Hulagu's army (Saunders 1971).

## The siege

Hulagu demanded surrender; the caliph refused. Many accounts say that the caliph failed to prepare for the fight; he neither gathered armies nor strengthened the walls of Baghdad.

Hulagu divided his forces, so that they threatened both sides of the city, on the east and west banks of the Tigris.  The attacking Mongols broke some dikes and flooded the ground behind the caliph’s army, trapping them. Much of the army was slaughtered or drowned.

The siege started on January 29. The battle was swift, by siege standards. By February 5 the Mongols controlled a stretch of the wall. Al-Musta'sim tried to negotiate, but was refused.

On February 10 Baghdad surrendered. The Mongols swept into the city on February 13 and began a week of massacre, looting and destruction.

## Related pages

- Mongol Empire
- Abbasid Empire
- Baghdad
- Islamic Golden Age

## Sources

- Amitai-Preiss, Reuven. _Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War, 1260–1281_ (first edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.  .
- Morgan, David.  _The Mongols_. Boston: Blackwell Publishing, 1990.  .
- Nicolle, David, and Richard Hook (illustrator). _The Mongol Warlords: Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Hulegu, Tamerlane_. London: Brockhampton Press, 1998. .
- Saunders, J.J. _The History of the Mongol Conquests_. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. .
- Sicker, Martin. _The Islamic World in Ascendancy: From the Arab Conquests to the Siege of Vienna_. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2000. .
- Souček, Svat. _A History of Inner Asia_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. .

## Other websites

- An article  describing Hulagu's conquest of Baghdad, written by Ian Frazier, appeared in the April 25, 2005 issue of _The New Yorker_.
- Steven Dutch article

## Infobox (military conflict)

- **partof**: The Mongol invasions
- **image**: Bagdad1258.jpg
- **caption**: Hulagu's army conducting a siege on Baghdad walls.
- **date**: January 29 – February 10, 1258
- **place**: Baghdad, modern-day Iraq
- **result**: Decisive Mongol victory
- **combatant1**: Mongol Empire
- **combatant2**: Abbasid Caliphate
- **commander1**: Hulagu Khan
Guo Kan
Baiju
Kitbuga
Koke Ilge
David VII ulu
- **commander2**: Caliph Al-Musta'sim
Mujaheduddin
Sulaiman Shah
Qarasunqur.
- **strength1**: 120,000-150,000 total
(60,000 Georgians, Georgian infantry,
12,000 Armenian cavalry,
Chinese people, Chinese artillery, bombardiers,
and Mongols, Mongol, Turkic people, Turkic, Persian people, Persian and Georgians, Georgian soldiers)
- **strength2**: 50,000
- **casualties1**: Low
- **casualties2**: 50,000 soldiers,
200,000-1,000,000 civilians (According to Halugu)
- **conflict**: Siege of Baghdad (1258)