Talk:Siege of Baghdad

message: Shouldn't this be Sack of Baghdad or something similar?  There seems to have been some actual battle involved, but this article is really on the whole campaign, which mostly consisted of an advance, a siege, and a sack.  As such, I think Sack of Baghdad or Mongol Sack of Baghdad would be a better title for this article. john k (talk) 23:23, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the title needs to be changed.  I've read dozens of books about the Mongols, and the event generally isn't referred to as a "Battle".  Instead it's "The Fall of Baghdad" or "The Sack of Baghdad", "The Conquering of Baghdad", or "The Destruction of Baghdad."  I looked through titles at http://scholar.google.com, and based on a quick look, "Fall" and "Sack" are the preferred titles. If I had to choose, I'd probably lean towards "Fall of Baghdad (1258)" as being one of the most neutral, but I could go with "Sack of Baghdad" too.  The word "Sack" is stronger and somewhat more emotional, but it's definitely well-sourced. --Elonka 04:39, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We have several Sack of Rome articles - for 387 BC, 410, 455, 846 (somewhat dubiously), 1084, and 1527.  On the other hand, for Constantinople it's Fall of Constantinople.  But Baghdad seems definitely like a sack - the Mongols were certainly more vicious than the Visigoths in 410, or than the Arabs in 846, in terms of mass destruction.  If we're going to have any articles entitled "Sack of X", this one seems like a good candidate. john k (talk) 18:47, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Makes sense.  So, "Sack of Baghdad (1258)" ?  Or just "Sack of Baghdad"?  --Elonka 21:55, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Timur appears to have sacked Baghdad again in 1401, but I think this might be a primary topic.  What's your thought?  john k (talk) 08:38, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hmm, is there an article on the 1401 event?  Also, what is being used for the current-event actions? --Elonka 09:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Sack" is such a loaded word... It is also rather limitative: the "sack" was only one of the phases of the siege itself, which is the subject of the article here. I think we should use a broader and more neutral title such as Fall of Baghdad (1258). PHG (talk) 09:26, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But the same is true of all the other articles called "sack."  I wouldn't especially object to Fall of Baghdad (1258), but I'd prefer "Sack". john k (talk) 16:03, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Battle of Baghdad? 

message: I do not see the extreme sacking of Baghdad as a military tactic. What about the looting and destruction of the House of Wisdom (i.e the Great Library of Baghdad), does it have any military significance over the next Mongolian military campaigns? The Mongols tended to plunder a city for it's wealth, not concerning the next and possible future use of the city.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.20.60.197 (talk) 08:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: While what you say is basically true, massacres WERE used as a military device by the Mongols - they hoped that the spread of the news would terrify the populations of future areas of conquest so that they would submit without a fight in order to save their lives and property.  The effectiveness of such measures is, of course, debatable.  It didn't work in Hungary, where large battles ensued that resulted in the virtual annihilation of the Hungarian army and their Cuman allies.  And the morality of these actions is pretty clear. HammerFilmFan (talk) 17:06, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

text: I think it was just the application of the relatively extreme values of a very tough people who had grown up in a harsh, vengeance based society on the steppes to civilization. On the steppes, when someone lost, they were liquidated. That's just how it was. I don't think the Mongols ever got together in a tent and had a great intellectual debate about the military effectiveness of these tactics. Likely, that's just a retroactive interpolation by later historians trying to rationalize the abject horror of the matter.68.19.231.55 (talk) 05:22, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course they did. This is verified in Reliable Sources. The early Mongol Empire had very good generals, and tactics were regularly discussed and observations of battles later re-evaluated. This is beyond dispute. HammerFilmFan (talk) 21:55, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extreme plundering of Baghdad as a Military Tactic? 

message: I have been working on this article lately, and expect to be intermittently revising/restructuring until next weekend or so, given a GA review that may get in the way.  I will remove the tag by Thursday if work is progressing slowly.  dci |  TALK   00:05, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Status 

message: Guo Kan was a son of the Chinese commander Guo Baoyu who served the Mongolian Empire. He and his family served the Mongols and was usually in charge of Chinese artillery and troops recruited under the banner of the Mongolians. They had never been major military commanders. If we need to mention every sub-commanders, the article simply cannot contain it, so that I removed his name. But his name can be mentioned in the article along with other Mongolian officers.--Lauren68 (talk) 12:26, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Guo Kan

message: An Arab historian said, "The Moslems, being few, were defeated." Before that, we were told that military victory was proof of philosophy.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.8.116.118 (talk) 15:00, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historian 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: While Ian Frasier's New Yorker article is fine for a life-style magazine, he's hardly a scholar of Mongolic/Persian studies, as his intro to the cited article states.  We can do much better.HammerFilmFan (talk) 15:14, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  updating article for better sources 

message: In response to : No, I'm saying precisely that I don't see how to choose which of the three terms—"siege", "Baghdad", "1258"—should go, so they should all stay. I just stumbled across a comment from  at Talk:Israel–Hamas war#Requested move 23 January 2024:  Obviously, that refers to the Israel–Hamas war, but I think the same thing applies here.  Srnec (talk) 16:56, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Really bizarre move. You're absolutely right. This is a history article. Dates are not gratuitous disambiguators. Historical events are usually much better known by their dates than the wording chosen. "Baghdad 1258" is instantly recognizable. "Siege of Baghdad" is a mystery.  I'd be hard-pressed to find a historian who would know what the article was about just by that title alone.  Walrasiad (talk) 05:20, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Post-move comment

message: There has been a trend of adding "kingdom of Georgia" and "kingdom of Armenia" to the infobox. 
Weirdly, these are always copy-pasted from (a presumably Slavic) elsewhere; this is shown by the citations to "Vederford, Dzek (2007) Dzingis Kan i stvaranje modernog sveta", which is in reality the slavicsation of "Weatherford, Jack (2004) Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" (in any case, not a truly reliable source: see Timothy May: )
The other two sources are non-English sources I will request a quotation for per WP:RSUEQ. This should be done before the citations are added into the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:50, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additions of Georgia and Armenia to infobox