Caliph Al Musta’sim Died Rolled in a Rug
Al Musta’sim Billah (1213 -1258) was Islam’s last recognized Caliph, or religious successor to the Prophet Mohammad. He ruled the rump of what had once been a mighty empire, the Abbasid Caliphate. When the Mongols, who had recently erupted out of the Steppe to terrorize Eurasia, demanded Al Musta’sim’s submission, he made a series of poor decisions. Acting on the advice of ineffectual courtiers who offered him conflicting counsel, Al Musta’sim gave conflicting responses. He rejected the Mongols’ demands, ignored some and answered others with bluster and empty threats. What he did not do was prepare defenses against what was sure to follow such rejection.
The Mongols had first burst into the Islamic world in the 1220s, when Genghis Khan destroyed the Khwarezmian Empire and conquered as far west as western Persia up to the edges of Mesopotamia. That was followed by a decades-long lull, as far as the Middle East and the Islamic world were concerned, during which the Mongols directed their energies elsewhere. The lull ended in the 1250s, when a new Mongol ruler, Genghis Khan’s grandson Mongke, sent his brother Hulagu to assert Mongol power over the Middle East.
Hulagu began by eradicating the Assassins, a terror cult led by a shadowy mystic known as The Old Man of the Mountain, that operated from a string of mountain holdfasts. From their fortresses, the Assassins had had terrorized the Middle East for over a century and a half. After destroying the cult, Hulagu shifted his attention to the Abbassid Caliphate, based in Baghdad, and ordered its Caliph, Al Musta’sim, to accept Mongol suzerainty and pay tribute.
The Abbassids, once the world’s largest, strongest, and most prosperous empire, were centuries removed from their heyday, and by the 1250s, their sway did not stretch far beyond Baghdad. The Caliph had been reduced to a ceremonial figurehead, a puppet of Turkish or Persian sultans wielding real power and acting in his name. However, the Caliph had some vestigial spiritual and moral authority, and enough pride to refuse Hulagu’s summons to submit.
Pride was not enough. The Abbasids were not prepared to face the Mongols, who had conquered bigger and tougher opponents. Al Musta’sim believed that the Mongols could not 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 12 day siege, the city fell.
The Mongols sacked Baghdad, massacred its inhabitants, torched its vast libraries, and burned the city to the ground. Al Musta’sim was captured, but the Mongols had a taboo against spilling royal blood. So they executed him by rolling him in a carpet, and had their army ride over him when it marched off to further conquests, their horses trampling the last Caliph to death.