9. The Mongol General Who Ended a Cult That Had Terrorized the Middle East for Generations
When the Assassin recruits came down from the high and woke up, they were back in regular and austere surroundings. They were told that they had been in paradise, and that the only way to return was to die while assassinating the Old Man of the Mountain. It proved highly effective. The Assassins, with no shortage of horny young men high on hash and desperate to die while ending his enemies so they could return to paradise, terrorized the Middle East for generations. Their reign of terror ended when Hulegu extinguished the cult.
Hulegu then turned to the Abbasid Caliphate, and when the Caliph refused to submit, the Mongol general invaded and besieged him in Baghdad. He captured the city in 1258 and destroyed it along with all its treasures, such as the Grand Library of Baghdad, and massacred between 200,000 to a million inhabitants. The Mongols had a taboo against spilling royal blood. So the captured Caliph was executed by being rolled into a carpet, which was then trampled by Mongol horses that were ridden over it. That brutal act ended the Abbasids, and the Islamic institution of the Caliphate.