The Other Muslim Ruler Who Called Out the Mongols
One would think that the fate of Shah Muhammad II, above, would have the made contemporaries wary of calling out the Mongols. One ruler who did not heed the lesson was Al Musta’sim Billah (1213 -1258), the last ruler of the Abbasid Caliphate, and Islam’s last Caliph. A weak ruler of the weak rump of what had once been a mighty empire, Al Musta’sim was surrounded by ineffectual advisors who offered poor advice when the Mongols demanded his submission. He rejected the demands, ignored some and answered others with bluster and empty threats. What he did not do was prepare adequate defenses against what was sure to follow such rejection. He should have known better. The Mongols had first erupted into the Islamic world in the 1220s, when Genghis Khan destroyed the Khwarazmian Empire and conquered as far west as western Persia up to the edges of Mesopotamia.
That outburst was followed by a decades-long relative lull, as far as the Middle East and the Islamic world were concerned. The Mongols directed their energies elsewhere, against China, Kievan Rus, Eastern Europe, and in internal squabbles amongst themselves. The lull ended in the 1250s, when a new Mongol ruler, Genghis Khan’s grandson Mongke, turned his attention to the Middle East and sent his brother, Hulagu, to assert Mongol power over the region. To kick things off, Hulagu destroyed the Assassins, a murderous cult led by a shadowy mystic known as The Old Man of the Mountain. It had operated from mountain holdfasts, and terrorized the Middle East for over a century and a half. Hulagu completed that task by 1256, then turned his attention to the Abbassid Caliphate, based in Baghdad.