23. Payback Finds the Caliph Who Trolled the Wrong Mongol
Al Musta’sim Billah (1213 -1258) was the last ruler of the Abbasid Caliphate, and Islam’s last Caliph. He was a weak ruler, ruling a weak rump of what had once been a mighty empire. Al Musta’sim was surrounded by ineffectual advisors, who offered conflicting advice when the Mongols demanded his submission. He trolled the Mongols by ignoring some demands, while answering others with bluster and empty threats. However, he failed to prepare adequate defenses against what was sure to follow such rejection. The payback exacted by the Mongols was epic.
The Mongols had first erupted 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. In the meantime, 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.