Sieges and 1001 Nights of Baghdad

Baghdad - Considered the world richest city in the 8^th-9^th century during the Abbasid Caliphate. 
Baghdad - Where 1001 Nights were collected, written and augmented.

Baghdad – Under siege and captured by the Mongols on 10 February 1258, who destroy and kill hundreds of thousands.

Much later - Very recently - Another distant superpower unleashes destruction and killing. Counting its own dead, but not the inhabitants – Tearing down a tyrant, and leaving a chaos - Calling it… democratization.

Now what? The Iraqis have rebuilt before, and have huge natural resources underground. The 1001 nights has stories of love and passion told by women and men of wisdom. I think their spirit, the spirit of life, the spirit of creativity is stronger. Hopefully that will lead the cradle of civilization into a new golden age.

Hulagu's army on the siege of Baghdad. 

A Golden age
Baghdad was a Persian village before al-Mansur made it the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate in 762 CE. On the bank of Tigris a city with three concentric walls, “the Round City” was built as a government complex. Four main roads led out to the vast empire. Close to the Euphrates and the fertile lands of Mesopotamia it prospered and grew to have 500.000 inhabitants in the 9^th century, maybe the most populous city in the world at the time. Ships with goods from all over Asia were in the harbor, Greek works were translated, hospitals and an observatory founded, poets and artisans streamed in.  In 1001 nights Queen Scheherazade is to be executed by King Shahryar so she will not be infidel. Her sister Dunyazad comes to tell her one last story, and Scheherazade tell it to the king, but does not end it. The execution is postponed, and she continues the same way for 1001 nights, inventing the so-called  cliffhanger storytelling. Dunyazad marries the King’s brother Shah Zaman.

Queen Scheherazade the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.

Dunyazad, her sister who starts the storytelling.

Centuries of decline

Slowly over the centuries it became weaker because of internal conflicts, neglect of irrigation systems and failure of crops. Nomadic peoples from Central Asia, the Buyid 945-1055, the Turkic Seljuq 1055-1152 invade. They are the real rulers of Baghdad but leave the Abbasid to rule formally. But even though the region is conquered, there is little destruction, and soon the newcomers adopt Islam and are absorbed into the more advanced society.

The Mongols 

In 1206 Genghis Khan gather the Mongol tribes for the first time, and start conquering huge parts of Asia and Europe. The Mongols try to take Baghdad in 1245, but are repelled. Repeated floods weaken the city and when Genghis Khan’s grandson, Hulagu, lay siege to Baghdad in 1258 they take it. The Mongols massacre hundreds of thousands  and kill the Abbasid Caliph. The carefully manufactured irrigation system is destroyed with the agricultural and economic foundations of the city. Even though an Abbasid is symbolically made Caliph in Cairo, it is in effect the end of the Abbasid Caliphate which has ruled much of what we today call the Middle East since 750. But the Mongols leave most of the other cities intact and soon convert to Islam. Traditional historians have seen 1258 as one of the great turning points in Islamic history. But some modern historians like the Norwegian Knut Vikør view the shift as smaller because there was a lot of continuation, and relatively little disruption apart from Baghdad. How ever one looks at it, Baghdad becomes a provincial capital of other empires, and it is not until the end of the 19^th Century before the city start to prosper once more.

Hulagu (left) imprisons Caliph Al-Musta'sim among his treasures to starve him to death. Medieval

I am open to your comments and proposals.
Warmly
Bjarte Bjørsvik