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Neither people, nor corn, nor food, nor clothing … the people ate only human flesh, dogs and cats for a whole year because the warriors of Chinggis Khan had burnt down the granaries …
The fourteenth-century Iranian writer Saifi.
The blood spilt at Harbiyya and al-Mansura was as nothing to what was to take place in Baghdad, where the Tigris would be choked with bodies. In 1256 the Great Mongol Khan, Mongke, had tasked his brother, Hulegu, with exterminating the Ismaili Assassins of Persia in revenge for an attempt on the Great Khan’s life, and with bringing the Caliph of Baghdad to submission. The first part of Hulegu’s mission was fairly well completed by the beginning of 1258.
In February 1258 Hulegu moved against Baghdad. He deceived the caliph’s army with a probe and a feigned retreat to lure it into marshy land. The caliphal army was encircled and massacred almost to a man. It seems that the Caliph al-Mustasim was not the brightest Abbasid to have sat on the throne of Baghdad, and he harboured the illusion that the Mongols would do no harm to the leader of the faithful, saying, ‘Baghdad is enough for me, and they will not begrudge it me if I renounce all the other countries to them. Nor will they attack me when I am in it, for it is my house and my residence.’ Upon his capture he was rolled up in a carpet and kicked to death. The Mongols never spilt royal blood directly.
Hulegu moved on to accept the peaceful submission of Armenia and Georgia. Mosul made obeisance and the Saljuqs of Anatolia put their forces at Hulegu’s disposal. Aleppo was taken, and its fate was as bloody as Baghdad’s. Damascus capitulated upon the Mongols’ approach and Islam was disestablished as the official religion of the area. Bohemond VI of Antioch submitted to Hulegu and was swiftly excommunicated by Acre’s papal legate. Hulegu then sent envoys to Cairo, demanding surrender.
The Mamluks who held Cairo following Baybars’s murder of Turanshah had initially elected al-Salih’s widow to rule as queen of the Muslims, but the coup leaders could not gain the full support of the army, and there was even a faction within the Bahriyya that attempted to kill Baybars for his regicide.
The junta selected a senior emir, Aybeg, as commander-in-chief, and arrested all the Kurdish emirs, for fear that they might remain pro-Ayyubid. Shajar al-Durr was forced to abdicate in favour of Aybeg, who was then replaced only five days later by al-Ashraf Musa, a 10-year-old great nephew of al-Salih, supported by a clique of emirs. Aybeg then made a political marriage with Shajar al-Durr, as the state split into factions. Aybeg garnered enough support to become atabeg to the child sultan and calls for unity in 1253 upon news of the Mongol army being built for Islam’s destruction stabilised his rule. His right-hand man, Qutuz, then killed the leader of Baybars’s faction. Baybars and 700 troopers fled to Syria to become swords for hire. Aybeg meanwhile sought a better political marriage but Shajar al-Durr had him slain in his bath in April 1257. She herself was killed within the same month and her body was found outside Cairo’s citadel, the victim of a faction led by Qutuz that had put her stepson up as heir. Egypt did not look ready to take on the Mongol superpower.
