Hulagu Khan
Хүлэгү хаан
Khan of the Ilkhanate · Ilkhan of Persia
1218 – 1265
Biography
Third son of Tolui, dispatched by his brother Möngke to subjugate Mesopotamia and Persia. His army destroyed the Order of Assassins at Alamut in 1256 and sacked Baghdad in 1258 — burning its libraries, throwing its books into the Tigris, and executing the last Abbasid caliph by rolling him in a carpet and trampling him to death with horses. The conquests became the Ilkhanate, which his descendants would rule for the next eighty years.
Events
After a twelve-day siege, the Mongol army of Hulagu Khan stormed Baghdad on 10 February 1258. They sacked the city for a week, butchering perhaps two hundred thousand inhabitants and throwing the books of the great libraries into the Tigris until, the chronicles say, the river ran black with ink. The last Abbasid caliph, al-Musta'sim, was rolled in a carpet and trampled to death by horses, ending the caliphate that had ruled the Islamic east for half a millennium.
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