Shock and Awe

Baghdad has previously suffered shock and awe and it was long ago. First a little history: With the founding of Baghdad in 762, a little more than a century after the foundation of Islam, the Arab world found its metropolitan focus under the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, who ruled as the titular head of the entire Muslim world. The Caliph also ruled as a successor to the Prophet Muhammad and was therefore the symbolic leader of all Muslims. Basically he ruled as both Emperor and Pope.

Baghdad was the city of Scheherazade, of Thousand and One Nights fame. For 500 years the wealth of the Muslim world poured into the city where the Caliphs lavished it on palaces, mosques, schools, private gardens and public fountains. It was a city of luxurious baths and overflowing bazaars. Serving not only as the center for its Muslim majority , the city served as the religious center for Christians, who erected churches, and a cultural center for Jews who built numerous synagogues and schools

In 1253 Mongke Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, having placed the Mongol empire on a solid footing, decided to pursue his grandfather’s aims in having a dual campaign against the Sung Dynasty of South China and the Muslim civilization of the Arabs and the Persians. Baghdad was the centerpiece of the latter campaign. Mongke Khan assigned his best general, Hulegu, to the task.

Getting there he had to first subdue the heretical Shiite sect known to us as the Assassins but that is for another story.

In 1257 Hulegu, in good Mongol fashion, sent emissaries to the Caliph with a list of legal grievances against him. If the Caliph did not immediately atone for his transgressions by surrendering, Hulegu would conquer his city and capture him. The Caliph scoffed. He said that the entire Muslim world would rise up and defend the city (sound familiar?) Neither God, he went on, nor the Muslim people would allow Baghdad to fall into the hands of the infidels.

Unconvinced of the Caliph’s power to speak either for god or the entire Muslim population Hulegu began to march towards the city. I shall not go into detail but Hulegu had three armies; his own Mongols, an army from Armenia and an army from Georgia (Russia). The main army approached from the north and east and the others from the north and west. Crossing the Tigris and Euphrates, originally thought to be great barriers to attack, very easily on pontoon boats.

The Mongols showed their traditional ability to improvise and use whatever material presented itself as a possible weapon. They chopped down the palm trees and used them as missiles they fired into the city. They dug a huge ditch around the city and backed that up with a rampart and began a terrifying bombardment of the city. Rockets, firelances, smokebombs, mortars were used. They had developed explosive devices able to hurl projectiles with such force they may as well have been using real cannons.

Being bombarded from a distance outside their range of defensive weapons had never happed to the Muslim army and it confused, frightened and frustrated them. Hulegu destroyed the dams and diverted the Tigris to flood the camp of the Caliph’s army and make them take refuge in the city.

After five days the Caliph surrendered. The Mongol army had accomplished in a mere two years what the European Crusaders from the West and the Seljuk Turks from the East had failed to do in two centuries of sustained effort. They had conquered the heart of the Muslim world. No other non-Muslim army would do that again until the arrival of the Americans and Coalition forces in 2003.

And neither God nor the entire Muslim population prevented it in either case.