Halaku Khan and the Pillage of Baghdad

I had heard that when Halaku Khan brought his army to Iraq, it destroy- ed the entire Baghdad which used to be the major Islamic center of learning. The whole of Baghdad was burned to ashes, its world-renowned libraries burned, all the books thrown in the river that flows through Baghdad, and it created huge piles of human skulls (as a symbol of its "achievements") every where. The Khalifa himself was killed in the most ruthless manner. His legs were tied to a horse which was driven all over Baghdad. The Tatars (Halaku Khan's army) however stayed and later on converted to Islam who then spread the light of Islam throughout the entire Eastern Europe and deep into Russia. I often wondered how this remarkable transformation took place. Recently, I found my answer in a publication which narrated it as follows. After burning and pillaging entire Baghdad and killing thousands of Muslims, Halaku ordered his army to arrest and gather all the Islamic scholars in a huge field in which he was to enjoy the scene of them beheaded in front of him. When all the Islamic scholars were gathered in the field, Halaku came galloping on his beautiful horse in the field while holding the reins in one hand and repeatedly throwing a lemon in the air and catching it (as it was his habit) in the other hand. He then stopped at the front of the assembly of prisoners where his generals were waiting for him. He stayed seated on his horse and started addressing the scholars with scornful arrogance while still playing with the lemon: "Today no power will save you from my wrath. Where is your Allah? If He really exists then why don't you call Him to come to your help?" This insult to Allah really infuriated an old Islamic scholar named Imam Yusuf who was physically very weak and thin. However, he was endowed with a great religious zeal and fervor. When he heard Halaku saying that, he moved forward, his body trembling with anger, and his face turned red with rage. Imam Yusuf spoke in his fearsome loud trembling voice: "You ruthless! You are the one who spreaded rape, pillage, and destruction in this land. How did you dare to insult my Allah like that. My Allah is so power that if He wills, He can take your life

even before this lemon that you have just thrown in the air falls in you hand!" Halaku started sweating profusely, he never heard anyone talking to him like that - this man was feared by all for his ruthlessness. The lemon fell on the ground. He bend down while still seated on his horse to pick up the lemon from the ground. The horse took it as a signal to gallop at her maximum speed. This shook Halaku who fell on the ground on his back but his one foot got stuck in the saddle. The horse was running like wind while Halaku was mercilessly dragged all over the place. Then he started to bleed profusely and when the horse stopped, Halaku had died a miserable and painful death. The man who loved to inflict painful deaths on innocent people, himself died that way. When Tatar generals saw this, they started trembling with fear. Imam Yusuf's faith in Allah had convinced them more them enough that Allah indeed exists and is not oblivious to what the transgressors do. The huge fearsome- looking Tatar generals wept and apologized to Imam Yusuf and converted to Islam on his hand. Because of these Tatar generals, the entire Tatar nation converted to Islam. It was these Tatar Muslims who then founded the great Khilafat-eUsmania (the Ottomon Empire) and pushed the frontiers of Islam to the gates of Vienna. There is indeed great lessons to be learned from this gruesome incident (i.e. destruction of an Islamic state) of our history. Firstly, Allah does not spare transgressors and those who spread FASAD (death, destruct- ion, misery) in His land. He just gives such people a respite till a certain time so that these people get more ruthless in their destructive activities and start thinking that they can do what they please. When that happens Allah's wrath comes into action which does not spare such spreaders of FASAD. Secondly, such adversities are test from Allah for the Muslims. When we Muslims confess that we are Muslims, Allah tests us to see how true we are to our words. Becoming or confessing to be a Muslim is like signing a contract asking Allah to test us. As Allah says in Qur'an: O you who believe! seek help With patient perseverance And prayers; for Allah is with those Who patiently persevere. And say not of those Who are slain in the way of Allah:"They are dead." Nay, they are living, Though your perceive (it) not. Be sure We shall test you With something of fear And hunger, some loss In goods or lives or the fruits (Of your toil), but give Glad tidings to those Who patiently persevere, Who say, when affected With calamity: "To Allah We belong, and to Him Is our return." They are those on whom (descend) blessings from their Lord, And Mercy, And they are the ones That receive guidance. (Al-Qur'an, Chapter 2 - Surah Albaqara) (The Ayah numbers are somewhere between 100 to 145) Ponder over the above Ayahs (verses) very carefully. Allah says it very clearly that He will test us (the Muslims). But even before Allah states what the test will be, He gives us the tools to be used to pass the tests we encounter in our lives. He says:"Seek help with patient perseverance (i.e.SABR) and prayers; for Allah is with those who patiently persevere (i.e.who do SABR)".

Prayers are indeed a great gift from Allah because prayers protect us from losing courage, giving in to evil temptations, and save us from indulging in vices that make our hearts dead. And "patient perseverance" is a hallmark of a Muslim only because as the Messenger of Allah Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said in a Hadith, that SABR is the quality of a believer only; when he is in good condition he thanks Allah and when he is suffering, he patiently perseveres [knowing that it is also from Allah]. As Allah says in the above Ayahs, whenever we are affected with calamity we must give our resigned submission to Allah by saying from our hearts "Inna Lillah-hay Wa Inna Ilaeyhay Rajioon" ("To Allah we belong and to Him is our return"). If we Muslims learn to seek help from patient perseverance (SABR) and prayers (SALAT) then no trial and tragedy will be a source of disheartening for us. We will have the inner conviction that Allah is the Master of whole universe and all events that unfold around us are due to the Divine Will, and these events no matter how tragic they are can turn into a source of invigorating our spirits and making us stronger than before. With this attitude, we get imbued with a sense of inner satisfaction and optimism. Miseries and tragedies like happiness and good times are not eternal. They will change by the Divine Will and Plan of Allah; we just do not know what this Divine plan is, but this lack of knowledge should not make us assume that things will not change for the better. Our job as Muslims is to BELIVE AND DO GOOD DEEDS (as prescribed by Islam) AND LEAVE THE REST IN ALLAH'S HANDS. Allah is the most supreme strategist of all universes. Sincere devotees to Allah who fulfill all their obligations to Allah, will indeed triumph as truth is bound to prevail and forces of evil will meet their utter humiliation and defeat. By Ahmad Rasheed, Junior Member

Hulagu was friendly to Christianity, as his mother was a Nestorian Christian. Hulagus favorite wife, Dokuz Khatun, was also a Christian, as was Hulagus closest friend and general, Kitbuqa. Hulagu told the Armenian historian Vardan Arewelci in 1264 that he had been a Christian since birth. It is recorded however that he was a Buddhist[1] as he neared his death, against the will of his Christian wife Dokuz Khatun Hulagu sent multiple communications to Europe, in an attempt to establish a Franco-Mongol alliance against the Muslims. In 1262, he sent an embassy to all kings and princes overseas, along with his secretary Rychaldus. However the embassy was apparently intercepted in Sicily by King Manfred, who was allied with the Mamluks and in conflict with Pope Urban IV, and Rychaldus was returned by ship. On April 10 1262, Hulagu sent through John the Hungarian a letter to the French king Louis IX, offering an alliancethe letter stated Hulagus intention to capture Jerusalem for the benefit of the Pope, and asked for Louis to send a fleet against Egypt: From the head of the Mongol army, avid to devastate the perfid nation of the Sarasins, goodwilling support of the Christian faith () so that you, who are the rulers of the coasts on the other side of the sea, endeavour to deny a refuge for the Infidels, your enemies and ours, by having your subjects diligently patrol the seas. Letter from Hulagu to Saint Louis

There are copious descriptions of Mongol conquests in central Asia. Genghis Khans armies killed 1.6 million people in the city of Herat in northwestern Afghanistan in 1222; thats 1.6 million, dispatched with arrows, clubs, and swords. For the cities and cultivated places in the Mongols path, they were a natural disaster on the order of an asteroid collision. Like the Huns and the Scythians before them, they came from the steppe grasslands of central Asia, which produced their great resource of horses and draft animals. After Genghis Khan united a number of Mongol tribes into a single horde under his command in the early thirteenth century, they descended on cities in China, India, Afghanistan, Persia, Turkestan, and Russia. Between 1211 and 1223, they wasted dozens of cities and wiped out more than 18.4 million people in China and environs alone. (These and other large numbers of victims attributed to the Mongols may have been inspired more by terror than by historical fact.) By the time of Genghis Khans death, in 1227, the Mongol empire extended from the Volga River to the Pacific OceanFuelled by grass, the Mongol empire could be described as solarpowered; it was an empire of the land. Later empires, such as the British, moved by ship and were wind-powered, empires of the sea. The American empire, if it is an empire, runs on oil and is an empire of the airHulagu was educated by a Nestorian Christian priest. Sorkhakhtani, Hulagus mother, was a Nestorian. (Nestorians held a less exalted view of the divinity of Christ, and were regarded by the Roman and Orthodox churches as heretics.) Hulagus principal wife, Dokuz-khatun, also a Nestorian, often persuaded Hulagu to be lenient toward Christians in lands that he conquered. Dokuz-khatun was said to be descended from one of the wise men who visited the baby Jesus in the manger.The New Yorker Within forty years [of the prophet's death] , Baghdad had become the storied and romantic place it would forever be in popular imagination. Under enlightened, poetry-loving caliphs like Harun al-Rashid, Mansours grandson, Baghdad attracted scholars from all the domains of Islam, in keeping with Muhammads teaching that educated men are next to the angels and that the scholars ink is more sacred than the blood of martyrs. Mansours prediction that his city would be a crossroads had come true, and wealth accumulated from caravan trade arriving from each of the four directions. Poets who pleased the caliph might have pearls poured upon them; concubines for his harem sold for tens of thousands of gold dirhams. A Chinese method for making paper from flax and hemp appeared in the Middle East at about the time of the citys founding, and the new technology produced books in quantities impossible before. Almost everybody in ninth-century Baghdad could read and write. While Europe still moiled in its Dark Ages, Baghdad was a city of booksellers, bathhouses, gardens, game parks, libraries. Harun alRashid was the first chess-playing caliph; Baghdadis also played checkers and backgammon. Translators took Greek works and rendered them into Arabic, in which they were preserved to be translated into European languages several centuries later. The palaces of the caliphs were of marble, rare woods, jade, and alabaster, with fountains and interior gardens, and carpets and wall hangings by the thousand. Servants sprinkled guests with sprinklers of rosewater and powdered musk and ambergris. A poet wrote, Live long, O Caliph, to thy hearts content / In scented shade of palace minarets. Arts and sciences flourished literature, music, calligraphy, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, history. Because of the need for accuracy in setting the religious calendar and orienting mosques to face Mecca, astronomy was especially important. From Baghdads best years we get words like zenith and nadir,

as well as algebra, algorithm, alcohol, alembic, alchemy. The food in Baghdad was great, too, apparently. The citys gardens grew a cornucopia of fruits, spices, pistachios, licorice root. Its cooks knew how to make highly complicated dishes, and sweets like halvah and baklava. By 1257, Hulagu had reached western Persia. From there he sent emissaries to the caliph telling him to raze the walls of Baghdad and fill in the moat and come in person to make obeisance to Hulagu. The caliph replied that with all of Islam ready to defend him, he did not fear. He advised Hulagu to go back where he came from. The Mongol army had recently received reinforcements from other Mongol hordes, and a contingent of Christian cavalry from Georgia. Perhaps the Mongols had eight hundred and fifty thousand soldiers; certainly they had more than a hundred thousand. In November of 1257, they marched on toward Baghdad, dividing as they approached so that their forces would surround the city. The caliph sent an army to stop those approaching from the west, and repulsed them in an early battle. In the next encounter, the Mongols broke some dikes and flooded the ground behind the caliphs army, and slaughtered or drowned them all. New Yorker When Halaku Khan brought his army to Iraq, it destroyed the entire Baghdad which used to be the major Islamic center of learning. Baghdad was burned to ashes, its world-renowned libraries destroyed, all the books thrown in the river that flows through Baghdad, and it created huge piles of human skulls (as a symbol of its achievements) every where. The Khalifa himself was killed in the most ruthless manner. His legs were tied to a horse which was driven all over Baghdad. On January 29, 1258, Hulagus forces took up a position on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad and began a bombardment. Soon they had breached the outer wall. The caliph, who had been advised against escaping by his vizier, offered to negotiate. Hulagu, with the city practically in his hands, refused. The upshot was that the caliph and his retinue came out of the city, the remainder of his army followed, they laid down their arms, and the Mongols killed almost everybody. Hulagu told Baghdads Christians to stay in a church, which he put off-limits to his soldiers. Then, for a period of seven days, the Mongols sacked the city, killing (depending on the source) two hundred thousand, or eight hundred thousand, or more than a million. The Mongols Georgian Christian allies were said to have particularly distinguished themselves in slaughter. Plunderers threw away their swords and filled their scabbards with gold. Silver and jewels and gold piled up in great heaps around Hulagus tent. Fire consumed the caliphs palace, and the smoke from its beams of aloe wood, sandalwood, and ebony filled the air with fragrance for a distance of a hundred li. (A li equalled five hundred bow lengthsa hundred li was maybe thirty miles.) So many books from Baghdads libraries were flung into the Tigris that a horse could walk across on them. The river ran black with scholars ink and red with the blood of martyrs.New Yorker The stories of what Hulagu did to the caliph vary. One says that Hulagu toyed with him a while, dining with him and discussing theology and pretending to be his guest. A famous account describes how Hulagu imprisoned the caliph in a roomful of treasure and brought him gold on a tray instead of food. The caliph protested that he could not eat gold, and Hulagu asked him why he hadnt used his money to strengthen his army and defend against the Mongols. The caliph

said, That was the will of God. Hulagu replied, What will happen to you is the will of God, also, leaving him among the treasure to starve. The Tatars (Halaku Khans army) however stayed and later on converted to Islam. The Tartars then spread the light of Islam throughout the entire Eastern Europe and deep into Russia. How did this remarkable transformation took place? Here the truth that explains the story.
After burning and pillaging entire city of Baghdad and killing thousands of Muslims, Halaku ordered his army to arrest and gather all the Islamic scholars in a huge field in which he was to enjoy the scene of them beheaded in front of him. When all the Islamic scholars were gathered in the field, Halaku came galloping on his beautiful horse in the field while holding the reins in one hand and repeatedly throwing a lemon in the air and catching it (as it was his habit) in the other hand. He then stopped at the front of the assembly of prisoners where his generals were waiting for him. He stayed seated on his horse and started addressing the scholars with scornful arrogance while still playing with the lemon:

Today no power will save you from my wrath. Where is your Allah? If He really exists then why dont you call Him to come to your help?

This insult to Allah really infuriated an old Islamic scholar named Imam Yusuf who was physically very weak and thin. However, he was endowed with a great religious zeal and fervor. When he heard Halaku saying that, he moved forward, his body trembling with anger, and his face turned red with rage. Imam Yusuf spoke in his fearsome loud trembling voice: You ruthless! You are the one who spreaded rape, pillage, and destruction in this land. How did you dare to insult my Allah like that. My Allah is so power that if He wills, He can take your life even before this lemon that you have just thrown in the air falls in you hand! Halaku started sweating profusely, he never heard anyone talking to him like that this man was feared by all for his ruthlessness. The lemon fell on the ground. He bend down while still seated on his horse to pick up the lemon from the ground. The horse took it as a signal to gallop at her maximum speed. This shook Halaku who fell on the ground on his back but his one foot got stuck in the saddle. The horse was running like wind while Halaku was mercilessly dragged all over the place. Then he started to bleed profusely and when the horse stopped, Halaku had died a miserable and painful death. The man who loved to inflict painful deaths on innocent people, himself died that way.

When Tatar generals saw this, they started trembling with fear. Imam Yusufs faith in Allah had convinced them more them enough that Allah indeed exists and is not oblivious to what the transgressors do. The huge fearsome- looking Tatar generals wept and apologized to Imam Yusuf and converted to Islam on his hand. Because of these Tatar generals, the entire Tatar nation converted to Islam. It was these Tatar Muslims who then founded the great Khilafat-eUsmania (the Ottomon Empire) and pushed the frontiers of Islam to the gates of Vienna. There is indeed great lessons to be learned from this gruesome incident (i.e. destruction of an Islamic state) of our history. HALAKU KHAN AND THE PILLAGE OF BAGHDAD LESSONS TO BE LEARNED Originally Narrated by Irfan Hasan.