Hulagu's Mongols sack Baghdad and kill the last Abbasid caliph of the city; the catastrophe ends the five-hundred-year caliphate in Iraq, though a shadow Abbasid line continues in Mamluk Cairo.
Tagged: Muslim Sunni Islam Twelver Shia Islam
The Event
- Date
- 1258 (exact)
- Era
- Abbasid; Standard periodization of Islamic history
- Location
- Baghdad; today Baghdad, Iraq
- Traditions
- Islam
- Streams
- Sunni Islam, Twelver Shia Islam
- Key figures
- Hulagu Khan, Al-Musta'sim
Primary Sources
- Rashid al-Din, Jami al-Tawarikh
Secondary Sources
- Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates (Routledge, 3rd ed. 2016)
- Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Faber, 1991)
Provenance: HIST-0239; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-27.
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