"Baghdad Baghdad (; ) is the capital of Iraq. The population of Baghdad, , is approximately 8,765,000, making it the largest city in Iraq, the second largest city in the Arab world (after Cairo, Egypt), and the second largest city in Western Asia (after Tehran, Iran). Located along the Tigris River, the city was founded in the 8th century and became the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Within a short time of its inception, Baghdad evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center for the Islamic world. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions (e.g., House of"
"Wisdom), garnered the city a worldwide reputation as the ""Centre of Learning"". Baghdad was the largest city of the Middle Ages for much of the Abbasid era, peaking at a population of more than a million. The city was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through many centuries due to frequent plagues and multiple successive empires. With the recognition of Iraq as an independent state (formerly the British Mandate of Mesopotamia) in 1938, Baghdad gradually regained some of its former prominence as a significant center of Arab culture."
"a few months after the Syrian invasions, Mamluk forces returned from Egypt and reoccupied the region with little resistance. In 1258, the Mongols under the leader Hulagu, on their quest to further expand the Mongol Empire, successfully captured the center of power in the Islamic world, the city of Baghdad, effectively destroying the Abbasid dynasty. After Baghdad, the Mongol forces, including some Christians from the previously conquered or submitted territories of Georgia, Cilician Armenia and Antioch, went on to conquer Syria, the domain of the Ayyubid dynasty. The Mongols took the city of Aleppo, and on March 1, 1260, they"
"in a variety of facets, and because of this it arguably became the largest city in the world during that time. By the 10th century, the city's population was between 300,000 and 500,000. Baghdad's early meteoric growth slowed due to troubles within the Caliphate, including relocations of the capital to Samarra (during 808–819 and 836–892), the loss of the western and easternmost provinces, and periods of political domination by the Iranian Buwayhids (945–1055) and Seljuk Turks (1055–1135). Nevertheless, the city remained one of the cultural and commercial hubs of the Islamic world until February 10, 1258, when it was sacked"
"Islamic art and music also flourished significantly during their reign. Their major city and capital Baghdad began to flourish as a center of knowledge, culture and trade. This period of cultural fruition ended in 1258 with the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols under Hulagu Khan. The Abbasid Caliphate had however lost its effective power outside Iraq already by c. 920. By 945, the loss of power became official when the Buyids conquered Baghdad and all of Iraq. The empire fell apart and its parts were ruled for the next century by local dynasties. In the 9th century, the Abbasids"
"al-Zahrawi (pioneer of surgery), Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī (pioneer of Indology, geodesy and anthropology), Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī (polymath), and Ibn Khaldun (forerunner of social sciences such as demography, cultural history, historiography, philosophy of history and sociology), among many others. Islamic science began its decline in the 12th or 13th century, before the Renaissance in Europe, and due in part to the 11th–13th century Mongol conquests, during which libraries, observatories, hospitals and universities were destroyed. The end of the Islamic Golden Age is marked by the destruction of the intellectual center of Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid caliphate in 1258. By"
"Iran, Iraq, Caucasus and parts of Syria and Turkey, with further Mongol raids reaching southwards into the Palestine region as far as Gaza in 1260 and 1300. The major battles were the Siege of Baghdad (1258), when the Mongols sacked the city, which for 500 years had been the center of Islamic power, and the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260, when the Muslim Kipchak Mamluks were able to defeat the Mongols in the battle at Ain Jalut in the southern part of the Galilee—the first time the Mongol advances had been decisively stopped. One thousand northern Chinese engineer squads"
"the Turkic Islamic Kara-Khanid Khanate, yet Nestorian Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Buddhism in Central Asia virtually disappeared. During the early 13th century Khwarezmia was invaded by the early Mongol Empire. The Mongol ruler Genghis Khan had the once vibrant cities of Bukhara and Samarkand burned to the ground after besieging them. However, in 1370 Samarkand saw a revival as the capital of the new Timurid Empire. The Turko-Mongol ruler Timur forcefully moved artisans and intellectuals from across Asia to Samarkand, making it one of the most important trade centers and cultural ""entrepôts"" of the Islamic world. The Mongol expansion throughout"
"Hulagu offered the royal palace to the Nestorian Catholicos Mar Makikha, and ordered a cathedral to be built for him. Initially, the fall of Baghdad came as a shock to the whole Muslim world, but the city became an economic center where international trade, the minting of coins and religious affairs flourished under the Ilkhans. The chief Mongol darughachi was thereafter stationed in the city. Siege of Baghdad (1258) The Siege of Baghdad, which lasted from January 29 until February 10, 1258, entailed the investment, capture, and sack of Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, by Ilkhanate Mongol forces"
"the 9th to 11th centuries, and was destroyed in the Mongolian invasion in 1258. The city was rebuilt and flourished under Ilkhanid rule but never rose to its former glory again. It was again sacked by Timur in 1401 and fell under Turkic rule. It was briefly taken by Safavid Persia in 1508, before falling to the Ottoman Empire in 1534. With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Baghdad fell under the British Mandate in 1920 and became the capital of the independent Kingdom of Iraq in 1932 (converted to a Republic in 1958). As the capital of the modern"
"it failed, led by an-Nasir Yusuf of Aleppo. In 1260, the Mongols sacked Aleppo and wrested control of what remained of the Ayyubid territories soon after. After the Crusades the Mongols invaded in the 13th century, marking the end of the Islamic Golden Age. Some historians assert that the eastern Islamic world never fully recovered. Under the leadership of Genghis Khan, The Mongols put an end to the Abbasid era. The Mongol invasion of Central Asia began in 1219 at a huge cost in civilian life and economic devastation. The Mongols spread throughout Central Asia and Persia: the Persian city"
"city were still ruined from the damage inflicted by Hulago Khan's invading army in 1258. In Baghdad, he found Abu Sa'id, the last Mongol ruler of the unified Ilkhanate, leaving the city and heading north with a large retinue. Ibn Battuta joined the royal caravan for a while, then turned north on the Silk Road to Tabriz, the first major city in the region to open its gates to the Mongols and by then an important trading centre as most of its nearby rivals had been razed by the Mongol invaders. Ibn Battuta left again for Baghdad, probably in July,"
"the Mongols invaded Baghdad in 1258 CE, the House of Wisdom was burned down and its collections were thrown into the Tigris river, concluding the Islamic Golden Age. Translation Movement The Arabic translation movement was a widely supported movement under Islamic ruling that resulted in the translation of materials from various different languages to Arabic. It successfully formed an overlap of civilizations and established new cultural and political maps. Islamic rulers contributed to the movement in several ways, including the creation of translation classes to organize its flow of throughout the different periods of the Islamic Empire. The translation movement"
"among the ten largest cities on earth. The city was destroyed by Mongols in 1221, after the husband of Genghis Khan's daughter was killed at Nishapur. She requested the death of every resident of the city to avenge her husband's death, and over the course of 10 days Khan's troops killed, and beheaded the entire population. Their skulls were reputedly piled in pyramids by the Mongols. After the massacre a much smaller settlement was established just north of the ancient town, and the once bustling metropolis lay underground—until a team of excavators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art arrived in"
"during the 11th through 14th centuries. It was visited by both Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta; both travelers praised it as one of the most prosperous and glorious cities in the world. It was the naval base from which the Mongol attacks on Japan and Java were primarily launched and a cosmopolitan center with Buddhist and Hindu temples, Islamic mosques, and Christian churches, including a Catholic cathedral and Franciscan friaries. A failed revolt prompted a massacre of the city's foreign communities in 1357. Economic dislocations—including piracy and an imperial overreaction to it during the Ming and Qing—reduced its prosperity, with"
"Siege of Baghdad in 1258. The Abbasids were influenced by the Quranic injunctions and hadiths, such as ""the ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr,"" that stressed the value of knowledge. The major Islamic capital cities of Baghdad, Cairo, and Córdoba became the main intellectual centers for science, philosophy, medicine, and education. During this period, the Muslim world was a collection of cultures; they drew together and advanced the knowledge gained from the ancient Greek, Roman, Persian, Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, and Phoenician civilizations. Between the 8th and 18th centuries, the use of ceramic glaze"
"the summer in Ctesiphon. Susa was destroyed at least three times in its history. The first was in 647 BCE, by Ashurbanipal. The second destruction took place in 638 CE, when the Muslim armies first conquered Persia. In 1218, the city was razed by invading Mongols. The city further degraded in the 15th century when the majority of its population moved to Dezful and it remains as a small settlement today. Susa had a significant Christian population during the first millennium, and was a diocese of the Church of the East between the 5th and 13th centuries, in the metropolitan"
"precious metals. Herat was invaded and destroyed by Genghis Khan's Mongol army in 1221. The city was destroyed a second time and remained in ruins from 1222 to about 1236. In 1244 a local prince Shams al-Din Kart was named ruler of Herāt by the Mongol governor of Khorāsān and in 1255 he was confirmed in his rule by the founder of the Il-Khan dynasty Hulagu. Shams al-Din founded a new dynasty and his successors, especially Fakhr-al-Din and Ghiyath al-Din, built many mosques and other buildings. The members of this dynasty were great patrons of literature and the arts. By"
"13th century, this Mongol Empire conquered most of the Eurasian land mass, including China in the east and much of the old Islamic caliphate (as well as Kievan Rus') in the west. The destruction of Baghdad and the House of Wisdom by Hulagu Khan in 1258 has been seen by some as the end of the Islamic Golden Age. The Ottoman conquest of the Arabic-speaking Middle East in 1516-17 placed the traditional heart of the Islamic world under Ottoman Turkish control. The rational sciences continued to flourish in the Middle East during the Ottoman period. To account for the decline"
"alike, for whom opposition to the Saljuq power was a common factor. On 10 February 1258, Baghdad was captured by the Mongols led by Hulegu, a grandson of Chingiz Khan (Genghis Khan), during the siege of Baghdad. Many quarters were ruined by fire, siege, or looting. The Mongols massacred most of the city's inhabitants, including the caliph Al-Musta'sim, and destroyed large sections of the city. The canals and dykes forming the city's irrigation system were also destroyed. During this time, in Baghdad, Christians and Shia were tolerated, while Sunnis were treated as enemies. The sack of Baghdad put an end"
"the kings of this realm are Persian kings."" During the golden age of the Samanids, Bukhara became the intellectual centre of the Islamic world. Many illustrious scholars lived and worked in Bukhara. Muhammad al-Bukhari, a prominent Islamic scholar who gathered the authentic sayings (""hadiths"") of the Prophet Muhammad, was born in this city. In 999 AD the Samanids were toppled by the Karakhanid Turkic dynasty. Later, Bukhara became part of the kingdom of Khwarazm Shahs, who incurred the wrath of the Mongols by killing their ambassador, and in 1220 the city was levelled by Genghis Khan. The city slowly recovered,"
"1258 sack of Baghdad, as well as for the 1260 Mongol invasions of Syria, which caused even further friction with the Muslim world. After the destruction of Baghdad and the capture of Damascus, which were the centers of the Abbasid and Ayyubid caliphates, by the Khan Hulegu, Islamic power had shifted to the Egyptian Mamluks based in Cairo. Around the same time, the Mongols were slowed in their westward expansion by internal conflicts in their thinly spread Empire. The Mamluks took advantage of this to advance northwards from Egypt, and re-establish dominion over Palestine and Syria, pushing the Ilkhans back"
"during the Islamic Golden Age. The Mongols destroyed the city and burned its library during the siege of Baghdad in the 13th century. In 1257, Hulagu Khan amassed an unusually large army, a significant portion of the Mongol Empire's forces, for the purpose of conquering Baghdad. When they arrived at the Islamic capital, Hulagu Khan demanded its surrender, but the last Abbasid Caliph Al-Musta'sim refused. This angered Hulagu, and, consistent with Mongol strategy of discouraging resistance, he besieged Baghdad, sacked the city and massacred many of the inhabitants. Estimates of the number of dead range from 200,000 to a million."
"The Mongols destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate and Baghdad's House of Wisdom, which contained countless precious and historical documents. The city has never regained its previous pre-eminence as a major centre of culture and influence. Some historians believe that the Mongol invasion destroyed much of the irrigation infrastructure that had sustained Mesopotamia for millennia. Other historians point to soil salination as the culprit in the decline in agriculture. The mid-14th-century Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world. The best estimate for the Middle East is a death rate of roughly one-third. In 1401, a warlord of Mongol descent, Tamerlane (Timur"
"the heart of the urban fabric of the city founded by Uqba ibn Nafi. However given the natural lay of the land crossed by several tributaries of the wadis, the urban development of the city spread southwards. Human factors including Hilalian's invasions in 449 AH (1057 AD) led to the decline of the city and halted development. For all these reasons, the mosque which once occupies the center of the medina when first built in 670 is now on the easternmost quarter abutting the city walls. The building is a vast slightly irregular quadrilateral covering some 9,000 m. It is"
"whom they could capture. The Böszörmény Muslims formed an early community of Muslims in Hungary. Their biggest settlement was near the town of present-day Orosháza in the central part of the Hungarian Kingdom. At that time this settlement entirely populated by Muslims was probably one of the biggest settlements of the Kingdom. This and several other Muslim settlements were all destroyed and their inhabitants massacred during the 1241 Mongol invasion of Hungary. In the mid-7th century AD, following the Muslim conquest of Persia, Islam spread into areas that would later become part of Russia. There are accounts of the trade"
"and its ruler Genghis Khan destroyed the once vibrant cities of Bukhara and Samarkand. However, in 1370 Samarkand saw a revival as the capital of the Timurid Empire. The Turko-Mongol ruler Timur forcefully brought artisans and intellectuals from across Asia to Samarkand, transforming it not only into a trade hub but also one of the most important cities of the Islamic world. The 6th century is thought to be the peak of Sogdian culture, judging by its highly developed artistic tradition. By this point, the Sogdians were entrenched in their role as the central Asian traveling and trading merchants, transferring"
"Buddhist center before and during the 7th century AD. Excavations have revealed religious artifacts of both Hindu and Buddhist traditions. In 644 AD, the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang visited the city of Jaguda (probably Ghazni), while returning from Varnu (modern Bannu, Pakistan) In 683 AD, armies from the Umayyad Caliphate brought Islam to the area and attempted to conquer the capital of Ghazni but the local tribes fiercely resisted. Its resistance was so famed that Yaqub Saffari (840-879) from Zaranj made an example of Ghazni when he ranged the vast region conquering in the name of Islam. The city was completely"
"Jalut (1263), only much later did the change became pivotal when the Mongols converted ""en masse"" when a century later Uzbeg Khan (lived 1282-1341) converted - reportedly at the hands of the Sufi Saint Baba Tukles. Some of the Mongolian tribes became Islamized. Following the brutal Mongol invasion of Central Asia under Hulagu Khan and after the Battle of Baghdad (1258), Mongol rule extended across the breadth of almost all Muslim lands in Asia. The Mongols destroyed the caliphate and persecuted Islam, replacing it with Buddhism as the official state religion. In 1295 however, the new Khan of the Ilkhanate,"
"250 years until the late 9th century AD"". Their main capital Zamindawar was located in the present-day Helmand Province of Afghanistan. The shrine of Zoon (sun god) was located about three miles south of Musa Qala in Helmand, which may still be traced today. Some believe that the Sunagir temple mentioned by the famous Chinese traveler Xuanzang in 640 AD pertains to this exact house of worship. In 653-4 AD, an army of around 6,000 Arabs were led by General Abdur Rahman bin Samara and they arrived to the shrine of Zoon in Zamindawar. It is reported that General Abdur"
"that stood in Baghdad from the 9th-13th century. The library contained and protected much of the world's knowledge until it was destroyed by the Mongols in 1258CE. According to lyricist and lead songwriter Luc Lemay, ""the lyrics of the song start with the fall of Rome around 500 A.D., then go to Baghdad in 762 when they founded the city, then the Mongol invasion in the 1200s, when the library was destroyed."" In a separate interview referencing the Islamic Golden Age, Lemay further explained that ""I talk about knowledge as if it was like a wandering person. So for some"
"economic and commercial development and organized a powerful army. It was said that he made his capital Bukhara into one of Islam's most glorious cities, as Ismail attracted scholars, artists, and doctors of law into the region. The first translation of the Qur'an into Persian was completed during Samanid rule. Sunni theology greatly cultivated during Ismail's reign, as numerous mosques and madrassas were built. In 893, Ismail took the city of Talas, the capital of the Karluk Turks, taking large numbers of slaves and livestock. In addition, a Nestorian church was converted into a mosque. He also brought an end"
"the Iranians. Although the Mongol invaders were eventually converted to Islam and accepted the culture of Iran, the Mongol destruction of the Islamic heartland marked a major change of direction for the region. Much of the six centuries of Islamic scholarship, culture, and infrastructure was destroyed as the invaders burned libraries, and replaced mosques with Buddhist temples. The Mongols killed many Iranian civilians. Destruction of qanat irrigation systems destroyed the pattern of relatively continuous settlement, producing numerous isolated oasis cities in a land where they had previously been rare. A large number of people, particularly males, were killed; between 1220"