Daily Medieval

Hulagu Khan was a grandson of Genghis Khan (Genghis had 43 grandchildren—known ones, that is, because he slept with a lot  of women in his l...

Part 1 is here . Hulagu Khan did not execute the Abbasid leader, Caliph al-Musta'sim, immediately; he wanted him punished for his foolis...

The Sack of Baghdad has been described as the single bloodiest event in the history of war. At the time, Baghdad was perhaps the greatest ...

The House of Wisdom was a marvelous repository of knowledge from all over the world. It also functioned as an informal university long befo...

Established during the Golden Age of Islam in the newly founded capital of Baghdad , the Bayt al-Hikmah (House of Wisdom) had a simple goal:...

Harun al-Rashid (c.763 - 24 March 809) was the fifth ruler of the Abbasid Caliphate , his reign considered the start of Islam's Golden A...

[ source ] The Mongols were expanding westward. Under Genghis Khan they had taken a huge chunk out of Asia, from what is now the Koreas...

Mamluk going to war, from a 14th century History of the Tatars The short answer to the question posed in the title is "slaves....

The red pin is Kufa, the purple pin is Baghdad, about 170 km north. The Abbasids had taken over from the Umayyads, and in order to make...