> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://theparnassian.com/en/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# 10 February 1258: the day the Mongols took Baghdad
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/10-fevralia-1258-goda-den-vziatiia-bagdada-mongolami/
- Published: 2018-02-10T11:49:40.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:44:46.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Faith, The East, Education, Society

[​​](http://telegra.ph/file/aedca89539378b4eb492a.jpg?ref=theparnassian.com)10 February 1258 is the day the Mongols took Baghdad. It is a very important milestone in history, whose influence is felt to this day. The battle for Baghdad is held to have marked the end of the Golden Age of Islamic culture. The bloody and devastating engagement put an end to the existence of the intellectual centre of the Arab world. In the view of many studies, the psychological trauma of the destruction of Baghdad, of its libraries, schools, public buildings and guilds, and the death of its best scholars, physicians, men of letters and teachers, proved fatal to the subsequent fate of Islamic learning. Some believe that it was precisely the fall of Baghdad that brought about the curtailment of the progressive paradigm in Islam and its replacement by conservatism and a withdrawal into religious ideas. At the same time, the seizure of the Abbasid Caliphate entailed a general economic decline of the region, owing to the destruction of a irrigation system a thousand years old, which could not be restored because of the human and professional losses the region had suffered. The city lay in ruins for several centuries. In many respects the Near East that we know today is the result of the Near Eastern campaign of the Mongols under Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan, who, for that matter, had no intention of destroying the city, had the caliph Al-Musta'sim, little versed in military affairs, simply submitted to the head of a host a hundred and fifty thousand strong instead of throwing down a challenge to the nomads. The mighty Mongol army, according to contemporaries, also included mercenaries from China, Antiochene French, Armenians and Georgians eager to avenge the destruction of Tbilisi.