February 10, 1258

Siege of Baghdad (1258)

Caliph al-Musta'sim surrenders Baghdad to Hulagu

Mongol proclamations promising safety to judges, scholars and noncombatants were tied to arrows and shot over Baghdad's walls.

10 February 1258: the caliph walks out

On 10 February 1258 the Abbasid caliph al-Musta'sim left Baghdad and presented himself at Hulagu's camp, ending organized resistance. Mongol siege engines had broken the Ajami Tower, Mongol troops held the eastern walls, escape by river was blocked, and repeated surrender offers had failed to produce acceptable terms.

A scholarly chronology records that residents also came out of the city that day and were killed.

Three days before the sack

The Mongols did not swarm into Baghdad on the 10th. The organized entry for pillage is dated 13 February, and a stronger chronology places the sack from the 13th to the 20th — not forty days.

During the earlier assault, a near-contemporary account says the besiegers ran short of stone and cut down date palms to hurl pieces of the trunks from their siege engines. The same tradition reports 12,000 caliphal troops killed in a flooded sortie on 17 January, excluding those drowned or trapped in mud.

What the numbers cannot tell us

Army-strength and casualty figures for the siege vary enormously and cannot be presented as settled totals; the widely quoted 80,000 dead is one estimate among divergent and generally unreliable ones.

The capture ended the Abbasid caliph's temporal government in Baghdad. Hulagu executed al-Musta'sim and most of his family on 20 February; the manner of the execution is disputed, with traditions including trampling and rolling in felt.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 3 audit passes

How this was checked

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What the sources leave uncertain

The surrender date is well supported, but sources differ over whether to describe 10 February as the city’s “capture,” “fall” or merely the caliph’s capitulation.
Army-strength and casualty figures vary enormously and should not be presented as settled totals.
The manner of al-Mustaʿsim’s execution is disputed; contemporary and near-contemporary traditions include trampling, rolling in felt and other versions.