The massacres of Hulagu Khan and the lands he invaded

According to some sources, the number of people Hulagu Khan martyred is 800,000 Muslims while according to other sources it is close to two million. Considering the population of the world at that time, this is more than the number of people Hitler killed from a per capita perspective.

One of the more notorious atrocities of Hulagu Khan was to make towers of skulls from the heads of the people in the lands he invaded in order to terrorize and intimidate the local people.

THE ISLAMIC LANDS INVADED BY HULAGU KHAN

·      With the aim of annihilating the Islailis sect (Assassins), he first blew up Alamut castle in Iran which was filled with women, children and civilians. After digging tunnels underneath the castle and filling them with oil, he blew up the entire castle together with thousands of civilians.

·      Then he invaded Azarbaijan and Caucasia.

·      He destroyed Baghdad, the center of the Abbasid Caliphate.

·      It is recorded that in Baghdad alone, he killed 400,000 people. He killed people without making discrimination between women and children.

·      Hulagu made Mutasim, the Caliph of that time, watch his people being massacred and then the city being plundered. Then he had the Caliph wrapped in a rug and had him killed under the feet of the Mongol's horses.

·      The destruction of Baghdad by Hulagu Khan is remembered as one of the greatest massacres in world history.

·      Following the terrifying massacre in Baghdad the smell of the unburied dead made even Hulagu Khan himself leave the city because of its intolerable odor.

·      As a result of the cruelty of Hulagu Khan, it is said that the Tigris ran red with blood for days.

·      Hulagu Khan put the historical library in Baghdad together with the manuscripts in it to the torch. He burned down all the mosques, hospitals and palaces. Priceless of religious and scientific works were simply thrown into the Tigris River.

·      Once Hulagu Khan abolished the Abbasid Caliphate, he captured Urfa, Harran, Humus, Hama, Dimashk, Aleppo and Antakya.

·      He struggled to capture Palestine. He returned to Iran but he left some part of his army in Syria; his army continued to persecute the people in Syria.

THE PERSECUTION THE MONGOLS COMMITTED IN ANATOLIA

In 1239, the Mongols entered Anatolia after capturing Kars and plundering it. Wherever they went, they killed tens of thousands of people, the Ahis being the foremost and the Mongols subjected the Turkmen to monstrous tortures.

During the Kosedag War, which took place during the invasion of Anatolia by the Mongols, Shams - with whom Mawlana was in love - was fighting in the ranks of the Mongols.

The Mongol invaders killed thousands of Muslims in Erzurum, Erzincan, Tokat, Sivas, Kayseri, and plundered these cities.  In Kayseri especially they carried out a horrific massacre and put the city to the torch. They killed countless Ahis. Ibn-i Bibi, one of the historians of the period, and Abu al-Faraj, an Assyrian historian, wrote that tens of thousands of Ahis were massacred and were subsequently enslaved.

Ahmad Aflaki, the author of “Manak al-Arif”, writes that while Mongols massacred the Ahis and Turkmen, they gave great sums of money and gold to Sayyid Burhaneddin, the master of Mawlana, who was then in Kayseri.

THE CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES OF THAT TIME ALLIED THEMSELVES WITH HULAGU KHAN

Following the invasion of the Mongols, an interesting alliance was taking place. Byzantium, the French Kingdom, The Little Armenian Kingdom, the Crusaders and the Papacy sided with Hulagu Khan while an alliance of the Mamluks and The Golden Army existed on the other side.