WaybackWire

BAGHDAD, Wednesday.—Hülegü Khan has come up to Baghdad. On the fifteenth of Muharram he left his baggage at Khanaqin and pitched his camp on the east side of the city, and his army now stands in a ring about the ramparts.

On the west side Baiju, Buqa Temür and Su’unchaq hold the quarters along the Tigris, and Ket Buqa has come in from Nahasiyya and Sarsar with a very large army. Baiju’s men have halted opposite the caliph’s Taj palace across the river, and go scouting between the houses.

The villages emptied ahead of them. Families from al-Ishaqi, Nahr Malik and Nahr Isa crowded into the city with their women and children, and a ferryman’s price for a crossing was a gold bracelet, a length of brocade or a number of dinars.

Then a great cloud of dust rose to the east on the Ba’quba road. The people climbed onto the roofs and minarets to watch it, and when it settled the city was invested on every side.

The Khan came by Hamadan, by Kirmanshahan, where his army killed and plundered, and by a camp on the river at Hulwan; at Dinawar, offered a yearly tribute if he would turn back, he asked: “how can we turn back without having seen the caliph?”

BAGHDAD, Wednesday.—The caliph al-Musta’sim has refused the Khan’s summons to come out of Baghdad and pay him taxes, and has sent the envoys back with a stern answer.

Hülegü sent them once the city was ringed; among them was the Armenian prince Hasan Prosh, son of Vasak.

The caliph called himself lord of sea and land and spoke of the banner of the Prophet: “It is here and, if I touch it, you and the entire world will be destroyed. You are a dog, a Turk. Why should I pay taxes to you or obey you?”

The Khan took no offence and sent no boast in return. He said only: “God knows what He does.”

It is the latest of his summonses. Last year he wrote: “Destroy your ramparts, fill in your moats, turn the kingdom over to your son, and come to us.” If the caliph would not come in person, he was to send the vizier, Sulaymanshah and the Dawatdar.

The caliph told him then to take the path of friendship and go back to Khurasan. As those Mongol envoys left the city, a Baghdad crowd cursed them, tore their clothes and pelted them with mud.

BAGHDAD, Wednesday.—Before the army crossed the river, two of the caliph’s commanders carried a warning to the palace and came away in despair.

Sulaymanshah, the Amir-i-Alam, and the Kurdish commander of the right wing went first to the Dawatdar: “Matters have gone too far, a potent enemy is close at hand, and an adverse Wazir has plotted with the foe.” The Dawatdar said he had already told the caliph all he could, and found them a private audience.

They asked the caliph for the means to drive the enemy off. He answered: “The Wazir hath been spoken to: it behoveth ye to request a reply from him.”

The vizier, Mu’ayyad al-Din Ibn al-Alqami, had warned the caliph to prepare. The caliph’s intimates told him there was nothing to fear, and that the vizier was magnifying the danger to raise his own standing.

The vizier’s plan to buy peace, with a thousand loads of goods, a thousand camels and a thousand Arab horses, and the Friday prayer and the coinage in the Khan’s name, was blocked by the Dawatdar, the amirs and the city crowd. Rumour now has it that the vizier is at one with the Khan.

He, for his part, is forever quoting a couplet: “The obeyed lacks commonsense, whilst the speaker of commonsense is not obeyed.”

BEFORE BAGHDAD, Wednesday.—The host now before the walls is drawn from every people under the Khan.

Hülegü marched in the cool season, since the great heat of this country forbids a summer campaign. Princes of the house of Jochi, Balagha, Tutar and Quli, ride in the right wing, and the sultans, maliks and atabegs of Iran ride with the centre.

The Mongols called the old and new cavalry of the Georgians and Armenians to a great assembly and led them against Baghdad. The Georgian-Armenian lord Prince Zak’are, son of Shahnshah, was with the army in the fighting by the river.