The siege of Baghdad took place in early 1258 when a large army under Hulegu, a prince of the Mongol Empire, attacked Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Hulegu had been sent by his brother, the Mongol khan Möngke, to conquer Persia. When Baghdad's ruler, Caliph al-Musta'sim, failed to reinforce the Mongol army, an angered Hulegu decided to overthrow him. The Mongol army routed a sortie led by al-Musta'sim's dawatdar (a leading minister) and besieged the city. After Mongol siege engines breached Baghdad's walls within days, al-Musta'sim surrendered and was later executed. The Mongol army pillaged the city for a week. The number of deaths was inflated by epidemics of disease, but Hulegu estimated his soldiers killed 200,000. Although the siege is often seen as the end of the Islamic Golden Age, Baghdad prospered under Hulegu's Ilkhanate. This double-page illustration, taken from a 14th-century manuscript of Rashid al-Din Hamadani's Jami' al-tawarikh, depicts the attempted escape of the dawatdar down the river Tigris (centre right); the soldiers on the pontoons forced him back to Baghdad with the loss of three ships. The manuscript forms part of the Diez Albums, now in the collection of the Berlin State Library in Germany.
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