The Mongol court in Baghdad

Since 617/1219, or the beginning of the Mongol invasions, then Muslim contemporaries viewed these conquests as an unprecedented catastrophe that culminated in the extermination of the Abbasid caliphate. ¹ Although the capture of Baghdad might have been merely a stepping stone for the Mongols on their way to the Mediterranean Sea, for the Arabic-Persian population the fall of the caliph marked a symbolic and epoch making date. Since its foundation under the second Abbasid caliph al-Manṣūr in 145/762, Baghdad had been the capital Abbasid city, seat of the caliph and the cultural, religious as well as economic centre of the Islamic world. Even though the caliphate had been in a process of decline since the middle of the twelfth century Ce and had already lost some of its political sovereignty and power, the role of the caliphate as Imamate still symbolized the only legitimate Islamic rule, based on prophetic revelation and the sharīʿa. With the Mongols and the fall of the last caliph al-Mustaʿṣim (r. 640–56/1242–58), Islam lost its claim to be the only legitimate principle of sovereignty and also its supremacy over other religions. The disintegration of the Islamic Empire created a division between the Arabic-speaking Mamluk region and, in opposition, the Persian-Mongolian Ilkhanate. The Euphrates River became the depopulated edge of the Mongol Empire ² rendering Baghdad a rather insignificant city on the periphery of both spheres. The Mongol invasion meant for Baghdad and Iraq first a separation from the rest of the Arabic-speaking world and secondly it became the only Arabic province affiliated with the Persian-speaking Ilkhanid state. The centre of the Islamic world now shifted to the west, to Damascus and Cairo. For the Ilkhanids, the Persian city of Tabriz gained prominence.