Mongols in Persia

"With one stroke," wrote a Persian historian, "a world which billowed
with fertility was laid desolate, and the regions thereof became a
desert, and the greater part of the living dead, and their skin and
bones crumbling dust; and the mighty were humbled..." [Juvaini, The
History of the World Conquerors, vol. 1, translated by Boyle,
Cambridge, 1958.] "

The Mongols wreaked death and devastation wherever they rode from China
to the plains of Hungary, but nowhere more so than in Persia, where
most of the great cities were demolished and their inhabitants
annihilated. "The total population of this area may have dropped
temporarily from 2,500,000 to 250,000 as a result of mass extermination
and famine." [J.M Smith in Dunn, p. 83] In 1256, Hulagu (1217-1265),
Genghis Khan's grandson, subdued the whole of Persia. In 1258, Baghdad
was captured and the caliph put to death, bringing the Abbasid
Caliphate rule to an end.

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