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Event

The Fall of Baghdad

سقوط بغداد

Abbasid era · 1258–1258 CE · 656 AH

The Mongol sack of Baghdad brings an end to Abbasid political power and destroys the House of Wisdom, a watershed moment in Islamic history.

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In 1258 CE, Mongol forces under Hulagu Khan besieged and sacked Baghdad, ending the political power of the Abbasid Caliphate and destroying the House of Wisdom along with countless irreplaceable manuscripts. The event is remembered as one of the most devastating single blows to classical Islamic scholarship, though centres of learning in Cairo, Damascus, and elsewhere carried Islamic intellectual life forward in the centuries that followed.