The Nāṣirī Generations 291.4.4

291.4.4

Such infatuation as marked these last events is scarcely conceivable, after so many proofs of Mughal treachery, but the Musalman people were now without a head. but God knows the truth. One statement is this, that they martyred him, and the Amir-i-’Alam, Suliman Shah, Hulaku having got the Khalifah into his power, sent him to Kaibuka's camp, at the Kul-wagi gate, where a tent was pitched for him, and he was placed in charge of a guard, and the Mughal leader gave orders, at dawn the following day, to make a general massacre of the people of Baghdad. The broad and deep ditch was speedily filled up, part of the walls thrown down, there being no opposition whatever, and the Mughals, soon after, began to pour into the city; and the work of slaughter, violation, pillage, and destruction, began. This was ruthlessly carried out; and the Haram-Sarae—the private dwelling of the Khalifahs, which, for five hundred years, had been the place of prostration of the Musalman peoples, was so utterly demolished that no one would have imagined that a habitation had ever existed there. The other buildings of Baghdad—the masjids, mausolea of Musalman saints and Khalifahs, the palaces, hospitals, colleges, and libraries—were all given to the flames; and places adjacent, constituting a vast extent of suburbs, were completely sacked and devastated.