Hulegu, Genghis Khan's grandson, carved out a Mongol state in Persia
When Möngke became Great Khan in 1251, he handed his brother Hulegu a staggering force, two-tenths of all the empire's fighting men, and orders to subdue southwest Asia. Hulegu took the Assassins' mountain stronghold, captured Baghdad and ended the Abbasid caliphate, then founded the Ilkhanate that ruled Persia for generations.
Hulegu was born around 1217 to Tolui, a son of Genghis Khan, and Sorghaghtani Beki, a Keraite princess who skilfully steered all her sons into leadership. His brothers included Möngke, Ariq Böke and Kublai. Little is known of his boyhood beyond one anecdote: in 1224 he and Kublai met their grandfather. His mother was a Christian of the Church of the East, and Hulegu remained friendly to Christianity all his life.
His great campaign began when the army assembled in 1253, reaching Transoxiana in 1255. He crushed the Lurs of southern Iran, and the Nizari Ismailis, known in Europe as the Assassins, handed over their supposedly impregnable fortress of Alamut. A thousand squads of northern Chinese sappers travelled with him. In November 1257 he turned toward Baghdad. The caliph Al-Musta'sim refused to yield, and the Mongols broke dikes to flood the ground behind his army. Under the Chinese general Guo Kan they besieged the city from 29 January 1258, and it surrendered on 10 February. A week of destruction followed; the famous library known as the House of Wisdom was destroyed, and estimates of the dead range from about 90,000 to a million.
In 1260, joined by Christian vassals including Hethum I of Cilician Armenia and Bohemond VI of Antioch, his forces seized Muslim Syria, taking Aleppo and breaking the Ayyubid dynasty. With Baghdad ruined and Damascus weakened, the centre of Islamic power moved to Cairo. Hulegu sent the Mamluk sultan Qutuz a letter demanding surrender, then withdrew most of his army. At Ain Jalut in the Jezreel Valley later that year, the Mamluks beat the roughly 12,000 Mongols left behind.
Hulegu hoped to avenge the loss, but was pulled into war with his cousin Berke of the Golden Horde, a Muslim convert. On 10 April 1262 he wrote to Louis IX of France offering an alliance; whether the letter ever arrived is unknown. He died on 8 February 1265.
Source: Hulegu Khan
