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The most beautiful city in the world was dying.

Nasir al-Tusi sat astride his horse at the edge of the River Tigris and wept.

As an advisor to the Great Hulagu Khan, he should have rejoiced at this victory, but he felt only bitter sadness in his heart.

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing — not just the horror of the city’s destruction, the smoke and the blood, and the absolute ruin everywhere he looked, but what defied belief was that this had been allowed to happen in the first place. The Khan’s quarrel was with the rogue Nizari Muslims, not the Abbasid Caliphate. Yet, seemingly against all reason, Caliph Al-Musta’sim had refused to pay tribute, in the form of military support, to the Mongol ruler. As a result, he had also become the Khan’s enemy.

The Caliph had bragged that if the Khan tried to attack Baghdad, the women of his city would drive the Khan off. Indeed, when the Mongol army arrived at Baghdad, they found a city barely ready to repel an invasion. No army had been summoned. The walls had not been fortified to withstand the Mongol artillery. Even when Hulagu deployed his forces on both banks of the Tigris River and began preparations for the siege, the Caliph barely took note.

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