Born Then1258
Life during the Mongol sack of Baghdad
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
In February 1258 Hulagu's Mongol army took Baghdad, killed the last Abbasid caliph and massacred much of the population. Libraries, mosques and the canal system were destroyed. Iraq took centuries to regain its earlier population.
Deaths: estimates range from about 90,000 to several hundred thousand; Persian sources give higher figures.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.
Around the same time
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- Song dynasty commercial revolution 960–1270
- The Crusades 1096–1291
- Thule migration across the Arctic 1200–1300
- Rise of Great Zimbabwe 1200–1450
- Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' 1237–1242
- Polynesian settlement of New Zealand 1250–1300
- Mongol sack of Baghdad 1258
- Mongol conquest of the Song 1268–1279