The Destruction of Baghdad's House of Wisdom: When the Mongols Burned the World's Greatest Library

In 1258, Mongol forces under Hulagu Khan besieged Baghdad, the jewel of the Islamic world and home to the House of Wisdom - arguably the greatest library and center of learning in medieval history. For 500 years, Baghdad had been the intellectual capital of the world, where scholars translated and preserved Greek, Persian, and Indian texts, made revolutionary advances in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and philosophy, and created knowledge that would later fuel the European Renaissance. In February 1258, the Mongols destroyed it all in a week of slaughter that ended the Islamic Golden Age.

The siege lasted only 12 days before Baghdad's walls fell. What followed was apocalyptic. Hulagu Khan's soldiers massacred between  ...