Siege of Baghdad (1401)

In 1401, Timur besieged Baghdad for forty days and then massacred its inhabitants for resisting.^[1] The Mongol army looted the treasury and razed much of the city, except for mosques and madrasas.^[2] Contemporaries reported that each Mongol soldier was ordered to bring at least one severed head of an inhabitant. Only one out of a hundred of the city's inhabitants reportedly survived the massacre to be sold into slavery.^[3]

Siege of Baghdad, Folio from a Dispersed copy of the Zafarnama (Book of Victory) of Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi, by Ya'qub ibn Hasan

References

1. Shterenshis, Michael (2013). Tamerlane and the Jews. Routledge. pp. 65–66. ISBN 978-1-136-87366-9.
2. The Diez Albums: Contexts and Contents. BRILL. 14 November 2016. p. 490. ISBN 978-90-04-32348-3.
3. Yehuda, Zvi (2017). The New Babylonian Diaspora: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Community in Iraq, 16th-20th Centuries C.E. BRILL. p. 33. ISBN 978-90-04-35401-2.