Kamal El-Mekki – The Fall of Baghdad
AI: Summary ©
The transcript describes the destruction of cities like Virginia and the US, as well as the destruction of cities like Virginia and the United States. The destruction of cities like Virginia and the United States is the cause of the destruction of cities like Virginia and the United States. The destruction of cities like Virginia and the United States is the cause of the destruction of cities like Virginia and the US. The destruction of cities like Virginia and the United States is the cause of the destruction of cities like Virginia and the United States. The destruction of cities like Virginia and the United States is the cause of the destruction of cities like Virginia and the United States. The destruction of cities like Virginia and the US is the cause of the destruction of cities like Virginia and the United States. The destruction of cities like Virginia and the United States is the cause of the destruction of cities like Virginia and the United States. The destruction of cities like Virginia and the United States is the cause of the destruction of cities like Virginia and the United States.
AI: Summary ©
Asalaamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem.
Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen.
Wasalaatu wasalaamu ala rasoolihi al ameen wa ala
alihi wa sahbihi ajma'een.
So we're going to be describing briefly because
there's so many details, there's so many things
leading up to the fall of Baghdad.
But we're going to look at only some
of the details.
So we're going to look at the story
kind of briefly but there's a purpose behind
it.
Obviously we're talking about when the Mongols or
the Tatar invaded Baghdad and absolutely destroyed it.
Before they destroyed Baghdad they destroyed a lot
of cities.
So why are we talking about this?
Like why this topic?
We already see the destruction of Gaza and
Lebanon and like we're talking about another time
where there was destruction in the Muslim ummah.
And basically I have more or less just
one goal behind this.
It's for us to understand that the ummah
went through a lot of destruction and it
went to through things that were arguably far
worse than what the ummah.
Not to downplay what's happening right now but
you will see as far as the death
tolls, as far as the destruction, it was
a lot worse.
But it bounced back.
Many people don't even know that this happened
in Baghdad.
Some people have an idea that the Mongols
came and sacked Baghdad and destroyed the libraries
but many people don't even know that it
happened.
And if you went to Baghdad and walked
around the streets and went to restaurants, would
you know that this place was completely demolished
centuries ago?
It was rebuilt and in the same way
inshaAllah the city of Gaza and the other
cities in Palestine and in Lebanon, they're going
to be rebuilt.
And we already know how that's going to
end.
So we know it's going to be rebuilt
but the idea is to get us to
understand that the ummah has been through a
lot worse and survived a lot worse.
And it's not necessary that every time there's
a calamity happening or befalling the ummah, that
some kind of miracle comes and saves the
ummah.
And as you'll see after the Mongols entered
Baghdad and they began to kill people for
40 nights or 40 days, there was a
group of people who just said for sure
the Mahdi's going to show up right now.
Like there's no way like a million people
get killed and the Mahdi's not going to
show up.
They were certain that he's going to show
up.
And you kind of see this pattern a
lot in the ummah.
You see it, you saw it when Bush
invaded Baghdad and the Shia newspapers and their
social media, they were always talking about how
the Mahdi's here, he's on his way, someone
saw him en route to Baghdad.
Then tomorrow the Mahdi's on his way, he
just had a flat tire, he'll be here
any minute.
Then tomorrow the Mahdi's here, he just got
lost looking for directions.
He's going to be here for sure.
Why wouldn't he come and save people?
And by the way, just as a side
note here, for us, for the Sunni Muslims,
the Mahdi is not someone that, I mean
he could be born now as a baby,
but for the most part we don't regard
him as someone who's living amongst us.
You understand?
We don't regard him as someone who's alive
and living and well and everything.
But for the Shia, he went into a
tunnel a thousand years ago when he was
five years old and he's just waiting there.
So that makes him like less respectable for
lack of a better term.
Because he's just sitting there in this tunnel,
it was a cave basically.
He's just sitting there.
People are dying and he's alive and well,
he's just sitting there.
What's he doing?
Is he training?
Is he studying?
What's he doing?
He's just sitting there.
A million people died, he's just sitting there.
People get attacked left and right, he's sitting
there.
But for us, because we don't have the
belief that he is here right now and
a grown man and aware of what's happening,
that makes him a more respectable person.
And maybe it's a side note, but one
of my mashayikhs, he was one of my
teachers, he said, we prayed Isha in Al
-Madinah and then after the salah I saw
this red-headed guy turn towards the grave
of the Prophet ﷺ and make du'a.
So he said, I approached him, I went
to him, I found out he's Arab but
he's just got red hair.
So I told him that in Islam we
only make du'a to Allah and we
don't call upon the Prophet ﷺ and the
Prophet ﷺ has already passed on to his
Lord.
So the man, he said, was shocked when
I said that.
He said, what are you talking about?
The Prophet ﷺ is alive and well and
he just prayed Isha with us just now.
Now, how do you argue with someone like
this?
You go down to their level.
So the shaykh said, he said, he prayed
Isha with us just now?
He said, yes.
He said, then why don't you make sure
he led the salah?
And you're telling me the Prophet ﷺ is
with us and he's somewhere in the ranks?
Some imam is like stow.
No, you stow, you get back.
He should lead the salah.
And he said, why don't we seek his
counsel on all the problems and things that
are befalling the ummah?
Back then it was just Palestine and Kashmir.
Now I can add a whole list to
it.
Like, he's alive and well and we don't
go ask him, how do we solve this
problem?
So, when you make someone alive and just
not doing anything, you make him the most
careless, least caring person in the ummah.
Same thing with Al-Khadir, the Prophet.
Al-Khadir, yeah, he's alive and well.
Where is he?
He's in all the vegetable markets in Sudan.
Always, in the newspaper, they always put every
couple of years, Al-Khadir was spotted in
the vegetable market.
And he thought, for a while I was
thinking, why is it the vegetable market?
Then I realized how I'm not, I'm not
so clever.
Al-Khadir, Akhdir, green, vegetables.
Of course, he's going to hang on the
vegetable market.
A meat market wouldn't make any sense.
And what does he do?
He just walks around vegetable markets.
A great Prophet, who had so much wisdom
that Musa Alayhis Salaam learned from him, but
he just walks around the vegetable markets.
Does that make him great now?
Doesn't help anyone with anything?
Doesn't give ummah guidance?
Anyways, so the point is for us to
understand that the ummah has been through a
lot and bounced back.
You know, the Ka'bah was destroyed by
the Kharamata.
Many people don't even know that it was
destroyed.
And they stole the black stone and it
was missing for years.
And then it was returned just fragments.
If we look at the Ka'bah today,
it's like nine or eleven pieces of the,
it's set in some kind of mold.
But that's because they stole it and they
broke it and destroyed it.
But the Ka'bah is still standing.
Many people don't even know that this happened.
They killed the Hujjaj and they threw their
bodies into the well of Zamzam and today
we get Zamzam water.
We don't even know this story happened.
Because the ummah bounced back and it's as
if it never happened.
Okay, anyways.
But the Mongols, they were, first we start
off, this is under the leadership of Genghis
Khan.
And by the time he decides to attack
the Muslim empire or the Abbasid dynasty in
particular, his empire is all the way from
Korea to Iran.
Later on it goes all the way to
Hungary and Poland.
And from Siberia all the way to the
Indian Ocean.
It's a vast empire.
And it grew fast and there were many
things, many reasons behind why it was, it
grew so quickly.
And he would conquer areas and he would
make pacts with people and being a nomadic
group.
They're nomads so when they conquer all this
wealth they would give it to allies and
to new partners.
Because how much gold can you keep as
a nomad?
They didn't have much need for it.
They didn't have like cities and buildings that
they were in.
So they would give it to the other
folks.
So their empire grew quickly.
Anyways, but they were very very vicious people.
And one of the things that, sometimes people
try to shame Muslims and say, you know
your history has warfare and conquering and battles
and even the seerah of your prophet ﷺ
is just battle to battle to battle.
Just open a seerah book, the battle of
Badr.
And some books call it the period between
Badr and Uhud.
It's like half a paragraph.
Like nothing happened.
After Badr everyone's just bored, just sitting around.
Then Uhud comes and everyone's excited again.
And then after Uhud just people waiting for
the next battle.
But of course we got a couple of
things.
Number one, the seerah was written, initially the
books of seerah were known as kutub al
maghazi, the books of battles.
Okay and one of the earliest was maghazi
Urwa.
This is Urwa ibn al Zubair ibn al
Awam.
So the son of a companion.
And he was one of the earliest writers.
The other early writer was Aban ibn Uthman
ibn Affan.
So the son of a companion.
And his book known as maghazi Urwa, where
he just collected the narrations about the battles.
So initially it wasn't about the wives of
the prophet ﷺ and the children of the
prophet ﷺ.
It was just a collection of battles.
And then when it developed into the seerah,
they started to add other things that the
marriages of the prophet ﷺ, things that happened
between the battles.
But they still maintain that structure of the
battles being the highlights.
And then the scholar said that when you
write about someone's life, you write about the
most major events.
And one of the more major events in
people's lives would be battles.
Now you're not going to talk about, he
woke up and said I'm hungry, what should
I make?
Should I eggs?
He decided on two eggs, sunny side up.
That's not interesting.
The battle is something major.
So those are the two reasons.
The third thing is that even though there
are battles in the life of the prophet
ﷺ, it is nothing for the believers to
be ashamed of.
Because there has never been in history Muslim
soldiers, I mean soldiers that have the conduct
of Muslim soldiers.
Never.
We've never heard of them like pillaging and
attacking and doing things and attacking civilians and
stealing from people.
We've never had that.
I mean I'm talking about the good old
days.
I don't speak for any of the armies
today.
But never had cases of that.
If you remember in the battle of al
-Qadisiyah, it was the Muslims, they were going
to, next day they're going to meet the
army of Rustum, the Persian army.
They're going to meet in the battlefield.
But tonight the Muslims are settled in a
Persian village and Rustum and his army, they're
settled in another Persian village.
And so the Muslims of course are going
to treat everyone well.
No one's misbehaving.
And the Persian soldiers went out and got
drunk and attacked the women and went into
people's homes and took their positions.
So some of the elders of the village
came to Rustum and they complained to him
of the behavior of his soldiers.
And it is said that Rustum said to
those around him, he said, you know these
Muslims, they deserve to be victorious over us.
Because they're camped at a village and that's
not even their people.
And look how well they're treating them.
And we're camped with our own people and
look what we're doing to them.
So we never had that history.
We never burnt crops or killed livestock for
no reason or went into people's homes and
took things.
And so there's no reason for us to
be ashamed of any part of our history,
meaning the history of the Prophet ﷺ and
the Righteous Khulafa.
Anyways, but because we had a code.
If you remember Abu Bakr when he sent
the army out, he instructed them to not
kill a woman or a child or to
not cut any crops or burn any crops
or cut trees or kill any animal.
They had a moral code, right?
Whereas other soldiers, they're just trained to kill
and they're just told, you're a killing machine.
And so when they go out to the
battlefield, you expect atrocities from them.
So the Mongols, they fall into the second
category where they don't have any moral code.
They don't have any religion that guides them
in this area.
So they're very severe and they would kill
in the millions.
They would kill in the millions.
And those who didn't die, they wished they
were dead.
And it was so bad that people thought
Islam is done with.
The light of Islam will be extinguished forever.
City after city, region after region will be
completely disintegrated amidst the violent attacks from the
Mongols.
So this is the 7th century towards the
end of Abbasid dynasty, which is a very
weak dynasty right now.
And there are many other Muslims nations surrounding
the Abbasid dynasty.
We have the Khawarizm empire, which is composed
of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
They're on the eastern side of the Abbasid
dynasty.
And there used to be long wars between
the Abbasids and the Khawarizm empire.
And so now Genghis Khan, forwarding a little
bit, he dies.
And then Hulagu Khan, he is the one
now in charge of dealing with Muslim lands.
So he doesn't want to just attack all
the Muslims as one group.
He wants to break them apart first.
Make pacts with certain groups, attack groups at
different times first.
And then when he's left with nothing but
the Abbasids, he deals with them alone.
Of course, divide and conquer, old tactic and
everything.
But Genghis Khan takes over the Khawarizm empire
and his armies will move from there now.
He's got the eastern side of the Abbasid
dynasty.
The ruler of the Khawarizm empire, Muhammad ibn
Khawarizm Shah.
And there's a story where there's still some
issue or debate about exactly what happened.
Where basically there were some either merchants, some
Mongolian merchants that were in the Khawarizm empire
doing trade or they were spies.
Either way, Muhammad ibn Khawarizm Shah, he had
them executed.
So Genghis Khan sent him a messenger to
ask him why he executed these two merchants.
So what's his response?
He kills the messengers.
And you have this gigantic army and this
gigantic empire and this man who's conquering left
and right and he sends you a messenger
and you kill.
When you kill the messenger, what does that
mean?
War.
What's interesting is the Prophet ﷺ said in
Sunan Abu Dawud, if I remember correctly, and
Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, yeah I believe
it's Sunan Abu Dawud.
The Prophet ﷺ said, utrukul turka ma tarakukum.
Leave the Turks alone so long as they
leave you alone.
Al-Turk is a large race of people.
It's not just one group.
It's not Turkish people.
These are the Turkic people that include Turkish
people, Mongolians, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Azeris.
They're all under this group.
They're known as al-Turk.
Just as an interesting note, some of the
scholars said they were called al-Turk because,
I know I've said this before, because when
Dhul Qarnayn came to the people and they
complained of Ya'juj and Ma'juj, he
closed them behind the barrier.
So they're the same type of people.
He closed them behind the barrier and this
group turiku outside of the barrier.
They were turiku, they were left outside the
barrier so they became known as al-Turk.
Either way, the Prophet ﷺ said, leave them
alone as they leave you alone, as long
as they leave you alone.
And then he also said, leave the Abyssinians
alone so long as they leave you alone.
This man Muhammad ibn Khawarizm Shah, he doesn't
even know this hadith.
He's not well versed and he kills them.
And so that's the green light now to
attack him and they enter and they utterly
destroy him.
They utterly destroy his city and his soldiers
and they enter the city of Bukhara.
This is in the year 617 after the
hijrah, the city of Imam al-Bukhari.
And they killed the majority of its inhabitants.
And when I say they killed its inhabitants,
it means men, women, children, babies, old men,
women, they don't care.
And then they went into Samarkand and they
completely destroyed the city as well and Nisabur
and they completely destroyed it as well.
And then his son Jalaluddin ibn Khawarizm Shah,
he tries to fight them, tries to gather
an army and fight them.
But he tried to fight them in an
area that they had taken control of.
They destroyed him, they entered that city, they
killed everyone except for 400 handymen to leave
them to do their work, build and construct
things for them.
So Jalaluddin then rearranged his army and he
fought them again and he defeated them in
Kabul in Afghanistan.
He defeated them in Kabul, but then he
escapes to India and they capture him there
and they kill him and they kill his
children.
Now they enter the city of Harat and
they killed hundreds of thousands.
They enter another city, kill all its inhabitants,
the city of Rai, they enter and completely
destroy it.
Rai is near Tahran.
They killed its inhabitants and all this within
a few years.
In the meantime, the khalifa, the Abbasid khalifa,
and his name is very misleading.
His name was An-Nasir Lidinillah, the one
given victory to the religion of Allah.
What a name.
He was very happy that the Khawarizm empire
is being destroyed because he used to fight
against them.
They used to go to war before and
he hates them and he's so pleased.
He even used to assist the Tatar in
destroying the Khawarizm empire.
Not knowing that soon it's going to be
your turn.
You think they're just going to thank you,
send you like, I don't know, edible arrangements
and just say thank you for your assistance.
You're next.
They're just weakening you.
So on the eve of the Mongol invasion,
there was corruption, disunity, materialism.
It was rampant.
The Abbasid khalifa, An-Nasir Lidinillah, he was
happy, like we said, to hear of the
collapse of the Khawarizm empire.
And then in 624, after the hijrah, Genghis
Khan dies.
And we already described the size of his
kingdom at this point.
And we said, Hulagu Khan is now going
to start to attack the Muslims.
But he doesn't want to attack all the
Muslims.
First he starts to contact Muslims within Christian
lands.
And the first thing he promises them that
if they assist him, he promises them Bayt
al-Maqdis.
And Salahuddin had just freed it not long
ago and he's telling them, I'll give back
Bayt al-Maqdis to you guys.
And they went to the Seljuk Turks, the
kings of Armenia.
And they tried to oppose him, but they
had a series of weak governments.
So they allowed him into their territory.
So now he is surrounding the Abbasids from
the west.
He's got them from the east and from
the west as well.
And then he makes a pact with the
Kurds.
These are like the people of Salahuddin.
As you know, he was a Kurd.
He contacts them.
He contacts al-Ashraf al-Ayubi and Yusuf
al-Ayubi.
And he says, I will keep you upon
your kingdoms.
I'm not going to take your power away
from you.
I'll keep you upon your kingdoms.
Either you help me or you stay out
of my way.
And of course, they agreed.
Then he contacted the Shia inside of Iraq,
which as you know, is predominantly Sunni.
But he contacts the Shia and he gets
them on his side.
He chose as his right-hand man, a
man by the name of Mu'ayyid al
-Din al-Alqami.
Mu'ayyid al-Din al-Alqami was a
Shia.
And he was assisting the Mongols.
He was on their side.
He would be helping them so they could
come in and take over Baghdad.
Thinking that, believing that he will be victorious
and have a better position, which they're victorious.
So they agreed with him that he would
decrease the morale.
That he would let people know that it
is impossible to withstand and to face the
Tatar.
And basically they spread things like, you know,
what fierce warriors the Mongols are.
Even their women are fierce warriors.
Their horses eat roots, which means that the
horses don't need nutrition even.
And that they eat people.
So all these things were destroying the morale
and scaring everyone inside Baghdad.
And Mu'ayyid al-Din al-Alqami, I'll
get to this part in a second here.
But now at this point, we have the
son of the khalifa and his name is
al-Mustasim Billah.
Al-Mustasim Billah ibn Kathir, rahimahullah, mentions that
he loved knowledge and he was upon the
sunnah and he loved scholars and he was
a generous person.
But he was very weak in courage, in
preparation, in ability, in organization, in unifying the
ummah, in choosing the right people in his
government.
He was weak in all these areas.
So he's good in his ibadah and everything
but lacking everywhere else.
One of the interesting stories that's mentioned by
ibn Kathir, rahimahullah, he says that when, I'm
fast forwarding a little bit, when the Mongols
laid siege to Baghdad.
And he's sitting there and he has one
of his servant girls dancing for him.
The army's at the gates and he's sitting
here in his palace and the girl's dancing
for him.
Then an arrow comes from the window and
strikes this girl and kills her.
And when he sees that, what does he
order?
He still doesn't order more soldiers or anything
else.
He doesn't order anything.
He just basically beefs up security around the
palace and asks them to put thicker curtains
so nobody can see who's inside.
They're outside and you hear girls dancing for
you.
Anyways, so what's insane is that the army,
so they say that Baghdad, some reports say
there were about a million, the population was
one million in Baghdad.
Other reports say there were about two million
in Baghdad.
Either way, put it anywhere between one to
two million, it's a huge number.
The Mongol army outside of Baghdad is 200
,000.
They're about to face two million or one
million.
Al-Mustasim Billah, he could have mustered up
from inside Baghdad 120,000 horsemen.
And you know the horsemen is more valuable
in battle than the foot soldier.
He could have gathered 120,000 horsemen from
inside Baghdad, not counting the others he could
have called upon from other parts.
This is just inside his city, 120,000
horsemen.
Not counting the foot soldiers in Baghdad, not
counting the foot soldiers outside of Baghdad.
He could have mustered up an insane army
and been one of the greatest khulafa from
the Abbasids.
But instead he's sitting here and the girl's
dancing for him.
And she gets shot like, make the curtain
thicker.
Fabiha.
Anyways, so in the meantime, Hulagu also he
attacks the Ismailis or the Ismaili Shia or
known as the Hashashin, the assassins.
He also destroys them and now he's getting
ready and he's laying siege to Baghdad to
weaken them even further.
The Khalifa sends two people to negotiate peace
with Hulagu.
He sends Mu'ayyaduddin Al-Alqami, his right
-hand man.
He sends him, the Shia guy, to negotiate
with Hulagu.
And he sends the Christian patriarch of Baghdad.
Those are the two people that he sends
to negotiate with Hulagu.
And when they get there, Hulagu promises them
that if he enters Baghdad, one, there will
be no war.
Two, the son of the Khalifa will marry
Hulagu's daughter.
Okay.
That's like one of the great things.
Three, that the Khalifa will remain and he
will still be the ruler.
And then four, that everyone will be safe.
These are his promises.
What are the conditions?
The conditions are, first of all, and there
were two people in the city that were
asking for, they were calling for jihad.
Mu'ayyaduddin Aibak and Suleiman Shah.
Those two people that were going around the
city getting everyone riled up for jihad.
So he said, what these two people are
doing, this is not conducive to the peace
that we want.
So my conditions are, number one, everyone calling
for jihad, particularly those two people, you send
them to me.
The second thing, you will destroy all forts.
You will destroy weapons.
You will cover up all ditches and the
ditches that are built for warfare or dug
for warfare.
You will cover them all up and agree
that the Khalifa rules under Tatar supervision, the
Khalifa and all his family.
And then the Khalifa and all his family
members, his sons, the nobles, the ministers, all
the big shots of the city will go
out and welcome Hulagu back into the city.
And when he gathered this group, it was
about 700 people, 700 of scholars and ministers
and the nobles and the wealthy of the
city and his family members, they all went
out to welcome Hulagu and bring him back
into the city.
But before we get to that, of course,
the Khalifa agreed and he sent Mujahideen Aybak
and Suleiman Shah and Hulagu killed them instantly,
immediately.
And he swore to them that he comes
with freedom and justice and peace.
And I know some of this story sounds
so familiar, right?
Like everything sounds extremely familiar.
And despite all these ridiculous demands, the Khalifa,
al-Musta'asim Billah agrees.
He doesn't fight and he just agrees to
all these things.
And then they start, of course, we talked
about how there's no way you can withstand
these armies, they're powerful, they're this, they're that.
So he goes out to him with 700
people and he kills them all.
So he takes 17 in with the Khalifa
and all the rest, 600 plus, they're all
killed, executed immediately.
And then the Khalifa starts to realize.
And you can imagine the sorrow and the
regret, the remorse he feels at that point.
Well, he knows this is it.
He's going to be killed.
Everyone that just came out with him was
killed.
All these promises were all lies.
So he kills everyone immediately and he just
leaves the Khalifa alone to come back and
to guide them to five centuries of gold,
of Muslim wealth.
And he personally led them into Baghdad.
And the city of scholars, the city of
Islamic civilization, this was like the center of
knowledge.
And it wasn't just Islamic knowledge, it was
sciences, it was mathematics, it was the translated
works of all other civilizations.
This was an incredible place, like an incredible
center of knowledge.
And they enter and he shows them the
gold.
Now there are two accounts of his killing.
One of them is from Marco Polo, which
many don't give much credit.
Marco Polo says that they put him in
his storage room with his gold, like his
safe or treasury or whatever, treasure chest of
gold.
And they locked him in there until he
died of starvation.
But the other more accepted one that has
no Marco Polo in it, is that the
Mongols had the belief that royal blood should
not touch the ground.
That if royal blood touches the ground, there
will be earthquakes and calamities and all kinds
of natural disasters.
So they brought the Khalifa and they rolled
him up in one of the large palace
rugs.
And then they had the horses trample him
to death.
And that's how he was killed.
So what happens now?
They enter the city of Imam Ahmad ibn
Hanbal, the city of Al-Shafi'i, Imam
Abu Hanifa, the city where the armies of
Khalid ibn Walid were there.
And where Al-Mu'tasim, the Khalifa would go
out, he would go to Hajj from there
and he would go to Jihad once a
year from there.
And they enter.
Now some of the Muslim sources, they say
that they killed a thousand thousand.
A thousand thousand is a million.
So they killed a million in 40 days.
They stayed there for 40 days.
And after 40 days, Hulagu says, no more
indiscriminate killing.
No more.
Why?
Because the carcasses are everywhere and they're rotting.
And the stench is filling the air and
he doesn't also want diseases and things to
spread in the city.
So now everyone who is left alive, no
more killing.
These are the people who are going to
bury everybody, clean up the city.
So he left them only for that reason,
not for any other reason.
So for 40 days they're killing people left
and right.
They kill a million.
And then there are like individual stories that
are so hard to fathom.
There is a narration about one of the
Tatar soldiers.
He walked by this alleyway where there were
40 infant babies still alive on the streets.
They were just recently born and their mothers
were obviously all killed and these babies were
just strewn on the street.
So he does a double-take, sees, oh,
babies.
And he goes in there and he starts
to kill every one of them.
Some say like with a rock, some say
like he would just lean into a sword
killing the 40 babies.
Like what would possess a grown man to
kill 40 infants like that?
But this shows you how severe they were.
And because they were so invincible, no one
thought of resisting.
Like you would imagine someone must have resisted,
but nobody thought of resisting.
That to the point that one Mongol soldier
could bring 100 men.
He said, I'm going to execute you.
And he would start to execute them one
by one.
And I always wonder at the guy in
position 63.
You just wait for your turn?
Like the first guy they killed, second, third,
23, 47, 52.
And he's just moved.
Can you just move this line?
Hurry up already.
And he's just taking a step forward, taking
a step forward, taking a step forward.
Then it's his turn.
He puts his head down and just gets
executed.
100.
And it's one guy executing them.
They narrated that a woman would just lead
a group of men.
She'd tell them, I'm going to execute you.
And they'll just all follow her.
And she'll execute them one by one.
Woman, five guys, six guys.
It's hard to understand, right?
It's hard to believe.
That a Tatar soldier would tell a random
Muslim in the street, wait here.
I'm going to go find my sword.
I'm going to get my sword and come
kill you.
And he'd go look for it.
And he'd come back and the guy's waiting.
Just run into the desert.
Just keep running.
Just keep running.
But that's how defeated they were.
Those that remained alive, they hid inside graveyards
and they sit inside graves and inside ditches
until after 40 days they said, no more
killing.
And they asked him to come out and
start to bury everyone and basically clean up
the city.
So they said that the Euphrates River, it
turned red with the blood of all the
victims.
And then they said, the eyewitnesses said it
turned black because they entered into what is
known as Dar Al-Hikmah that had hundreds
of thousands of books.
You'll hear that Imam Al-Shafi'i wrote
over 200 books, but today we'll have like
six or just a small handful.
What happened to all the rest?
So many books, not just in Islamic studies
and sciences and all kinds of things.
They're all just taken from Dar Al-Hikmah,
this great library, hundreds of thousands of them.
And they were thrown into the river.
And of course the ink was different back
then, so the water would run through these
pages and it would dissolve the ink.
And so on the other side, they said
they created a bridge.
So these books went all the way to
the bottom of the river, to the bed
and came above the surface that they could
cross with their horses over these books.
And the other side of the river, as
the water ran through these books and their
pages, was turned black.
And all this knowledge was just lost like
that.
Then they had Mu'ayyid al-Din al
-Alqami, the Shi'i right-hand man of
the khalifa.
He gave them the names of all the
scholars and all the shuyukh and mashayikh that
teach at the different masajid.
And they went out and went through this
list and brought them out one by one
and they executed them.
By the way, when they executed the khalifa,
they executed him, they executed in front of
him.
They said, one of the things that we
will execute you, but we'll execute your sons
in front of you.
So Ahmad and Abdulrahman, they were killed right
in front of him as he was watching.
This was his punishment.
So we said that Mu'ayyid al-Din
al-Alqami, the Shi'i right-hand man
of the khalifa, he gave them a list
of all the scholars, imams, mashayikh in the
city.
And they went through this list executing every
single one of them.
And there's some known and famous or I
guess somehow known scholars that were executed.
But one of the interesting ones is Mu
'ayyid al-Din Yusuf.
Mu'ayyid al-Din Yusuf, he was the
son of Ibn al-Jawziya.
That's his son.
They killed him and they killed his sons,
Abdullah and Abdulrahman and Abdulkarim.
All of them were executed.
They didn't even leave the families alone.
So we said then, after 40 days the
killing stops and they let the Muslims come
out to bury the dead.
Not out of respect for the dead, but
just so that we clean them up and
get them out of the way.
And they put bin Hulako and his army,
they move out of the city and they
leave Mu'ayyid al-Din al-Alqami in
charge.
But they left people to watch over him.
And he ends up being very humiliated.
He assisted them.
When he was working for the Abbasids, he
used to have, what they call it, procession.
Soldiers and horses and carts and what have
you.
He was a big deal when he came
down the road.
And now he is just, not even a
pawn, he's almost like a prisoner, but just
not a prisoner of the Mongols.
And he was walking with the soldiers, the
Mongol soldiers, like they're a prisoner, not like
they're his bodyguards.
And one of the women saw him and
she said, is this how you were at
the time of the Abbasids?
And you betrayed them, but you were like
a king at the time of the Abbasids.
And you assisted these people to come to
power and look at how you are now.
So from there you go into, this is
just the fall of Baghdad, but some of
the Muslim sources mention insane death tolls.
They say in Nisabur, it was about 1
.7 million in Baghdad.
Anywhere from 1 to 1.7 million in
Samarkand, 950,000 were killed.
In Maro, 700,000 were killed.
In Aleppo, 50,000 dead.
And these are just estimates by the people.
The city of Balkh completely destroyed.
Haran completely, they would absolutely destroy cities.
Like I said, sometimes just keep a few
handymen with them.
And of course there was nobody to monitor,
no one to report anything or videotape anything.
So they just had free reign.
They could do whatever they wanted.
The point is that the destruction was severe.
The Mongols were severe.
And then things happen.
The battle of Ain Jalut, the Mamluks defeat
them.
The Mongols start to become Muslim.
All kinds of things happened that changed.
But the point is that they were not
that powerful that they were going to make
Islam disappear off the face of the earth.
And every city they destroyed, today is a
city that is completely built up and completely
populated.
I mean, they bounced back.
They bounced back.
And the point was for us to realize
that Gaza is going to bounce back bi
-idhnillah Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
InshaAllah, bi-idhnillah, it's going to bounce back.
And whether it's in our lifetime or not,
we know what's going to happen there.
We know the victory is coming for the
believers.
So our ummah's been through a lot and
it bounced back.
And nobody should feel like this is the
end or we're doomed and we're devastated.
Sometimes you deal with an enemy that's so
strong, you can't even imagine how they could
be defeated.
How could they be defeated?
You just can't imagine it.
The weaponry, this, that.
But just like people in Baghdad, they couldn't
imagine how the Mongols could be defeated.
But they got defeated.
So forget the how.
You don't know the how.
But you know that it's going to happen.
And we also don't know when.
But we know that it's going to happen.
So there's, I mean, I'm not going to
say like there's no reason to feel, no,
there is a reason to feel saddened and
everything.
But you should never feel doomed.
Never feel doomed.
Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala says, And the
final end is for those who have taqwa.
And the final end is for taqwa.
So the end is always for the believers.
But sometimes you go through a lot of
difficulties.
Islam's gone through a lot of challenges, a
lot of challenges.
Like some were attacks like the Mongols, like
the Karamita destroying the Kaaba.
And some were just times in Muslim history
where there was basically nothing left of Islam.
Like it almost vanished.
Whatever they were practicing didn't even like match
or look like Islam whatsoever.
Still bounced back.
All these regions today they have Sunnis and
they have Muslims practicing their religion and they
have mashayikh and ulama and everything.
So that was the whole point of the
talk that it's never the end.
No one's ever going to be able to
destroy Islam and the Muslims.
It'll fade out by itself towards the end
of time as Allah wills.
But no one force is just going to
come in and say, These people won't exist
anymore.
Zakumul khair for coming.
Zakumul khair for listening attentively.