July 1401 · Mesopotamia Theater
July 1401
Baghdad, already a shadow of its former glory since the Mongol sack of 1258, suffered a second catastrophic destruction at Timur's hands. After the Jalayirid Sultan Ahmad fled, the city resisted Timur's forces. When it fell, Timur reportedly ordered each of his soldiers to bring back two severed heads. The resulting massacre produced towers of 90,000 skulls erected outside the city walls, and much of what the Mongols had not destroyed 143 years earlier was now annihilated.
Commanders