Hulagu Khan

Hulagu Khan was a grandson of Genghis Khan and the founder of the Ilkhanate in Iran. Sent west by his brother Möngke, he destroyed the Nizari Ismaili strongholds and captured Baghdad in 1258, ending the Abbasid caliphate there and causing immense loss of life.

His forces advanced into Syria but withdrew substantial troops after Möngke’s death. A remaining army was defeated by the Mamluks at Ain Jalut in 1260. Hulagu Khan died in Maragheh.

In Cecelia Holland’s Heart of the World, when Hulagu Khan’s army breaks into Baghdad in 1258, Rikart al-Shah’b—an estranged Templar known as Rikart the Ghost—tries to escape the collapsing city with Daud, an Arab boy, and Dinah, the teenage daughter of a Jewish scholar. In Robert Shea’s The Saracen Holy War, the action moves through central and southern Italy toward the Battle of Benevento in 1266, where Manfred’s kingdom faces destruction. Baibars, Louis IX, Charles of Anjou, Thomas Aquinas and Hulagu Khan remain part of the political world surrounding the fictional conflict. Further fictional perspectives on Hulagu Khan can be found in Robert Shea’s The Saracen Land of the Infidel and Conn Iggulden’s Conqueror.