The Mongols’ conquests turned west as well. They finally shattered the power of the already declining Abbasid dynasty; their leader in this was Il-Khan (‘Subordinate Khan’) Hülagü, whose principal wife belonged to the Church of the East. That was a happy circumstance for the Christians of Baghdad, who were the only community whom the Mongols spared massacre when the city fell in 1258; indeed the Mongols gave the Catholicos one of the caliphs’ palaces in which to establish his headquarters and cathedral complex.
