The Day Mongols Destroyed the World's Financial Capital (And Changed Everything)

Описание: In February 1258, the Mongol army surrounded Baghdad. Twelve days later, the richest city on Earth was gone.

This was not ordinary conquest. This was calculated financial assassination.

Baghdad controlled global trade for 500 years. Its banks issued checks honored from Morocco to Malaysia. Its irrigation systems turned desert into farmland feeding one million residents. Its libraries held 400,000 volumes of accumulated knowledge.

The Mongols targeted all of it. They seized the treasury. They burned the banks. They murdered the engineers. They destroyed the canals. They erased five centuries of accumulated wealth in less than two weeks.

The gold they seized eventually reached European merchants. The trade routes they shattered forced commerce toward Venice and Genoa. The banking techniques Baghdad pioneered migrated to Florence and Amsterdam.

You live in the aftermath. The financial systems you use today trace back to the vacuum Baghdad left behind.

This is the story of how twelve days of destruction redirected global wealth for 800 years.

CHAPTERS

0:00 The Financial Assassination Nobody Talks About
2:42 The Financial Engine of the Medieval World
6:27 The Infrastructure Producing the Wealth
10:45 The Mongol War Machine Approaches
14:37 The Systematic Destruction
19:14 The Economic Vacuum and Its Consequences
24:18 The 800 Year Wealth Transfer

SOURCES

Ibn al-Athir, "Al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh" (The Complete History, 1231)
Rashid al-Din, "Jami al-Tawarikh" (Compendium of Chronicles, 1307)
Cairo Geniza Documents, Cambridge University Library
Robert McC. Adams, "Land Behind Baghdad" (1965)
Robert McC. Adams, "Heartland of Cities" (1981)
Venetian Commercial Archives, Archivio di Stato di Venezia
Genoese Commercial Archives, Archivio di Stato di Genova

Subscribe to Noob Historian for more hidden financial history.

We follow the money. We trace the power. We expose the history they never taught you in school.