Al-Musta'sim (d. February 20 1258) was the last Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad; he ruled from 1242 to 1258.

In 1258 the Abbasid domains, now little more than the area of what is now Iraq and Syria, was invaded by the Mongols under Hulagu Khan. In an advance on Baghdad, Hulagu Khan had several columns advance similtaneously on the city, and laid siege to it. The Caliph had been deluded by promises from his Vizier that the Mongols could be driven off literally by the women of the city throwing stones at them, and did the worst of all things: nothing. He neither raised an army to defend Baghdad from the largest Mongol army ever assembled – two Mongols in ten had been conscripted into the forces advancing on the Caliphate – nor did he attempt to negotiate with Hulagu. Instead he sent weak threats to the Mongol warlord.

Baghdad was sacked on February 10, and Al-Musta'sim was executed by Hulagu Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan soon afterwards. All of his sons but one were also executed, and that one was sent as a prisoner to Mongolia, where Mongolian histories report he married and fathered children, but played no role in Islam thereafter. The Mamluk sultans and Syria later appointed an Abbasid Caliph in Cairo, but they were even more symbolic than by now marginalized Abbasid Caliphs in Baghdad. They were ignored by the rest of the Muslim world. Even though they kept the title for about 250 years more, other than installing the Sultan in ceremonies, these Caliphs had no importance.

After the Ottomans conquered Egypt in 1517, the remaining Caliph was transported to Constantinople, and Sultan Selim I announced himself to be a Caliph.

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• The Mongol's besiege and capture Baghdad in 1258