Latin polemic celebrated the Baghdad sack as uprooting Islam’s own succession

Evidence

The author comes back to the capture of Baghdad at §14 (pp. 302–4), where he describes Hülägü’s slaughter of the caliph’s family before his eyes: “Ante cuius oculos interfici fecit uxores et concubinas, filios et filias et omnes propinquos, de quibus videbatur, quod spes posteriraris posset oriri, ut in radice arboris succisa Machometi in illa civitate non remaneret successor in aeternum.” — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1867

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates a vault claim by showing Latin Christians could read a Mongol massacre of Muslims as vindication, an early instance of an ‘enemy-of-my-enemy’ pleasure in Muslim ruin that recurs in modern Islamophobic rhetoric.