The Travels of Marco Polo 1: Chapter 6

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CHAPTER VI.

OF THE GREAT CITY OF BAUDAS, AND HOW IT WAS TAKEN.

[...only NOTE 7 was relevant, all else removed]

NOTE 7.--

 "I said to the Kalif: 'Thou art old,
 Thou hast no need of so much gold.
 Thou shouldst not have heaped and hidden it here,
 Till the breath of Battle was hot and near,
 But have sown through the land these useless hoards
 To spring into shining blades of swords,
 And keep thine honour sweet and clear.
      *       *       *       *       *
 Then into his dungeon I locked the drone,
 And left him to feed there all alone
 In the honey-cells of his golden hive:
 Never a prayer, nor a cry, nor a groan
 Was heard from those massive walls of stone,
 Nor again was the Kalif seen alive.'
   This is the story, strange and true,
 That the great Captain Alau
 Told to his brother, the Tartar Khan,
 When he rode that day into Cambalu.
 By the road that leadeth to Ispahan." (_Longfellow_.)[1]

The story of the death of Mosta'sim Billah, the last of the Abbaside Khalifs, is told in much the same way by Hayton, Ricold, Pachymeres, and Joinville. The memory of the last glorious old man must have failed him, when he says the facts were related by some merchants who came to King Lewis, when before Saiette (or Sidon), viz. in 1253, for the capture of Baghdad occurred five years later. Mar. Sanuto says melted gold was poured down the Khalif's throat--a transfer, no doubt, from the old story of Crassus and the Parthians. Contemporary Armenian historians assert that Hulaku slew him with his own hand.

All that Rashiduddin says is: "The evening of Wednesday, the 14th of Safar, 656 (20th February, 1258), the Khalif was put to death in the village of Wakf, with his eldest son and five eunuchs who had never quitted him." Later writers say that he was wrapt in a carpet and trodden to death by horses.