Tatars who take the dam of Gog and Magog for a cobweb
Editorial contextAs Hulagu closed on Baghdad, the last Abbasid caliph, told that the Mongol vanguard had crossed the Hamrin hills, asked how that could be. The answer, in Wassaf's ornate rhymed prose (rendered by Hammer in rhyme), paints the Tatars as a sea flood flying over peaks like eagles, for whom the legendary dam of Gog and Magog, Alexander's barrier against the peoples of the north, is no more than a cobweb. Hammer then describes how the Mongols ringed Baghdad with a hastily raised earthen rampart.
The army of the Tatars, who come on like the floods of the sea, flies over the mountain tops like flocks of eagles; since they regard the dam of Gog and Magog as a cobweb, what else should rise from their hooves on the heights of Hamrin but dust, what else should come out of the storm in which they ride but fire and plunder
Working translation
Original wording
Das Heer der Tataren, die wie die Meeresfluthen einherfahren, überfliegt der Berge Gipfel wie der Adler Schaaren; da sie den Damm von Gog und Magog für Spinngeweb' ansehen, was soll auf des Hamrin's Höhen aus ihren Hufen wohl anders erstehen, als Staub, was soll aus dem Sturme, in dem sie daherfahren, wohl anders aufgehen, als Feuer und Raub
About Hulagu's Mongol army ('the Tatars'); the caliph al-Musta'sim
Keep in mind
Literary rhetoric written decades later, not a record of what was said to the caliph.
The caliph of Baghdad made to eat his gold
Editorial contextRiccoldo's version of the fall of Baghdad, told a generation later by a man living in the city. The Tartars found the caliph in a marvellous palace heaped with treasure, starved him for three days, set gold, silver and jewels before him, and when he said he had only kept what his ancestors gathered, poured molten gold into his mouth. They then killed the people for forty days.
When he fell silent they ordered gold to be melted and poured into his mouth, and said to him: 'You thirsted for gold, drink gold!' And they killed his people for forty days on end.
Working translation
Original wording
Quo tacente mandauerunt, quod liquaretur aurum et colaretur in os eius, et dixerunt ei: Aurum sitiisti, aurum bibe! Populum autem eius per quadraginta dies continuos occiderunt.
About Tartars under Hulegu; the Abbasid caliph
Keep in mind
The molten-gold death is a legend; Persian sources say the caliph was rolled in a carpet and trampled, and Hayton (W229) has him starved among his treasure.