Rokn ud din followed Hulagu to Hamadan whence he sent officers with those of Hulagu to Syria to order the commandants of Ismailian castles in that country to surrender to the Mongols. While in Hamadan the late master of Alamut became enamored of a Mongol maiden of low origin. Hulagu gave the girl to him and he married her. Thus far the fallen chief had been useful to the Mongol who had treated him with kindness while commanding him to deliver up strongholds which might have stood the siege for years had the Ismailians resisted. When he had no further use for the man he wished to be rid of him, but he had given such a promise of safety that he did not like to break his word openly. Rokn ud din saved him from embarrassment by expressing a wish to visit the court of Mangu, the Grand Khan. Hulagu beyond doubt suggested this idea very deftly through others. He sent the fallen chief with nine attendants of his own people under an escort of Mongols (1257).
When Rokn ud din reached the Mongol court Mangu would not see him, and said that the authorities in Persia should not have permitted the journey, which wearied post horses for nothing. Rokn ud din turned homeward, but when near the mountain Tungat, the escort cut him down with his attendants. According to Rashid, Mangu had him killed on the way to Mongolia, not while returning.
Since the Grand Khan had given orders to exterminate the Ismailians, Rokn ud din’s subjects had been distributed among Mongol legions. When the Assassin chief had set out on this journey, which was ignominious and doleful, command was given Mongol officers to slay the Assassins, and spare no man, woman [[246]]or child; hence all were massacred. Infants at the breast were not spared any more than their mothers. Not a child or a relative of Rokn ud din was left living.
This last ruler of the Assassins was among the most loathsome of characters in history—a pitiless coward who had caused the death of his own father, killed the murderer of that father without trial lest he tell what he knew of his master’s evil doing, and burned the children of the murderer with the corpse of their father lest they too might expose him. He gave away power without an effort to save it, and lost his own life with indignity. [[247]]
CHAPTER XIII
DESTRUCTION OF THE KALIFAT
Hulagu had destroyed the Assassins: he was now to extinguish the line of the Abbasids. In August, 1257, this Mongol master of Persia sent his envoys to Bagdad, with a letter to Mostassim, the Kalif then in office, who was a grandson of Nassir, that successor of the Prophet who had invited Jinghis Khan to destroy Shah Mohammed.
After certain introductions and complaints in the letter, Hulagu warned against resistance substantially as follows: “Strike not the point of an awl with thy fist, mistake not the sun for the glowing wick of a flameless taper. Level the walls of Bagdad at once, fill its moats; leave government to thy son, for a season, and come to us or, if thou come not, send thy vizir with Suleiman Shah and the chancellor. They will take to thee our counsels with precision; thus wilt thou use them correctly and we shall not be forced then to anger. If we march against Bagdad thou wilt not escape us, even shouldst thou hide in the deepest earth, or rise to highest heaven.
“If thou love thy own life and the safety of thy house give ear to these counsels; if not the world will behold Heaven’s anger without waiting.”