Probably not, since this story is likely a fairy tale, but I'm sure some of them do recall that the Mongols adopted Islam not long after. Btw, Hulagu sacked Baghdad in 1258, not 1259.
The Mongols were brutal but they were not anti-Christian and were extremely anti-Muslim.
Even though they became muslim themselves. Riiiight.
Is it something in the Russian mindset that makes them prefer slavery to liberty? How else to explain jubilation at the thought of "forcing Muslims to kneel before the cross"? Is there something about oriental despotism, Tsarist caesaro-papism, mongols forcing people to kneel at the cross, and the sound of muzhiks groaning under the knout which invokes romantic nostalgia for Russians? How else to explain why they look upon Mongols, who destroyed Kyivan Rus, as liberators and defenders of the faith? One day they will say Stalin was a great defender of the faith.
Probably not, since this story is likely a fairy tale, but I'm sure some of them do recall that the Mongols adopted Islam not long after. Btw, Hulagu sacked Baghdad in 1258, not 1259.
How could you read Damascus....and then confuse it with Baghdad.
That you are ignorant of history is your failing but I aim to correct that.
Hulagu was bitterly hostile to Islam, and much influenced by his Buddhist and Nestorian Christian entourage. His wife Dokaz Khatun and his principal lieutenant Kitbogha or Kitbuka were Christians, and a portable tent-church travelled with him, in which mass was celebrated daily. Mongke is said to have promised the Christian King of Armenia, who visited Karakorum in 1255, that the Mongols would restore Jerusalem to the Crusaders when they had destroyed the power of the Muslims. The Asian Christians were filled with extravagant hopes and expected the rapid downfall of Islam: the European nations were less sanguine. They noted that the Mongol leadership was still pagan, that it had a dreadful reputation for cruelty and perfidy, and that it demanded not friendship and alliance but abject submission. The Franks in Palestine and Syria mostly waited to see what would happen.
The Mongol army, in composition more Turkish than Mongol, and including contingents from the Christian kingdoms of Armenia and Georgia, was probably the largest, best equipped and best disciplined that had ever issued from the steppes of Central Asia. Hulagu first moved against the Assassins, who though they had never succeeded in creating a territorial State. had resisted all efforts to dislodge them from their castles in northern Persia. He demanded their submission and the dismantling of their strongholds. The reigning Imam, Muhammad III, a moody melancholic, favoured defiance, but his chiefs were terrified of Mongol strength and ferocity, and had him killed in a drunken sleep. His son Rukn al-Din, the last 'grand master' of Alamut, young, inexperienced and frightened, gave in; the Mongols swarmed into the Assassin fortresses, and such local or sporadic defence as was put up was savagely crushed. Rukn al-Din asked to be sent to the Great Khan; but Mongke refused to see him, and on the road back from Mongolia he was slain by his guards.
Sunnite Islam might rejoice in the extermination of the Isma'ili terrorists, but Hulagu cared nothing for the distinctions between Muslims and turned next against Baghdad. Since the death of Nasir in 1225, the Abbasids had sunk again into lethargy under his incompetent successors, and the Caliph Musta'sim (1242-1258), the last Commander of the Faithful, was the man least likely to lead a holy and heroic fight against the hordes of paganism. Confronted by the usual Mongol demand for surrender, he temporized, desperately hoping that the Muslim princes would rally to the defence of their spiritual chief. Hulagu, growing impatient, commenced military operations; his army crossed the Tigris and besieged the city; his engineers broke the dykes and flooded the Muslim camp; the inhabitants, panic-stricken, tried to flee, many being caught and drowned in the rising floodwaters, and the unhappy Musta'sim in despair sent the Nestorian Patriarch to the enemy to offer capitulation. Hulagu ordered the Caliph to come in person to his camp, with his family and retinue, to tell his people to stop fighting, and to give up his wealth and treasure. His commands were obeyed, and the metropolis of Islam was abandoned to the merciless bloodlust of the conquerors. The palaces, colleges and mosques were plundered and burnt; the cultural accumulation of five centuries perished in the flames, and the appalling figure of 800,000 is the lowest estimate given of the number of men, women and children who were slaughtered in the streets and houses. The Christians, gathered in a church under their patriarch, alone were spared. Musta'sim and his sons were taken to a village outside Baghdad, and there killed in cold blood: according to report, in view of the Mongol superstition about shedding with the sword the blood of sovereign princes, they were rolled in carpets and trampled to death by horses. So ended miserably the Abbasid Caliphate and the glories of medieval Baghdad.
The Christians of the East hailed the ruin of Baghdad in the spirit of the 'Babylon is fallen, is fallen ! ' of the Book of Revelation, and looked forward to the end of half a millennium of Muslim domination. Hulagu's armies were soon in Syria: Aleppo resisted, was stormed and the non-Christian population massacred; Damascus gave in without a fight, three Christian leaders (the Mongol commander Kitbogha, the King of Armenia and the Frankish Count Bohemund of Antioch) riding through its streets and forcing Muslims to bow to the cross; it was expected that the Mongols would soon be in Jerusalem and Cairo, and the usual peremptory summons was addressed to the Mamluks in Egypt to surrender or perish. If Egypt, the last important centre of Muslim power, fell, the position of Islam would be grave indeed. The Mamluks were under no illusions: they must fight or go under. They resolved to resist, and were favoured by good luck. Early in 1260 Hulagu received at Aleppo the news that his brother the Great Khan Mongke had died in China the previous December. He favoured the candidature of his other brother Kublai for the succession, but another claimant started up, who received the backing of Hulagu's cousin Berke, the Mongol commander in Russia. Berke had embraced Islam, and was shocked at Hulagu's destruction of the Caliphate: he also feared his own power was in danger from his cousin's supposed ambition to create an independent Western Mongol Empire. In this situation Hulagu felt obliged to shift the bulk of his army to the Caucasus to watch the movements of Berke, leaving only a light screen of troops in Syria. The Mamluks, themselves Kipchak Turks from the Russian steppes. were aware of all this, and acted accordingly. Appealing for a levee en masse of faithful Muslims against the heathen enemies of Islam and the murderers of the Caliph, they advanced into Palestine, led by their Sultan Kutuz and his general Baybars, apd came up with the Mongols under Kitbogha at Ain Jalut ('Goliath's Spring') near Nazareth. After a furious battle (September 1260), the depleted Mongol army was routed and scattered; Kitbogha was slain, and the spell which the great Chingiz had cast upon the world was broken forever.
Ain Jalut was one of the world's decisive battles. It put a stop for good to the Mongol advance westwards; it saved Cairo from the fate of Baghdad, and Islam itself from possible destruction; it ruined the last hope of a Christian restoration in the Near East; it doomed the remaining Crusading positions in Syria, and it raised Mamluk Egypt to the status of leading Muslim Power and the home of what was left of Arabic culture. It did not, however, recall the Caliphate to life. The Mongols remained in possession of Baghdad and Iraq; a Mamluk attempt to restore the Abbasids by sending an expedition under an uncle of the murdered Caliph was an utter failure, and Baybars, who seized the throne of Egypt on the morrow of Ain Jalut by deposing and killing Kutuz, contented himself with setting up a shadow-Caliphate at Cairo. The Abbasid line was prolonged in Egypt until the Ottoman conquest in 1517, but these puppet Caliphs were mere names and existed solely for the purpose of providing a symbol of the unity of Islam and confirming the legal sovereignty of Muslim princes, who long felt it necessary to secure diplomas of investiture from the Vicars of the Prophet.
Yes definitly, you muslim at heart, arab muslim to be sure...you like double speak: council of church leaders with no one supreme overlord = slavery; one priest-king = liberty....hooo, you even worse then Palies.