al
documents it is called the "glorious city."

The Tatars retained possession of Bagdad for a century and a half, until
about A.D. 1400. Then it was taken by Timur, from whom the sultan Ahmed Ben
Avis fled, and, finding refuge with the Greek emperor, contrived later to
repossess himself of the city, whence he was finally expelled by Kara Yusuf
of the Kara-Kuyunli ("Black Sheep") Mongols in 1417. About 1468 the
descendants of the latter were driven out by Uzun Hasan or Cassim of the
Ak-Kuyunli ("White Sheep") Mongols. He and his descendants reigned in
Bagdad until Shah Ismail I., the founder of the Safawid royal house of
Persia, made himself master of the place (_c._ 1502 or 1508). From that
time it continued for a long period an object of contention between the
Turks and the Persians. It was taken by Suleiman I. the Magnificent and
retaken by Shah Abbas the Great, in 1620. Eighteen years later, in 1638, it
was besieged by Sultan Murad IV., with an army of 300,000 men and, after an
obstinate resistance, forced to surrender, when, in defiance of the terms
of capitulation, most of the inhabitants were massacred.

Since that period it has remained nominally a part of the Turkish empire;
but with the decline of Turkish power, and the general disintegration of
the empire, in the first half of the 18th century, a then governor-general,
Ahmed Pasha, made it an independent pashalic. Nadir Shah, the able and
energetic usurper of the Persian throne, attempting to annex the province
once more to Persia, besieged the city, but Ahmed defended it with such
courage that the invader was compelled to raise the siege, after suffering
great loss. Turkish authority over the pashalic was again restored in the
first part of the 19th century.

AUTHORITIES.--Allen's _Indian Mail_ (1874); J. S. Buckingham _Travels in
Mesopotamia_ (1827); Sir R. K. Porter, _Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia
and Ancient Babylonia_ (1821-1822); J. M. Kinneir, _Geographical Memoir of
the Persian Empire_ (1813); F. R. Chesney, _Expedition_ (1850); J. B. L. J.
Rousseau, _Description du pachalik de Bagdad_ (1809); J. R. Wellsted, _City
of the Caliphs_; A. N. Groves, _Residence in Baghdad_ (1830-1832);
_Transactions of Bombay Geog. Soc._ (1856); G. le Strange, _Description of
Mesopotamia and Baghdad about A.D. 900_; "Greek Embassy to Baghdad in A.D.
917," in _Journal Royal Asiatic Society_, 1895, 1897; _Baghdad under the
Abbasid Caliphate_ (1901).

(H. C. R.; J. P