In 1258, Mongol forces under Hulagu Khan besieged and sacked Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. The city, a center of learning with the House of Wisdom, was devastated; libraries were destroyed, scholars killed, and the caliph executed. This ended the Islamic Golden Age's political center, causing massive cultural loss as books were thrown into the Tigris, reportedly turning the river black with ink. It reshaped Middle Eastern geopolitics.

The sack profoundly affected Arabic and Persian poetry, leading to elegies and laments on lost knowledge. Poets like Saadi referenced the era's fall, influencing Islamic literary traditions of melancholy and resilience. It shaped non-Western literary memory of invasion and cultural destruction, echoed in later Middle Eastern poetry addressing empire and loss.