In the midst of worries about the Wuhan coronavirus, it is worth remembering that the scholarly consensus has long been that the Black Plague reached the Mediterranean in 1347 because of the Mongol invasion of Crimea. The Mongol Empire and its derivative kingdoms were, themselves, considered plagues at the time. Some modern historians celebrate Mongol religious tolerance — historian Jack Weatherford has called its capital city Karakorum “the most religiously open and tolerant city in the world at that time” [1] — but the rest of the world, whether Muslim, Christian, or Hindu, viewed the Mongols as devils.
Arguably the worst Mongol savagery was in 1258, when Hulagu Khan and his Ilkhanate Empire (along with allies from the Christian states of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, the Kingdom of Georgia, and the Principality of Antioch) destroyed Baghdad, thus ending the so-called “Islamic Golden Age.” The Mongols raped and pillaged for days, destroyed the city’s libraries and universities, and murdered at least 3,000 of the city’s notables. The Mongol destruction of Baghdad was far worse for the Muslim world than the Crusades; Muslims flourished in the Crusader states after the fall of Jerusalem in 1099. ...
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