n on Nostr: Primary Sources Contemporary accounts from the 13th century include Rashid al-Din’s ...

Primary Sources
Contemporary accounts from the 13th century include Rashid al-Din’s Jami’ al-Tawarikh and Ibn al-Athir’s Al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh, which describe flaming pots hurled at Baghdad in 1258, producing choking fumes that suffocated defenders. The Tarikh-i Jahangushay by Ata-Malik Juvayni details similar tactics at cities like Merv and Nishapur, attributing them to engineers under Hulagu Khan.
Secondary Analyses
Modern historians like David Nicolle in The Mongol Warlords (1990) cite these texts for Mongol adaptation of Byzantine and Persian “Greek fire” variants. Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2004) references the sieges, while chemical warfare overviews, such as in A History of Chemical and Biological Weapons by Eric Croddy (2005), classify naft pots as proto-chemical weapons based on the same chronicles.[cainstructor +1]
Limitations
No direct Mongol records survive; evidence relies on enemy accounts, which may exaggerate. Recent reevaluations, like Fancy and Green’s 2021 Medical History article, distinguish these from plague catapulting, confirming incendiary-chemical use via textual analysis.[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih]