Siege of Baghdad -1638

They were built of hard brick in the Horasani mode, surrounded on three sides (the Tigris protected the fourth wall) by three wide rings of dry moats, each up to 40 meters across. Abbas I took this impressive fortress-city in 1623 only because its garrison defected. Over the following 16 years the Ottomans devoted most of their military resources to its recapture. A seven-month siege failed in 1625-1626. A second attempt was made in 1630, with a caravan of 2,000 camels carrying bales of cotton to fill in the dry moats.

However, the Safavid garrison counter-mined and trapped the attackers in a concealed pit, where they were slaughtered. It took a 39-day siege in 1638 to finally crack Baghdad’s defenses. For the final siege the Ottomans brought 24,000 beldar (military laborers) and another 8,000 lagimci (sappers and miners), as well as specialized engineers and thousands of assault troops. Instead of cotton bales, brush and boughs to make gabions were carried in from lusher locales, on top of the regular kit of the laborers and soldiers, during the last leg of the march. Immediately, sapping of zigzag trenches began a mile out from the walls.

Once the main guns were in place, on high ramparts on top of filled-in moats, shifts of Janissaries kept up a slow but constant bombardment of the inner defenses. A wide breach was made and the city was stormed after hard fighting atop the broad walls, not just with firearms but also with older weapons, including bows, sabers, hatchets, halberds, and knives.