Siege of Baghdad (1638): Murad IV Retakes the City from Persia

The siege of Baghdad in 1638 was the decisive campaign of the Ottoman–Safavid war of 1623–1639. Sultan Murad IV marched in person from Istanbul to Mesopotamia, besieged the Safavid-held city for about forty days, and forced its surrender in late December 1638. The victory returned Baghdad to Ottoman rule and led directly to the Treaty of Zuhab the following year.

Background: a city between two empires

Baghdad, once the capital of the Abbasid caliphs, had been a frontier prize between the Sunni Ottomans and the Shia Safavids of Iran since the early sixteenth century. Shah Ismail I took it in 1508, and the Ottoman sultan Suleiman captured it in 1534. The Peace of Amasya in 1555 confirmed Ottoman possession.

In 1623 a mutiny inside the Ottoman garrison gave Shah Abbas the Great his chance. Safavid forces took the city in January 1624, and many Sunni inhabitants were killed or enslaved. Ottoman armies tried to recover it in 1625–26 and again in 1630, but both sieges failed.

Murad IV takes command

Murad IV had come to the throne as a boy in 1623, with his mother Kösem Sultan as regent. After taking personal control in the early 1630s he restored discipline harshly at home and set out to revive Ottoman military prestige. In 1635 he led a successful campaign to capture Yerevan in the Caucasus, though the Safavids recovered it in 1636.

In spring 1638 Murad left Istanbul with a large army for Baghdad. The march across Anatolia and down the Tigris took months. Contemporary estimates of his army’s size vary widely and are not reliable, but it was one of the largest Ottoman expeditions of the century, with heavy siege artillery.

The Safavid shah, Safi (r. 1629–1642), did not bring his main army to relieve the city. Baghdad was defended by a strong garrison under the governor Bektash Khan, behind walls and towers that the Persians had reinforced.

The siege

The Ottoman army arrived before Baghdad on 15 November 1638 and dug in around the walls of the main city beside the Tigris. Ottoman batteries pounded the fortifications, and sappers pushed trenches toward the walls.

After several weeks the artillery had opened breaches. In a major assault on 24 December, the grand vizier Tayyar Mehmed Pasha was killed at the front of his troops. Murad immediately appointed Kemankeş Kara Mustafa Pasha as grand vizier, and the attack continued.

With the walls broken and no relief army in sight, the garrison asked for terms, and Bektash Khan surrendered around 25 December 1638.

Massacre and aftermath

The surrender did not end the bloodshed. Fighting broke out between Ottoman troops and Safavid soldiers, apparently after an incident during the evacuation, and a large part of the garrison was killed. Persian residents of the city also suffered. Contemporary figures run into the thousands or tens of thousands and cannot be verified.

Murad stayed only briefly in Baghdad, appointing a governor and ordering repairs before returning to Istanbul in 1639. To celebrate the victory he commissioned the Baghdad Kiosk at Topkapı Palace, a tiled pavilion that still stands. He also had a kiosk built earlier to mark his Yerevan campaign.

Neither side was eager for further war. Negotiations led to the Treaty of Zuhab, signed on 17 May 1639, which left Baghdad and Iraq with the Ottomans.

Key people

• Murad IV (r. 1623–1640): the last Ottoman sultan to lead a major campaign in person for decades; he died in February 1640, only about a year after his triumph.
• Tayyar Mehmed Pasha: grand vizier, killed leading the assault.
• Kemankeş Kara Mustafa Pasha: appointed grand vizier during the siege; he later negotiated the peace.
• Bektash Khan: the Safavid commander of Baghdad.
• Shah Safi: the Safavid ruler, whose decision not to relieve the city sealed its fate.

Timeline

• 1534: Suleiman the Magnificent captures Baghdad for the Ottomans.
• 1624, January: Shah Abbas I takes Baghdad.
• 1625–26 and 1630: Ottoman attempts to retake the city fail.
• 1635: Murad IV captures Yerevan.
• 1638, spring: Murad IV sets out from Istanbul.
• 1638, 15 November: The Ottoman army begins the siege.
• 1638, 24 December: Grand vizier Tayyar Mehmed Pasha is killed in the assault.
• 1638, 25 December: The garrison surrenders.
• 1639, 17 May: The Treaty of Zuhab ends the war.

Legacy

The recapture of Baghdad was the greatest military success of Murad IV’s reign and a powerful symbol of Ottoman revival after decades of internal turmoil. Baghdad remained under Ottoman rule, apart from brief threats in the eighteenth century, until British forces occupied it in 1917.

For Iran, the loss confirmed that Mesopotamia, with its Shia shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, lay outside Safavid control. Shia pilgrims continued to travel there, and the status of pilgrims became a regular subject of later Ottoman–Persian treaties.

Why it matters

The siege of 1638 settled a century of struggle over Baghdad. It fixed Iraq within the Ottoman Empire and set the stage for a frontier between Turkey and Iran that, in broad terms, still exists today.