Alexei Kosygin, Soviet politician, 8th Premier of the Soviet Union (d. 1980)

"HISTORY"

1904 – Alexei Kosygin, Soviet politician, 8th Premier of the Soviet Union (d. 1980)

Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin (20 February 1904 – 18 December 1980) was a Soviet-Russian statesman during the Cold War. Kosygin was born in the city of St. Petersburg in 1904 to a Russian working class family. He was conscripted into the labour army during the Russian Civil War, and after the Red Army's demobilisation in 1921, he worked in Siberia as an industrial manager. Kosygin returned to Leningrad in the early 1930s and worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. During the Great Patriotic War (World War II), Kosygin was a member of the State Defence Committee and was tasked with moving Soviet industry out of territories soon to be overrun by the German military. He served as Minister of Finance for a year before becoming Minister of Light Industry and later, the Minister of Light and Food Industry. One year before his death in 1953, Stalin removed Kosygin from the Politburo, intentionally weakening his position within the Soviet hierarchy.
After the power struggle triggered by Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev became the new leader. On 20 March 1959, Kosygin was appointed to the position of Chairman of the State Planning Committee (Gosplan), a post he would hold for little more than a year. Kosygin next became First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. When Khrushchev was replaced in 1964, Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev became Premier and First Secretary respectively. Kosygin, along with Brezhnev and Nikolai Podgorny, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, was a member of the newly established collective leadership. Kosygin became one of two major power players within the Soviet hierarchy, the other being Brezhnev, and was able to initiate the failed 1965 economic reform, usually referred to simply as the Kosygin reform. This reform, along with his more open stance on solving the Prague Spring (1968), made Kosygin one of the most liberal members of the top leadership.
Some of Kosygin's policies were seen as too radical, particularly by more conservative members of the top leadership. However, they were never able to depose Kosygin as Premier, even if he and Brezhnev disliked each other. By the 1970s, Brezhnev had consolidated enough power to stop any "radical" reform-minded attempts by Kosygin. In 1980, Kosygin retired from office due to bad health, dying two months later on 18 December 1980.(Thanks:Khalid Jelani Tiwana)

Al-Musta'sim, Iraqi caliph (b. 1213)"HISTORY"

"HISTORY"

1258 – Al-Musta'sim, Iraqi caliph (b. 1213)

Al-Musta'sim Billah (1213 – February 20, 1258) was the last Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad; he ruled from 1242 until his death.
Biography:
Al-Musta'sim succeeded his father in late 1242.

He is noted for his opposition to the rise of Shajar al-Durr to the Egyptian throne during the Seventh Crusade. He sent a message from Baghdad to the Mamluks in Egypt that said: "If you do not have men there tell us so we can send you men.". However, Al-Musta'sim had to face the greatest menace against the caliphate since its establishment in 632, the invasion of the Mongol forces that, under Hulagu Khan, had already wiped out any resistance in Transoxiana and Khorasan. In 1255/1256 Hulagu forced the Abbasid to lend their forces for the campaign against Alamut.
In 1258 Hulagu invaded the Abbasid domain, comprising a little more than what is now Iraq and Syria. In an advance on Baghdad, Hulagu Khan had several columns advance simultaneously on the city, and laid siege to it. The Caliph had been deluded by promises from his Vizier that the Mongols could be driven off literally by the women of the city throwing stones at them, and did the worst of all things: nothing. He neither raised an army to defend Baghdad nor did he attempt to negotiate with Hulagu. Instead he sent weak threats to the Mongol warlord.
Baghdad was sacked on February 10 and the caliph was killed by Hulagu Khan soon afterwards. It is reckoned that the Mongols did not want to shed "royal blood", so they wrapped him in a rug and trampled him to death with their horses. Some of his sons were massacred as well; one of the surviving sons was sent as a prisoner to Mongolia, where Mongolian historians report he married and fathered children, but played no role in Islam thereafter.

The Travels of Marco Polo reports that upon finding the caliph's great stores of treasure which could have been spent on the defense of his realm, Hulagu Khan locked him in his treasure room without food or water, telling him "eat of thy treasure as much as thou wilt, since thou art so fond of it."
The Mamluk sultans and Syria later appointed an Abbasid Caliph in Cairo, but they were even more symbolic than by now marginalized Abbasid Caliphs in Baghdad. They were ignored by the rest of the Muslim world. Even though they kept the title for about 250 years more, other than installing the Sultan in ceremonies, these Caliphs had little importance.
After the Ottomans conquered Egypt in 1517, the Abbasid Caliph of Egypt, Al-Mutawakkil III was transported to Constantinople, and Sultan Selim I announced himself to be a Caliph.(Thanks:Khalid Jelani Tiwana)