MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · October 17 · 1244
ON THIS DAY · 17 OCTOBER 1244
La Forbie
17 Oct 1244 — near Gaza, an allied Frankish–Damascene army is destroyed by Egyptian forces and Khwarezmian mercenaries who had just sacked Jerusalem. The crusaders never field an army this size again.
THE MOMENT IN CONTEXT
The instrument of the end is, once again, a slave-soldier state. At La Forbie near Gaza in 1244, an allied Frankish and Damascene army is destroyed by Egyptian forces and the Khwarezmians who had just sacked Jerusalem — the last time Outremer fields an army of any size. Then the Mongols come, sweeping away Baghdad and the Abbasid caliphate; and at Ain Jalut in 1260 the Mamluks of Egypt halt the seemingly invincible Mongols in Galilee. That victory saves the Islamic heartland — and forges a disciplined, self-renewing military state (the same slave-soldier system the Muslim world had used for centuries) that will now turn methodically on the crusader coast.
From Chapter 11 — Baibars and the End of The Crusades, 1095–1291 (1271).
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TEACH THIS IN 5 MINUTES
- Why it happened — The Mamluk military state. The Mamluks were a professional army of slave-soldiers, trained from boyhood, promoted by merit, and renewed by purchase rather than birth — an…
- The turn — Ain Jalut, 3 September 1260. The battle that made the machine. By halting the Mongols in Galilee, the Mamluks both removed the crusaders’ last conceivable ally and won the…
- What it changed — Outremer erased. Watch the map: the last red drains to lost-hatch along the whole coast, and only Cyprus remains Latin. The mainland crusader states, born in 1099,…
Then ask the room: Why did Europe not send a fleet to save Acre in 1291? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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