Middle Ages
Recapture of Constantinople (1261): Byzantium Restored
The Empire of Nicaea retook Constantinople, ending the Latin Empire and restoring the Byzantine Empire under the Palaiologos dynasty.
Era · c. 500 – 1500
Middle Ages
Kingdoms, crusades and plagues: the medieval world from the end of the Western Roman Empire to the fall of Constantinople.
Middle Ages
Thomas Aquinas and the Summa Theologica: Faith Meets Reason
An unfinished but enormously influential synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian doctrine that became the foundation of Thomism.
Middle Ages
Simon de Montfort's Parliament (1265) and the Barons' War
Montfort's regime summoned knights and town representatives to parliament, but he was killed at Evesham on 4 August 1265 and royal power was restored.
Middle Ages
Khanbaliq (Dadu): Kublai Khan's Capital at Beijing (1267)
Dadu became the Yuan dynasty's main capital and laid out the core of the later city of Beijing.
Middle Ages
Battle of Xiangyang (1268-1273): The Mongol Siege of the Song
Mongol victory; Fancheng was stormed and Xiangyang surrendered in 1273, opening the Yangtze valley to the conquest of the Song.
Middle Ages
Yekuno Amlak and the Solomonic Dynasty of Ethiopia (1270)
The Zagwe dynasty was overthrown and the Solomonic dynasty took power, ruling Ethiopia, with interruptions, until the deposition of Haile Selassie in 1974.
Middle Ages
Kublai Khan and the Founding of the Yuan Dynasty (1271)
Kublai founded the Yuan dynasty, conquered the Song by 1279 and became the first non-Chinese ruler of all of China.
Middle Ages
Mongol Invasions of Japan (1274 and 1281): The Kamikaze
Both invasions failed; Japan remained independent, but the cost of defence weakened the Kamakura shogunate.
Middle Ages
Marco Polo in China: A Venetian at Kublai Khan's Court (1275)
Marco Polo spent about 17 years in Yuan China, and his book became medieval Europe's most influential account of Asia.
Middle Ages
Gaocheng Observatory: Guo Shoujing's Yuan Star Tower (1276)
A giant gnomon tower that supplied precise solar measurements for the Shoushi calendar of 1281, used in China for more than 360 years.
Middle Ages
Great Drought of 1276: The Ancestral Puebloan Exodus
By about 1300 the northern Southwest was emptied of farmers, who resettled in the Rio Grande valley, Zuni, Acoma and the Hopi mesas.
Middle Ages
Battle of Ngasaunggyan (1277): Mongols Against Pagan
Yuan victory; the Pagan army was driven back, opening a decade of Mongol campaigns that broke the Pagan kingdom.