1281

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Year 1281 (MCCLXXXI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Events

By place

Asia

• August 12 – Battle of Kōan (Hakata Bay): The second Mongol invasion of Japan is foiled, as a large typhoon – famously called a kamikaze, or divine wind – destroys much of the combined Chinese and Korean fleet and forces, numbering over 140,000 men and 4,000 ships.
• Kublai Khan orders the burning of sacred Taoist texts, resulting in the reduction in number of volumes of the Daozang (Taoist Canon) from 4,565 to 1,120.
• The Mon kingdom of Haripunchai falls as its capital Lamphun (in present-day Thailand) is captured by King Mangrai's Lannathai kingdom.

Middle East

• October 29 – Mamluk sultan Qalawun defeats an invasion of Syria by Mongol Ilkhan Abaqa Khan in the Second Battle of Homs.
• Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, becomes bey of the Sögüt tribe in central Anatolia; in 1299 he will declare independence from the Seljuk Turks, marking the birth of the Ottoman Empire.
• An offensive by the Byzantine Empire significantly reduces the size of the Kingdom of Albania, as it recaptures land seized from the Despotate of Epirus by Charles I of Sicily 10 years earlier.

Europe

• Pope Martin IV authorizes a Crusade against the newly re-established Byzantine Empire in Constantinople; French and Venetian expeditions set out toward Constantinople but are forced to turn back in the following year.
• July – Niccolò Bonsignori heads a hundred of Ghibelline exiles in a failed attempt to topple the Sienese government.

By topic

Markets

• Guy of Dampierre, count of Flanders, licenses the first Lombards merchants to open a changing business in his realm.^[1]

Religion

• Pope Martin IV succeeds Pope Nicholas III as the 189th pope.

Births

• Castruccio Castracani, duke of Lucca (d. 1328)
• Yuri III Danilovich, Grand Prince of Russia (d. 1325)
• Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster (d. 1345)
• Hamdallah Mustawfi, Ilkhanid Iranian historian (d. 1349)
• Rudolf I of Bohemia (d. 1307)

Deaths

• February 16 – Gertrude of Hohenburg, queen consort of Germany (b. c.1225)
• September 10 – John II, Margrave of Brandenburg-Stendal (b. 1237)
• October 8 – Princess Constance of Greater Poland (b. c.1245)
• December 24 – Henry V, Count of Luxembourg (b. 1216)
• date unknown – Ertuğrul, father of Osman I (b. 1198)

References