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 15 – 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 Hariphunchai falls, as its capital Lamphun (in modern-day Thailand) is captured by King Mangrai's Lannathai Kingdom.

Middle East[]

• October 29 – Second Battle of Homs: Mamluk sultan Qalawun defeats an invasion of Syria, by Mongol Ilkhan Abaqa Khan.
• Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, becomes bey of the Söğüt 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[]

• New Pope Martin IV excommunicates Michael VIII Palaiologos, who has newly re-established the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople, and authorizes Charles I of Anjou to make a Crusade against him, but this will be suspended the following year by the outbreak of the War of the Sicilian Vespers.
• 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 Lombard merchants to open a changing business in his realm.^[1]

Religion[]

• February 22 – Frenchman Pope Martin IV succeeds Pope Nicholas III, as the 189th pope.

Births[]

• December 25 – Alice de Lacy, 4th Countess of Lincoln (d. 1348)
• Castruccio Castracani, duke of Lucca (d. 1328)
• Yuri III Danilovich, Grand Prince of Russia (d. 1325)
• Agnes of Austria, queen consort of Hungary (d. 1364)
• Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster (d. 1345)
• Hamdallah Mustawfi, Ilkhanid Iranian historian (d. 1349)
• Rudolf I of Bohemia (d. 1307)
• Sancia of Majorca, queen consort and regent of Naples (approximate date) (d. 1345)

Deaths[]

• February 16 – Gertrude of Hohenberg, 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, Turkish father of Osman I (b. 1198)

References[]