| Battle of Machghara | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Fifth Crusade | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Kingdom of Hungary |  Ayyubid Dynasty | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Dionysus (POW) | Unknown | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 500 cavalry | Unknown | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| All but 3 killed or captured | Unknown | ||||||
The Battle of Machghara occurred on December 15, 1217, as part of the Fifth Crusade. In it, an army led by a Hungarian nobleman was ambushed and defeated in Machghara.
Shortly after the failed siege of Mount Tabor, a handful of adventurous crusaders, mainly Hungarians, decided to launch a raid against the castle of Beaufort. The Hungarian leader, a certain rich nobleman named Dionysus, led a force of 500 cavalry. Arab sources claim that they were led by the Nephew of the Hungarian king, Andrew. [1] [2]
The Balian of Sidon tried to warn the Hungarians of the difficulties in the mountainous region, inhabited by mountaineers who harassed the Crusader territory of Sidon but paid no attention to it. The Hungarians set out and arrived in Machghara, located between the mountains, whose seat is approximately halfway between Sidon and Damascus. The inhabitants learned of the upcoming raid and evacuated the town. The Hungarians rested there for three days. On December 15, the Muslims attacked the Hungarians, who were taken by surprise, killing and capturing a large number of men and horses. Their leader fell prisoner. [1] [3] [4] [5]
Those who escaped the massacre retreated towards Sidon. During the battle, the Hungarians captured a Muslim prisoner called al-Jamus, and he guided them to a safe route in exchange for his freedom, to which they agreed. However, the Crusaders entered a deep ravine, where they were chased by Muslims and slaughtered. The Hungarians executed the Muslim prisoner for his treachery. Few of the Crusaders survived the massacre. According to Abu Shama, only 3 out of 500 Crusaders survived and reached Sidon. [1] [3] [4] [5] The prisoners were then taken to Damascus. [4]
The battle marked the end of the Hungarian Crusade. King Andrew began preparations to return home. [3]
The Kingdom of Jerusalem, also known as the Crusader Kingdom, was a Crusader state that was established in the Levant immediately after the First Crusade. It lasted for almost two hundred years, from the accession of Godfrey of Bouillon in 1099 until the fall of Acre in 1291. Its history is divided into two periods with a brief interruption in its existence, beginning with its collapse after the siege of Jerusalem in 1187 and its restoration after the Third Crusade in 1192.
Year 1147 (MCXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar.
Year 1227 (MCCXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar.
The Sixth Crusade (1228–1229), also known as the Crusade of Frederick II, was a military expedition to recapture Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land. It began seven years after the failure of the Fifth Crusade and involved very little actual fighting. The diplomatic maneuvering of the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, Frederick II, resulted in the Kingdom of Jerusalem regaining some control over Jerusalem for much of the ensuing fifteen years as well as over other areas of the Holy Land.
The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the Middle Ages. The objective was the recovery of the Holy Land from Islamic rule. While Jerusalem had been under Muslim rule for hundreds of years, by the 11th century the Seljuk takeover of the region threatened local Christian populations, pilgrimages from the West, and the Byzantine Empire itself. The earliest initiative for the First Crusade began in 1095 when Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos requested military support from the Council of Piacenza in the empire's conflict with the Seljuk-led Turks. This was followed later in the year by the Council of Clermont, during which Pope Urban II supported the Byzantine request for military assistance and also urged faithful Christians to undertake an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
The Fifth Crusade was a campaign in a series of Crusades by Western Europeans to reacquire Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land by first conquering Egypt, ruled by the powerful Ayyubid sultanate, led by al-Adil, brother of Saladin.
Hugh I succeeded to the throne of Cyprus on 1 April 1205, underage upon the death of his elderly father Aimery, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem. His mother was Eschiva of Ibelin, heiress of that branch of Ibelins who had held Bethsan and Ramleh.
Abu Sa'id Taj al-Dawla Tutush or Tutush I, was the Seljuk emir of Damascus from 1078 to 1092, and sultan of Damascus from 1092 to 1094.
Ridwan was a Seljuk emir of Aleppo from 1095 until his death.
The siege of Ascalon took place from 25 January to 22 August 1153, in the time period between the Second and Third Crusades, and resulted in the capture of the Fatimid Egyptian fortress by the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Ascalon was an important castle that was used by the Fatimids to launch raids into the Crusader kingdom's territory, and by 1153 it was the last coastal city in Palestine that was not controlled by the Crusaders.
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Christian Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these military expeditions are those to the Holy Land between 1095 and 1291 that had the objective of reconquering Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Muslim rule after the region had been conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate centuries earlier. Beginning with the First Crusade, which resulted in the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, dozens of military campaigns were organised, providing a focal point of European history for centuries. Crusading declined rapidly after the 15th century.
Balian I Grenier was the Count of Sidon and one of the most important lords of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1202 to 1241. He succeeded his father Renaud. His mother was Helvis, a daughter of Balian of Ibelin. He was a powerful and important representative of the native aristocracy during the three Levantine crusades of the first half of the thirteenth century.
Guérin de Montaigu, also known as Garin de Montaigu or Pierre Guérin de Montaigu, was a nobleman from Auvergne, who became the fourteenth Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, serving from 1207–1228. He succeeded the Grand Master Geoffroy le Rat after his death in 1206, and was succeeded by Bertrand de Thessy.
Mongol raids into Palestine took place towards the end of the Crusades, following the temporarily successful Mongol invasions of Syria, primarily in 1260 and 1300. Following each of these invasions, there existed a period of a few months during which the Mongols were able to launch raids southward into Palestine, reaching as far as Gaza.
The siege of Jajce was a siege of the town of Jajce and its citadel in 1463, in a push by Ottomans to conquer as much of the Bosnian Kingdom, and continuation of the Ottoman–Hungarian Wars. After the fall of Travnik and royal fortress of Bobovac, in the initial days of invasion, Ottomans, led by Sultan captured the town. One of the parties pursued Bosnian King Stjepan Tomašević, and caught up with him at Ključ fortress, after which he was brought to Jajce and executed. Soon the Ottomans forces withdraw, leaving the town under the protection of a small garrison. The Hungarian took the opportunity to capture the citadel, and this meant that Ottoman advancement in Bosnia was halted for the time being. The northern part of Bosnia were brought under Hungarian control, and divided into three administrative regions, Banate of Jajce, Banate of Srebrenik, established around Srebrenik fortress, and a puppet statelet named "Bosnian Kingdom". This situation and Jajce under Hungarian garrison will last until 1527 when the Ottomans finally took the town, and breaking the lines advanced northward to Hungary and westward to Bihać, which was part of the Kingdom of Croatia.
The History of Jerusalem during the Kingdom of Jerusalem began with the capture of the city by the Latin Christian forces at the apogee of the First Crusade. At that point it had been under Muslim rule for over 450 years. It became the capital of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, until it was again conquered by the Ayyubids under Saladin in 1187. For the next forty years, a series of Christian campaigns, including the Third and Fifth Crusades, attempted in vain to retake the city, until Emperor Frederick II led the Sixth Crusade and successfully negotiated its return in 1229.
The Barons' Crusade (1239–1241), also called the Crusade of 1239, was a crusade to the Holy Land that, in territorial terms, was the most successful crusade since the First Crusade. Called by Pope Gregory IX, the Barons' Crusade broadly embodied the highest point of papal endeavor "to make crusading a universal Christian undertaking." Gregory IX called for a crusade in France, England, and Hungary with different degrees of success. Although the crusaders did not achieve any glorious military victories, they used diplomacy to successfully play the two warring factions of the Ayyubid dynasty against one another for even more concessions than Frederick II had gained during the more well-known Sixth Crusade. For a few years, the Barons' Crusade returned the Kingdom of Jerusalem to its largest size since 1187.
The battle of Mansurah took place from 26–28 August 1221 near the Egyptian city of Mansurah and was the final battle in the Fifth Crusade (1217–1221). It pitted the Crusader forces under papal legate Pelagius Galvani and John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem, against the Ayyubid forces of the sultan al-Kamil. The result was a decisive victory for the Egyptians and forced the surrender of the Crusaders and their departure from Egypt.
The siege of Mount Tabor was a military engagement between the Crusader armies of the Fifth Crusade and the Ayyubids. The combined Crusader armies laid siege to Mount Tabor, which was the objective of the Hungarian Crusade. The crusaders ultimately failed to capture the fort.
The battle of Hama happened in August 1178, when a Latin force raided the vicinity of Hama, which was under Ayyubid control. The Ayyubid repelled the raid and captured many prisoners who would be later executed.