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Seven days without a ruler

Jerusalem had been captured on 15 July 1099. Seven days later, on 22 July, the crusade's leaders elected Godfrey of Bouillon as the city's secular ruler.

Much of the expedition was returning west, and the crusaders needed a resident authority to govern and defend what they had taken.

Prince of the city

The contemporary Gesta Francorum calls Godfrey princeps civitatis — prince of the city — and says his charge was to fight Jerusalem's enemies and protect its Christians.

He did not assume the unambiguous title king of Jerusalem. Evidence that the polity was already regarded as a kingdom before Baldwin I's coronation in 1100 is scant.

The contemporary source says Godfrey was brought to the Holy Sepulchre after being elected; it does not securely place the electoral meeting inside the church.

What the sources will not settle

Later narratives say Raymond IV of Toulouse was considered before Godfrey and refused royal dignity, but the election's deliberations are imperfectly documented.

Godfrey's title is disputed. The only firm contemporary evidence for advocatus ecclesiae Sancti Sepulchri comes from a later 1099 letter issued while Godfrey was absent; other sources call him princeps, duke, king or lord. The familiar crown-of-thorns explanation is a later narrative tradition, and may originally relate to objections raised at Baldwin I's coronation.

A recent scholarly study argues that the safest date for the kingdom's creation is Baldwin I's coronation on 25 December 1100, not Godfrey's election.

Two documents, not one treaty

At Worms on 23 September 1122, Emperor Henry V and representatives of Pope Calixtus II concluded a settlement expressed through reciprocal imperial and papal instruments: the Heinricianum and the Calixtinum.

The accepted date rests on testimony rather than on the documents. The surviving imperial instrument is itself undated, and the Monumenta Germaniae Historica notes that the exact day ultimately depends on Ekkehard of Aura's chronicle and dependent manuscript testimony.

Lamberto of Ostia led the papal delegation that negotiated with Henry and the imperial princes.

What Henry gave up

Henry renounced investiture with ring and staff, and granted canonical election and free consecration throughout the churches of his kingdom and empire.

He promised to restore possessions of Saint Peter that he held, to assist in recovering those he did not hold, to address other property lost during the conflict according to justice, and to grant peace to Calixtus and his supporters.

The original Heinricianum survives; the papal Calixtinum is known through later copies, and its original documentary form is debated.

What he kept

Calixtus permitted German episcopal and abbatial elections to occur in the emperor's presence, without simony or violence. In a disputed election, Henry could assist the better-supported party on clerical advice.

The elected prelate received the temporal regalia from the emperor through a sceptre. In Italy and Burgundy this was to occur within six months after consecration.

The concession concerning imperial presence applied specifically to elections in the German kingdom, not uniformly across the empire.

The 13 May 1134 fire has no source

No primary, scholarly, French-government or monument chronology consulted records a fire damaging the abbey church of Saint-Denis on 13 May 1134.

The exact date and the fire claim appear only in derivative timeline material.

This entry may conflate Saint-Denis with the September 1134 fire at Chartres, which destroyed much of that city while sparing or only affecting portions of its cathedral complex.

Suger's own reason was the crowds

Suger's explanation connects enlargement of the church to severe crowding on feast days, not to fire damage. He was abbot of Saint-Denis from 1122 to 1151 and commissioned the enlargement and decoration.

He described feast-day congestion so dense that people could not move their feet, and women were forced over other worshippers' heads toward the altar.

The building campaigns that are documented

Reliable chronologies place Suger's western building campaign in the 1130s, its dedication in 1140, and the construction and consecration of the eastern chevet in 1140–1144.

Modern chronologies vary on when the western campaign began — approximately 1130, 1135 or 1137.

None of the reliable accounts makes it the consequence of a fire on 13 May 1134.

13 September 1171, in Cairo

Al-Adid, the fourteenth and last Fatimid caliph, died in Cairo on Monday, 10 Muharram 567 AH, corresponding to 13 September 1171. He was twenty, and had reigned since 1160.

He died without learning that three days earlier Saladin had ordered the Friday khutba in Cairo to name the Abbasid caliph al-Mustadi instead of him.

The caliphate was not abolished only when he died; his name had already gone from the sermon on 10 September.

The palace changes hands

After the death, Saladin attended the formal condolence gathering and took possession of the Fatimid palace and its contents through his official Baha al-Din Qaraqush.

No Fatimid successor assumed the caliphate, and the family was subsequently confined and prevented from restoring the dynasty.

Ibn al-Athir says the public break produced so little resistance that “no two goats locked horns.”

How he died is not settled

The date of death is well attested; the cause is not. Serious illness is reported, while later sources variously allege suicide, poisoning or murder.

The modern specialist Heinz Halm found no serious evidence for violent elimination. Natural death is therefore better supported than poisoning, but cannot be proved conclusively.

Saladin acquired no new office that day — he was already Fatimid vizier and effective ruler, and scholarship notes that Nur al-Din did not publicly recognise him as a formal Zengid viceroy.

June 1183: an exchange, not a storming

Saladin's forces took possession of Aleppo and its citadel in June 1183, ending the city's role as the last principal centre of Zengid power in Syria.

After Saladin camped outside the walls and fighting occurred around the city, its Zengid ruler Imad al-Din Zengi II negotiated its surrender rather than waiting for a successful assault.

Ibn al-Athir's translated conversion places the handover on 11 June; the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi converts 18 Safar 579 to 12 June.

The terms

Imad al-Din ceded Aleppo in exchange for Sinjar, Nisibis, Khabur, Raqqa and Saruj, and undertook to provide personal and military service when summoned.

Ibn al-Athir says Aleppo's residents learned of the secret agreement when Saladin's banner appeared over the citadel. Some mocked the departing ruler with a wash tub, shouting that he was fit to wash clothes rather than rule.

Saladin's chancery boasted that the exchange was like receiving gold dinars while paying in silver dirhams.

What it did not make him

The transfer materially strengthened Saladin's control of Syria, but it did not make him sultan for the first time: Abbasid investiture as sultan of Egypt and Syria had come in May 1175.

Nor did it complete his hold on the region. Mosul remained outside his direct possession, and accepted client status only in 1186.

25 April 1185, in the Kanmon Strait

A Minamoto fleet commanded in the battle by Minamoto no Yoshitsune defeated the Taira fleet at Dan-no-Ura in the Kanmon Strait between Honshu and Kyushu, on the day conventionally converted to 25 April 1185.

The main fighting probably ran from about noon to four in the afternoon. Azuma Kagami reports more than 840 Minamoto ships against more than 500 Taira vessels; other narrative sources give Minamoto totals ranging from more than 700 to more than 3,000.

The commonly listed figure of “some 300 ships” is not supported by any of the principal counts.

The child emperor and the regalia

The child Emperor Antoku drowned with his grandmother Taira no Tokiko during the collapse of the Taira fleet. He was six by modern age-counting and eight by traditional Japanese counting.

According to the principal narrative tradition, Tokiko carried the emperor into the sea.

Of the court's three sacred treasures, the mirror and the jewel were recovered; the ceremonial sword carried with Antoku's party was lost at sea.

What the epic added

The defeat destroyed the Taira's remaining organised bid for national power. Taira no Munemori and other survivors were captured, while numerous Taira leaders died or drowned themselves.

The detailed battle narrative depends heavily on sources such as The Tale of the Heike and later chronicles, which combine history, literary shaping, religious meaning and legend. Modern reconstructions dispute whether a reversal of the tide decided the fighting; one expert reconstruction places the current at only about one knot.

The battle ended the Genpei War's effective military contest, although Yoritomo's formal appointment as shogun came later, in 1192.

July 1187: the field army is gone

After destroying the kingdom's field army at Hattin on 4 July 1187, Saladin rapidly divided his forces to occupy its inadequately defended cities and fortresses.

He reached Acre four days after the battle, and Acre surrendered. Separate detachments took Nazareth, Haifa, Caesarea, Nablus and other places.

The dispersed garrisons had no realistic relief force; most of the kingdom's mobile army had been killed or captured.

South to Ascalon

Al-Adil advanced from Egypt and captured Mirabel (Majdal Yaba) and Jaffa. Mirabel was not immediately demolished.

Saladin began besieging Ascalon on 23 August; it surrendered on 5 September.

His men then occupied Gaza, Bayt Jibrin and Latrun without resistance.

What was still standing in September

By September Saladin controlled the major ports from Ascalon north to Jubayl, except Tyre. That reopened the land connection between Egypt and Palestine and allowed an Egyptian fleet to operate between Alexandria and Acre.

Tyre, Jerusalem, Kerak, Montréal, Safed, Belvoir and a few other strongholds still resisted. Tyre did not fall in this campaign; Conrad of Montferrat organised the resistance that kept it out of Saladin's hands.

Jerusalem was besieged next, from 20 September, and surrendered on 2 October.

Spring 1189: the last Transjordan fortress

Montréal — also called Shawbak or Shobak — went on resisting until approximately April or May 1189, and surrendered after a siege reported as lasting about two years.

Sources place the surrender in April or May; an exact day is not securely established.

Its fall ended the remaining major Frankish resistance in Oultrejordain, and the fortress passed to al-Adil.

Kerak had already gone

Kerak and Montréal did not fall together. Kerak surrendered to al-Adil in November 1188 after a prolonged blockade — roughly six months earlier.

After Hattin removed any prospect of relief, Saladin's forces isolated the strong Transjordan fortresses and starved their garrisons into negotiated surrender.

Tyre was not all that was left

Saladin had devastated the Principality of Antioch during the summer of 1188, taking places from Jabala to Baghras, before accepting an eight-month truce requested by Bohemond III.

That truce ran from 1 October 1188 through the last day of May 1189. Its expiry may explain why a generalised chronology placed the northern situation under “May 1189.”

Reginald of Sidon held Beaufort until spring 1190, and Tripoli, Antioch, Margat and the Tortosa citadel also remained outside Saladin's control.

Tarain, 1192

At Tarain, near modern Taraori in Haryana, an army led by the Ghurid ruler Mu'izz al-Din Muhammad defeated the forces of the Chahamana king Prithviraj III in 1192.

Mu'izz al-Din had renewed his invasion after being defeated by Prithviraj's forces at the First Battle of Tarain the previous year.

No secure contemporary evidence fixes the second battle to a precise day.

What the chronicles cannot agree on

The defeat ended Prithviraj's ability to resist the Ghurid advance and opened Delhi and Ajmer to Ghurid political control.

Sources agree that Prithviraj was captured or killed after the defeat, but disagree about the sequence. The Tabaqat-i Nasiri has him captured and killed; the earlier Taj al-Ma'asir permits a brief restoration at Ajmer before his later execution.

Exact army strengths are not recoverable — medieval figures such as 120,000 Ghurids or 300,000 opponents are literary claims, not verified force totals.

What did not happen at Tarain

Mu'izz al-Din left Qutb al-Din Aibak in charge of the newly acquired north Indian territories and returned west; the subsequent expansion was conducted largely by Aibak and other commanders.

The battle did not destroy all Indian political power in the north: numerous kingdoms remained independent and Chahamana resistance continued. The Delhi Sultanate was founded in 1206, fourteen years later, not on the field at Tarain.

The later story that a blinded Prithviraj killed Muhammad of Ghor by shooting toward his voice belongs to the much later Prithviraj Raso tradition; Muhammad lived until 1206.

Twelve days of fever

After riding out in wet weather to welcome the returning pilgrimage caravan on 20 February 1193, Saladin developed a fever that night and deteriorated over the following twelve days.

He died in Damascus at dawn on Wednesday, 4 March 1193, corresponding to 27 Safar 589 AH.

The illness is described as a fever with headache, weakness and delirium; identifying a specific disease would be speculation.

Buried the same afternoon

Bahāʾ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād attended the court during the final illness and recorded the death and the public mourning. Crowds waited outside the citadel and tried to read the faces of Bahāʾ al-Dīn and al-Fadil as they emerged from the sickroom.

Saladin was buried that afternoon in a garden house within the Citadel of Damascus. His body was transferred to the mausoleum beside the Umayyad Mosque in 1195.

That first funeral was so simple that the burial expenses, and even material for the grave's bricks, reportedly had to be borrowed.

Four rulers, no single successor

Al-Afdal, who was present in Damascus and had previously received the army's oath, immediately became ruler of Damascus, Jerusalem and much of southern Syria and Palestine.

Al-Aziz took control in Egypt, al-Zahir retained Aleppo and its dependencies, and their uncle al-Adil remained established at Kerak and in the Jazira. The partition was not invented that day — Saladin had already stationed sons and relatives as provincial rulers.

One thing the day's usual telling gets wrong: “Saladin” does not mean “the Lion.” Salah al-Din is an honorific meaning approximately “Righteousness of the Faith”; it is his uncle's honorific, Asad al-Din, that contains the word for lion.

1192 capture, 1193 consolidation

Encyclopaedia Iranica dates the initial Ghurid capture or occupation of Delhi to 588–89 AH / 1192, when Qutb al-Din Aibak occupied the forts of Delhi and Meerut. The year 1193 belongs to what came next.

A traditional reconstruction places Aibak's removal of Delhi's remaining Tomara ruler in 1193, allegedly because that ruler harboured hostile designs. This is consolidation after the 1192 occupation, not a wholly new capture.

The ruler's identity and the treason story are poorly documented.

From subordinate to direct rule

The Second Battle of Tarain in 1192 had broken the principal Chahamana resistance and enabled the Ghurid occupation. In the traditional account, allegations of disloyalty then supplied the pretext for removing the retained ruler.

Delhi passed from an indirect arrangement through a local subordinate to direct Ghurid administration under Aibak.

It became a durable base for further operations in the Ganges–Yamuna plain.

The campaigns this date borrows

Bakhtiyar Khalji's advance into Bihar and Bengal was a separate eastern campaign, dated by Encyclopaedia Iranica to 1202–1204. He was not an actor in Delhi's consolidation.

India's UNESCO tentative-list submission dates Bakhtiyar Khalji's destruction of the Vikramashila monastery to 1203.

Nalanda did not simply cease to exist on a documented day in 1193; UNESCO dates its functional cessation as an institution to the thirteenth century.

There is no 1200 event

No consulted scholarly source identifies a discrete event in 1200 in which Temüjin united “about half” of the Mongol clans, and the claimed fraction has no identified evidentiary basis.

Christopher Atwood's Encyclopedia of Mongolia says the sources diverge so sharply that Temüjin's political chronology before 1201 is nearly impossible to reconstruct. Only his participation in a 1196 campaign against the Tatars is firmly dated.

What 1201 actually looked like

By 1201 Temüjin had attained dominance among the Mongol clans. Opposing Mongols, Tayichi'ud, Tatars, Naimans, Merkits and others still supported Jamukha against him.

Toghril, the Kereyid Ong Khan, was still Temüjin's powerful ally around 1200; their decisive rupture and war came later.

The coalition ranged against Temüjin in 1201 was large enough to choose Jamukha as a rival khan.

The dates that are secure

Temüjin's decisive defeat of Ong Khan's Kereyids came in autumn 1203; his victories over the Naimans and Merkits followed in 1204. He had fallen to only about 2,600 followers after a defeat that spring, yet destroyed the Kereyid regime before the year ended.

The formal founding event occurred in 1206 at the source of the Onon River, where a great assembly enthroned Temüjin as Chinggis Khan and designated the Mongol polity.

“Genghis Khan” is best reserved for the title formalised at that assembly, although the history of the title itself has generated scholarly debate.