1250

Events

Europe

• April 30 - King Louis IX of France is released by his Egyptian captors, after paying a ransom of one million dinars and turning over the city of Damietta.
• October 12 - A great storm shifts the mouth of the River Rother 12 miles (20 km) to the west; a battering series of strong storms significantly alter other coastal geography as well (see Romney Marsh).
• December 13 - Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, dies, beginning a 23-year-long interregnum known as the Great Interregnum. Frederick II is the last Holy Roman Emperor of the Hohenstaufen dynasty; after the interregnum, the empire passes to the Habsburgs.
• The Lombard League dissolves upon the death of its member states' nemesis, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor.
• King Afonso III of Portugal captures the Algarve from the Moors, thus completing the expulsion of the Moors from Portugal.
• Valdemar I of Sweden, first Swedish king of the Folkung house, becomes King of Sweden.
• Albertus Magnus isolates the element arsenic. He also first uses the word oriole to describe a type of bird (most likely the golden oriole of Great Britain).
• The University of Valladolid is founded in Spain.
• The Rialto Bridge in Venice, Italy is converted from a pontoon bridge to a permanent, raised wooden structure.
• Vincent of Beauvais completes his proto-encyclopedic work, The Greater Mirror.
• The Parlement law courts of ancien régime France are established.
• A plague breaks out in the city Naples (in present-day Italy), called the Naple's Plague.
• Villard de Honnecourt draws the first known image of a sawmill.

Asia

• A kurultai is called by Batu Khan in Siberia as part of maneuverings to eventually elect Möngke Khan as khan of the Mongol empire in 1251.
• Starting in this year and ending in 1275, the foreign-born Muslim Kuwabara serves as the Commissioner of Merchant Shipping for the Song Dynasty Chinese seaport at Quanzhou, where he writes a monograph on the Chinese shipping industry and maritime economy.

Africa

• July 3 - Battle of Fariskur: Louis IX of France is captured by Baibars' Mamluk army while he is in Egypt conducting the Seventh Crusade; he later has to ransom himself.
• The Bahri dynasty of Mamluks seize power in Egypt.
• The Welayta state is founded in present-day Ethiopia (see Rulers of Walayta).

Oceania

• Around this date, Samoa frees itself from Tongan rule. Beginning of the Malietoa dynasty in Samoa.

Births

• Pietro d'Abano, Italian physician, philosopher and astrologer (d. 1316)
• Guido Cavalcanti, Italian poet (d. 1300)
• Dmitri of Pereslavl, Grand-duke of Vladimir-Suzdal (d. 1294)
• Pierre Dubois, French publicist (approximate date; d. c. 1312)
• Moses de Leon, compiler of the Zohar (approximate date; d. 1305)
• Giovanni Pisano, Italian sculptor (approximate date; d. 1314)
• Asher ben Yehiel, Jewish Talmudist (approximate date; d. 1328)
• September 17 - Robert II of Artois

Deaths

• February 2 - King Eric XI of Sweden
• February 8 - Robert I of Artois, French Prince (b. 1216)
• February 8 - William II Longespee, English crusader
• April 6 - Guillaume de Sonnac, Grand Master of the Knights Templar
• June 18 - Teresa of Portugal
• August 9 - King Eric IV of Denmark (b. 1216)
• October 4 - Herman VI, Margrave of Baden
• December 13 - Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1194)
• Leonardo of Pisa, Italian mathematician
• Matej Ninoslav, Croatian ban

Eras and population estimates

Being a round number, the year 1250 is used to demarcate the beginning or ending of various eras or epochs. These include:

• Judaism's acknowledged center of Jewish thought and learning:
• End of the Geonim era in Babylonia (from 650)
• Beginning of the Rishonim era (until 1550)
• Medieval music - end of the Notre Dame school of polyphony
• Leonardo Fibonacci