1250

Events

February 2 - King Erik Eriksson of Sweden dies. The ten-year-old Valdemar, the eldest son of Birger Jarl, is elected King of Sweden, and becomes the first king from the House of Bjälbo.
October 12 - A great storm shifts the mouth of the River Rother in England 12 miles to the west; a battering series of strong storms significantly alters other coastal geography around Romney Marsh.
December 13 - Emperor Frederick II dies, beginning the 23-year-long "Great Interregnum". Frederick 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.
Albertus Magnus isolates the element arsenic, as the 8th discovered metal. He also first uses the word "oriole" to describe a type of bird.
The Rialto Bridge in Venice is converted from a pontoon bridge to a permanent, raised wooden structure.
The Ponts Couverts fortified bridges of Strasbourg are completed.
Vincent of Beauvais completes his proto-encyclopedic work Speculum Maius.
The first of the Parlements of Ancien Régime France is established.
Villard de Honnecourt draws the first known image of a sawmill.
The first usage is made of the English word "cuckold", according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Medieval music: The Notre Dame school of polyphony ends.

July 9 – The Qaymariyya tribe engineers a coup d'état to hand over Damascus to An-Nasir Yusuf. The garrison in the citadel surrenders later to him.
A kurultai is called by Batu Khan in Siberia as part of maneuverings which will elect Möngke Khan as khan of the Mongol Empire in 1251.
Starting in this year and ending in 1275, the Muslim Shougeng Pu, likely a Persian or an Arab, serves as the Commissioner of Merchant Shipping for the Song dynasty Chinese seaport at Quanzhou, due to his effort in defeating pirates.

April 8 - Battle of Fariskur: Louis IX is captured by Baibars' Mamluk army while he is in Egypt conducting the Seventh Crusade; he later has to ransom himself.
April 30 - King Louis IX is released by his Egyptian captors after paying a ransom of one million dinars and turning over the city of Damietta.
May 2 - Al-Muazzam Turanshah, Ayyubid ruler of Egypt, is murdered, ending effective Ayyubid Dynasty rule in the country. He is briefly succeeded by his widow, Sultana Shajar al-Durr.
July 21 - Aybak becomes ruler of Egypt, beginning the Bahri Dynasty of the Mamluk Sultanate. After 5 days he stands down and the six-year-old Al-Ashraf Musa is nominally proclaimed sultan.
The Welayta state is founded in modern-day Ethiopia.
In Tunis, a popular rebellion against newly arrived, wealthy and influential Andalusian refugees breaks out, and is violently put down.
The Hafsid caliph al-Mustansir enforces laws of ghiyar, or differentiation for non-Muslims. As such, Jews have to wear a distinguishing badge which Tunisian Jews will have to wear into the nineteenth century.

Samoa frees itself from Tongan rule, which begins the Malietoa dynasty in Samoa.

The Flemish town of Douai emits the first recorded redeemable annuities in medieval Europe, confirming a trend of consolidation of local public debt started in 1218, in Rheims.
The Sienese bankers belonging to the firm known as the Gran Tavola, under the steering of the Bonsignori Brothers, become the main financiers of the Papacy.