1290

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political events

The Ottoman Empire that will rule part of Europe and much of the Mediterranean for 6 centuries has its beginnings in a Bithynian Islamic principality founded by Osman (or Othman) al-Ghazi, 31, who 2 years ago succeeded his father, Ertogrul, as chief of the Seljuk Turks.

The Khalji dynasty that will rule Delhi until 1320 is founded by the Firuz shah Jalal-ud-din (see 1287). An elderly Muslim long resident among the Afghans, Jalal-ud-din overthrows the Muslim slave dynasty founded in 1266 (see 1296).

Cuman rebels assassinate Hungary's Ladislas IV at Körösszeg July 10. Dead at age 28, he is succeeded by his senior kinsman, who will rule as András III until his death in 1301, the last of the Arpád dynasty founded in 907.

Bohemia's Wenceslas II has his mother's secret husband, Zavis of Falckenstein, beheaded (see 1278); now 19, he begins ruling on his own (see 1291).

Sweden's king Magnus I Ladulás dies at age 50 after an 11-year reign in which he has helped to introduce a feudal class system. He is succeeded by his 10-year-old son, who will be crowned in 1302 and reign until 1318 as Birger III Magnusson.

Scotland's titular queen Margaret, the maid of Norway, reaches the Orkneys, where she dies in September under mysterious circumstances at age 7. Margaret had been betrothed to Edward of Caernarfon, 6-year-old son of England's Edward I, who intervened to secure her throne in 1286. Her death leaves Scotland without a monarch, and a Scottish delegation asks Edward I to arbitrate competing claims to the throne (see 1291).

religion

England's Edward I exiles the country's Jews at the behest of Italians who seek to handle English banking and commerce (see 1259; France, 1252). Jewish communities at Lincoln, York, and London are uprooted, a total of about 3,000 are placed on ships for transport to the Continent, and many are drowned in the Channel when a captain makes them disembark on a sandbar at low tide and then refuses to let them reboard as the tide rises (see 1306).

environment

An earthquake in China's Zhili (Chihli, or Bei Zhi Li [Beijrli]) Province September 27 kills an estimated 100,000, but while droughts, floods, and other natural disasters combine with brutal winters to produce famine virtually every year in parts of northern China, the country as a whole remains well fed.

population

Population in north China will reach 10 to 20 million (plus a few million in Mongol territory in central Asia) in this decade as compared with 50 million in the south.

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