Battle of La Forbie (1244)

Also known as Harbiyya

The forgotten catastrophe that sealed the fate of Crusader Palestine. By the 1240s the Crusader states had regained Jerusalem through diplomacy, but their position was fragile. In 1244 a horde of displaced Khwarezmian Turks — refugees from the Mongol conquests in Central Asia — swept through Syria and sacked Jerusalem, driving out its Christian inhabitants for the last time. The Crusaders allied with their former enemy, the Ayyubid rulers of Damascus and Homs, and together they marched to confront the Khwarezmians and their Egyptian allies near the village of La Forbie (Harbiyya), northeast of Gaza. On 17 October 1244 the allied army was annihilated: over five thousand Crusader troops were killed and eight hundred captured, while the Syrian contingent was routed. It was the worst Christian defeat in the Holy Land since Hattin, and the Crusader states never recovered their interior territories. Jerusalem would not return to Christian control for nearly seven hundred years.

Coordinates: 31.6057°, 34.5464°

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