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| - The County of Tripoli, though founded as a Crusader State and predominantly Christian, had been a vassal state of the Mongol Empire since around 1260, when Bohemond VI, under the influence of his father-in-law Hethum I, King of Armenia, preemptively submitted to the rapidly advancing Mongols. Tripoli provided troops in the Mongols' 1258 sack of Baghdad, as well as the 1260 Mongol invasions of Syria, which caused even further friction with the Muslims.
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| abstract
| - The County of Tripoli, though founded as a Crusader State and predominantly Christian, had been a vassal state of the Mongol Empire since around 1260, when Bohemond VI, under the influence of his father-in-law Hethum I, King of Armenia, preemptively submitted to the rapidly advancing Mongols. Tripoli provided troops in the Mongols' 1258 sack of Baghdad, as well as the 1260 Mongol invasions of Syria, which caused even further friction with the Muslims. After the Mongols destroyed Baghdad and Damascus, centers of the Abbasid and Ayyubid caliphates, the center of Islamic power shifted to Cairo, with the Egyptian Mamluks. Around the same time, the Mongols were slowed in their westward expansion by internal conflicts in the thinly-spread Empire. The Mamluks took advantage of this to advance northwards from Egypt, and re-establish dominion over Palestine and Syria, pushing the Mongols back to Persia. The Mamluks attempted to take Tripoli in a 1271 siege, but instead were persuaded to agree to a truce, because of the arrival of Prince Edward in Acre that month, with the beginning of the Ninth Crusade. The Mamluks negotiated a truce with Edward as well, though as it turned out his forces had been too small to be very effective. The Mongols, for their part, had not proven to be staunch defenders of their vassal Christian state of Tripoli. Abaqa Khan, the leader of the Mongol Ilkhanate and someone who had been sending envoys to Europe in an attempt to form a Franco-Mongol alliance against the Muslims, had died in 1282. He was succeeded by Tekuder, a convert to Islam. Under Tekuder's leadership, the now Islamic-leaning Mongols were not inclined to defend Christian territories against Muslim advances. This further freed the Mamluks to make attacks against the remaining coastal cities which were still under Crusader control. Tekuder was assassinated in 1284 and replaced by Abaqa's son Arghun, who was more sympathetic to Christianity. He continued his father's communications with Europe towards the possibility of forming an alliance, but still did not show much interest in protecting Tripoli. Meanwhile, the Mamluks continued to expand their control, conquering Margat in 1285, and Lattakiah in 1287. The Muslim Sultan Qalawun still had an official truce with Tripoli, but the Christians themselves gave him an excuse to break it. The Christians had been pursuing an unwise course, as rather than maintaining a united front against the Muslims, they had fallen into bickering battles with each other, of which the best known example was the dispute between the merchant republics, Genoa and Venice. Lucia of Tripoli, ruler of the County of Tripoli, had allied with the Genoese, and was therefore opposed by the Venetians, as well as by Bartolemew Embriaco of Gibelet. Frank envoys from either Bartolemew or the Venetians had been sent to Alexandria, Egypt to ask for the intervention of the Mamluk Sultan Qalawun against the Genoese, on the grounds that the Genoese might potentially dominate the Levant and obstruct or eliminate Mamluk trade if left in power. Because of the Venetian envoys, Qalawun thus had an excuse to break his truce with Tripoli, and he moved north with his army.
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