Siege of Laodicea, 1267

The Siege of Laodicea was the last major military action initiated by the Salghurid Sultanate. It ended in defeat.

The death of the Sultan Ahmed in 1265 had brought to power his nineteen year old son Tutuş, an ambitious young man eager to prove himself as a military commander. To that end, Tutuş decided to attempt to capture the last remaining Roman enclaves on the Syrian coastline, all that remained of the conquests of the Emperor John II a century previously. The three cities, Tripolis, Antarados, and Laodicea had become prosperous centres of trade, with Laodicea being particularly important lying as it did at the junction of Salghurid and Jurchen territory.

Tutuş spent his first year in power crushing rivals, before marching on the Syrian cities in the spring of 1266. Tripolis and Antardos yielded immediately to the Sultan, their military garrisons fleeing north to Laodicea. The capture of the cities was trumpeted as a great victory by the Salghurids, and Tutuş immediately converted all but one church in each city to mosques. After a brief return to Egypt, Tutuş returned to Syria and laid siege to Laodicea in November 1266, accompanied by the bulk of his army.

The Syrian cities lay under the jurisdiction of the Grand Duchy of Cyprus, a holdover from the time when the conquests of John II had originally fallen to Kurboga and the Roman administration in the area had fled to Cyprus. In 1266, the ruling Megas Doux was George Evagoras, nephew and namesake of the Emperor George I of Genoa. Evagoras had held the position since the death of his father Theodore back in 1218 but had never seen much military action, being only a youth at the time Syria had fallen to the Jurchens. Nonetheless, upon the news of the Salghurid invasion, Evagoras gathered what troops he had available on Cyprus and, commandeering a number of vessels, set sail for Laodicea. The relief effort would end in disaster, however, when the Cypriots were confronted in battle before the walls of Laodicea by the Salghurid royal army, and defeated. The Cypriot troops, chiefly inexperienced levies, broke and fled into the city, and Evagoras himself was killed on the battlefield. Morale in Laodicea remained sufficiently high, however, to repulse a Salghurid attack upon the walls.

By this point, it had become abundantly clear to the government, still headed by the septuagenarian Demetrios Simeopoulos, that something would have to be done. A Tagma regiment from Cappadocia, together with a number of Anatolian levies and mercenaries from Bulgaria and Wallachia, duly set sail from the Anatolian port of Attaleia, under the joint command of Stephen Doukas, Strategos of the Anatolikon and Gregory Maleinos, brother-in-law of the Emperor Constantine. The expedition was something of a marvel of combined military and naval logistics, and was cited at length in a number of later military treatises, one reason for the detailed information we have. This second relief force landed without incident to the north of Laodicea in May 1267 and was resupplied by the supportive Jurchen Khan Wúqǐmǎi, who was eager to prevent either of his major western vassals growing in power.

Thus refreshed, the Roman army pressed on, and brought the Salghurid forces to battle in a series of short engagements in the first week of June. Initially, the well defended Salgurid positions held firm, but they were shattered by a charge of Hungarian mounted knights (political refugees from the recent war of the Princes and the Queens) late in the evening of the fifth of June. Ramadan had begun at this point, and the Salghurid army may well have been weakened from a day without food. Whatever the case, the Salghurid siege line was broken, and the Sultan Tutuş sent into flight. Stephen Doukas entered Laodicea in triumph, but in doing so unwittingly missed out on the real glory of the expedition, which fell to Gregory Maleinos, who, leading his Hungarians, pursued and captured the Sultan's harem, as well as several hundred slaves, a substantial amount of gold and most importantly, Tutuş' only son, the two year old Kürboğa. Using the little prince as a prize, Maleinos was able to negotiate the return of both Tripolis and Antarbos, as well as substantial reparation payments.

In the aftermath of the war, Doukas and Maleinos returned to Constantinople, where they enjoyed an ovation in the Hippodrome in the old style. The Sultan's wives and daughters were paraded through the City, before being forcibly converted to Christianity and married off to various soldiers who had distinguished themselves during the campaign. Doukas, however, had little time to enjoy the fruits of victory, as he fell ill and died in the harsh weather of February 1268. Maleinos, for his part, returned to the East, and set himself up as viceroy of Cyprus for George Evagoras' young sons Theodore and Constantine.