1210

All the evil that afflicts mankind comes from the North.

Pope Innocent III, reflecting on the invasion of Italy by Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV.

• The Albigensian Crusade rages in southern France. The towns of Bram, Minerve, and Terme fall to the Crusade after lengthy sieges.
• Pope Innocent III gives his approval to Saint Francis of Assisi to establish the Order of Friars Minor, better known as the Franciscan Order of Catholic monks.
• Mongol warlord Genghis Khan begins his assault on the Jurchin Empire in northern China.
• Breaking his promise to Pope Innocent III, Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV invades Sicily, whereupon Innocent promptly excommunicates him from the Church. Undeterred, Otto advances into southern Italy.
• King John of England undertakes a second expedition to shore up his authority in Ireland, accompanied by a massive force of 7,000 men. His primary goal of humbling the overly assertive barons William de Braose and Hugh de Lacy is successful, and despite the attempt by William's wife to bribe John with a bull and 400 cows, de Braose and de Lacy are forced to flee to France.
• Penniless minor French noble John of Brienne becomes king of the crusader state of Jerusalem when his friend King Philip II of France arranges for him to marry the queen of Jerusalem, Marie of Montferrat.
• The mighty Queen Tamar of Georgia invades and plunders northern Persia.
• German poet Gottfried Von Strassburg writes his epic poem Tristan und Isolde about this time, but dies before completing it.
• Indian king Ganapati, ruler of the Kakatiya kingdom in what is now Andhra Pradesh, frees his realm from the oppressive yoke of the Velanati Cholas.
• Welsh king of Gwynedd Llywelyn the Great declares himself the first Prince of Wales.
• A certain man named Ralph betrays the hedonistic Amalrician heresy to the Bishop of Paris, causing nine Amalricians to be burned at the stake and leading the Pope to ban works of Aristotle often quoted by the heretics.
• The River Tay floods in Scotland, obliterating the town of Perth.
• The Crosier Fathers and Brothers, a Roman Catholic religious order, is founded in Belgium.
• The Didot Perceval, an Arthurian romance in Old French, is completed about this time.
• Theodor Shkodrani writes the first book in Albanian by adapting Roman letters to the Albanian vernacular.
• Suspicious of the growing popularity of miracle plays, Pope Innocent III issues a papal edict forbidding clergy from acting on a public stage.
• Dunbrody Abbey, one of the most important Cistercian outposts in Ireland, is founded in what is now County Wexford.

These people were born in 1210:

• Giacomo Savelli, the future pope Honorius IV.
• Tebaldo Visconti, the future pope Gregory X (approximate).
• Portuguese king Afonso III.
• Henry I, king of Navarre.
• Arab physician Ibn an-Nafis, the first to accurately describe the circulation of blood.
• Swedish nobleman Birger Jarl.
• Pathbreaking Italian surgeon Guglielmo Da Saliceto.
• German mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg.
• Scottish queen Joan Plantagenet, wife of King Alexander II.

These people died in 1210:

• Muslim general Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, whose conquests in India laid the foundations for the Delhi Sultanate, and in whose honor Iltutmish erected the Qutb Minar, killed when he falls from his horse while playing polo.
• Chinese writers Lu You, one of the greatest poets of the Song Dynasty.
• Korean Buddhist priest Bojo Guksa (birthname Jinul), founder of the Chogye sect of Korean Buddhism.
• The former king Sverker II of Sweden, killed in the Battle of Gestilren while trying to win back his crown from current king Erik X.
• Moise, ruler of the kingdom of Makuria in what is now Sudan, succeeded by his son Yahya.
• Arab scholar Majd ad-Din ibn al-Athir.
• English historian Gervase of Canterbury.

1209 - 1210 - 1211

13th century