1124
Song loses Yanjing to Jurchen
The Jin dynasty took the Sixteen Prefectures, including what is now Beijing, from their nominal Song allies. The Song had hired the Jurchen to destroy the Liao and then found themselves facing a far more dangerous neighbor. The mistake would cost them North China within three years, a catastrophic miscalculation that haunted Song strategists for the rest of the dynasty's existence.
Fall of Tyre
With a Venetian fleet blockading the seaward side, the great Phoenician port fell to the Crusaders after a six-month siege. Venice was rewarded with a third of the city and a commercial quarter that would underwrite her Levantine empire for three centuries. The Venetians also received a church, a marketplace, and exemption from tolls throughout the kingdom, privileges that made them the most powerful Italian community in the Latin East.
Venetian fleet helps capture Tyre
The great Phoenician port of Tyre, the last major coastal city on the Levantine shore to resist the Franks, finally surrendered after a joint siege by Baldwin II's army and a Venetian fleet of over a hundred war galleys. Venice extracted a full third of the city and sweeping trading privileges in exchange - concessions that would underpin its Levantine commercial empire for generations.
Balak's Crusader prisoners escape Kharput
In a swashbuckling episode recorded by Fulcher of Chartres, the Crusader captives at Kharput - including Baldwin II himself - overpowered their guards, seized the castle, and held it briefly. Belek Ghazi retook it within days; most of the prisoners were recaptured or killed in the scramble. Baldwin survived and was eventually ransomed, returning to Jerusalem with a reputation for endurance that cemented his authority among the Frankish barons.