Kublai, a recluse since the death of…

Plzen (or Pilsen), located about ninety kilometers (fifty-five miles) southwest of Prague and first chronicled in the tenth century, is chartered in 1294 by Wenceslaus, who builds its first fortifications.

Wenceslaus establishes a new town site, some ten kilometers (six miles) away from the original settlement, which is the current town of Starý Plzenec.

It will quickly become an important town on trade routes leading to Nuremberg and Regensburg.

The Mansouri Great Mosque, a mosque in Tripoli, Lebanon, also known simply as the Great Mosque of Tripoli, will be built from 1294 to 1314 around the remains of a Crusader Church of St. Mary.

The mosque is named after Mamluk sultan al-Mansur Qalawun, who had conquered Tripoli from the Crusaders in 1289.

The mosque itself is erected by his two sons, al-Ashraf Khalil, who had ordered its construction in 1293, and al-Nasir Muhammad, who will have the arcade built around the courtyard in 1314.

Located on the site of what was once a Crusaders' suburb at the foot of the Citadel of Tripoli, the mosque will often be mistaken for a remodeled Christian church by medieval travelers and modern historians alike.

Two elements, the door and the minaret, probably do belong to an earlier, Christian structure that is incorporated into the mosque when it is built, but the building—comprising its court, arcades, fountain, and prayer hall—is essentially a Muslim creation.

In any case, the two Christian elements in no way detract from the traditional Muslim nature of this great royal mosque, the first building erected in Mamluk Tripoli.

The Nestorian Christian monk Rabban Bar Sauma, who had arrived in Europe from China in 1288 as an emissary of Kublai Khan, has visited Rome, Genoa, and Florence and met England's Edward I and France's Philip IV, as well as Pope Nicholas IV.

He dies in Baghdad in 1294.

Kublai's great-nephew, then ruler of Persia, had sent representatives to China in search of a potential wife in 1292, and they had asked the Polos to accompany them, so they had been permitted to return to Persia with the wedding party—which left that same year from Zaitun in southern China on a fleet of fourteen junks.

The party had sailed to the port of Singapore, traveled north to Sumatra, then sailed west to the [Point Pedro] port of Jaffna under Savakanmaindan and to Pandyan of Tamilakkam.

Eventually Polo crosses the Arabian Sea to Hormuz.

The two-year voyage has been a perilous one—of the six hundred people (not including the crew) in the convoy only eighteen have survived (including all three Polos).

The Polos leave the wedding party after reaching Hormuz and travel overland to the port of Trebizond on the Black Sea, the present day Trabzon, then make their way home to Venice by sea.

Al-Nasir is only a nominal Sultan.

Kitbugha and al-Shuja'i are the actual rulers of Egypt.

The two Emirs, Kitbugha who is of Mongol origin, and al-Shuja'i, are rivals and have bad relation with each other.

Al-Shujai, with the support of the Burji Mamluks, plans to arrest Kitbugha and assassinate his Emirs but Kitbugha besieges the Citadel and the conflict endes by the murder of al-Shuja'i and the removal of the Burjis from the Citadel.

When Emir Hossam ad-Din Lajin, who had fled after the murder of Al-Ashraf Khalil, shows up in Cairo, the Burji Mamluks who ware called al-Mamalik al-Ashrafiyah Khalil (Mamluks of al-Ashraf Khalil and who had been removed from the Citadel by Kitbugha, rebel and go on rampage in Cairo as Lajin is not arrested and punished for his involvement in the murder of their benefactor Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil.

The Ashrafiyah are defeated and many of them are killed and executed.

Lajin convinces Kitbugha to depose Al-Nassir Muhammed and install himself as Sultan after he warns him that the Ashrafiyah and later Al-Nassir himself will seek revenge for the murder of Khalil, in which Kitbugha also was involved.

Kitbugha deposes Al-Nassir Muhammed and installs himself Sultan with Lajin as his vice-Sultan.

Al-Nassir, who is by now ten years old, is removed with his mother to another section in the palace, where they will stay until they are sent in 1294 to Al Karak, thus ending the first reign of Al-Nassir Muhammad.

The Venetians have gradually found their way back to partial favor in Constantinople through a series of treaties.

When the last of the crusader strongholds in Syria falls to the Muslims in 1291, Venetian merchants thus dispossessed have moved north to dispute the Black Sea trade with the Genoese, the suppliers and defenders of Constantinople by sea.

This has excited the jealousy of the Venetians to the pitch of war.

Venice, allied to Pisa, challenges Genoa's control of spice trade routes in the Black Sea.

The Genoese in 1294 defeat a combined Venetian-Pisan fleet in the Gulf of Alexandretta, then sack the Venetian port of Canea (Khania) on Crete, destroying the Venetians' spice fleet here.

Bern, an Imperial Free City, is a de facto independent city-state republic.

Her traditional constitution, which will remained largely unchanged until 1798, is established in 1294 and provides for a Grosser Rat (Grand Council) of two hundred members and a Kleiner Rat (Small Council) of twenty-seven members.

The latter includes the Schultheiss (mayor) as chief executive and the holders of other public offices such as guild representatives, Stadtschreiber (city clerk), Seckelmeister (bursar) and Grossweibel (Grand Bailiff).

The first parts of the Doge’s Palace in Genoa had been built between 1251 and 1275, during the flourishing period of the Republican history of Genoa.

The palace originates from the acquisition by the commune of Genoa of houses of the Doria between San Matteo and San Lorenzo churches (1291), after which the construction of an annexed new building is started.

To this, in 1294, a tower of the Fieschi family is added.