Sartaq’s reign as khan of the Blue…

Daniil Romanovich, King of Galicia-Volhynia, succeeds in driving the Mongols out of Volhynia in 1256, and now focuses his domestic policies on stability and economic growth.

He has invited German, Polish, and Rus' merchants and artisans into the country, and numbers of Armenians and Jews have established themselves in the towns and cities.

He has appointed officials to protect the peasantry from aristocratic exploitation and formed peasant-based heavy infantry units.

Daniil founds the town of L'vov, named for Lev, his son, and fortifies many others.

(Today a major city in western Ukraine, it is regarded as one of the country’s main cultural centers.)

Alexander Nevsky, since becoming grand prince of Vladimir, has pursued a policy of cooperation with Russia’s Mongol overlords, who have reciprocated by abandoning demands for Russian troops and by withdrawing tax collectors.

Nevsky leads his army to Finland in 1256 and successfully routs the Swedes, who have made another attempt to block the Baltic Sea from the Russians.

Louis, in Donauwörth in 1256, orders the execution of his wife Marie of Brabant—a daughter of Henry II, Duke of Brabant and Marie of Hohenstaufen—due to mistaken suspicion of adultery, although any actual guilt on her part could never be validated.

As expiation, Louis founds a Cistercian friary, Fürstenfeld Abbey (Fürstenfeldbruck), near Munich.

Louis supports Richard of Cornwall during the German interregnum that follows King William's death in 1256.

Bulgaria has lost significant territories to its enemies by the time of the death of Michael II Asen in 1256; not by suffering any major military disaster, but because disloyal nobles have surrendered territories for personal enrichment.

The Lors, or Lurs, a branch of Iranian people living mostly in southwestern Iran, are, like most Iranian people, a mixture of indigenous inhabitants of the Zagros Mountain and Iranian-speaking tribes migrating from Central Asia.

Lori language, which is closely related to Persian, has two distinct dialects: Lor-e-Bozorg (Greater Lor), which is spoken by the Bakhtiaris (mainly in Khuzestan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari), parts of Lorestan, and parts of Isfahan; and Lor-e-Koochik (Lesser Lor), spoken by the Lors themselves (mainly in Lorestan.

The overwhelming majority of Lors are Shia Muslims.

In Khuzestan, Lor tribes are primarily concentrated in the northern part of the province, while in Ilam they are mainly in the southern region.

Hulagu, seeking to subjugate the Lors, easily destroys their resistance.

The Hashshashin (also Hashishin, Hashashiyyin or Assassins) are an offshoot of the Ismaili sect of Shia Muslims.

Following a quarrel about the succession of leadership in the ruling Fatimid dynasty in Cairo around the year 1090, the losing Nizāriyya faction had been driven from Egypt and had established a number of fortified settlements in present day Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon under the charismatic leader Hasan i Sabbah.

Persecuted as infidels by the dominant Sunni sect in the Muslim world, the Hashshashin dispatch dedicated suicide murderers to eliminate prominent Sunni leaders whom they regard as "impious usurpers."

The reputation of Hulagu, who seeks the Hashshashins’ destruction, so frightens their recently installed commander, Ruknuddin Khor-shah, that he surrenders the impregnable fortress of Alamut, fabled for its gardens and libraries, to the Mongols without a real fight, in the vain hope that Hulagu would be merciful.

During the Mongol assault of Alamut on December 15, 1256, the library of the sect is destroyed, along with much of their power base, and thus much of the sect's own records are lost; most accounts of them stem from the highly reputable Arab historians of the period.

Only ruins remain of this fortress today.

Bayju defeats Kaykaus II, ruler of the Seljuq realm west of the river Kizilirmak, near Aksaray in October 1256, making all Anatolia officially subject to Möngke Khan.

Theodore of Nicaea manages to conclude a favorable peace with Bulgaria in May in 1256, which may have plunged the latter into a crisis of leadership.

Mongke, on becoming Great Khan, had immediately set out to implement his grandfather Genghis Khan's plan for world empire.

Mongke’s brother Hulagu Khan, who now takes over from Bayju in 1256, has been charged by Mongke with subduing the Muslim kingdoms to the west "as far as the borders of Egypt."

Compiling the army has taken five years, and it is not until 1256 that Hulagu is prepared to begin the invasions.

Mongke has ordered good treatment for those who yield without resistance, and utter destruction for those who do not.

In this way, Hulagu and his army are to conquer some of the most powerful and long standing dynasties of the time.

Other countries in the Mongols' path will submit to Mongol authority, and contribute forces to the Mongol army.

Hulagu's descendants, the Il-khanids, are to rule Persia for the next eighty years, beginning as shamanists, then Buddhists and ultimately converting to Islam.

The term il-Khan means "subordinate khan" and refers to the Ilkhanate dynasty’s initial deference to Mongke as great khan and ultimate sovereign of the entire empire.

Operating from the Mongol base in Persia, Hulagu proceeds south.

Many criminals and other undesirables have found their way to Acre.

More important, the earlier homogeneity of a French character has given way to an Italian predominance, but the Italians of Outremer are as divided as they were in Italy.

The Genoese-Venetian rivalry extends to the Levant and occasionally, as at Acre in 1256, results in outright war.

When the Venetians are evicted from Tyre, war grows out of a dispute concerning land in Acre owned by the monastery of Saint Sabas but claimed by both Genoa and Venice.

Genoa has a clear upper hand at first, but its early successes in the War of Saint Sabas are abruptly reversed when the Republic of Pisa, a former ally, signs a ten-year pact of military alliance with Venice.