Battle of Iconium

Overview

The Battle of Iconium took place on May 18, 1190, during the Third Crusade, in the expedition of Frederick Barbarossa to the Holy Land. As a result, Iconium, the capital city of the Sultanate of Rûm under Kilij Arslan II, fell to the Imperial forces.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

The Battle of Iconium on 25 May 1190 was an engagement during the Third Crusade in which Holy Roman Empire forces under Emperor Frederick I and Frederick VI Duke of Swabia fought against the Sultanate of Rûm, inflicting reported casualties of approximately 3,000 on the Rûm forces. The battle took place as Frederick I's German crusading army marched overland through Anatolia toward the Holy Land, a route that brought it into repeated conflict with Rûm forces. The engagement at Iconium represented one of the more significant military confrontations of that march, given the scale of the imperial force, which numbered between 12,000 and 20,000, and the reported losses sustained by the Sultanate. The broader significance of the overland campaign was ultimately shaped not by battlefield outcomes but by the death of Frederick I later in the same year, which caused much of the German crusading force to disintegrate before reaching the primary theater of operations in the Levant.

Forces & casualties

Commanders (4)