sent in response, but did not pass beyond the second cataract. Three years later the Makurians attacked and destroyed Aswan, but this time Mamluk Sultan Baybars responded with a well-equipped army setting off from Cairo in early 1276, accompanied by a cousin of king David named Mashkouda or Shekanda. The Mamluks defeated the Nubians in three battles at Gebel Adda, Meinarti and finally at the Battle of Dongola. David fled upstream the Nile, eventually entering al-Abwab in the south, which, previously being Alodia's northernmost province, had by this period apparently become a kingdom of its own. The king of al-Abwab, however, handed David over to Baybars, who had him executed. Thanks to the crusades, western Europe grew increasingly aware of the existence of Christian Nubia during the 12th and 13th centuries until in the early 14th century, there were even proposals to ally with the Nubians for another crusade against the Mamluks. Nubian characters also start to be featured in crusader songs, first displayed as Muslims and later, after the 12th century and with increasing knowledge of Nubia, as Christians. Contacts between crusaders and western pilgrims on the one side and Nubians on the other occurred in Jerusalem, where European accounts from the 12th-14th centuries attest the existence of a Nubian community, and also, if not primarily in Egypt, where many Nubians were living and where European merchants were highly active. Perhaps there also existed a Nubian community in crusader-controlled Famagusta, Cyprus. In the mid-14th century pilgrim Niccolò da Poggibonsi claimed that the Nubians had sympathies for the Latins and hence the Mamluk Sultan did not allow Latins to travel to Nubia as he was afraid that they might ignite the Nubians to war, although in the contemporary Book of Knowledge of All Kingdoms it was written that Genoese traders were present in Dongola. In Qasr Ibrim there was found a text apparently mixing Nubian with Italian as well as a Catalan playing card, and in Banganarti there has been noted an inscription written in Provencal dating to the second half of the 13th century/14th century. Internal difficulties seem to have also hurt the kingdom. King David's cousin Shekanda claimed the throne and traveled to Cairo to seek the support of the Mamluks. They agreed and took over Nubia in 1276, and placed Shekanda on the throne. The Christian Shekanda then signed an agreement making Makuria a vassal of Egypt,