the Levantine Christian state of Cilician Armenia. While the Mamluks of Egypt and the Ayyubids of Syria turned into conflicting rivals, the Franks and the Cilician Armenians in addition to the Principality of Antioch were allied. The Mongols, who suddenly erupted out of the Eurasian Steppe, had their armies by 1241 riding westwards as far as the river Oder and the northeastern shore of the Adriatic and during the Battle of Fariskur they were penetrating deep into all adjoining regions. The Western Christians and the Cilician Armenians always hoped to have a grand alliance with the Mongols against the Islamic World. The Cilician Armenians submitted themselves to Mongol suzerainty in 1247, and in 1254 their King Hetoum visited the Mongols' capital. In 1246, Pope Innocent IV, who fully supported the Seventh Crusade against Egypt, sent his Franciscan emissary Giovanni da Pian del Carpine to the Great Khan of the Mongols in Qaraqorum to seek an alliance against the Muslims. However, he received a disappointing answer from Güyük Khan who told him that he and the kings of Europe should submit to the Mongols. In 1253, after his defeat in Egypt, King Louis IX sent from Acre another emissary, the Franciscan friar William of Rubruck who accompanied him earlier in his Egyptian expedition, but the outcome of this trip was also not followed by effective action. In 1258 a Mongol army of perhaps 50,000 soldiers led by Hulagu Khan sacked Baghdad and liquidated the Abbasid Caliphate, then advanced to Syria and captured Damascus. The path to Egypt was then open. The Mongols sent a threatening message to Egypt asking it to submit to the Mongols. However, Hulagu withdrew with the bulk of his forces west of Bagdad, leaving only a garrison of 10,000 (a single tumen) with his lieutenant, Kitbuga. In 1260 an Egyptian army led by the Mamluk Sultan Qutuz and commander Baibars al-Bunduqdari – the same champions of Al Mansurah – annihilated this Mongol force at Ain Jalut. The commander of the Mongol army who was killed at the battle was Kitbuqa, a Nestorian Christian who was accompanied by the Christian king of Cilician Armenia and by the Christian prince of Antioch. The Franks of Acre who stood neutral, and who were warned by Qutuz not to commit an act of treachery, gave passage to the Egyptian army. The triumphant army took Damascus and Syria became part of the