Happy Juneteenth to those who are celebrating!
TODAY IN HISTORY
June 19, 1097: The First Crusade’s Siege of Nicaea ends with the Crusaders and their Byzantine allies in control of the city after the latter negotiates the surrender of its Seljuk garrison. The initial Crusader siege was unable to completely invest Nicaea because the campaign lacked any sort of navy to patrol Lake Ascania and so the city was able to keep bringing in supplies even with its land walls surrounded. Despite the successful outcome, the siege added tension to the already tense relationship between the Byzantine Empire and the Crusaders, who were cut out of the surrender discussions and felt they’d been denied their rightful chance for plunder.
June 19, 1821: An Ottoman army defeats a group of fighters from the Filiki Eteria (Society of Friends), a Greek independence movement, in battle near the town of Drăgășani (in modern Romania). This was one of the earliest battles of the Greek War of Independence, so clearly the Greeks’ fortunes picked up afterward.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The New Arab reports that Rami Makhlouf, cousin to former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and at one time thought to be the richest man in the country (before he and his cousin fell out), has announced the creation of a new militia to defend the Alawite community. Makhlouf released a video on Thursday in which he apparently “alleged that there is a plan aimed at changing the demographic composition of Alawite-majority areas involving removing residents from their homes and confiscating property.” The affected Alawites would then be forced to abandon their religion in order to recover said property. This is at least the second time Makhlouf has done something like this since Assad’s ouster in late 2024, so take it with a grain of salt. But the potential for inter-communal violence in Syria remains uncomfortably high.
