1270

Africa

Asia

• In Korea, the Sambyeolcho Rebellion begins against the Goryeo Dynasty, a puppet government of the Mongol Empire.
• The ancient city of Ashkelon is captured from the Crusader States, and utterly destroyed by the Mamluk sultan Baibars, who goes so far as to fill in its important harbor, leaving the site desolate, and the city never to be rebuilt.
• The city of Tabriz, in present-day Iran, is made capital of the Mongol Ilkhanate Empire (approximate date).
• The independent state of Kutch is founded, in present-day India.
• A census of the Chinese city of Hangzhou establishes that some 186,330 families reside within it, not including visitors and soldiers (Historian Jacques Gernet argues that this means a population of over 1 million inhabitants, making Hangzhou the most populous city in the world).

Europe

• February 16 – Livonian Crusade - Battle of Karuse: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeats the Livonian Order decisively, on the frozen surface of the Baltic Sea.
• September 1 – King Stephen V of Hungary writes his walk to the antiquum castellum near Miholjanec, where the Sword of Attila has been recently discovered.
• December – Crucial aspects of the philosophy of Averroism (itself based on Aristotle's works) are banned by the Roman Catholic Church, in a condemnation enacted by papal authority at the University of Paris.
• The Summa Theologica, a work by Thomas Aquinas that is considered within the Roman Catholic Church to be the paramount expression of its theology, is completed (year uncertain).
• Witelo translates Alhazen's 200-year-old treatise on optics, Kitab al-Manazir, from Arabic into Latin, bringing the work to European academic circles for the first time.
• The Sanskrit fables known as the Panchatantra, dating from as early as 200 BCE, are translated into Latin, from a Hebrew version by John of Capua.
• Construction of the Old New Synagogue in Prague is completed.
• The cathedral on the Rock of Cashel in Ireland is completed.
• The Chronicle of Melrose is ended.