Frederick Barbarossa

Frederick, king of the Germans. Ibn al-Athir describes the Germans as a kind of the Franks, most numerous of them and fiercest in might. ¹

He set out in 586 AH with a great host, aiming for Jerusalem. He took the road through Constantinople and then the lands of the Rum Seljuks, where cold, hunger and the Turkmen destroyed most of his army. He then drowned in a river in the lands of Armenia, at a place where the water does not reach a man's waist. His son then went on with the rest of the army to Acre, which had shrunk to about a thousand men. ¹