The Mongol imperial authority since the death of Ögedei Khan has been in interregnum.

The relentless scheming of Ögödei’s widow Töregene, who has ruled as regent for the five years that her son Güyük and his cousin Batu have vied for the Mongol throne, results in the election of Güyük, Ögedei's eldest son, to the throne in 1246.

Meanwhile, the Carpini party dispatched by Pope Innocent IV had traveled along the shores of the Dzungarian lakes, reaching the imperial camp called Sira Orda (i.e., Yellow Pavilion), near Karakorum and the Orkhon River, on July 22 , having ridden an estimated three thousand miles in one hundred and six days.

They had tightly bandaged their bodies so they could endure the excessive fatigue of this enormous ride, which has taken them across the Jaec or Ural River, and north of the Caspian Sea and the Aral to the Jaxartes or Syr Darya (quidam fluvius magnus cujus nomen ignoramus, "a big river whose name we do not know"), and the Muslim cities that stand on its banks.

They are so ill, wrote the legate, that they “could scarcely sit a horse; and throughout all that Lent our food had been nought but millet with salt and water, and with only snow melted in a kettle for drink.”

Güyük’s formal election in a great Kurultai, or diet of the tribes, takes place while the friars are at Sira Orda, along with three thousand to four thousand envoys and deputies from all parts of Asia and eastern Europe, bearing homage, tribute and presents.

They witness the formal enthronement on the 24th of August at another camp in the vicinity called the Golden Ordu, after which they are presented to the emperor.

The great Khan refuses the invitation to become Christian, and demands that the Pope and rulers of Europe should come to him and swear allegiance to him.

Güyük Khan does not dismiss the expedition until November.

He gives them a letter to the Pope—written in Mongol, Arabic, and Latin—that is a brief imperious assertion of the Khan's office as the scourge of God.

They begin a long winter journey home.

Austria, under the rule of the Babenberg margraves since 976, has expanded eastward to the Hungarian border and southward into Styria and Carniola.

After their defeat at the 955 Battle of Lechfeld, the Magyars had discontinued their attacks on Germany and settled in the former Roman province of Pannonia, where they had established the Kingdom of Hungary.

The adjacent territories west of the Leitha were incorporated as the March of Styria into the Holy Roman Empire.

In 1180, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had raised the Styrian lands to a duchy, which in 1192 had been acquired by the Austrian dukes from the House of Babenberg.

The Hungarian kingdom had suffered heavy losses since 1241 in the course of the Mongol invasion of Europe.

The Babenberg duke Frederick II, haughty and overambitious, makes use of this weakness, attacks Hungary, and claims the western comitati of Moson, …

…Sopron and …

…Vasvár.

King Bela IV makes a stand against the Austrian invasion: supported by the liensmen of his son-in-law, Prince Rostislav Mikhailovich, he gathers his troops and marches against Frederick's forces, which are challenged at the Battle of the Leitha River, in which the Babenberg ducal male line becomes extinct at the death of Frederick.

The battle sparks another conflict for the rule over the ceased Imperial fiefs of Austria and Styria.

The Khwarezmians had sacked Jerusalem in 1244 and later that year they and as-Sali Ayyub had defeated as-Salih's uncle, as-Salih Ismail, in Syria, who had allied with the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, at the disastrous Battle of La Forbie.

As-Salih had captured Damascus in 1245, and had been awarded the title of sultan by the caliph al-Musta'sim in Baghdad.

The next year, the combined forces of the Ayyubids defeat the unruly Khwarezmians, after they no longer recognize as-Salih as their lord.

The seventh Delhi sultan is effectively a puppet for the Chihalgani and does not actually have much power or influence in the government.

Instead, he has gained infamy for his fondness of entertainment and wine.

The chiefs have become sufficiently upset with Ala-ud-din Masud's increasing hunger for more power to replace him in 1246 with Nasir-ud-din Mahmud, who is another son of Iltutmish.

The Nicaeans capture the city of Thessaloniki from Epirus in 1246 and compel its ruler, Theodore Komnenos Doukas, to abandon the title of emperor.

Ferdinand III besieges and captures the Moorish stronghold of Jaén, in eastern Andalusia, in 1245-46.

The Muslim kingdom of Granada, founded early in the thirteenth century out of the remnants of Almoravid power in Spain, comprises, principally, the area of the modern provinces of Granada, Málaga, and Almería.

Its founder, Abu 'Abd Allah ibn Yusuf ibn Nasr al-Ahmar, who had in 1238 become king, as Mohammad I, in 1246 secures the recognition of Ferdinand III of Castile, his neighbor on all landed frontiers, in return for a vassalage.