Ghazan Khan and an army of sixty thousand Ilkhanate troops and forty thousand Georgians and Armenians in 1299, nearly twenty years after the last Ilkhanate defeat in Syria at the Second Battle of Homs, cross the Euphrates river (the Mamluk-Ilkhanid border) and seize Aleppo.
The Ilkhanate army then proceeds southwards until they are only a few miles north of Homs in a battle line that is almost ten miles wide.
The Sultan of Egypt, who is in Syria at this time, marches an army of twenty thousand to thirty thousand Mamluks (more, according to other sources) northwards from Damascus until he meets the Ilkhanate forces two to three Arab farsakhs (six to nine miles) northeast of Homs at Wadi al-Khazandar on the 22nd of December 1299 at five o'clock in the morning.
The sun has already risen.
The battle starts with the Mamluk infantry charging the Ilkhanates, then the Ilkhanate heavy cavalry charges at the Mamluks while Ilkhanate archers stand behind their horses and pepper the Mamluks with arrows.
It seems that early on in the battle, the two forces ended up in hand-to-hand combat.
The Mamluks were thought to be superior to the Ilkhanates in close quarters fighting as the Mongols' general tactics in battle were based on the use of mounted archers.
Eventually, the Ilkhanate troops break through the Mamluk right flank in the afternoon of the battle.
It is unknown whether this was rumor or a true fact as the Mamluk army begins to rout upon hearing about the Ilkhanate breakthrough.
Messages between sections of the army can take hours to reach the other side of the battlefield.
The Ilkhanates are ultimately left in complete control of the battlefield and the remaining Mamluk army is routed and forced into retreat.
Mamluk sources state that only two hundred Mamluk soldiers were killed while Ilkhanate casualties numbered five thousand to ten thousand.
These figures are considered suspicious, given that the right flank of the Mamluks had collapsed yet only two hundred soldiers died during the entire battle.
The Mamluk army flees southwards towards Damascus.
However, en route they are constantly harassed by twelve thousand Maronite and Druze bowmen who want independence for their homeland.
The Ilkhanate troops follow them as far as Gaza.
The Ilkhanates continue their march until they reach Damascus.
The city is soon sacked and its citadel besieged.
