1261
| Years: 1258 1259 1260 - 1261 - 1262 1263 1264 |
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| Decades: 1230s 1240s 1250s - 1260s - 1270s 1280s 1290s |
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| Centuries: 12th century - 13th century - 14th century |
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| 1261 by topic | |
| Politics | |
| State leaders - Sovereign states | |
| Birth and death categories | |
| Births - Deaths | |
| Establishments and disestablishments categories | |
| Establishments - Disestablishments | |
| Art and literature | |
| 1261 in poetry | |
| Gregorian calendar | 1261 MCCLXI |
| Ab urbe condita | 2014 |
| Armenian calendar | 710 ԹՎ ՉԺ |
| Bahá'í calendar | -583 – -582 |
| Berber calendar | 2211 |
| Buddhist calendar | 1805 |
| Burmese calendar | 623 |
| Byzantine calendar | 6769 – 6770 |
| Chinese calendar | 庚申年十一月廿九日 (3897/3957-11-29) — to —
辛酉年十二月初八日(3898/3958-12-8) |
| Coptic calendar | 977 – 978 |
| Ethiopian calendar | 1253 – 1254 |
| Hebrew calendar | 5021 – 5022 |
| Hindu calendars | |
| - Vikram Samvat | 1316 – 1317 |
| - Shaka Samvat | 1183 – 1184 |
| - Kali Yuga | 4362 – 4363 |
| Holocene calendar | 11261 |
| Iranian calendar | 639 – 640 |
| Islamic calendar | 659 – 660 |
| Japanese calendar | |
| Korean calendar | 3594 |
| Thai solar calendar | 1804 |
- January - Pope Alexander III bans the Flagellants movement.
- July 25 - The city of Constantinople is recaptured by Nicaean forces under the command of Alexios Strategopoulos, thus re-establishing the Byzantine Empire.
- 15 August - Michael VIII Palaeologus is crowned Byzantine emperor in Constantinople.
- August 29 - Pope Urban IV succeeds Pope Alexander III as the 182nd pope, the last man to do so without being a cardinal first.
- The population of Greenland accepts the overlordship of the King of Norway.
- The Japanese Bun'ō era ends, and the Kōchō era begins.
- The Convent of Wurmsbach is established in Switzerland.
- Baibars establishes a puppet caliphate in Cairo.
- Bela IV of Hungary repels a Tatar invasion.
- Kublai Khan, who became a Khagan claimant in the previously year, releases 75 Song Dynasty Chinese merchants from captivity after they had been captured along the border of his Empire and the Southern Song Dynasty of China. This is an act to increase his reputation amongst the Chinese, shore up his legitimacy as a just ruler, and to gain more defectors from the Southern Song Dynasty.
- The earliest extant Chinese illustration of 'Pascal's Triangle' is from Yang Hui's book Xiangjie Jiuzhang Suanfa, published in this year, although knowledge of Pascal's Triangle existed in China by at least 1100.
- February 1 - Walter de Stapledon, English bishop (d. 1326)
- October 9 - King Denis of Portugal (d. 1325)
- Daniel of Moscow, son of Alexander Nevsky
- February 28 - Henry III, Duke of Brabant
- May 25 - Pope Alexander IV
- September 18 - Konrad von Hochstaden, Archbishop of Cologne
- Plaisance of Antioch, regent
- Qin Jiushao, Chinese mathematician of the Song Dynasty (b. 1202)
