East in the Middle Ages 214 B.C. – 1644 A.D.

THE three states into which China had split were soon split up themselves into even smaller divisions. For three and a half centuries, war raged almost continuously among rival kings. Doubt and confusion were everywhere. The period between 220 and 589 is called the Six Dynasties era, after six ruling families in a row which used Nanking as their capital. In all those years‚ the memory of the Han Empire never died. Looking back longingly at the peace and order of that time, the people came to think of the Han government as the great model which all rulers should try to copy. With the country divided, it was easy for the barbarians to invade. During the fourth century, wave after wave of nomads rolled south across the North China Plain, as the Huns were joined by their relatives, the Mongols and the Turks. Riding swift ponies, the invaders mowed down the Chinese foot soldiers with deadly arrows from their crossbows. Huge numbers of Chinese fled-some to Kansu in the northwest and Szechwan in the west, but many more to the lands south of the Yangtze River. The Chinese population of south China doubled, tripled and quadrupled, until it overwhelmed the non-Chinese population. Even in north China the Chinese greatly outnumbered their barbarian conquerors. Due to this and because the Chinese system of government was much better suited than theirs to a country of farmers, the newcomers gradually adopted Chinese ways. THE SEVEN SAGES Chinese ways were themselves changing. Just as the rebellions, wars and invasions uprooted millions of people from their settled lives on the land, so they uprooted the beliefs by which these people lived. These beliefs, Confucianism and Taoism, were mainly rules for everyday living. They had worked well enough in orderly Han times, but they no …

THE vast East Asian land of China is named after its first family of emperors, the Ch’in. The Ch’in brought the country together under one government and built the Great Wall to keep out northern barbarians. They were in such a hurry to get things done, however, that they drove their subjects too hard and lost their support. In 206 B.C., after only a few years in power, they were overthrown. The Ch’in were replaced by an imperial family named Han. The Han dynasty ruled for two centuries before the time of Christ and then, after a break, for another two centuries. These two periods are called the Former Han and the Later Han. By the time the Han finally fell from power, the Chinese people all spoke the same language and used the same “idea-pictures,” made with brush-strokes, in writing. They had truly become a nation. To this day their descendants call themselves “men of Han.” The Former Han emperors took power away from rich landowners and gave it to officials who had passed difficult examinations in the teachings of Confucius, the great Chinese thinker and religious teacher. Their armies checked many attacks by wild herdsmen-warriors known as the Hsiung Nu, or Huns. As trade flourished, so did the painting of pictures, the composing of poems and the study of the classic Chinese writings of the past. Toward the end of their reign, however, the Former Han emperors had to surrender more and more power to the wealthy noblemen who owned the country’s richest farmlands. In A.D.8, a man named Wang Mang seized control of the empire. Although he was a nobleman himself, he set out to reform the unfair tax system which allowed aristocratic landowners to grow rich at the expense of the peasants and the government. He …

MORE than two centuries before Aurungzeb’s death and even before the coming of Babur, a new kind of invader had appeared in India. Instead of thundering down on horseback from the Himalayan passes, he arrived on the coast by ship. Instead of plunder, he sought trade. Instead of wanting to conquer the subcontinent, he wanted to conquer the seas around it. This invader’s name was Vasco da Gama. He had sailed his small fleet all the way around Africa from his homeland of Portugal in southwest Europe. In 1498, just six years after Columbus discovered America, he landed at the South Indian port of Calicut. “Why have you come?” someone asked him. “For Christians and spices,” he replied. The captain’s brief answer summed up a great deal of history. Throughout the Middle Ages, Europe had depended on the East for Silk, precious stones and spices‚ such as cloves and — most prized of all — pepper. Supplies had come from India across Moslem territory. Deliveries had always been uncertain, but after the Turks took Constantinople in 1453, they became even more so. The Turks held up shipments and demanded money to let them pass. If this toll was paid, the price of the goods had to be raised. If it was not paid, the Turks would not allow the shipment to go through. Eastern goods became scarce in Europe and this sent the price still higher. It soon became plain that anyone who could bring the products of Asia directly to Europe would make a fortune. The Portuguese, as the foremost seafarers of Europe, were the first people to try to get around the Turkish blockade by setting up a sea route to India. There were other reasons, too, behind da Gama’s voyage. The pope and the European kings feared …

WHEN Akbar died, the hope of a peaceful, prosperous India died with him. None of his successors was nearly so wise, open-minded, and farsighted. Even so, the Mogul Empire kept growing. The seventeenth century was, indeed, the height of Mogul power. Akbar’s son Jahangir reigned from 1605 to 1627. His name, which meant “grasper of the world,” did not fit him at all well, for he added only a little territory to the empire. Although he was clever and well-educated, Jahangir was also lazy and pleasure-loving. He was content to leave affairs of state to his Persian wife and her relatives. As he admitted in his memoirs, he “only wanted a bottle of wine and a piece of meat to make merry.” On Jahangir’s death, his two sons began to fight over which should succeed him. Before the question was settled, the winner had killed his brother and all but one of his other male relatives. In 1628, he was crowned as Shah Jahan. Three years later, his beautiful empress Mumtaz Mahal the name meant “jewel of the palace” died in childbirth. The grief-stricken emperor commanded the best architects in the land to create a monument worthy of his dead wife. Twenty thousand men worked on the project for fifteen years. The result was the world-famous white marble tomb known as the Taj Mahal, which many people consider the loveliest structure ever raised anywhere. The cost of building the Taj Mahal was enormous. Shah Jahan could afford it, for his treasury contained the equivalent of a billion dollars, an unheard-of sum for those days. His subjects did not benefit from his wealth. Instead of prospering, as they had under Akbar, they suffered terrible hardships. Under Akbar, the state had collected land taxes, but Shah Jahan let his governors collect taxes …

THE name “Mogul” comes from the Arabic word for “Mongol.” Babur, the founder of the Mogul dynasty, was probably descended from both Timur and the mightiest of all Mongol conquerors, Genghis Khan. His early story was much like that of Genghis. Born a minor prince in what is now Soviet Turkistan, he was driven from his throne while still a child. He spent years wandering about with a few hundred ragged, half-starved followers. In 1504, he captured Kabul and began to dream of conquering the richer lands south of the Khyber Pass. In 1519, he made a start by seizing a border province. In 1524, on the invitation of the Afghan nobles, he invaded the Punjab. His army was ridiculously small for such an ambitious venture, but the weakness of the Delhi Sultanate favoured him. In 1526, he defeated the sultan in battle at the ancient town of Panipat and so became master of North India. The Battle of Panipat showed how important firearms could be in deciding the outcome of a battle. Babur had only eight thousand troops to Sultan Ibrahim’s fifty thousand men and one thousand elephants. He also had cannon and crude muskets. By clever tactics he forced the sultan’s army into a solid mass and then ordered his men to fire. Twenty thousand of the enemy fell dead, including the sultan. The following year, Babur beat back a combined attack by the Hindu princes of the neighbouring Rajputana. This victory ended the Hindu’s last hope of chasing the Moslems out of North India. In 1530, Babur died. His intelligent but lazy son Humayun had to flee the country when one of his provincial governors rebelled against him. Humayun’s son Akbar turned out to be the strongest and also the greatest of all the Mogul rulers. AKBAR, …

IN 711‚ when other Moslem forces were invading distant Spain, Arab soldiers fought their way to the mouth of the Indus River and captured the area called Sind. There they stopped. Nearly three centuries passed before Moslems again menaced India. In 998, a Turk named Mahmud, the amir of Ghazni in Afghanistan, burst through the Khyber Pass with an army of Turkish horsemen to sweep across the Punjab in the first of seventeen raids. Not even the savage, pagan Huns had been as bloodthirsty as these civilized sons of Islam. They hated the Hindus with a special hate. Believing in one God and in the equality of all men, they abominated the Indians for their countless gods and idols and their caste system. In a frenzy of righteousness they slew thousands upon thousands of Indians, smashing their temples and demolishing their cities. The Hindus fought back bravely, but their slow-footed elephants could not keep up with the Turks’ fast horses. They were hindered, too, by the custom which decreed that only members of the warrior caste could fight. Sometimes, when the Hindu defenders of a stronghold saw that the end was near, they carried out a dreadful rite called jauhur. They placed their wives and children on top of a huge pile of wood and set fire to it. Then, as their families were burned alive, they marched forth from the gates, carrying their swords, to meet certain death. The fearful raids of Mahmud “the imagebreaker” were followed by a large-scale Moslem invasion toward the end of the next century. In 1191, Mohammed Ghori, an Afghan not only raided India but occupied it. By destroying Buddhist universities and massacring their priests, he wiped out Buddhism in the land where it began. Soon he controlled most of the north. When a …

UNTIL 1947, when the Moslem state of Pakistan was carved out of its western and eastern corners, the entire triangle of land that points south from the Himalaya Mountains into the Indian Ocean was known as India. Geographers call this huge land mass a subcontinent, because it is almost completely cut off from the rest of the continent of Asia. The Himalayas on its northern frontier form a continuous barrier of rock, the highest in the world. “MOTHER GANGES” From the southern slopes of the Himalayas, two great rivers run down to the ocean. The valley of the Indus River, on the west, is mainly desert; overlooking it are the only breaks in the Himalayan wall, the Khyber Pass and the Bolan Pass. The valley of the Ganges River, on the east, is a broad, fertile plain. Indians consider this river holy and call it “Mother Ganges.” Together, the Indus and Ganges Valleys make up North India. South of the Ganges Plain rise the Vindhya Mountains. To the south stretches a very large region of hilly uplands, called the Deccan. At its western and eastern edges the Deccan drops suddenly to coastal plains, forming long mountain walls called Ghats. The Vindhyas, the Deccan, the Ghats and the strips of lowland along the coasts make up South India. INVADERS FROM THE NORTH Geography influences history. This is particularly true of India — so much so, in fact, that North and South India have really had two separate histories. From earliest times, the people in both parts of the country were mostly poor farmers, living in villages. They shared the beliefs of the Hindu religion. Hinduism taught them that life was only a dream, they paid little attention, north or south, to the events that took place in their lifetimes. Otherwise, however, …

IF Islam had never existed, the Christian countries of the world would probably be less advanced and certainly less varied, than they are. For it was Moslems who gave the West many of its basic skills and ideas. From the eighth to the thirteenth centuries, the Arabs and the other Islamic peoples were the main carriers of western civilization. While Europe was torn by almost constant fighting, Moslem scholars preserved the learning of the ancient world. Other Moslems added discoveries and original works of their own. In time, translators in the parts of Europe that were in closest contact with Islam passed this knowledge on to the Christian world. It helped produce a great intellectual and artistic awakening, the Renaissance, which ended the Middle Ages and ushered m modern times. So the West owes much to Islam. Its debt is specially great in philosophy and science. Many cultural treasures would have been lost forever if it had not been for Moslem scholarship. Among them are the works of three of the greatest thinkers of ancient Greece — the philosopher Aristotle, the physician Galen and the astronomer Ptolemy. These works are the foundations on which Renaissance thinkers built modern learning. In one branch of science, astronomy, the Arabs’ superiority is written across the very heavens‚ for most stars hear Arabic names to this day. Example the Acrab (from aqrab, a scorpion), Altair (from al-tair, the flyer) and Deneb (from dhanab, a tail). Allied to astronomy is mathematics. Taking their cue from work done in ancient India, Arab and Persian mathematicians developed algebra, geometry and trigonometry. They also taught Europeans to use the Arabic figures instead of the clumsy numerals based on the letters of the Roman alphabet. Unlike the ancient Greeks, who often came to conclusions by reasoning alone, the scientists …

ACCORDING to their tradition, the Ottoman Turks once belonged to the same Central Asian tribe as the Seljuk Turks. Their ancestors came to Asia Minor with the Seljuks. In time, they began to challenge the authority of their fellow Turks. The Ottomans took their name from a chieftain called Othman, who in 1299 became the emir of Seljuk lands bordering on the Byzantine Empire. Othman declared holy war on his Christian neighbours. His son Orkhan captured the city of Brusa and in 1362 Orkhan’s son Murad took Adrianople, beyond the strait and sea that separated Asia Minor from Europe. Thereafter, Murad and his son Bayezid pressed forward on two fronts–against Serbs, Bulgars and other Balkan peoples in southeast Europe and against Byzantines and Seljuks in Asia Minor. By 1400, the Ottomans had conquered Macedonia and Bulgaria, pushed the Byzantines out of Asia Minor and swept the Seljuk emirs from their thrones. In that year, however, Timur attacked the eastern Bank of their kingdom. After devastating Syria, he came back and crushed the Ottoman army near Ankara, taking Sultan Bayezid captive. He restored the Seljuk emirs to their posts. When Bayezid died in 1405, his three sons immediately began to fight over their inheritance. Their struggle raged for ten years. At last Sultan Mohammed came out the winner, with both of his brothers dead. These civil wars, coming so soon after the Mongol invasion, left the land and the people exhausted. The Ottomans’ fighting spirit soon revived. Under Mohammed and his son Murad II, Turkish armies again advanced across southeast Europe. In 1443, a huge army made up of Rumanians, Hungarians, Poles, Germans and Frenchmen defeated them. Five years later, however, they beat back another massive Christian attack in Serbia. Murad’s son Mohammed II, became sultan in Adrianople in 1451. He …

LIKE THEIR relatives the Mongols, the Turks began as wandering herdsmen in Central Asia. Their first contact with Islam was as victims rather than victors. When Arab armies overran the southern part of their homeland in the eighth century, many Turks were captured and enslaved. Recognizing their talent for fighting, their new masters enrolled them in their armies. In time, many of them reached high positions in the lands of their adopted religion. About the middle of the tenth century, tribesmen from Turkistan, led by a chief named Seljuk, settled near the city of Bokhara. There they became converted to the Sunnite creed of Islam. From Bokhara, Seljuk set out on a career of conquest. His sons carried on, fighting their way slowly across Western Asia. At last, in 1055, Seljuk’s grandson Tughril took Baghdad. Tughril left the city in charge of his officers and went away. When he came back the next year, the Abbasid capital greeted him with elaborate ceremony. The caliph, wearing Mohammed’s own cloak and carrying his cane, named Tughril “King of the East and of the West.” Officially, Tughril became al-sultan, “he with authority.” From then on, Turkish sultans of the Seljuk family were to control the caliphate for a century and a half, using the Abbasid caliphs as pawns. THE SELJUK TURKS As Turkish tribesmen rushed to enlist in their armies, the Seljuks pushed their conquests outward in all directions. Soon western Asia was again united — as in the days of al-Mansur, Harun and al Mamun — in a mighty Moslem kingdom. Tughril’s successor, Alp Arslan, whose odd-sounding name meant “hero-lion” in Turkish, seized the capital of Christian Armenia. In 1071 he defeated the main army of the Byzantines, taking the emperor captive. Heading west, Seljuk soldiers penetrated the valleys of Asia Minor. …