Home / East in the Middle Ages 214 B.C. – 1644 A.D. (page 3)

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

Important Events of the East in the Middle Ages 214 B. C. – A. D. 1071

214 B.C. The Ch’in emperors build the Great Wall of China.

206 B.C.-A.D. 220 Trade and the arts flourish in China under the Han dynasty, in the east.

A.D. 220-589 China is torn by invasions and civil war in the period of the Six Dynasties

552 Buddhism is officially introduced into Japan and China.

571 The birth of Mohammed happened in the east.

604 Prince Shotoku gives Japan a constitution.

607 Shotoku sends missions to study Chinese culture.

618-907 The T’ang dynasty, one of the “golden ages” of China.

622 Mohammed and his followers are forced to flee from Mecca to Medina in the Hegira.

630 Mohammed’s followers capture Mecca.

632 Death of Mohammed.

642 With the defeat of the Persian Empire, the world of Islam extends from Africa to the Indus.

710-784 The Nara Period in Japan is marked by semi-Chinese culture.

711 Moslem Arabs and Berbers invade Spain and defeat the Goths.

712-756 Hsuan Tsung reigns over China; art, literature and philosophy flourish.

720 The Nihon Shoki, legends of the history of Japan, is written.

750 Rise of the Abbasid caliphs.

751 China loses Turkestan to the Arabs after the battle of Talas.

756 Rise of the Omayyad dynasty in Spain.

762 Al-Mansur founds a new capital for the caliphs at Baghdad.

778 Charlemagne and the Frankish army invade Spain but are defeated by the Moslems at Roncesvalles.

786-809 Harun al-Raschid encourages learning and makes war on the Byzantine Empire.

794 Kammu moves the Japanese capital to the new city of Heian, the present-day Kyoto.

813-833 Reign of al-Mamun, under whom Baghdad becomes a center of knowledge and the arts.

960-1279 Painting and printing flourish in China under the Sung dynasty.

1071 Alp Arslan defeats the Byzantine army and destroys the empire in Asia Minor.

Important Events in the East in the Middle Ages, 1099 – 1644

1099 Crusaders invade Palestine and capture Jerusalem.

1185-1333 Japan becomes feudal during the Kamakura period, with effective rule by the warlords.

1187 Moslems led by Saladin recapture Jerusalem.

1189-1192 The “Crusade of Kings” reaches Palestine but fails to conquer Jerusalem.

1206 Temujin is proclaimed Genghis Khan and leads his armies to conquests in Asia and Eastern Europe; a Moslem is made Sultan of Delhi and begins to unite India.

1227 Death of Genghis Khan.

1258 Mongols under Hulagu capture Baghdad and execute the last of the Abbasid caliphs.

1260 Mamelukes under Baybars defeat the Mongols at Ain Jalut, saving Egypt as a refuge of Moslem culture.

1267 Kublai Khan builds Peking.

1274 Kublai tries to invade Japan but is defeated.

1275 Marco Polo arrives in China.

1281 A second invasion of Japan is completely wiped out.

1294 Death of Kublai Khan.

1336-1573 Japan under the Ashikaga shoguns is torn by civil wars.

1368-1644 The Ming dynasty gives China three centuries of order.

1398 Timur captures and sacks Delhi, killing many thousands.

1421 Yung-lo moves the Chinese capital to Peking.

1453 Mohammed II and the Ottoman Turks capture Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire.

1498 Vasco da Gama reaches India.

1520-1566 Suleiman, greatest of the Ottoman rulers, expands the empire and organizes its legal system.

1526 Babur defeats the Delhi sultan at Panipat and founds the Mogul Empire.

1543 Portuguese traders and missionaries arrive in Japan.

1556 Akbar becomes Mogul emperor and consolidates India.

1557 Portuguese build a settlement at Macao on the coast of China.

1632 Shah Jahan begins construction of the Taj Mahal.

1641 European merchants are expelled from Japan.

1644 Beginning of the Manchu dynasty in China.

Christian Knights and Mongol Horsemen A. D. 099-1404

genghis khan

THROUGHOUT THE eleventh century, the divided Arab Empire became weaker in all its parts. Meanwhile, the Christian lands to the north became stronger. Adventures from northern France snatched Sicily and Southern Italy from the Arabs. The pope called on the rulers of Europe for a united Christian attack on the Moslems. By the end of the century, European knights in chain-mail armour were streaming into Syria by land and sea, determined to recapture the holy places of their religion. This campaign was the first of many. The Crusades dragged on for two centuries, with long periods of peace coming between bouts of fighting. Christian kings and noblemen carved small states out of Moslem territory, only to lose them. In 1099, Frankish troops seized Jerusalem, the Christians’ holy city, and made it the capital of a kingdom. In 1187 Saladin reconquered the country for Islam. After the Moslems forced the last Crusaders to leave Syria in 1291, only the island of Cyprus remained under the Christian flag. So, in the end, although the Crusades did not change the balance of power between Christianity and Islam, they left behind bitter memories which were to poison Moslem-Christian relations for centuries. Not all of the results were bad, however. The Crusaders, who came to the Near East convinced of their own superiority, found that their despised enemies knew more than they did about a great many things. They took the knowledge they had gained home to Europe. The brave deeds of the warriors on both sides gave rise to thousands of poems, songs and tales which enriched the literatures of Europe and Islam. The Christian heroes included two kings — Richard the Lion Hearted of England and Louis IX of France, who was made a saint. Among the Moslem heroes, the most famous were …

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Rival Caliphs and Amirs in the West A.D. 750-1492

caliph

IN 750, when the first Abbasid caliph ordered a wholesale massacre of the family that had ruled before him, hardly any of the Omayyads came out alive. One who did was a twenty-year-old youth named Abd-al-Rahman, a grandson of the tenth Omayyad caliph. Fleeing from a Bedouin camp on the Euphrates, he wandered in disguise through Palestine, Egypt and North Africa. Again and again he barely escaped being discovered and seized by Abbasid spies. His desperate flight lasted, altogether, five years. Finally he came to the town of Ceuta, on the northwest coast of Africa, where some Berber chieftains, who were uncles of his on his mother’s side, gave him shelter. The young man sent word across the Strait of Gibraltar to the chiefs of the Moslem divisions in southern Spain. Being Syrians, and therefore loyal to the Omayyads, the officers were overjoyed. They sent a ship to fetch him. Soon, he commanded a sizable army of Arabs and Berbers. When he led his soldiers through the countryside, the cities opened .their gates to him, one after another. The worried Abbasid governor tried to bribe him with rich presents‚ but he refused them. In May, 756, he captured the Spanish capital, Cordova. Within a few years be held all but the northern part of the Spanish peninsula. CONQUEST OF SPAIN Not long after this, the new Omayyad regime successfully defied the two most powerful rulers in the world. In 763, a governor of Spain appointed by al-Mansur was assassinated on Abd-al-Rahman’s orders. Abd-al-Rahman had the governor’s head sent to the caliph wrapped in a black Abbasid flag. Al-Mansur was beside himself with rage‚ but he was too busy fighting his enemies at home to answer the insult with force. In 778, Abd-al-Rahman and his Arab-Berber army defeated an army of …

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The Abbasids: Glory and Decay 750 -1258 A. D.

baghdad

UNDER THE Omayyads, who ruled from 661 to 750, Islam had grown into a mighty empire. Arabic had become its language, while the Arabs, in turn, had picked up useful skills from the peoples they had conquered. The state had grown rich from the tribute paid by non-Moslems and the land tax paid by landowners. Though the caliphs were mainly concerned with pleasure and power, they had not neglected religion completely. They had built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus — two magnificent sanctuaries which were the holiest places in Islam after the Kaaba and the Medina mosque. The believers had become divided, as they would remain divided, into Sunnites and Shiites. Now it was the turn of the Abbasids, who were to rule over the eastern part of the Arab Empire from 750 to 1258. Their first century of power was the Golden Age of Islam. Of all thirty-seven Abbassid caliphs, three stand out above the rest: al-Mansur, Harun al-Raschid and al-Mamun. Although he reigned after his brother the Bloodshedder, al-Mansur (754-775) was the real founder of the dynasty. It was he who firmly established it in power. He crushed a rebellion of Shiites. He raided the border strongholds of the Byzantines. He appointed the first vizier, or chief advisor. This practice, copied from the courts of the Persian emperors, was carried on by all the caliphs who came after him. BAGHDAD AND ITS RULERS Al-Mansur’s greatest achievement was building Baghdad, the fabled city of The Arabian Nights. He himself chose the site on the banks of the Tigris. Constructed in four years by a hundred thousand architects and workmen, Baghdad became the imperial capital of the Abbasids. It also became one of the greatest centres of trade in the world. To …

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Cracks in the Wall of Islam A.D. 656-750

islam

THE FIRST three caliphs — Abu Bakr, Omar and Othman — had all known — Mohammed well. In 656, Othman, an old man in his eighties, was stabbed to death by a band of rebels. They believed that the right to be caliph belonged to Mohammed’s son-in-law, Ali. Sometime later, Ali defeated his rivals for power in battle and proclaimed himself caliph. Instead of Medina, he chose as his capital the new Arab city of al-Kufah, in Iraq. All but one of the leaders of Islam swore loyalty to Ali. The exception was Muawiyah, the governor of Syria, who set out to avenge Othman. Holding the dead caliph’s blood-stained shirt above his head in the mosque of Damascus, he accused Ali of Othman‘s murder. He challenged Ali to produce the actual murderers or resign. ALI AND THE OMAYYADS Muawiyah was certainly ambitious‚ but his real quarrel with Ali was political, not personal. The question was whether al-Kufah or Damascus, Iraq or Syria, was to be the center of the Arab world. Soon the quarrel became a war, and two great armies stood face to face on the banks of the Euphrates. Instead of clashing, however, the Iraqi and Syrian soldiers merely raided each other’s camps, for neither side was eager to spill Moslem blood. Nevertheless, after a few weeks it began to look as if Ali’s forces would win. Then Muawiyah’s general Amr, the conqueror of Egypt, had a clever idea. He ordered his men to tie copies of the Koran to their lances and hoist them aloft. Fighting stopped immediately. The signal meant that the two sides should settle their differences by peaceful discussion, letting the holy word of Allah be their guide. To spare Moslem lives, Ali agreed. His decision had serious results. By accepting Amr’s suggestion, the …

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The Holy Book of Allah A. D. 632-732

koran

Mohammed sometimes dictated his thoughts to his secretary, Zayd, but when he spoke in public no one wrote down what he said. Instead, his listeners learned his speeches by heart and mistakes crept in, as they usually do. Only a short time after Mohammed’s death people were repeating his sayings in quite different ways. If Mohammed had been anyone else, this would not really have mattered. It would have been enough to remember what he had said without bothering too much about how he had said it. But the Moslems believed that God himself had addressed them through Mohammed. Every word the prophet had spoken was therefore divine and even every pause between words. The more the different reports of his teachings multiplied, the more confused his followers became. THE KORAN Mohammed’s old companions soon realized that if this confusion Were allowed to go on, Islam could easily split up into quarreling groups. Eventually, either Abu Bakr or a later head of the movement, Othman, ordered Zayd to prepare a text of Mohammed’s teachings that would be correct and complete. Gathering written and remembered fragments of his master’s words “from the ribs of palm-leaves and tablets of white stone and from the hearts of men,” Zayd brought them all together in a book. This book afterwards came to be called the Koran, meaning “the reading aloud” in Arabic. To Moslems, its contents are the very word of Allah. Four-fifths the size of the New Testament, the Koran is made up of 114 suras, or chapters. These suras are not arranged in the order in which Mohammed first spoke them, but by length, beginning with the longest. Most of them, short and fiery, came to Mohammed during his early years of struggle in Mecca. They deal with such things as the …

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Mohammed, Prophet of Allah A. D. 571 – 632

mohammed

IN THE year 571, in Mecca, a boy was born in a humble household of the Quraysh. No one knows what name he was given. His father died before his birth and his mother when he was six. The orphan, boy now called Mohammed, was brought up by his grandfather. When his grandfather also died, he came into the care of his uncle, Abu Talib. Nothing definite is known about his early life. As a boy, he may have tended sheep at the edge of the desert outside the city. When he was old enough to ride a camel, he probably traveled with caravans to Syria and Yemen. Later, he worked for a woman named Khadijah, the wealthy widow of two merchants. When he was twenty-five, he married her. Khadijah, who was forty, was still quite beautiful and had a fine mind. Mohamed himself was a handsome young man with broad shoulders and a curly black beard. His speech was musical, rolling from his tongue with the rhythm of poetry. In spite of the difference in their ages, their marriage was a happy one. Most men in those days kept as many wives as they could afford, but Mohammed refused to take any wife but Khadijah as long as she lived. Like most people of his time, Mohammed could not read or write. Even so, he was a thoughtful person, eager for knowledge. He listened to Jews and Christians tell about their beliefs and heard some of his pagan neighbours make fun of the gods their fathers had worshiped. Slowly he came to believe that there was really only one true God. He called him Allah, after Allah Taala, the Most High God of the Kaaba. During his travels he had seen much that troubled him. The half-wild Bedouins drank …

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Arabia, Mother of Religions 3000 B. C. – 570 A. D

ARABIA

ARABIA, the big, boot-shaped peninsula off the northeast corner of Africa, is one of the hottest and driest regions on earth. It is also extremely rugged. Almost all of it is made up of mountains‚ deserts and immense plains of sand broken by hills. Not a single river crosses it, only dry riverbeds called wadis which quickly carry away the little rain that falls. Water is so scarce that trees and plants can grow only along some of the coasts and in small “islands” of green called oases, mostly found in the wadis, which dot the vast interior. Yet this bleak‚ patched land was once the home of a people, the Semites, who gave the world much of its learning and three of its greatest religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Thousands of years ago some Semitic tribesmen migrated north to the fertile region by the Mediterranean Sea. Over many generations they developed the principles of Judaism, the religion of the Jews. Much later Christianity also came into being there. Before the coming of the third great Semitic faith, Islam, Judaism and Christianity had long been established in Arabia. Most of the people still worshiped the sun, moon, stars and the spirits of hills, caves, rocks, springs and palm trees. They bowed down before the day idols of hundreds of gods, goddesses and demons. THE BEDOUINS Most Arabians were herdsmen called Bedouins. They roamed endlessly across the empty spaces, looking for water and grass for their camels, goats and sheep. They ate dates and a mixture of flour with water or goat’s milk and slept in tents woven from the hair of camels or goats. They wore flowing head-scarves and long shirts and went barefoot. They owned very little. A Bedouin’s most prized possessions were his camels and his sword. For …

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