Harun al-Rashid (the Righteous) succeeded as caliph in 786 AD when his father, al-Mahdi, died the year before. During Harun’s reign, the caliph’s court in Baghdad became more Persian because of the influence of the Barmakid family and the Abbasids’ other Persian backers. The Abbasid court adopted Sassanian customs which required all subjects to bow down before the caliph as a greeting. The caliph also adopted the establishment of a harem (a contrast to original Islamic law which allowed men to have four wives). The Caliphate in Baghdad is recorded on the Biblical Timeline Poster with World History during the 8th century AD.
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The responsibilities of the caliph transformed from active administrator to a mere religious and military symbol during this period when Harun distanced himself from administrative affairs and left this task to his vizier. He, however, remained as the “representative of God” or the holy head of the ummah (Muslim community) on earth. The Persians, by then, held much sway in the Abbasid court as well as in the military. It was something the Arab population resented, but the discontent was offset by the political stability and economic prosperity during Harun’s reign.
It was said that the Abbasid caliphate and Muslim community reached a cultural, political, commercial, and scientific golden age during Harun’s reign. He ordered Muslim scholars to translate Greek and Syriac scientific texts to Arabic, while literature, mathematics, and medicine flourished during his rule. The development of the legal framework of the Islamic community called the Sharia also started and became fully developed during this period.
“Harun al-Rashid receiving a delegation”
Harun’s reign started the golden age of the Islamic community. The years that followed were also the start of a long political and economic decline of the Abbasids into the 13th century. The caliph traveled to Khorasan to stop a rebellion in the last year of his reign. He died on the way at the ancient city of Tus (near present-day Mashhad) in 809 AD. He arranged an unconventional succession for his two sons before he died, and appointed the older son, Al-Amin, as ruler in Baghdad. His favorite son by a Persian concubine, Al-Mamun, was appointed as the governor of Khorasan in the east. The arrangement did not go well for the brothers. By 811, a full-scale civil war erupted between the two which ended only in 813 upon the death of Al-Amin.
Al-Mamun succeeded his deceased brother as the new Abbasid caliph, but Shiite and Kharijite rebellions plagued the first ten years of his reign. He died in 833 AD and was succeeded by his brother, Al-Mutassim, who was unpopular among the people of Baghdad. Fearful for his life, the new caliph hired Turkish bodyguards who were former slaves and who, in recent years, had converted to Islam. Al-Mutassim further alienated himself from his own people when he moved the court from Baghdad and established another capital in Samarra.
The Turks steadily rose to power and became influential during the time of Al-Mutassim. Sunni Islam became popular among the people during the time of this caliph, but Shiite rebellion and economic instability plagued the caliphate most of the time. The conflict with the Byzantine Empire also worsened during his reign after Al-Mutassim and his troops repeatedly invaded Byzantine border towns. Al-Mutassim died in Samarra in 842 AD. He was succeeded by Al-Wathiq whose reign was dominated by doctrinal issues.
Al-Mutawakkil succeeded his brother, Al-Wathiq, upon his death, but the new caliph started his 14-year reign with a bang with the brutal execution of his brother’s vizier. The persecution of the Shiites, Christians, and Jews followed this brutal act. They were banned from public employment and subjected to forced conversions to Sunni Islam. He remained in Samarra and his son, Al-Muntasir, hired a Turkish soldier to assassinate the Caliph years later. Al-Muntasir succeeded his father but reigned only for five months before he died by poisoning in 861 AD. The Abbasid caliphate went into a slow and steady decline in the years that followed while the Turkish soldiers held the reins of power until the rise of the Buyid dynasty in the middle of the 10th century.
The Hohokam people started their migration out of Mexico into present-day Arizona in 300 BC. They settled in the northwestern portions of the Sonoran desert, particularly the Salt-Gila River basin. This was an area that received a relatively stable amount of rainfall. Which was enough to support a diverse ecosystem. Archaeologists christened this stage as the Pioneer Period (300 BC-500/700 AD). It was followed by the Colonial Period (500/700-900 AD) in which the Hohokam people expanded their territories and their influence within Arizona. The Hohokam people expanded their settlements around 800 AD, which is where it is recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History.
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The Hohokam started to pour out of their core settlements in the Salt-Gila River basin during the Colonial Period. They did not wander too far from their original settlements. The migrants settled in the nearby Verde Valley in the north, the Gila Valley in the east, and the Santa Cruz and San Pedro Valleys in the South. These areas had one thing in common: they all had the same favorable environment similar to the Salt-Gila River basin that allowed the Hohokam to thrive in an arid region.
The Colonial Period was characterized by the disappearance of large pit-houses they built during the Pioneer Period and the appearance of the Mesoamerican ball courts and capped trash mounds. This period also saw the widespread cultivation of corn, squash, barley, tobacco, beans, and cotton which thrived because of the Hohokam’s construction and extension of their irrigation canals. They also prized some wild plants such as the prickly pear, yucca, agave, mesquite, and the saguaro cactus. Rabbits, deer, antelopes, badgers, turkeys, and foxes were important sources of protein, while domesticated dogs served as the Hohokams’ companions.
References:
Picture By Yuchitown – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45030146
Mares, Michael A., ed. Encyclopedia of Deserts. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.
Peregrine, Peter N., and Melvin Ember., eds. Encyclopedia of Prehistory. Vol. 6. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2001.
The ancient city of Baghdad is located near the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, near the ancient (and once-great) Mesopotamian cities of Babylon, Kish, and Eshnunna. Baghdad was one of the oldest cities in Mesopotamia, but it was not until the rise of Abbasid caliphate (750-1258) that the city became the center of the Islamic world. Baghdad is listed as the Abbasid Capital on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History in 762 AD.
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The Umayyad Caliphate established the Syrian city of Damascus as their capital in 661 AD during the reign of Caliph Mu’awiya who found the city ideal for a number of reasons. First, Damascus sat on a fertile land with its back near the Hejaz region where the holy cities of Medina and Mecca are located. It was also located near the Arab heartland where the Umayyad rulers could easily call on their soldiers whenever the Byzantines harassed them or whenever they wanted to raid the Byzantine cities.
The family’s rule unraveled less than ninety years later during the reign of the last Umayyad caliph, Marwan II, and Abu al-Abbas, the elected leader of the rebel Banu Hashim clan, ousted them to start the Abbasid caliphate. Al-Abbas was aptly nicknamed as As-Saffah (the Slaughterer or ‘he who sheds blood’) after his purge of the whole Umayyad clan and his bloody capture of the caliphate. Al-Mansur succeeded As-Saffah as caliph of the Muslims after his brother’s death in 754 AD. As long as he was alive, The Slaughterer never dared set foot in nor rule from Damascus.
Al-Mansur founded Baghdad
Al-Abbas stayed in Kufa (a city in modern-day southern Iraq) because he thought he was safe in his stronghold from the revenge of anyone who survived the purge he masterminded against the Damascus-based Umayyad family. Damascus was also too far from Persia where most of the Abbasids’ supporters were based. The Syrian city was also too near Asia Minor where the Byzantines could easily harass them on land or at sea. The Abbasids focused on an easier eastward expansion into Central Asia, rather than a westward expansion where they encountered defeat many times in the hands of the Byzantines.
Al-Mansur, upon his accession as caliph, immediately looked for a new city on which he would build the Abbasids’ capital, but eliminated Kufa from the list as it was too near the rebellious Shiites and Arab tribesmen. He also removed the possibility of another Abbasid stronghold, Hashimiyah, as it was the base of the fanatical (and troublesome) Rawindis who worshiped him as a god. Another reason that pushed al-Mansur to move out of Kufa was that it was too near Mesopotamia’s desert border with Arabia. He wanted a more well-watered, fertile area that could support the local population.
He traveled north from Jarjaraya to Mosul by way of the Tigris river, and chanced upon the hills of Jabal Hamrin which seemed ideal at first, but eliminated it because food and other supplies were scarce in the area. On the way back to Kufa, al-Mansur saw Baghdad (then a Persian hamlet) located near the west bank of the Tigris. It was well-watered by the Sarat Canal which al-Mansur thought as ideal for his new capital. He had the foundations laid out in 762 AD.
Although it was not as ancient compared to the long-gone cities that once surrounded it, Baghdad was in existence by the time of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. The origin of the city’s name came from the Persian words for ‘a garden’ (bagh) of a person or deity called ‘Dad or Dadwayh.’ ‘Bagh’ was also the name of a local god, while ‘Dad’ meant ‘gift of’; meanwhile, another possibility is that ‘bagh’ meant God and ‘dadh’ meant ‘founded by.’ Some Muslims renamed the circular core of the city as Madinat as-Salam (The City of Peace) because they wanted to disassociate it with any remnant of Baghdad’s pagan past. But the name persisted and the city was known for many centuries and into the modern times as Baghdad.
As much as 100,000 men worked to build the city’s circular core (Madinat as-Salam). By 763 AD, the Abbasid administrative offices were located inside Baghdad. Madinat as-Salam was finished by 766 AD. Baghdad continued to be the Abbasid capital until the arrival of the Mongol horde during the 13th century.
The Ancestral Pueblo built some of the most recognizable dwellings in North America which eventually became the hallmark of the American Southwest landscape and cultural heritage. One of the ancient ruins that dot the barren landscape of New Mexico is the Pueblo Bonito complex located in the Chaco Canyon National Park. Pueblo Bonito (or beautiful village in Spanish) was constructed around 825 AD by the Ancestral Pueblo people (Anasazi). These free-standing structures evolved from the pit-houses that were once popular during the Basketmaker Eras. The complex was rediscovered during the 19th century, and excavations on the 2-acre site started in 1896 and ended only in 1927. The Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon National Park, New Mexico is recorded on the Biblical Timeline Chart with World History between 915 – 1130 AD.
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“Pueblo Bonito is the largest great house in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.”
The settlement of the Pueblo Bonito area started around 825-850 AD, and the first of the Great Houses was also constructed during this period. The largest Great House contained around eight-hundred rooms plus a number of kivas (rooms used for religious ceremonies), while a typical house in Pueblo Bonito only had as much as six rooms and a kiva. These houses were constructed in different geometric shapes, but some of the most predominant house were circular, rectangular, or oval in shape.
The Pueblo Bonito construction was divided into two stages: Old Bonito and Late Bonito. Old Bonito started around 825 AD and featured crude masonry, while the D-shaped plan of the Pueblo (with as much as 499 rooms) was completed around the Late Bonito period (1011 to 1126). The D-shaped Pueblo Bonito complex could support around 500 people at one time. Some of the rooms were used as administrative halls by the village leaders, storage rooms, and monuments. Construction of the Great Houses reached its peak during the eleventh century, but the number of Great Houses declined around 1130.
References:
Picture By James Q. Jacobs – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30405192
Cremin, Aedeen., ed. The World Encyclopedia of Archaeology. Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books, 2007.
Lekson, Stephen H., ed. The Architecture of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2007.
The Maya of Mexico faded into obscurity during the Post-Classic Period. While they continued to exist as a distinct group of people, they never regained their dominance in the area in the years that followed. The Classic Period brought prosperity to the Maya people and resulted in an explosive population growth, but the same prosperity turned on them when they ran out of land to grow their food. Faced with the possibility of starvation, the Maya rulers ordered them to use every inch of available land for agriculture. But it was still not enough, and more people began to starve after a widespread drought set in during the middle of the ninth century. The Maya power in Mexico collapsed between 900 and 1100 AD according to the Bible Timeline Chart with World History.
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It was a free-for-all situation during the early Post-Classic Period and when the food shortage worsened, almost everyone left the Maya cities to survive. Even the Maya noble families were not spared. Many migrated north, while others traveled south to Honduras where they brought with them their agricultural skills.
The Mixtec settled on the cities left vacant by the Maya after their exodus, but they also settled on the lands near the territories of the Zapotec. The collapse of the Maya in Mexico also gave way to the rise and short-lived domination of the Toltecs who were based in the city of Tula. The Toltec Empire lasted until the twelfth century after they, too, experienced drought and starvation. The Maya city of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula survived into the thirteenth century and became a center of pilgrimage until the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores in the sixteenth century.
References:
Picture By Madman2001 – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3197764
Cremin, Aedeen. The World Encyclopedia of Archaeology. Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books, 2007.
Morley, Sylvanus Griswold, and Robert J. Sharer. The Ancient Maya. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1956.
The houses of the Ancient Pueblo people were some of the most advanced and spectacular among the Native North Americans of the same era. The Ancient Puebloans constantly moved around the Four Corners area during the Archaic Era to hunt and gather food. These ancient nomads were still on the move most of the time during the Early Basketmaker II Era, but they periodically took shelter in caves during winter or camped out whenever the weather allowed it. During the Late Basketmaker II Era, the Ancient Puebloans started small-scale cultivation of squash and corn. As a result, the Ancient Puebloans switched from nomadic to the sedentary lifestyle which necessitated the construction of the earliest shallow pit-houses. The construction of circular rooms is recorded on the Bible Timeline with World History between 900 and 1100 AD.
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“Large circular depression outlined by a stone wall. The bottom is flat and grassy, and has a collection of rectangular stone foundations and smaller circles of stone. A great sandstone cliff towers in the background, and beneath the cliff are other stone foundations that are larger and higher.”
Deep pit-houses and above-ground homes increased during the Basketmaker III Era. These circular, oval, or rectangle dwellings were clustered together in three to five pit-houses and were made by digging a hole on the ground. The pit-house was supported by timber posts and beams, which were then covered with woven mats and brush as roofing materials. The soil dug from the pit and placed on the roof served as additional insulation for the house. The first above-ground rooms also appeared during this period.
The villages became larger during the Pueblo I and II Era when pit-houses evolved into “pueblos” or above-ground structures with adjoining rooms. These structures were initially used for storage as families preferred the comfort of the pit-houses, but Ancient Puebloans gradually moved into these pueblos and converted the pit-houses into kivas (circular, oval, or semi-circular rooms used for religious ceremonies). Larger pueblos dominated the landscape over the years, but these gradually gave way for cliff dwellings preferred by the Ancient Puebloans during the Pueblo III Era.
The Umayyad Caliphate was on the brink of collapse during the reign of the caliph Yazid II up to the short-lived rule of Ibrahim. All four caliphs who ruled before Ibrahim died either from illness or violence, while Ibrahim himself was deposed by General Marwan bin Muhammad in 744 AD. Peace remained elusive for caliph Marwan as the Byzantine emperor, Constantine V, attacked the coast of Syria and defeated the Arab navy in 747 AD. The Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad later occurred around 850 AD according to the Bible Timeline with World History.
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The Umayyad rulers had been deeply unpopular for some time, and the naval defeat only added to Marwan’s demise. Two discontented factions rose in Khorasan and rebelled during the last years of Umayyad rule: the Shi’at Ali (Party of Ali) who believed that a descendant of Ali (Muhammad’s son-in-law and cousin) was a more suitable replacement to Marwan and the Hashimites who were willing to appoint anyone from Muhammad’s clan, the Banu Hashim. The Hashimites voted one of the most prominent Banu Hashim clansmen, Abu al-Abbas, as their leader in 749 AD and assembled a large army to support him in ousting Marwan.
The conscripted army led by caliph Marwan and Abu al-Abbas’ rebel troops met in battle near the Tigris river in 750 AD. The battle resulted in the Umayyad recruits’ total defeat, and Marwan was forced to flee to several Middle Eastern cities until he finally reached Egypt. Abu al-Abbas’ assassins caught him hiding inside a Coptic church in Egypt and killed him; they later sent his decapitated head sent to al-Abbas in Kufa.
A massacre of the remaining members of the Umayyad family ensued after Marwan’s defeat. 20-year old Abd ar-Rahman survived after he hurriedly left Damascus with his brother and their Greek servant. They tried to flee into the Persian territory, but the assassins sent by Abu al-Abbas caught them near the banks of the Euphrates. The brothers and their servant jumped into the river to escape the assassins. His brother swam back to the bank after the assassins tricked him and was killed on the spot. The survivors continued their journey east but abruptly turned west toward Egypt and eventually to Ifriqiya. Back in Kufa, Abu al-Abbas invited all the remaining members of the Umayyad clan to a banquet as a sign of his goodwill and to offer amnesty. But the new ruler had all of his Umayyad guests killed as they feasted, and the festivities continued as before. The purge of Umayyads was finally complete. This cruelty earned Abu al-Abbas the title of al-Saffah or “the Slaughterer.”
Rise of the Abbasid Dynasty
Four years after his accession as caliph and the purge of the Umayyads, Abu al-Abbas died. This left the caliphate to his brother al-Mansur. The first Abbasid ruler governed from Kufa (modern-day Iraq), but al-Mansur moved the capital to Baghdad for one practical reason: it was the center of the trade route that crisscrossed the Euphrates and Tigris, as well as the caravan route from Syria and Egypt.
Meanwhile, ar-Rahman had arrived in the province of Al-Andalus (Spain) and declared himself the Emir (Prince) of Cordoba after he defeated Governor Al-Fihri. Ar-Rahman’s victory made Al-Andalus independent from the Abbasid caliphate in Kufa, and al-Mansur tried to reclaim the territory when news of ar-Rahman’s conquest reached him. He sent a sizable Abbasid army into the peninsula, but the new Emir of Cordoba and his troops defeated them in a battle in Seville.
The Abbasid caliph realized that Al-Andalus was not worth the trouble and focused instead on getting rid of enemies from within his empire. He ordered the massacre of prominent Shi’a leaders for their refusal to support his brother, the deceased al-Abbas, and those who dared rebel against his rule (as well as those suspected of dissent) were brutally punished. One good thing that he did was to take Baghdad out of the periphery and into the center stage of the Islamic world after he made it the capital of the Abbasid caliphate. Damascus reminded him too much of the Umayyads, and the city was too close for comfort to the Byzantines who had defeated the Arab navy less than forty years ago during the Second Siege of Constantinople. It was also too far from Persia where the Abbasid rulers had a strong power base and solid support from prominent Persian families.
It was said that the caliph traveled north to Mosul by following the banks of the Tigris in search of his new capital, but then ruled out the city because of the difficulty of transporting supplies. He chose the ancient city of Baghdad (then a Persian Hamlet) as his new capital in 762 AD for two reasons: the city was far from Kufa where Arab garrison troops and Shi’ites constantly rebelled, and during the eighth century, it was near the banks of Tigris which made the land very fertile. For Al-Mansur, it was perfect, and it was only second to the Byzantine capital in glory during the Medieval Period.
Al-Mansur had ordered his men to start the construction of the walls of the Round City of Baghdad (Madīnat as-Salām) when the descendants of Ali rebelled in Hijaz and Basra, but both were quickly quelled after the death of the Shi’ite leaders. As much as 100,000 men worked to build the walls of Madīnat as-Salām. B y 763 AD, the offices of Public Offices as well as the treasury were inside the new city instead of at Kufa. It took another three years before the construction of Madīnat as-Salām was finished.
In 775, al-Mansur traveled to Mecca for a pilgrimage, but he fell from his horse before he entered the city and died immediately. Al-Mansur reigned as the Abbasid caliph for twenty-two years and succeeded by his son, Muhammad bin Mansur (nicknamed al-Mahdi). The elder al-Mansur’s reign was characterized as gloomy and harsh, while al-Mahdi’s was the exact opposite. He also traveled to Mecca and visited his father’s grave, but he first needed to suppress a new revolt led by an “Al Muqanna” or the Veiled One. It was almost immediately quelled, and Al Muqanna was forced to take poison after he was cornered by al-Mahdi’s troops.
“One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Thousand_and_One_Nights
Harun Rules from Baghdad
Al-Mahdi also led an attack against the Byzantines in 780 AD with the help of his younger son, Harun, who was supported by his loyal Barmakid tutor Yahya bin Khalid. Harun became al-Mahdi’s favorite and preparations were underway to proclaim him as caliph when his father died by poisoning in 785 AD. The role of caliph fell to the older son, Musa. He was immediately tested when Shi’ites once again rose to rebel. The revolt was quashed, and Musa was about to proclaim his son as the next caliph when his own ambitious mother had him smothered in his sleep by the servants. Harun, his younger brother, became the caliph in 786 AD and took the title ar-Rashid (the Righteous). The new caliph immediately appointed Yahya as the chief minister which was a smart move as the Barmakid tutor helped him quash rebellions from within and guided him to victory against the Byzantines. Under Harun and with the guidance of Yahya, the Abbasid caliphate became a mighty force in the Middle East.
The prosperity of the caliphate was Harun’s primary concern, so he moved the capital from Baghdad to Ar-Raqqa where Arab merchants could be nearer to and take advantage of the profitable trade with the Khazars and Scandinavians who had ventured south. He also established a good diplomatic relationship with the powerful Frankish king Charlemagne and Harun even gifted him with an Asian elephant which the king took with him on a campaign against the Scandinavians. Harun became one of the richest men of the land (if not the richest), and his legendary wealth and personality became the inspiration for the Arabian Nights.
When the Tibetans threatened the Abbasids’ eastern frontier, Harun acted immediately and ordered additional fortifications for the border. His troops also overpowered the Byzantines and forced Nikephoros I to send a hefty tribute for peace—a sizable annual sum that added to his legendary wealth. But all was not well within the caliphate after Harun saw that Yahya had become popular among the people. He had the chief minister thrown into prison and the rest of the Barmakids stripped of their positions and properties. Yahya died in prison in 805/6 and his family, as well as their followers, never regained their affluence.
Harun and his troops traveled to Khorasan in 809 AD to quash a rebellion in the area, but he never arrived at his destination. The caliph died at a town called Tus and left behind a fortune that made him one of the richest men on earth during the Medieval Period. But Harun’s death would herald the long decline of the Abbasids after his sons, al-Amin and al-Mamun, fought for the right to rule the caliphate. Harun’s confusing succession arrangement sparked the row between the two brothers and the conflict escalated into full-blown war in the same year. Al-Mamun besieged Baghdad until his brother was forced to flee from the city, but was caught and killed by assassins near the Tigris river. Al-Mamun was now free to rule as Caliph of Abbasid Baghdad, but his rule would be challenged by the other prominent dynasties of the Islamic world.
Decline
During the early years of the 10th century, the Abbasid caliphs became mere figureheads for Turkish kingmakers in Baghdad and Samarra, while patches of Islamic lands were ruled by different families. It included the Fatimid Dynasty of North Africa, the Shi’a Buyid Dynasty that held the real power in Baghdad, the Samanids in greater Persia, the Saffarids in the south, and the Hamdanids in Aleppo. The Abbasid Dynasty continued to rule as caliphs (this time, in name only) from Baghdad until the rise of the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century.
The chaotic Northern and Southern Dynasties abruptly ended when Emperor Xuan of Northern Zhou suffered and died from a stroke at the age of twenty. Yang Jian, the Duke of Sui and Emperor Xuan’s father-in-law, had been an excellent as well as shrewd administrator during the time of the former Northern Zhou emperors. It was no different during the time of Emperor Xuan. It was Yang Jian who held the upper hand when it came to politics after the young and unstable Emperor Xuan indulged in vice and cruelty. The Sui Dynasty resulted from this and is recorded on the Biblical Timeline with World History between 581 – 618 AD.
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Emperor Xuan died in 579 AD and left Northern Zhou to his seven-year-old son, Emperor Jing. To keep the empire intact, Yang Jian appointed himself the coregent of the young ruler but steadily built a circle of supporters composed of trusted government officials to consolidate his power (the generals Yang Su and Gao Jiong, as well as the prominent government official and writer Li Delin, were among his supporters). Gao Jiong silenced any dissent against Yang Jian, while Li Delin praised the Duke of Sui in his writings and supported the belief that the Duke was a better ruler than the current Emperor. By 580 AD, the Duke of Sui’s efforts to sideline the young emperor paid off when Emperor Jing signed his own abdication and Yang Jian formally acceded the throne as Emperor Wendi of Sui. He also ordered the execution of the members of the former royal family (which included his own grandson) to get rid of other claimants to the Northern throne.
Reunification
“Location of the Sui Dynasty”
Yang Jian, now Emperor Wendi of Sui, sought to reunite the Southern Chen domain with his own Northern Kingdom. The Southern Chen kingdom became weak during the rule of its incompetent king. Emperor Wendi conquered it easily after seven years of preparation. The Northern and Southern Dynasties were no more, and a greater part of China was once again united after nearly two hundred years of fragmented kingdoms. Emperor Wendi of Sui then spent the next years strengthening the unity of the northern and southern kingdoms with the establishment of a unified government with a clear hierarchy. He ordered that all weapons be confiscated from civilians to prevent rebellions, had the crumbled portions of the Great Wall rebuilt, laid out a new legal code, and improved relations with his southern domain.
He also fought against the Kingdom of Goguryeo in the Korean Peninsula but was unsuccessful in his quest for domination because of the outstanding defense of the troops led by General Mundeok. Emperor Wendi’s court was beset with intrigues during the last years of his reign. The victims included long-time general Gao Jiong (demoted to the commoner rank after a conflict with Empress Dugu) as well as Li Delin (stripped of his position as governor because of court rumors). One of the emperor’s most ambitious projects was the Grand Canal that connected the Yellow River with the Yangtze, but the canal was built at the expense of the laborers and the taxpayers which made Wendi unpopular among the people toward the end of his reign. Emperor Wendi died in 604 AD and was succeeded by his second son, the Emperor Yangdi of Sui.
One of the emperor’s most ambitious projects was the Grand Canal that connected the Yellow River with the Yangtze, but the canal was built at the expense of the laborers and the taxpayers which made Wendi unpopular among the people toward the end of his reign. Emperor Wendi died in 604 AD and was succeeded by his second son, the Emperor Yangdi of Sui.
Collapse of the Sui Dynasty
Emperor Yangdi continued his father’s Grand Canal project, but it was at a great cost. The people resented the high taxes they needed to pay for the completion of the project while many of the laborers died or became impoverished. He also continued his father’s war with Goguryeo which teetered between a stalemate and a complete failure for twenty years, until the Sui troops were finally defeated by General Mundeok’s forces in Pyongyang during 612 AD. When news of the Sui defeat reached Luoyang, his officers promptly declared a rebellion against Emperor Yangdi. He died in the city while the battle raged on in 618 AD. Upon Yangdi’s death, his sons briefly inherited the throne, but they were soon disposed of in 619 AD. The rebel officer Li Yuan promptly declared himself Gaozu emperor and started the new Tang Dynasty.
References:
Picture By Ian Kiu – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3082893
Twitchett, Denis, ed. Cambridge History of China. Vol. 3. Sui and T’ang China 589-906, Part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Xiong, Victor Cunrui. Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty: His Life, Times, and Legacy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006.
Foot binding was the ancient Chinese practice of breaking, bending, and wrapping a girl’s feet to shrink and control their size. One of the earliest stories associated with foot binding was during the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC) when an unnamed emperor became infatuated with a concubine named Daji. This concubine had clubfoot so she asked the emperor to impose foot binding on the ladies in the palace so that hers would look normal. A dancer in the court of a Tang Dynasty emperor also bound her feet to make them more attractive. This story was said to be the most feasible origin of foot binding. Foot-binding became the custom at the court of Chi during 500 AD according to the Bible Timeline Poster with World History.
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The practice was mentioned once again during the domination of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) when tenth-century dancers bound their feet to make them look beautiful. The court ladies copied this practice. It later became fashionable among ladies of the upper class as seen in the tomb of Lady Huang whose tiny-than-normal feet were wrapped tightly in cloth. The popularity of the practice reached its height during the Ming Dynasty. It was during this period that the feet were shrunk by forcibly bending them downward. Over the years, the practice was adopted by lower-class women except by the Hakka minority, working peasants, and non-Han Manchu ladies.
“Bound feet were once considered a mark of beauty”
An early Qing Dynasty emperor issued a ban on foot binding. It turned out to be so unpopular that a later Emperor Qing emperor had it revoked. An official ban on the practice arrived in 1911, but some girls in rural areas continued to have their feet bound until the practice declined and was completely abandoned in the 20th century.
Reasons for Foot Binding
The Han Chinese associated this practice with wealth as girls with bound feet usually belonged to the upper class who did not need to work in the fields and whose value in the marriage market were higher because of their family’s affluence. This, however, was not necessarily true for all regions in China as poorer girls, despite their bound feet, were also exploited as laborers in cottage industries.
The practice was also a symbol of feminine beauty and sexuality as some men considered women with smaller feet more attractive than those with normal ones. Large and normal-sized feet were associated with mobility and loose morals (women with normal-sized feet can go out of the house and mingle with men), while women with smaller feet were considered pure and chaste since they were bound inside the house. Other Chinese men also associated the gait, as well as the appearance and smell of bound feet with sexuality.
In 662 AD, Heavenly Sovereign Tenji Tennō ordered the courtier Fujiwara no Kamatari to compile the laws of Japan into a single legal code. The result was the Ōmi code (Ōmi Ritsu-Ryo) which contained twenty-two volumes of code and penal law, but the task was left unfinished by the time of Emperor Tenji’s death in 672 AD. His son, Kōbun, succeeded him as emperor. However, it was during the reign of Monmu (Tenji’s grandson) that the compilation of the laws was completed more than thirty years later. The Daiho Legislation is recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History around 700 AD.
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Monmu, who was only fourteen years old at the time of his accession, ordered his court to resume the compilation of the laws in 697 AD. The legal code was enacted in 701 AD and named Daiho or Taiho Ritsu-Ryo (Great Treasure) after the discovery of gold in Tsushima in the same year. The code was revised multiple times by a 10-man committee presided by the influential courtier Fujiwara no Fuhito and Duke Awada Mahito. The result of the revision was pared down to eleven volumes of Administrative Code (ritsu) and six volumes of Penal Law (ryo) which were then publicized in the following year. The sections included:
Emperor Monmu
The laws were copied extensively from the Tang Code of China but revised and adapted to suit Japanese traditions (the laws in the ryo were more “Japanese” compared to the ritsu). The Taiho Code was more than just a set of laws as it also reorganized the Yamato polity into two departments: the Jingi-kan or Department of Worship and the Dajo-kan or Department of State. The Department of Worship was in charge of religious ceremonies and the administration of shrines of the native religion; the Department of State was more secular and had a clear hierarchy of ministers and councilors who were ruled over by a chancellor. The Yamato domain was now divided into provinces or kuni which were then divided into districts. Provincial and district governors were in charge of the allotment of land, tax collection, and labor.
The laws in the Taiho Code were updated in 718 AD into the Yōrō Code which the Japanese used until the 15th century. Unfortunately, many portions of the Taiho code were lost. Except for some fragments that could be found in the Yōrō Code.
References:
Picture By Unknown – Homepage of the Dojoji Buddhist Temple, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11012924
Brinkley, F., and Dairoku Kikuchi. A History of the Japanese People from the Earliest times to the End of the Meiji Era. New York: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1915.
“Introduction to the Heian Period: The Asuka and Nara Periods.” Accessed August 17, 2016. https://www.courses.psu.edu/spcom/spcom483_sdp2/lectures/Bill/intro.html.
Steenstrup, Carl. A History of Law in Japan until 1868. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991.
