Most of what modern historians know about the ancient Mesoamerican people called the Chichimeca came from the records of the Aztecs (Mixeca) who acknowledged them as their ancestors, as well as the accounts of the early Spanish settlers of northern Mexico, particularly those of Gonzalo de las Casas. The Chichimeca were also associated by the Aztec as the direct ancestors of the Toltec people whose empire they later adopted. The Chichimec Nomads are recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History during 1170 AD.
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The early Spanish accounts of the northwestern Mesoamerican people called Chichimeca were informative but also riddled with prejudice. The term “Chichimeca” itself was considered derogatory as it had various unpleasant meanings in the Nahuatl language, including “sons of dogs” and “rope suckers.” It was the Nahuatl equivalent of the term “barbarians” as many of them lived a nomadic lifestyle, engaged in hunting, and resisted the Spanish efforts to colonize them. The term, however, did not represent a single group of people, but different groups that lived north of the Valley of Mexico, including nomads, semi-nomads, and sedentary agriculturalists.
“Map of the location of prominent Chichimeca peoples around 1550.”
One of the earliest accounts of the Chichimeca people came from Gonzalo de las Casas wherein he noted that the Chichimeca, just like dogs, hunted so they could eat (hence, the “sons of dogs” term). According to Las Casas, they were proficient in using bows and arrows and were known as fierce warriors who frequently fought their own people, as well as the Spanish colonizers. He noted that there were four Chichimeca tribes (nations): the Zacatecos whose name means “grass” in Nahuatl, the Guachichiles who were known for their colorful and elaborate headdresses, the peaceful Pames tribe, and the fierce Guamari. Other tribes, such as the Otomis, Tepehuan, Caxcanes, and Tecuexes, were added to the list of Chichimeca people later on.
The Spanish conquistadores labeled the Chichimeca barbaric because, unlike their neighbors in central and southern Mexico, they did not seem to practice any religion. The Tepehuan, however, worshiped carved idols and practiced ritual cannibalism which they seemed to have adopted from the southern tribes. Later research also showed that northern Chichimec semi-nomads worshiped the sun and the moon. Unlike central and southern Mesoamerican peoples, they sacrificed deer instead of human hearts to their deities.
References:
Picture By Grin20 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
Gradie, Charlotte M. “Discovering the Chichimecas.” The Americas 51, no. 1 (1994): 67-88.
Russell, Philip L. The Essential History of Mexico: From Pre-Conquest to Present. Routledge, 2015.
The Muslim world had split by the time the first half of the tenth century rolled in. The Abbasid caliphs under Buyid control continued to rule in Baghdad; the Samanids ruled Khorasan in the east. The Saffarids’ ruled directly to the south; the Umayyad Caliph in Cordoba; the Hamdanids near the Mediterranean coast; and finally, the Ziyarids south of the Caspian Sea. Another dynasty appeared during the latter half of the tenth century, but this time, the formidable newcomers came not from the Arabs nor the Persians, but from the ranks of the slaves-turned-warriors: the Turks. The Turkic Muslims took India in 1030 AD according to the Bible Timeline with World History.
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The prominent Turkic general Alp Tigin was under the service of the Samanids when he rebelled after the death of the emir in 963 AD. He tried to install his own son on the Samanid throne, but this attempt failed so he and his family fled east to avoid the new emir’s assassins. They went as far as present-day Afghanistan and conquered the city of Ghazni. Alp Tigin, however, had to be temporarily content with this tiny city as his domain. The renegade general died twelve years later. He was succeeded by his son Abu-Ishaq and his son-in-law Sabuktigin as rulers of his tiny domain.
The ambitious Sabuktigin convinced his co-ruler Abu-Ishaq to ask Mansur (the Samanid emir) permission to rule their tiny domain in exchange for their loyalty. The Samanid emir agreed and made Abu-Ishaq the legitimate governor of Ghazni with Sabuktigin as his successor. When Abu-Ishaq died some time later, Sabuktigin rose to become his successor and immediately expanded his domain by attacking the city of Kandahar. The Samanids were already suspicious of Sabuktigin, but they could not do anything about this as they were busy managing the Karakhanids who raided their profitable silver mines.
“Bust of Alp Tegin”
Mahmud al Ghazni’s Expansion and Islam in India
One person who could not afford to ignore the Ghaznavid threat was Jayapala, the Hindu king of the Kabul Shahi kingdom, who immediately prepared his army to counter Sabuktigin’s. He launched a preemptive strike against Sabuktigin which the Turkic governor/king effectively countered, and this miscalculation cost Jayapala a lot of his territories. Jayapala suffered defeat after defeat in the years that followed. By the time Sabuktigin died in 997 AD, his kingdom was greatly reduced.
Sabuktigin left the crown to his son Ismail, but another son, Mahmud, fought with him for the domination of the expanding Ghaznavid Empire. Mahmud won the civil war, deposed his brother, and faced his father’s long-time nemesis, the king Jayapala, near Peshawar in November of 1001. The Hindu king was once again defeated by the fierce Ghaznavid army. He became so disheartened that he set himself on fire after his defeat. His successor, Anandapala, continued the resistance against the Ghaznavids but was forced to surrender and negotiate a peace treaty in 1011. He was succeeded by his son, Trilochanpála. His kingdom was so greatly reduced by then that he and his remaining army were forced to go into exile into the mountains. He was the last of the Kabul Shahi kings.
The defeat of the Kabul Shahi opened the way into India. By 1018, Mahmud had conquered the Gurjara-Pratihara kingdom in northwest India then drove out King Rajyapala from his capital Kannauj. Mahmud had conquered most of northwestern India by 1025, and his troops sacked an important Hindu temple when they arrived in the coastal town of Somnath. It was alleged that he removed the statue of the Hindu god Shiva and sent the rest of the statue’s body back to Ghazni after he destroyed the statue’s head. According to tradition, he had the rest of the statue positioned outside a mosque in Ghazni where worshipers stepped on it as they entered the building.
References:
Picture By Vikiçizer – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
“Maps of the Middle East.” Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Accessed October 5, 2016. https://cmes.uchicago.edu/page/maps-middle-east.
Morgan, David, Anthony John Stanhope Reid, and Michael Allan Cook, eds. The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 3: The Eastern Islamic World (Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries). Vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Thapar, Romila. Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History. London: Verso, 2005.
Utbi, Abu Al-Nasr Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd Al-Jabbar. The Kitab-I-Yamini: Historical Memoirs of the Amir Sabaktagin and the Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna. London: Printed for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1858.
Thousands of years ago, Native Americans gradually left behind the nomadic lifestyle and focused on the domestication and cultivation of crops. Two of the most important crops they cultivated were corn and sweet potatoes, and both came a long way from their Central American origins to become a staple food in North America and later, all over the world. This is recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History during 1000 AD.
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Teosinte, the first corn, was discovered and cultivated thousands of years ago in Central Mexico, particularly near the ancient city of Teotihuacan. The plant yielded cobs as tiny as a human thumb. Over the years, Mesoamericans started the selection of breeds that yielded bigger corncobs and more corn kernels. By 900 AD, it had spread to North and South America where the plant adapted to its environment to withstand drought and frost.
For the Native Americans, corn or maize (Zea mays) was more than just staple food as its cultivation was entwined with their myths and religions. For example, the Omaha people “sang” to the corn as the plants grew, and paired them with beans during planting as they considered both plants as holy. The Ancient Puebloans venerated the White Corn Maiden and the Blue Corn Woman (heroines of Native American legends) as important parts of their culture; they also cleaned the storage bins before bringing in the corn they harvested to keep it “happy.
The Pawnees set aside a “holy” breed of corn that they never ate and used only in religious ceremonies, while the Mandan people had their own corn priests. Zuni newborns received corn as a gift, and they were christened with a “corn name” afterward. Additionally, a deceased Zuni person’s heart would be replaced by a corncob before the burial as a symbol of the cycle of life. The Iroquois and other Native American peoples considered corn, squash, and beans as the Three Sisters.
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy adopted corn as a staple crop in the eleventh century and began its large-scale farming. They also converted the Iroquois into adopting the cultivation of corn after another tribe brokered a peace treaty between them in 1142 AD. This resulted in the Iroquois’ acceptance of the matrilineal social structure and peaceful consensus-based political system.
Sweet Potatoes
The Maya of Mexico and pre-Inca cultures of Peru had a long history of cultivating sweet potato. Evidence of this could be found on their ceramics. Sweet potato or camote possibly originated from Yucatan Peninsula-Orinoco River delta, but another location for its origin was the Peru-Ecuador border. It was also grown in Polynesia and New Zealand even before the Europeans reached the Americas after Pacific Islanders sailed to South America in as early as 700 AD.
References:
Picture By John Doebley – http://teosinte.wisc.edu/images.html, CC BY 3.0, Link
Johansen, Bruce E. The Encyclopedia of Native American Economic History. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1999.
Johansen, Bruce E. The Native Peoples of North America: A History. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005.
Welbaum, G. E. Vegetable Production and Practices. CABI, 2015.
Chinese scholars were liberated from the time-consuming and tedious task of writing manuscripts with the invention of the woodblock printing (Chinese characters carved on a block of wood) during the dominance of the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD). Woodblocks were first used in printing patterns on silk, but printing found another medium when paper was invented in China during the first century AD. The high-ranking government official Feng Dao (Feng-to) later played a large part in the widespread use of the movable wood blocks when he proposed the printing of the Nine Confucian classic. This is recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History during 900 AD.
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Feng Dao (882-954), formally known as the Prince Wenyi of Ying as well as Feng-To, lived during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (907-960) after the fall of the Tang Dynasty. He became a high-ranking government official and served different dynasties, but eventually found himself serving the Later Tang emperor Minzong (Li Siyuan). In 932, he proposed for the emperor to authorize the printing of the nine Confucian Classics (specifically, Four Books and Five Classics) which included:
“Life and works of Confucius, by Prospero Intorcetta, 1687”
The Four Books
Great Learning
Doctrine of the Mean
Analects
Mencius
The Five Classics
Classic of Poetry
Book of Documents
Book of Rites
I Ching
Spring and Autumn Annals
The emperor approved his request, and the printing (which used the movable wood blocks that were better suited to individual Chinese characters) started in 932 AD. The books were released in 953 AD. These were quickly followed by the printing of three more books (The Annotation of the Classics, Classical Characters, and Jujing Ziyang) using the same method. The use of the movable wood blocks allowed many students easy access to the Confucian classics. All other printing during the Song and Yuan dynasties were later administered by the government.
References:
Picture By Prospero Intorcetta, Philippe Couplet et al. – “Life And Works Of Confucius”, Prospero Intorcetta, et al., 1687, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2523905
Holcombe, Charles. A History of East Asia: From the Origins of Civilization to the Twenty-First Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Murphey, Rhoads. A History of Asia. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1996.
Yang, Hu, and Yang Xiao. Chinese Publishing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
The faint glimmer of unity under the Sui Dynasty (581-618) was extinguished after the death of its first Emperor Wendi (581-604). When his son, the Emperor Yangdi (604-618), acceded the throne, he continued his father’s ill-advised and long war with the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo. It ended in a significant loss of troops on the Chinese side until finally, his discontented subjects drove him out of the capital Chang’an. Emperor Yangdi died in 618 AD amidst a bloody civil war, but he left behind a strong administrative system from which the Tang Dynasty later benefited. China’s Golden Age then began during 750 AD according to the Bible Timeline Poster with World History.
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Before the end of the Sui Dynasty, Yangdi’s cousin (also a military commander of the Sui) named Li Yuan led a rebellion against him and wrested the capital Chang’an from the Sui in 617 AD. After declaring himself the new emperor, he announced the establishment of a new dynasty called the Tang and continued the fight to Luoyang, China’s second most important city. By 621, Li Yuan had conquered Luoyang, and he successfully suppressed the rebellion led by other generals in other cities by 624.
Li Yuan became Emperor Gaozu of Tang (Tang Gaozong), and he ruled China for eight years until he was deposed by his own son, Li Shimin. This ambitious son launched a rebellion against his father in 626 and later had him imprisoned along with his own brothers, as well as other possible claimants to the Tang throne. He adopted the name Emperor Taizong in the same year and immediately worked to secure his throne by quelling all rebellions in other Tang cities. Just like his father, Emperor Taizong was a brilliant military commander who was successful on the battlefield. He was known for his strategic alliances to pacify the Turks and other nomads who lived near China’s northern frontier. These new allies later helped the Tang soldiers secure the Silk Road against bandits. China reached the zenith of its influence throughout most of Asia during Tang Taizong’s rule (626-649).
“Estimated territorial extent of Wu Zetian’s empire”
Empress Wu Zetian
Emperor Taizong died after a glorious 23-year reign, and he was succeeded by his son, Tang Gaozong. His accomplishments as an emperor were impressive (he expanded the Tang dominion into Korea), but his reign was marked by the rise of China’s first female ruler, the brilliant Empress Wu Zetian. She first started as a minor concubine to Emperor Taizong when she entered the royal palace at the age of thirteen but was temporarily sidelined at a Buddhist monastery when the emperor died. She escaped the Buddhist monastery and found her way back to the palace to become the concubine of Emperor Gaozong. Concubine Wu was promoted in the harem after she gave birth to Gaozong’s son. In 656, she was elevated to the position of empress when the king deposed her rival, Empress Wang after she was accused of strangling Concubine Wu’s daughter. The emperor was hesitant to depose Empress Wang at first, but the accusation that she attempted to poison the emperor sealed her fate and she was removed from her position in 656.
Emperor Gaozong suffered a series of strokes afterward. His weakened state ensured the domination of Empress Wu Zetian in the imperial court. Armed with a combination of cunning and ruthlessness, the Empress proved to be an effective ruler who successfully navigated the intrigues in the imperial court. She ruled as Gaozong’s regent from 660 until he died in 683. She ruled as one also when her son, Zhongzong, acceded the throne. He proved to be too independent, so his mother had him banished when he insisted on ruling alone. She replaced him with another son, Ruizong, who became nothing more than her figurehead. Wu Zetian was a brilliant ruler in her own right. She eventually got tired of ruling as a regent, so she declared herself the new emperor and established a dynasty called the new Zhou. Her solo rule lasted for eight years, but she reinstated the deposed Zhongzong as her successor upon her death in 705.
Return and Collapse of the Tang Dynasty
The imperial court that Wu Zetian left after her death was divided, and stability only returned when her grandson, Xuanzong, acceded the throne in 712 AD. Xuanzong’s reign was considered Tang China’s golden age, but the latter years of his reign marked the empire’s slow decline. Xuanzong was considered a fair and capable ruler, but his path to destruction started when he, at 70 years old, fell in love with his son’s wife, Yang Guifei. The emperor’s obsession with the beautiful Yang Guifei ended the couple’s marriage, and he took her as his concubine after they divorced.
Yang Guifei gradually became powerful as the emperor’s concubine, and the infatuated emperor Xuanzong lavished gifts and granted important administrative positions to her relatives. Her cousin, Yang Guozhong, as well as the Gokturk-Sogdian general An Lushan, benefited from Yang Guifei’s power over the emperor after both men were promoted to prominence in the government. An Lushan, however, launched a rebellion against Emperor Xuanzong in 755 and the situation worsened when her cousin, Yang Guozhong, offered bad advice to the emperor in quelling the rebellion. His advice cost the Tang army many lives, and the emperor, along with Yang Guifei and their companions, were forced to flee from Chang’an to Chengdu for their safety.
The troops who accompanied the besotted emperor rebelled along the way and refused to continue to Chengdu unless the emperor gave them Yang Guifei to be executed. The emperor initially refused, but he had no choice but to hand over Concubine Yang Guifei to a eunuch who then strangled her to death in a Buddhist shrine on the way to Chengdu. They emperor’s entourage continued south to Chengdu, and the end of their romance was later immortalized in later poems.
An Lushan’s rebellion continued after Yang Guifei’s death, but the general suffered from ulcers later in life which made him testy and cruel to his own men. His reputation suffered further when he favored Qing’en, his son by his second wife, as his successor over an older son, Qing’xu, who then conspired with other men to have his father assassinated. An Lushan was killed by his own servant in 757, while Emperor Xuanzong was succeeded by his son Suzong. Suzong then led the recovery of Chang’an with the help of Arab and Uyghur mercenaries. He successfully suppressed the rebellion in 763 AD. What he managed to salvage was a broken empire saddled with hefty losses in lives and in revenues during the years of rebellion.
The glory days of the Tang Dynasty were no more after a century of strife. Various generals started to govern their own provinces as independent warlords. In 879, a salt trader and soldier named Huang Chao started a bloody rebellion in Guangzhou. The Tang had been too weak to resist when his troops captured Chang’an in 881. He crowned himself the emperor of the brand-new Qi Dynasty. This rebellion was only suppressed in 883 AD, but the Tang Dynasty never recovered from the internal strife and had collapsed completely by 907 AD.
Administration
The Tang emperors continued to use the administrative system previously laid out by the Sui emperors when they started to rule in 617. During the Tang rule, the power of aristocratic families was severely limited after the emperor commanded them to leave their home provinces and live closer to Chang’an, so he could keep an eye on them. Professional soldiers served year round, but the Tang government kept farmer-warriors on standby who served only whenever it was necessary. Tang emperors, however, were flexible enough to listen to their critics and implemented reforms when necessary. They inherited a strong tax system from the Sui. In 653, the Tang had implemented a comprehensive legal code based on Confucian values which were copied later by Korea and Japan. At its height, Tang China was at peace with the neighboring kingdoms of Korea, Japan, Tibet, Central Asia, Manchuria, and Vietnam.
Chang’an
The Tang Dynasty’s openness to foreign influence made its capital Chang’an a cosmopolitan city where people from China’s frontiers met to trade and exchange ideas. At that time, Chang’an was the largest city in the world with over two million inhabitants, and pilgrims, diplomats, and merchants flocked this Asian crossroad. No other empire in Europe or anywhere else in the world matched its prosperity, size, and cultural sophistication at that time.
Buddhism
Buddhism was widely practiced by the Sui Dynasty, but it reached its zenith during the domination of the Tang. The policies of granting tax exemptions and land to Buddhist monasteries started during the Sui Dynasty. These policies were continued by the Tang upon their accession. Tang emperors commissioned massive statues of Buddha, and during the eighth century, Buddhism permeated the imperial court, as well as the life of the common Chinese. Buddhism was entwined with literature when Xuanzang, a Buddhist monk, traveled to India and Central Asia to search for Buddhist texts. His journey and adventures later inspired the Ming Dynasty novelist Wu Cheng’en to write the novel, The Journey to the West.
Buddhism flourished under the Tang Dynasty for many years. Its influence declined during the reign of Emperor Wuzong (840-846) when he started the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution. The long years of rebellion depleted China’s treasury, and Wuzong could not afford to let the monasteries’ tax-exempt status go on any longer. To this end, he started the confiscation of Buddhist properties in 842, commanded the nuns and monks to return to secular life, and left only one monastery per prefecture. Wuzong died in 846, but Buddhism never recovered its former glory in China.
References:
Picture By Ian Kiu – Tang Dynasty700 AD from “The T’ang Dynasty, 618-906 A.D.-Boundaries of 700 A.D.” Albert Herrmann (1935). History and Commercial Atlas of China. Harvard University Press., CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
Adshead, Samuel Adrian M. T’ang China: The Rise of the East in World History. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Fairbank, John King, and Merle Goldman. China: A New History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006.
Latourette, Kenneth Scott. The Chinese, Their History and Culture. New York: Macmillan Company, 1964.
Only a few women reached the zenith of power in the male-dominated world of the Byzantines. One of them was the 9th century Empress Theodora. She was a native of Paphlagonia near the coast of the Black Sea and a daughter of a military officer who came from a wealthy family. She married the Byzantine Basileus and Augustus Theophilos not long after his accession as co-emperor to his father Emperor Michael II. Empress Theodora and her son, Emperor Michael III are recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History at 820 AD.
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One story dominated Theodora’s rise as Theophilos’ wife and empress of the Byzantines. She was certainly part of the bride-show organized by Theophilos’ mother Thekla or his stepmother Euphrosyne. But Theodora’s rise as Theophilos’ wife was only a postscript in the legendary contest of wits between the Byzantine intellectual Kassiani and Theophilos.
The star of this tale, Kassia, took part in the bride show at the same time as Theodora. She caught the eye of Theophilos immediately, but he told her that, “A woman was all fount and source of man’s tribulations” (he referred to Eve and the original sin.) To which the intelligent Kassia replied, “And from a woman sprang the course of man’s regeneration” (she referred to Mary’s birth of Jesus). Theophilos, taken aback by the rebuttal, rejected Kassia and chose Theodora as his wife instead.
“The Empress Theodora at the Colosseum”
Another less popular tale about Theophilos and Theodora’s marriage was that during the bride show, the future emperor gave out golden apples to the candidates and told them to come back to the palace the day after. Theodora was the only one who brought back the golden apple among the candidates and Theophilos handed her another golden apple as a sign that he had chosen her as his bride.
Her husband was known to be a capable and intelligent administrator after he spent eight years as Michael the Amorion’s co-emperor. His reign, although considered lackluster, brought relative stability to the empire. He then became a popular ruler because of his sense of justice. Before Michael III was born, the couple had four daughters and a son named Constantine. Theophilos elevated the boy to Augustus at a young age, but Constantine did not live long enough to succeed his father, so Theophilos appointed his son-in-law Alexios (husband of his daughter Maria) as Caesar. But Maria died soon after, and Alexios retired to a monastery following his wife’s death. Another son, Michael III, was born some time later.
Theophilos died of dysentery on January 20, 842 AD, but not before he secured Michael’s succession by ordering the death of a usurper, and appointing Manuel (Theodora’s uncle and Byzantine chief magister) and Theoktistos (Logothene of the Court) as regents for his son. As she was Michael’s mother, Theodora became her son’s automatic regent upon the death of Theophilos.
One of her first acts as empress was to convoke a synod that restored the veneration of icons and reinforced the decrees of the Second Council of Nicaea. The empire was relatively stable under Theodora, but her power was greatly hampered by her co-regents Manuel and Theoktistos. When Michael reached seventeen, Theodora decided it was time for her son to marry, so she assembled a bride show and chose a noblewoman named Eudokia Dekapolitissa as his wife. In truth, the mother was eager for her son to marry because she wanted to prevent him from marrying his long-time mistress, Eudokia Ingerina. Michael went on to marry Eudokia Dekapolitissa, and she was proclaimed as the Byzantine empress, but the emperor abandoned her almost immediately to go back to Eudokia Ingerina.
Michael turned eighteen in 856 AD, and two of his mother’s brothers, Bardas and Petronas, had risen to prominence at that time. In the same year, Bardas concocted a plot to get rid of Theodora so that Michael could rule alone, so the boy and his uncle conspired to get rid of the Empress’ most important ally, Theoktistos, who they had ordered stabbed. Theodora was now without an ally, and since the Senate had decreed that Michael was now of the right age to rule alone, she grudgingly handed the reins of power to her son.
Michael III
Theodora stayed in the palace for two more years, but during these years Michael never stopped hounding her to retire to a monastery. Michael first tried to coerce the Patriarch of Constantinople Ignatius to convince Theodora and his sisters to commit themselves to a monastery, but the patriarch refused—an act that resulted in his deposition and exile. The deposition of Ignatius and Michael’s choice of Photius as his successor resulted in the controversial Photian Schism which further severed Byzantine ties with the Pope. He finally succeeded in forcing his mother and his sisters to retire to a nunnery some time later and ruled with his uncle afterward.
Michael proclaimed Bardas as Caesar and next in line to the throne after Theodora retired. Bardas, for the most part, was a capable administrator who took on the reins of governing the empire when the pleasure-seeking Michael was busy elsewhere. Bardas was credited with a significant victory against the Saracens in 863 AD, as well as the conversion of Bulgarians to Christianity; the young emperor, meanwhile, sunk lower into the dissolute lifestyle and became known to drink too much that he later earned nicknamed ‘the Sot.’ He was known to be extravagant and frequently used public funds for personal expenses, but his greatest past time apart from drinking was horse racing. And this was where he met his future co-emperor Basil I the Macedonian.
The Rise of Basil the Macedonian
Basil was born around 812 AD from a poor Armenian family who lived in Adrianople during the height of Krum the Bulgar’s incursion into Byzantine territory. His family was settled in the Macedonian part of Krum’s territory which was why he was nicknamed as ‘the Macedonian.’ He escaped from Macedonia at the age of 25 and eventually found himself in Constantinople where he served as a groom for a man named Theophilitzes. It seemed Basil was a superbly talented horse whisperer or simply lucky as he found another benefactor, a rich woman named Danelis, who supported the groom and gave him some of her wealth.
Some time later, Michael received an untamed horse as a gift and Theophilitzes suggested for the emperor to summon his talented groom Basil to deal with the horse. Basil successfully tamed the horse which impressed Michael so much that the former groom was promoted to captain of the palace’s foreign guards as a reward. He soon became a strator, then a prostator, and finally rose to High Chamberlain when Bardas’ chamberlain was deposed.
Michael’s Crowded Domestic Arrangement
Meanwhile, Michael and Eudokia Ingerina still continued their relationship even when the emperor was still married to Eudokia Dekapolitissa. This complicated arrangement did not sit well with the conservative people of Constantinople, the noblemen, and the patriarchs. So Michael concocted a strange domestic arrangement to cover up his liaison. Since he and Basil were close friends, he had the former groom marry Eudokia Ingerina, but they still continued to see each other even after Basil and his mistress were married. To satisfy Basil, he summoned one of his sisters, Thekla, out of a nunnery to serve as Basil’s mistress. Meanwhile, Eudokia Ingerina gave birth to two sons that Basil acknowledged as his but many in Constantinople suspected as Michael’s.
The Fall of Bardas
Bardas’ importance and influence had diminished by this time, and Basil, eager to get rid of rivals, ordered him stabbed as they prepared for a war against the Saracens in Crete in 866 AD. With his uncle dead, Michael elevated Basil as Basileus and Augustus on May 26 of the same year, but this clever arrangement and their joint rule unraveled one year later because of Michael’s own impulsiveness.
Death of Michael III
In September, 867 AD, Michael dined with Basil, Eudokia Ingerina, and a patrician named Basiliskianos after a horse race. Basiliskianos showered Michael with compliments, so the emperor ordered their guest to remove the imperial boots from his feet and wear them. The patrician hesitated and looked to Basil for permission as this might offend him; Basil discreetly signed for Basiliskianos to decline but this did not escape Michael’s notice, and he berated both men for this. Michael then remarked to his guests that he could easily remove Basil from his position; Basil was enraged and proceeded to plot against the emperor.
On the 24th of September, Michael retired to his room after a night of heavy drinking, and Basil took advantage of this to have him murdered. Emperor Michael III was buried in a monastery in Chrysopolis, and he was mourned by his mother and sisters who outlived him.
References:
Picture By Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant – Art Renewal Center Museum, image 7554., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1848404
Bradbury, Jim. The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare. London: Routledge, 2004.
Bury, J.B. A History of the Eastern Roman Empire: From the Fall of Irene to the Accession of Basil I (A.D. 802-867). London: Macmillan and, Limited, 1912.
Scylitzes, John. A Synopsis of Byzantine History, 811-1057. Translated by John Wortley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Shepard, Jonathan, ed. The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Charlemagne split the Frankish Empire between his sons even before they became adults. After years of steady conquests across the vast lands of Europe. Louis, the Holy Roman Emperor’s fourth son by his wife Hildegard, received the domain of Aquitaine and lived there since his childhood. By 813 AD, Charlemagne was on the brink of death. The only son left alive was Louis the Pious of Aquitaine (Pepin of Italy died in 810 and followed by Charles in 811). Charlemagne summoned Louis, as well as the Frankish noblemen by his side when he felt that death was near. He then appointed Louis as emperor of the Franks in front of the witnesses. Charlemagne died on January 28, 814 AD at the age of 72 and was buried in the Aachen Cathedral on the same day. These events led to Germany (East Francia) during 843 AD according to the Bible Timeline Poster with World History.
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Louis acceded the throne as the new Holy Roman Emperor and took a page from his father’s book by dividing the empire between his own sons. His eldest son, Lothair, received Italy and became his father’s co-emperor; another son named Louis received Bavaria; while Pepin, the youngest, got Aquitaine. Louis’ first wife died in 818 AD, and he took another woman, Judith, as his second wife in 820. His new wife gave birth to their son, Charles (later nicknamed the Bald and the Landless) in 823 AD. He was so fond of the boy that he chipped away at Lothair’s domain and gave little Charles the lands of Alemannia.
“Location of Germany (dark green)– in Europe”
Lothair was understandably furious, so he convinced his brothers, Louis of Bavaria and Pepin of Aquitaine, to rebel against their father. They fought their father in a war which lasted for three years until they captured Louis, as well as Charles, and imprisoned them in different monasteries as punishment. While he was imprisoned in a monastery, Louis sent his sons an offer they could not refuse: he would give them more land and in exchange, the brothers would join him and turn against Lothair. The brothers agreed to their father’s deal, and Lothair (who did not expect this turn of events) was forced to sign a peace treaty with his father.
One of his sons, Pepin of Aquitaine died in 838 AD, so Louis handed his territory over to Charles the Landless. The people of Aquitaine rebelled when they heard the news that the land had been passed over to Charles, so they installed Pepin’s son, Pepin II, as ruler of the territory. Before he died in 840 AD, Louis gave Neustria to Charles the landless to compensate for his loss.
The Birth of Germany
A bloodier civil war led by the troublesome Lothair once again erupted in the Frankish empire after Louis’ death. The civil war that flared up became so vicious that all sides lost many warriors during the battles, while invaders from Al-Andalus and Viking pirates pillaged the countryside. The brothers finally realized the futility of the civil war after they saw the destruction of their kingdoms, so they came together in 843 AD, and shifted the border lines of the Frankish Empire into what was called the Treaty of Verdun. Charles the Landless took Western Francia, Lothair received Middle Francia, and Louis the German took Eastern Francia which was an area that later gave birth to modern Germany.
The long and slow decline of the Abbasid caliphate based in the city of Baghdad started right after the death of Harun al-Rashid and the succession of his sons. The civil war between his sons ended with Harun’s appointed successor, al-Amin, dead by 813 AD at the hands of his brother, al-Mamun. Large chunks of the empire managed to slip away from al-Mamun’s grasp as Egypt was beset with revolts. The new caliph had mistakenly entrusted Khorasan to the man who helped him wrest the caliphate away from his brother, general Tahir, who then claimed the province as his own. Tahir died before he could make his mark as an independent ruler of Khorasan, but his son, Talhah, declared himself his father’s successor and started the Tahirid Dynasty. Because of this, the Caliphate later became only a Clerical Head during 935 AD according to the Bible Timeline Poster with World History.
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Fifty years ago in al-Andalus (modern-day Spain), the survivor of the Umayyad massacre in Damascus, Abd al-Rahman I, deposed the former governor of the province. He then set up the Emirate of Cordoba in 756 AD. It was a domain independent from the rule and whims of the Abbasid caliphate. Al-Rahman recognized the caliph in Baghdad as the spiritual head of the ummah (Muslim community) in Cordoba. The Abbasid caliph made an attempt to recover the province from Abd al-Rahman, but the Umayyad forces were too strong for them to handle. The caliph was forced to recall them from the other side of the Mediterranean.
Abd al-Rahman I
The Rise of the Turks
Back in Baghdad, the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun had died and was succeeded by his brother, al-Mutasim. Fearful that the numerous revolts would finally oust him as caliph, he surrounded himself with elite Turkish warriors who served as his bodyguards and became the Muslim equivalent of the Praetorian Guards. A few years before that, the Arabs kidnapped these Turks beyond the river Oxus and turned them into slaves. The same men converted to Islam later on, enlisted in the military, and rose to power during the time of caliph al-Mutasim. The Turks gained prominence in the Abbasid court which pushed the Persian and Arab allies away .Their resentment intensified when the caliph moved the capital from Baghdad to Samarra. This isolated him from the general population. The Turks had their own quarters in Samarra and there, they became the most powerful and influential forces within the Abbasid court.
Al-Mu’tasim died in 842 AD, and he was succeeded by his sons al-Wathiq and al-Mutawakkil. The younger son, al-Mutawakkil, was deposed when his son, al-Muntasir, conspired against him with the support of the Turkish troops. The same Turkish troops who helped him topple his father later turned on al-Muntasir. He was forced to choose his own successor under the threat of death. The Abbasid caliphs who followed al-Muntasir’s successor became mere figureheads under the Turkish elite, while the fringes of the empire steadily disintegrated into the hands of various ruling families in Persia, North Africa, and Spain.
A Divided Empire
The Tahirid Dynasty in Khorasan lasted only seventy years before they, too, were ousted by the troops led by a coppersmith-turned-warlord named Ya’qub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar in 873 AD. He and the Saffarid troops marched toward Baghdad to gain the recognition of the Abbasid caliph. The Turkish-backed caliph al-Mutamid saw this as a threat and scouted for a possible ally in Samarkand to counter the Saffarid rebellion. A Persian official named Nasr of the Samanid family answered the caliph’s call and fought al-Saffar’s forces. They only succeeded in containing his power in Southern Iran.
The Samanid’s ruled Transoxiana after their victory against al-Saffar’s rebel troops, while the Abbasid caliphs continued to rule from Baghdad (although with less power than before). As the caliphs faded into obscurity and became nothing more than ceremonial heads, the viziers accumulated more power over the years. It also did not help that Maghreb in North Africa had broken away from the Abbasid caliphate after the rise of the Shi’a Fatimid Dynasty (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter Fatima). The Fatimids were different in a sense that while the renegade emirates of Cordoba, Khorasan, and Sistan recognized the authority of the caliph, the Fatimid caliphate in North Africa was completely independent of the Abbasids in Baghdad. By the early years of the 10th century, the Fatimids had conquered Tripoli, Cyrenaica, and Alexandria.
Back in Asia, the domination of the Samanid Dynasty in Transoxiana fell apart after the rise of Mardaviz al-Ziyar who took away a small portion of land south of the Caspian Sea and formed his own Ziyarid Dynasty. Al-Ziyar’s own official, Ali ibn Buya, rebelled against him in 932 AD and wrested the city of Karaj away from the Ziyarids. Ibn Buya later extended his dominion up to the province of Fars in the south, while the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir was deposed in the same year by his Turkish puppeteers. He died on the streets of Baghdad and was succeeded by his equally powerless son, al-Radi. By 935 AD, the Abbasid caliphs were nothing more than clerical heads and would remain as such until the domination of the Buyid Dynasty in Baghdad in 945 AD.
The Huari (also spelled as Wari) Empire rose to prominence around 600 AD, during what historians of Peru’s Pre-Columbian civilizations call the Middle Horizon Period (600-1000 AD). The Huari were the cultural heirs of the Tiwanaku of Bolivia, and the Inca consider and revere them as their ancestors. These ancient Peruvians founded a city in the central Andean highlands (also named Huari) which became their capital. From which they governed their colonies that spanned from Pikillacta in the east to the Wiracuchapampa region in the north and finally, to the Moquegua Valley in the south. The fading of the Huari Empire is recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History during 890 AD.
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Historians theorized that in order for the Huari to dominate their neighbors in a such a short period of time, they needed to conquer them through violent means. Scenes that depict warriors clutching trophy heads of captured enemies and migrants were colorfully illustrated on their ceramics, while actual trophy heads were discovered in Huari sites in present-day Peru.
On the other hand, it was also possible that the Huari peacefully established distant trade networks and loosely administered neighboring cities as colonies. Some of the Huari empire’s major settlements were Ayacucho, Lima, Cuzco, and Mantaro. They also built or administered walled settlements in Pikillacta and Cajamarquilla. They constructed massive irrigation projects and terraced the mountainsides for farming until a series of droughts that started in 800 AD brought a hasty end to their empire. The population of the Huari cities had dwindled by 1000 AD until only the walled settlement of Pikillacta remained of the Huari’s great cities. The few remaining Huari people finally abandoned Pikillacta in 1100 AD until they were replaced by the Chimu civilization in the domination of Peru.
References:
Picture by: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30489
Bulliet, Richard W., Pamela Kyle. Crossley, Daniel R. Headrick, Steven W. Hirsch, L. A. Johnson, and David Northrup. The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning, 2015.
Chacon, Richard J., and David H. Dye, eds. The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians. New York: Springer, 2007.
Dartmouth College. “Wari, predecessors of the Inca, used restraint to reshape human landscape.” ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131016123036.htm (accessed September 7, 2016).
“The Wari Culture.” The Wari Culture, Tampere Art Museum. Accessed September 07, 2016. http://www.tampere.fi/ekstrat/taidemuseo/arkisto/peru/800/wari_en.htm.
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.
