1000

__NOTOC__ Year 1000 (M) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. It was also the last year of the 10th century as well as the last year of the 1st millennium of the Christian era ending on December 31st, but the first year of the 1000s decade. Popular culture sometimes holds the year 1000 as the first year of the 11th century and the 2nd millennium, due to a tendency to group the years according to decimal values, as if a year zero were counted. According to the Gregorian Calendar, this distinction falls to the year 1001, because the 1st century was retroactively said to start with year 1. Since the calendar has no year zero, its first millennium spans from years 1 to 1000, inclusive.

Overview

Arab and Muslim world

The Arab world and the Islamic World was experiencing a Golden Age around the year 1000 and continued to flourish under the Islamic Empires (including the Ummayad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates), which included what is now the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Iberian Peninsula. By 1000, Muslim traders and explorers had established a global economy across the Old World leading to a Muslim Agricultural Revolution, establishing the Arab Empire as the world's leading extensive economic power.

The scientific achievements of the Arab civilization also reaches its zenith during this time, with the emergence of the first experimental scientists and the scientific method, which would form the basis of modern science.

Most of the leading scientists around the year 1000 were Muslim scientists, including Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen), Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, Avicenna, Abu al-Qasim (Abulcasis), Ibn Yunus, Abu Sahl al-Quhi (Kuhi), Abu-Mahmud al-Khujandi, Abu Nasr Mansur, Abu al-Wafa, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, Al-Muqaddasi, Ali Ibn Isa, and al-Karaji (al-Karkhi), among others.

In particular, Ibn al-Haytham, Avicenna, Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, and Abu al-Qasim, who all flourished around the year 1000, are considered to be among the greatest scientists of the Middle Ages.

China

In what is today China, the Song Dynasty remained the worlds strongest empire and continued to thrive under Emperor Zhenzong of Song China. By the late 11th century the Song Dynasty had a total population of some 101 million people an average annual iron output of 125,000 tons and had bolstered the enormous Economy of the Song Dynasty with the worlds first known "Banknote" paper printed money.

Events

By place

Africa

The Hutu arrive in present-day Rwanda and Burundi, soon outnumbering the native Twa.

Americas

Leif Ericson lands in North America, calling it Vinland.

Middle Horizon period ends in the Andes.

Mississippian culture flourishes in North America.

Teotihuacan and Mayan cultures collapse in Central America.

Aztec civilisation migrates to Tenochtitlan in Mexico and begins to flourish.

Asia

Dhaka, Bangladesh, is founded.

Europe

September 9—Battle of Svolder: King Olaf Tryggvason is defeated by an alliance of his enemies, in this notable naval battle of the Viking Age.

December 25—Stephen I becomes King of Hungary, which is established as a Christian kingdom.

Sancho III of Navarre becomes King of Aragon and Navarre.

Sweyn I establishes Danish control over part of Norway.

Oslo, Norway is founded (the exact year is debatable, but the 1,000 year anniversary was held in the year 2000).

Emperor Otto III makes a pilgrimage from Rome to Aachen and Gniezno (Gnesen), stopping at Regensburg, Meissen, Magdeburg, and Gniezno. The Congress of Gniezno (with Bolesław I Chrobry) is part of his pilgrimage. In Rome, he builds the basilica of San Bartolomeo all'Isola, to host the relics of St. Bartholomew.

The Château de Goulaine vineyard is founded in France.

By topic

Art

Kandariya Mahadeva temple, Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India, is built. Chandela dynasty, Early Medieval period (approximate date).

Religion

The Diocese of Kołobrzeg is founded.

The archdiocese in Gniezno is founded; the first archbishop is Gaudentius (Radim), from Slavník's dynasty.

Iceland adopts Christianity as its official religion.

Science and technology

Scientific achievements in the Arab civilization reach their zenith, with the emergence of the first experimental scientists and the scientific method, which will form the basis of modern science.

Arab Muslim polymath and scientist, Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen), who is considered the father of optics, the pioneer of the scientific method, and the "first scientist", moves from Baghdad to Cairo, where he invents the camera obscura, and writes his influential Book of Optics, which introduces the scientific method, and drastically transforms the understanding of light, optics, vision, and science in general.

Persian Muslim polymath and scientist, Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, who is considered the father of geodesy and the "first anthropologist", writes books on many different topics, and rejects many theories which cannot be verified through the scientific method of early modern medicine, publishes The Canon of Medicine, an influential book which maintains that medicine should be known through either experimentation or reasoning. He also publishes The Book of Healing, where he hypothesizes two causes of mountains: "Either they are the effects of upheavals of the crust of the earth, or they are the effect of water, which, cutting itself a new route, has denuded the valleys."

Arab Muslim physician, Abu al-Qasim (Abulcasis), the "father of modern surgery", publishes his influential 30-volume medical encyclopedia in Al-Andalus, the Al-Tasrif, which remained a standard textbook in the Islamic world and medieval Europe for centuries.

Arab Muslim mathematician and astronomer, Ibn Yunus, publishes his astronomical treatise Al-Zij al-Hakimi al-Kabir in Cairo.

Persian Muslim physicist and mathematician, Abu Sahl al-Quhi (Kuhi), hypothesizes that the heaviness of bodies vary with their distance from the center of the Earth, and solves equations higher than the second degree.

Persian Muslim astronomer and mathematician, Abu-Mahmud al-Khujandi, invents the astronomical sextant and first states a special case of Fermat's last theorem.

The Bell foundry is founded in Italy by Pontificia Fonderia Marinelli.

Gunpowder is invented in China.

Paper has largely replaced vellum and parchment in Islamic realm, encouraging the proliferation on increasingly elaborate and decorative cursive scripts.

Demographics

World population: 310,000,000.

Births

Adalbert, Duke of Lorraine (d. 1048)

Qawam al-Daula, ruler of Kerman (d. 1028)

Ibn Rashiq, Arab rhetorician (d. 1070?)

Deaths

September 9—Olaf I of Norway (killed at the Battle of Svold) (b. 969)

Abu-Mahmud al-Khujandi, Persian astronomer and mathematician

Abu Sahl al-Quhi (Kuhi), Persian physicist, mathematician and astronomer

Ahmad ibn Fadlan, Arab writer and traveller

Al-Muqaddasi, Arab geographer and social scientist

Ælfthryth, second or third wife of Edgar of England

Garcia IV of Pamplona

Tlilcoatzin, Toltec ruler (approximate date)

Topiltzin, Toltec ruler

David III of Tao (murdered by his nobles)

Huyan Zan, Chinese general

Hrosvit, Saxon nun

See also

Millenarianism

References

Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium (1999) ISBN 0-316-55840-0

John Man Atlas of the Year 1000 (1999) ISBN 0-14-051419-8