Middle Ages

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Period = from:622 till:666 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:622 ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:1 start:622

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from: 622 till: 632 color:era text:Muhammad from: 632 till: 634 color:age text:Abu Bakr from: 634 till: 644 color:era text:Umar ibn al-Khattab from: 644 till: 656 color:age text:Uthman ibn Affan from: 656 till: 661 color:era text:Ali ibn Abi Talib from: 661 till: 666 color:age text:Muawiyah I :::Consult particular article for details

{|align=right style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%" align="center" colspan="2" |Rise of Islam |- | [[File:Arabische Rijk.jpg|thumb|center| Arab expansion in the seventh century. Area I : Abu Bakr Area II : Omar Area III : Uthman III Area IV : Ali ]] |} The rise of Islam begins around the time Muhammad and his followers took flight, the Hijra, to the city of Medina. Muhammad spent his last ten years in a series of battles to conquer the Arabian region. From 622 to 632, Muhammad as the leader of a Muslim community in Medina was engaged in a state of war with the Meccans. In the proceeding decades, the area of Basra was conquered by the Muslims. During the reign of Umar, the Muslim army found it a suitable place to construct a base. Later the area was settled and a mosque was erected. Upon the conquest of Madyan, it was settled by Muslims. However, soon the environment was considered harsh and resettlement of settlers went to Kufa. During Umar's rule, he defeated the rebellion of several Arab tribes in a successful campaign, unifying the entire Arabian peninsula and giving it stability. Under Uthman's leadership, the empire expanded into Fars in 650, some areas of Khorasan in 651 and the conquest of Armenia was begun in the 640s. In this time, the Islamic empire extended over the whole Sassanid Persian Empire and more than two thirds of the Eastern Roman Empire. The First Fitna, or the First Islamic Civil War, lasted for the entirety of Ali ibn Abi Talib's reign. After the recorded peace treaty between with Hassan ibn Ali and the suppression of early Kharijites' disturbances, Muawiyah I accedes to the position of Caliph.

Islamic Expansion

The Muslim conquests of the Eastern Roman Empire and Arab wars occurred between 634 and 750. Starting in 633, Muslims conquered Iraq. The Muslim conquest of Syria would begin in 634 and would be complete by 638. The Muslim conquest of Egypt started in 639. Before the Muslim invasion of Egypt began, the Eastern Roman Empire Empire had already lost the Levant and its Arab ally, the Ghassanid Kingdom, to the Muslims. The Muslims would bring Alexandria under control and fall of Egypt would be complete by 642. Between 647 and 709, Muslims swept across North Africa and establish their authority over that region.

The Transoxiana region was conquered by Qutayba ibn Muslim between 706 and 715 and loosely held by the Umayyads from 715 to 738. This conquest was consolidated by Nasr ibn Sayyar between 738 and 740. It was under the Umayyads from 740-748; and under the Abbasids after 748. Sindh, attacked in 664, would be subjugated by 712. Sindh became the easternmost province of the Umayyad. The Umayyad conquest of Hispania (Visigothic Spain) would begin in 711 and end by 718. The Moors, under Al-Samh ibn Malik, sweeping up the Iberian peninsula, by 719 overran Septimania and the area would fall under their full control in 720. With the Islamic conquest of Persia, the Muslim subjugation of the Caucasus would take place between 711 and 750. The end of the sudden Islamic Caliphate expansion ended around this time. The final Islamic dominion eroded the areas of the Iron Age Roman Empire in the Middle East and controlled strategic areas of the Mediterranean.

At the end of the 8th century, the former Western Roman Empire was decentralized and overwhelmingly rural. The Islamic conquest and rule of Sicily and Malta was a process which started in the 9th century. Islamic rule over Sicily was effective from 902, and the complete rule of the island lasted from 965 until 1061. The Islamic presence on the Italian Peninsula was ephemeral and limited mostly to semi-permanent soldier camps.

Caliphs and empire

The Abbasids built their capital in Baghdad after replacing the Umayyad caliphs from all but the Iberian peninsula. The influence held by Muslim merchants over African-Arabian and Arabian-Asian trade routes was tremendous. As a result, Islamic civilization grew and expanded on the basis of its merchant economy, in contrast to their Christian, Indian and Chinese peers who built societies from an agricultural landholding nobility.

The Abbasids flourished for two centuries, but slowly went into decline with the rise to power of the Turkish army it had created, the Mamluks. Within 150 years of gaining control of Persia, the caliphs were forced to cede power to local dynastic emirs who only nominally acknowledged their authority. After the Abbasids lost their military dominance, the Samanids (or Samanid Empire) rose up in Central Asia. The Sunni Islam empire was a Tajik state and had a Zoroastrian theocratic nobility. It was the next native Persian dynasty after the collapse of the Sassanid Persian empire caused by the Arab conquest.

Iberian peninsula

The Kingdom maintained independence from the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, the attempts of which to re-establish Roman authority in Iberia were only partially successful and short-lived. By the early 6th century, the Kingdom's territory in Gaul had been lost to the Franks, save the narrow coastal strip of Septimania, but the Visigoth control of Iberia was secured by the end of that century with the submission of the Suebi and the Basques. The Visigoths and their early kings were Arian Christians and came into conflict with the Catholic Church, but after they converted to Nicene Christianity, the Church exerted an enormous influence on secular affairs through the Councils of Toledo. The Visigoths also developed the most extensive secular legislation in Western Europe, the Liber Iudiciorum, which formed the basis for Spanish law throughout the Middle Ages.

The Islamic expansion in the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania commenced when the Moors (Berbers and Arabs) invaded under their Moorish leader, Tariq ibn Ziyad. They landed at Gibraltar on April 30 and worked their way northward. Tariq's forces were joined the next year by those of his superior, Musa bin Nusair. Most of the Visigothic Kingdom were conquered by Islamic troops from Morocco in 716 AD, only the northern reaches of Spain remaining in Christian hands. The eight-year campaign was brought Islamic rule — save for small areas in the northwest (Asturias) and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees. These gave birth to the medieval Kingdom of Asturias when a local landlord called Pelayo, most likely of Gothic origin, was elected Princeps by the Astures.

This Iberian territory, under the Arab name Al-Andalus, became first an Emirate and then an independent Umayyad Caliphate, the Caliphate of Córdoba, after the overthrowing of the dynasty in Damascus by the Abbasids. When the Caliphate dissolved in 1031, the territory split into small Taifas, and gradually the Christian kingdoms started the Reconquest up to 1492, when Granada, the last kingdom of Al-Andalus fell under the Catholic Monarchs.

Central Europe

Church and monasticism

The Catholic Church, which means "universal church", was the major unifying European cultural influence. It preserved selections from Latin learning, maintained the art of writing, and provided centralized administration through its network of bishops. Some regions that were populated by Catholics were conquered by Arian rulers, which provoked much tension between Arian kings and the Catholic hierarchy. Clovis I of the Franks is a well-known example of a barbarian king who chose Catholic orthodoxy over Arianism. His conversion marked a turning point for the Frankish tribes of Gaul.

Bishops were central to European Middle Age society due to the literacy they possessed. As a result, they often played a significant role in governance. However, beyond the core areas of Western Europe, there remained many peoples with little or no contact with Christianity or with classical Roman culture. Martial societies such as the Avars and the Vikings were still capable of causing major disruption to the newly emerging societies of Western Europe.

The Early Middle Ages witnessed the rise of monasticism within the Western Europe. Although the impulse to withdraw from society to focus upon a spiritual life is experienced by people of all cultures, the shape of European monasticism was determined by traditions and ideas that originated in the deserts of Egypt and Syria. The style of monasticism that focuses on community experience of the spiritual life, called cenobitism, was pioneered by the saint Pachomius in the 4th century. Monastic ideals spread from Egypt to western Europe in the 5th and 6th centuries through hagiographical literature such as the Life of Saint Anthony.

The 7th century was a tumultuous period of civil wars between Austrasia and Neustria. Such warfare was exploited by the patriarch of a family line, Pippin of Landen, who curried favour with the Merovingians and had himself installed in the office of Mayor of the Palace at the service of the King. From this position of great influence, Pippin accrued wealth and supporters. Later members of his family line inherited the office, acting as advisors and regents. The dynasty took a new direction in 732, when Charles Martel won the Battle of Tours, halting the advance of Muslim armies across the Pyrenees.

{|align=right style="width: 222px; margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%;" align="center" |Coronation of Charlemagne |- | , Emperor of the West (800)Karolus serenissimus Augustus a Deo coronatus magnus pacificus imperator Romanum gubernans imperiumGrandes Chroniques de France (14th-century) ---- The Holy Roman Emperor received the title of "Emperor of the Romans" from the Pope.]] |- | |} The Carolingian dynasty, as the successors to Charles Martel are known, officially took control of the kingdoms of Austrasia and Neustria in a coup of 753 led by Pippin III. A contemporary chronicle claims that Pippin sought, and gained, authority for this coup from the Pope. Pippin's successful coup was reinforced with propaganda that portrayed the Merovingians as inept or cruel rulers and exalted the accomplishments of Charles Martel and circulated stories of the family's great piety. At the time of his death in 783, Pippin left his kingdoms in the hands of his two sons, Charles and Carloman. When Carloman died of natural causes, Charles blocked the succession of Carloman's minor son and installed himself as the king of the united Austrasia and Neustria. This Charles, known to his contemporaries as Charles the Great or Charlemagne, embarked in 774 upon a program of systematic expansion that would unify a large portion of Europe. In the wars that lasted just beyond 800, he rewarded loyal allies with war booty and command over parcels of land. Much of the nobility of the High Middle Ages was to claim its roots in the Carolingian nobility that was generated during this period of expansion. He also sought to reform the Church in his domains, pushing for uniformity in liturgy and material culture.

Carolingian Renaissance

See also the careers of Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, and Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor.

Carolingian empire separation

Louis's long reign of 26 years was marked by numerous divisions of the empire among his sons and, after 829, numerous civil wars between various alliances of father and sons against other sons to determine a just division by battle. The final division was made at Crémieux in 838. The Emperor Louis recognized his eldest son Lothair I as emperor and confirmed him in the Regnum Italicum (Italy). He divided the rest of the empire between Lothair and Charles the Bald, his youngest son, giving Lothair the opportunity to choose his half. He chose East Francia, which comprised the empire on both banks of the Rhine and eastwards, leaving Charles West Francia, which comprised the empire to the west of the Rhineland and the Alps. Louis the German, the middle child, who had been rebellious to the last, was allowed to keep his subregnum of Bavaria under the suzerainty of his elder brother. The division was not undisputed. Pepin II of Aquitaine, the emperor's grandson, rebelled in a contest for Aquitaine, while Louis the German tried to annex all of East Francia. In two final campaigns, the emperor defeated both his rebellious descendants and vindicated the division of Crémieux before dying in 840.

A three-year civil war followed his death. At the end of the conflict, Louis the German was in control of East Francia and Lothair was confined to Italy. By the Treaty of Verdun (843), a kingdom of Middle Francia was created for Lothair in the Low Countries and Burgundy, and his imperial title was recognized. East Francia would eventually morph into the Kingdom of Germany and West Francia into the Kingdom of France, around both of which the history of Western Europe can largely be described as a contest for control of the middle kingdom. Charlemagne's grandsons and great-grandsons divided their kingdoms between their sons until all the various regna and the imperial title fell into the hands of Charles the Fat by 884. He was deposed in 887 and died in 888, to be replaced in all his kingdoms but two (Lotharingia and East Francia) by non-Carolingian "petty kings". The Carolingian Empire was destroyed, though the imperial tradition would eventually lead to the Holy Roman Empire in 962.

Carpathia and East Europe

Carpathian Basin

{|align=right style="width: 222px; margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%;" align="center" | Magyar tribes |- | [[File:Kalandozasok.jpg|thumb|center| Magyar campaigns in the 10th century. ---- Magyar region ---- Most European were praying for mercy: "Sagittis hungarorum libera nos Domine" - "Lord save us from the arrows of Hungarians"]] |} The Avar Khaganate maintained the region for more than two centuries and had the military power to launch attacks against all its neighbors. The Franks, under Charlemagne, defeated the Avars ending their 250-year rule. In the four centuries after their migration into the Carpathian Basin, the Magyars gradually developed from a confederation of tribes, the Seven chieftains of the Magyars. Arpad's Magyars settled here in the Great Plain first and then in Transylvania and Moldavian. This Confederation was led by the Árpád line of the Árpád Dynasty. The Magyars in the Carpathian Basin destroyed a Bavarian army in the Battle of Pressburg and laid the territories westward open to raids. Magyar expansion was checked at the Battle of Lechfeld. Although the battle stopped the raids against Western Europe, the raids on the Balkan Peninsula continued up to the end of the early Middle Ages.

Eastern Europe

In the Migration Period, the Bulgars lived in Eastern Europe during the Early Middle Ages. In the 7th century the Volga Tatars and Chuvash, Balkars and Bulgarians as the Danube Bulgar khanate established two states on the Pontic-Caspian steppe: Great Bulgaria (Caspian Sea and Black Sea) and Volga Bulgaria (Tatarstan and Chuvashia). The confederated Hunnic Empire, established by the Huns of Eurasian, appearing from beyond the Volga River some years after the middle of the 4th century, they first overran the Alani, who occupied the plains between the Volga river and the Don river, and then quickly overthrew the empire of the Ostrogoths between the Don and the Dniester. Deafeating the Romanian Visigoths they arrived at the Danubian frontier of the Roman Empire. Their mass migration into Europe, led by Attila the Hun, brought with it great ethnic and political upheaval.

Rus' Khaganate was a formative phase of Northwestern Russia, at the time a place of operations of the Varangian Norsemen under the rule of a monarch or monarchs using the Old Turkic title khagan. With the decline of the Viking Age, Varangians assimilated into the East Slav population by the late 11th century. Kievan Rus', a medieval polity, originated with the conquest of the East Slavic town of Kiev by "Rus'" Varangians. The early phase of the state is sometimes known as the "Rus Khaganate" would encompasse the territories stretching south to the Black Sea, east to Volga, and west to the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It was weakened by economic factors such as the collapse of Rus' commercial ties to Byzantium due to the decline of Constantinople and the falling off of trade routes, and it finally fell to the Mongol invasion in the High Middle Ages. East Slavic principalities were later united within the Russian Empire.

Far East's dynasties

China's dynasties

Before the Middle Ages During the Middle Ages After the Middle Ages ]] |} Six Dynasties of China immediately followed the fall of the Han Dynasty, and was a period of disunity, instability and warfare. The period ended when Emperor Wen of Sui reunified Southern and Northern China and the Sui Dynasty began. The early Imperial China begins with the unification of China by the Qin dynasty. It ended five centuries of feudal warfare that plagued the Eastern Zhou dynasty. The Sui Dynasty, an ephemeral Imperial Chinese dynasty, unified China and ended nearly four centuries of division between rival regimes. This dynasty has often been compared to the earlier Qin Dynasty in tenor and in the ruthlessness of its accomplishments. The Sui dynasty's early demise was attributed to the government's tyrannical demands on the people, who bore the crushing burden of taxes and compulsory labor. The Tang Dynasty seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire. The dynasty is generally regarded as a high point in Chinese civilization — equal to, or surpassing that of, the earlier Han Dynasty — a golden age of cosmopolitan culture. The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms era saw a series of political upheavals in China, between the fall of the Tang Dynasty and the founding of the Song Dynasty.

Japan's dynasties

Indian Middle Kingdoms

High Middle Ages

Middle East powers

The Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty, founded by Saladin and centered in Egypt, ruled during the 12th and 13th centuries. The Ayyubids ushered in an era of economic prosperity in the lands they ruled and the facilities and patronage provided by the Ayyubids led to a resurgence in intellectual activity in the Islamic world. This period was also marked by an Ayyubid process of vigorously strengthening Sunni Muslim dominance in the region by constructing numerous madrasas (schools) in their major cities. The Ayyubids launched conquests throughout the Middle East region and the territories under their control included Egypt, Syria, northern Mesopotamia, Hejaz, Yemen, and west portion of the North African coast. Most of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and beyond Jordan River fell to Saladin after his victory at the Battle of Hattin. However, the Crusaders regained control of Palestine's coastline shortly afterward. Toward the end of the high Middle Ages, Ayyubid unity was centered in Syria. By then, local Muslim dynasties had driven out the Ayyubids from Yemen, the Hejaz, and parts of Mesopotamia. After repelling a Crusader invasion of the Nile Delta, Mamluk generals overthrew Ayyubid rule, ending Ayyubid power in Egypt and a number of attempts by the rulers of Syria to recover it failed. The Mamluks, who forced out the Mongols after the destruction of the Ayyubid dynasty, maintained the Ayyubid principality of Hama until deposing its last ruler at the beginning of the late Middle Ages.

European urbanization

The High Middle Ages saw an explosion in population. This population flowed into towns, sought conquests abroad, or cleared land for cultivation. The cities of antiquity had been clustered around the Mediterranean. By 1200, the growing urban centres were in the centre of the continent, connected by roads or rivers. By the end of this period, Paris might have had as many as 200,000 inhabitants. In central and northern Italy and in Flanders, the rise of towns that were, to some degree, self-governing, stimulated the economy and created an environment for new types of religious and trade associations. Trading cities on the shores of the Baltic entered into agreements known as the Hanseatic League, and Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, and Pisa expanded their trade throughout the Mediterranean.

This period marks a formative one in the history of the western state as we know it, for kings in France, England, and Spain consolidated their power during this period, setting up lasting institutions to help them govern. Also new kingdoms like Hungary and Poland, after their sedentarization and conversion to Christianity, became Central-European powers. Hungary, especially, became the "Gate to Europe" from Asia, and bastion of Christianity against the invaders from the East until the 16th century and the onslaught by the Ottoman Empire. The Papacy, which had long since created an ideology of independence from the secular kings, first asserted its claims to temporal authority over the entire Christian world. The entity that historians call the Papal Monarchy reached its apogee in the early 13th century under the pontificate of Innocent III. Northern Crusades and the advance of Christian kingdoms and military orders into previously pagan regions in the Baltic and Finnic northeast brought the forced assimilation of numerous native peoples to the European identity. With the brief exception of the Kipchak and Mongol invasions, major barbarian incursions ceased.

East-West Schism

After the Schism, Christianity was represented by Western Catholicism in Western Europe and Eastern Orthodoxy in the east. The Church split along doctrinal, theological, linguistic, political, and geographical lines, and the fundamental breach has never been healed, with each side accusing the other of having fallen into heresy and of having initiated the division. The Crusades, the Massacre of the Latins in 1182, the capture and sack of Constantinople in 1204, and the imposition of Latin Patriarchs made reconciliation more difficult. This included the taking of many precious religious artifacts and the destruction of the Library of Constantinople.

Early Holy Roman Empire

During the high Middle Ages, the kingdom had no permanent capital city and the kings travelled from residence to residence (called Pfalz) to discharge affairs. However, each king preferred certain places, in Otto's case, the city of Magdeburg. Kingship continued to be transferred by election, but Kings often had their sons elected during their lifetime, enabling them to keep the crown for their families. This only changed after the end of the Salian dynasty in the 12th century.

Kings often employed bishops in administrative affairs and often determined who would be appointed to ecclesiastical offices. In the wake of the Cluniac Reforms, this involvement was increasingly seen as inappropriate by the Papacy. The reform-minded Pope Gregory VII was determined to oppose such practices, leading to the Investiture Controversy. An agreement with both the Pope and the bishops in the 1122 Concordat of Worms. The political power of the Empire was maintained but the conflict had demonstrated the limits of any ruler's power, especially in regard to the church, and robbed the king of the sacral status he had previously enjoyed. Both the Pope and the German princes had surfaced as major players in the political system of the Empire.

Also during the high Middle Ages, Hohenstaufen rulers increasingly lent land to ministerialia, formerly non-free service men, which Frederick hoped would be more reliable than dukes. Initially used mainly for war services, this new class of people would form the basis for the later knights, another basis of imperial power. An important event was the establishment of a new peace (Landfrieden) for all of the Empire, an attempt to (on the one hand) abolish private feuds not only between the many dukes, but on the other hand a means to tie the Emperor's subordinates to a legal system of jurisdiction and public prosecution of criminal acts - a predecessor of the modern concept of "rule of law". Another new concept of the time was the systematic foundation of new cities, both by the emperor and the local dukes. These were partly caused by the explosion in population. Another reason was to concentrate economic power at strategic locations, while formerly cities only existed in the shape of either old Roman foundations or older bishoprics. Imperial rights were referred to as regalia since the Investiture Controversy, but were enumerated during the high period. This comprehensive list included public roads, tariffs, coining, collecting punitive fees and the investiture, the seating and unseating of office holders. These rights were now explicitly rooted in Roman Law, a far-reaching constitutional act. Also in this period, the Teutonic Knights on invitation from the Holy Roman Empire went to Prussia to Christianise the Prussians. The monastic state of the Teutonic Order and its later German successor states of Prussia however never were part of the Holy Roman Empire.

As the age progressed, the Holy Roman Empire saw general structural changes in how land was administered, preparing the shift of political power towards the rising bourgeoisie at the expense of aristocratic feudalism that would characterize the Late Middle Ages. Instead of personal duties, money increasingly became the common means to represent economic value in agriculture. Peasants were increasingly required to pay tribute for their lands. The concept of "property" began to replace more ancient forms of jurisdiction, although they were still very much tied together. In the territories (not at the level of the Empire), power became increasingly bundled: Whoever owned the land had jurisdiction, from which other powers derived. It is important to note, however, that jurisdiction at this time did not include legislation, which virtually did not exist until well into the 15th century. Court practice heavily relied on traditional customs or rules described as customary. It is during this time that the territories began to transform themselves into predecessors of modern states. The process varied greatly among the various lands and was most advanced in those territories that were most identical to the lands of the old Germanic tribes, e.g. Bavaria. It was slower in those scattered territories that were founded through imperial privileges.

British Kindom

In the British Isles around the beginning of the high Middle Ages, William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, claimed the throne for Kingdom of England. William launched an invasion of England and landed in Sussex on 28 September 1066. At the Battle of Hastings (14 October 1066), the English army, or Fyrd, was defeated and William emerged as victor. William was then able to conquer the rest of England with little further opposition. He was not, however, planning to absorb the Kingdom into the Duchy of Normandy. As a mere Duke, William owed allegiance to Philip I of France, whereas in the independent Kingdom of England he could rule without interference. He was crowned King of England on 25 December 1066. The Kingdom of England and the Duchy of Normandy remained in personal union until 1204. Four generation after William, the continental possessions of the Duchy was lost to Philip II of France. A few remnants of Normandy, including the Channel Islands, remained in the possession of England, together with most of the Duchy of Aquitaine.

{|align=right style="width: 222px; margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%;" align="center" | Magna Carta |- | [[File:Joao sem terra assina carta Magna.jpg|thumb|center| John of England signs Magna Carta. Illustration from Cassell's History of England (1902) ---- In John Softsword's oppressive government, the barons made an oath that they would "stand fast for the liberty of the church and the realm", and they demanded that King John confirm the Charter of Liberties. The nobles forced King John to agree to a document later known as the 'Articles of the Barons'. A formal document to record the agreement, the original Magna Carta, was distributed throughout the Kingdom. The document put England on course to become a democracy. ]] |} Up to the time of the Norman conquest of Anglo-Saxon England, Wales had remained for the most part independent. After the Norman conquest of England, some of the Norman lords began to attack Wales. They conquered parts of it, which they ruled, acknowledging the overlordship of the Norman kings of England, but with considerable local independence. Over many years these "Marcher Lords" conquered more and more of Wales, against considerable resistance led by various Welsh princes, who also often acknowledged the overlordship of the Norman kings of England.

Edward I of England effectively conquered Wales, in 1282, and created the title Prince of Wales for his eldest son Edward II in 1301. Edward's conquest was brutal and the subsequent repression considerable, as the magnificent Welsh castles such as Conwy, Harlech and Caernarfon attest; but this event re-united under a single ruler the lands of Roman Britain for the first time since the establishment of the kingdom of the Jutes in Kent in the 5th century AD, some 700 years before. Accordingly, this was a highly significant moment in the history of medieval England, as it re-established links with the pre-Saxon past. These links were exploited for political purposes to unite the peoples of the kingdom, including the Anglo-Normans, by popularising Welsh legends.

Trade and technology

The annual Champagne fairs were an cycle of trading fairs held in towns in the Champagne and Brie regions of France in the Middle Ages. From their origins in local agricultural and stock fairs, the Champagne fairs became an important engine in the reviving economic history of medieval Europe, "veritable nerve centers" serving as a premier market for textiles, leather, fur, and spices. At their height, in the late 12th and the 13th century, the fairs linked the cloth-producing cities of the Low Countries with the Italian dyeing and exporting centers, with Genoa in the lead. The fairs, which were already well-organized at the start of the century, were one of the earliest manifestations of a linked European economy, a characteristic of the High Middle Ages. From the later twelfth century the fairs, conveniently sited on ancient land routes and largely self-regulated through the development of the Lex mercatoria, the "merchant law", dominated the commercial and banking relations operating at the frontier region between the north and the Mediterranean.

During the 12th and 13th century in Europe, there was a radical change in the rate of new inventions, innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth. The period saw major technological advances, including the invention of cannon, spectacles, and artesian wells, and the cross-cultural introduction of gunpowder, silk, the compass, and the astrolabe from the east. One major agricultural innovation during this period was the development of a 3-field rotation system for planting crops (as opposed the 2-field system that was being used). Further, the development of the heavy plow allowed for a rise in communal agriculture as most individuals could not afford to do it by themselves. As a result, medieval villages had formed a type of collective ownership and communal agriculture where the use of horses allowed villages to grow.

There were also great improvements to ships and the clock. The latter advances made possible the dawn of the Age of Exploration. At the same time, huge numbers of Greek and Arabic works on medicine and the sciences were translated and distributed throughout Europe. Aristotle especially became very important, his rational and logical approach to knowledge influencing the scholars at the newly forming universities which were absorbing and disseminating the new knowledge during the 12th century Renaissance.

Christian conflict and reform

Andrew II of Hungary assembled the biggest army in the history of the Crusades, and moved his troops as a leading figure in the Fifth Crusade, reaching Cyprus and later Lebanon, coming back home in 1218. Islamic counter-attacks had retaken all the Crusader possessions on the Asian mainland, leaving a de facto boundary between Islam and western Christianity that continued until modern times.

Northern Europe

During the Christianization of Scandinavia, the Northern European realms established Archdioceses, responsible directly to the Pope, and began to establish a network of churches in the Viking homelands. A considerably long time occurred for actual Christian beliefs to establish themselves among the people. The old indigenous traditions were slowly replaced by Christian doctrine. The Northern Crusades were crusades undertaken by the Northern European Christian kings and their allies against the pagan peoples of the Viking North around the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. The east Baltic world was transformed by military conquest and underwent defeat, baptism, military occupation and sometimes extermination.

Slavic chronicles refer to Lithuania as one of the areas attacked by the Rus'. At first pagan Lithuanians paid tribute to Polotsk, but soon grew in strength and organized their own small-scale raids. At some point the situation began to change and the Lithuanians started to organize sustainable military raids on the Slavic provinces. The Livonian Order and Teutonic Knights, crusading military orders, were established in Riga and in Prussia. The Christian orders posed a significant threat to pagan Baltic tribes and further galvanized the formation of Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Iberia reclaimed

The formation of the Kingdom of Asturias under the Visigothic nobleman Pelagius and his victory over the Muslims at the Battle of Covadonga in 722 were major formative events in the reconquest of Iberia. Charlemagne reconquered the western Pyrenees and Septimania and formed a Marca Hispánica to defend the border between Francia and the Muslims.

Beginning in the mid-high Middle Ages, the Reconquista of Al-Andalus was undertaken in force. The reconquest of Iberia passed through major phases over the centuries before its completion. The Reconquista, being of such great duration, is much more complex than any simple account would allow. Christian and Muslim rulers commonly became divided among themselves and fought. Alliances across faith lines were not unusual. The fighting along the Christian–Muslim frontier was punctuated by periods of prolonged peace and truces. Blurring matters even further were the mercenaries who simply fought for whoever paid the most.

By the end of the Middle Ages, the Christian Crusaders had captured all the Islamic territories in modern Spain and Portugal. Reconquista was completed by 1249, after the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, when the sole remaining Muslim state in Iberia, the Emirate of Granada, became a vassal state of the Christian Crown of Castile. This arrangement lasted for 250 years until the Castilians launched the Granada War of 1492, which finally expelled all Muslim authority from Spain. The last Muslim ruler of Granada, Muhammad XII, better known as King Boabdil, surrendered his kingdom to Isabella I of Castile, who with her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon were known as the Catholic Monarchs.

The Balkans and Anatolia

The Second Bulgarian Empire was the successor of the First Bulgarian Empire, reaching the peak of its power under Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II. The Byzantines were defeated in several major battles, and the newly-established Latin Empire was crushed in the battle of Adrianople. With the defeated the Despotate of Epiros and Bulgaria transformed into a regional power once again. However, in the late 13th century the Empire declined under the constant invasions of Tatars, Byzantines, Hungarians, Serbs, and internal instability and revolts. Gradually being conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the late 14th-early 15th century. It was succeeded by the Principality and later Kingdom of Bulgaria in 1878.

The Sublime Ottoman State, referred to as the Ottoman Empire, formed around the end of the High period of the Middle Ages. With the demise of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rūm, Turkish Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent states, the so-called Ghazi emirates. By 1300, a weakened Byzantine Empire had lost most of its Anatolian provinces to ten Ghazi principalities. One of the Ghazi emirates was led by Osman I (from which the name Ottoman is derived) in western Anatolia. Osman I extended the frontiers of Ottoman settlement toward the edge of the Byzantine Empire. In this period, a formal Ottoman government was created whose institutions would change drastically over the life of the empire. The government used the legal entity known as the millet, under which religious and ethnic minorities were allowed to manage their own affairs with substantial independence from central control. In the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387. The Turkish victory at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe.

Central Asia mid-age

Kings of Persia

Mongol Empire

The Empire began to split as a result of wars over succession, with the Toluids prevailing after a bloody purge of Ogedeid and Chagataid factions. Disputes continued though even among the descendants of Tolui. Rival councils would simultaneously elect different Great Khans but also deal with challenges from descendants of other of Genghis's sons. Genghis's descendants would either challenge the decision of Great Khan, or assert independence in their own section of the Empire.

Kublai Khan would eventually take power, but civil war ensued, as Kublai sought, unsuccessfully, to regain control of the Chagatayid and Ogedeid families. By the time of Kublai's death, the Mongol Empire had fractured into four separate khanates or empires, each pursuing its own separate interests and objectives: the Golden Horde khanate, the Chagatai Khanate, the Ilkhanate, and the Yuan Dynasty. At the end of the high Middle Ages, all Mongol khans submitted to a single paramount sovereign for the first time since the wars over succession.

Mongol's European Invasion

Central Khanates

The Chagatai Khanate consisted of the lands ruled by Chagatai Khan, second son of the Great Khan Genghis Khan, and his descendents and successors. Initially it was considered a part of the Mongol Empire, but it later became fully independent. At its height in the late 13th century, the Khanate extended from the Amu Darya south of the Aral Sea to the Altai Mountains in the border of modern-day Mongolia and China. The western half of the khanate was lost to Tamerlane in the 1360s. The khanate lasted in one form or another till the end of the Middle Ages.

Islamic India

Far East mid-age

China mid-age

Japan mid-age

Late Middle Ages

European turbulence

Creative social, economic and technological responses emerged in the late period in response to various upheavals in the region; these developments laid the groundwork for further significant change during the Early Modern Period. The Late Middle Ages was also a period when the Catholic Church was increasingly divided against itself. During the time of the Western Schism, the Church was led by as many as three popes at one time. The divisiveness of the Church undermined papal authority, and allowed the formation of national churches.

Popular revolts in late medieval Europe saw uprisings and rebellions by peasants in the countryside, or the bourgeois in towns, against nobles, abbots and kings during the upheavals of the 14th through early 16th centuries, part of a larger "Crisis of the Late Middle Ages". Although sometimes known as Peasant Revolts, the phenomenon of popular uprisings was of broad scope and not just restricted to peasants. In Central Europe and the Balkan region, these rebellions expressed, and helped cause, a political and social disunity paving the way for the expansion of the Ottoman Empire.

Disease and Famine

Medieval Inquisition

The Medieval Inquisitions were in response to growing religious movements, in particular the Cathars, first noted in the 1140s in southern France, and the Waldensians, starting around 1170 in northern Italy. Individuals, such as Peter of Bruis, had often challenged the Church. However, the Cathars were the first mass heretical organization in the second millennium that posed a serious threat to the authority of the Church. The different phenomenon of the Spanish Inquisition, which was under the control of the Spanish monarchy, and the Portuguese Inquisition followed the same pattern. The Medieval Inquisition Inquisitions were prior to the Roman Inquisition.

State resurgence

The Late Middle Ages in Europe witnessed the rise of strong, royalty-based sovereign states, particularly the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of France, and the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula (Aragon, Castile, Navarre, and Portugal). The long conflicts of this time, such as the Hundred Years' War fought between England and France, strengthened royal control over the kingdoms, even though they were extremely hard on the peasantry. Kings profited from warfare by gaining land.

France shows clear signs of a growth in sovereign royal power during the 14th century, from the active persecution of heretics and lepers, expulsion of the Jews, and the dissolution of the Knights Templar. In all of these cases, undertaken by Philip IV, the king confiscated land and wealth from these minority groups. By the last half of the 15th century, kings like Henry VII of England and Louis XI of France were able to rule without much baronial interference.

Louis the Great

In the North, Louis's diplomacy, moreover, was materially assisted by his lifelong alliance with his uncle, King Casimir III of Poland, who had appointed him his successor. Louis waged successful wars against the pagan Lithuanians, Mongols, and against Bohemians. The young Louis had become very popular in Poland due to these campaigns. In Poland, Louis defeated Lithuanians (1350–1352) and the Mongols (Golden Horde), and conquered Galicia (Central-Eastern Europe). After the serials of victories over the Tatars, the Hungarian sphere of influence stretched eastward as far as the Dniester. In the wars between 1345–47, Louis defeated the Golden Horde.

Louis' campaigns in the Balkans were aimed not so much at conquest and subjugation as at drawing the Serbs, Bosnians, Wallachians and Bulgarians into the fold of the Roman Catholic faith and at forming a united front against the looming Turkish menace. The rulers of Serbia, Bosnia, Walachia, Moldavia, and Bulgaria became his vassals. They regarded powerful Hungary as a potential menace to their national identity. For this reason, Hungary could never regard the Serbs and Wallachians as reliable allies in her subsequent wars against the Turks. The Ottoman Turks confronted the southern vassal states in the Balkan region ever more often. However Louis defeated the Turks when Hungarian and Turkish troops clashed for the first time in history at Nicapoli in 1366. The Hungarian Chapel in the Cathedral at Aachen was built to commemorate this victory. He defeated the Turkish army in Wallachia in 1374.

East European Duchies

The medieval Russia polity centered on Moscow, the Grand Duchy of Moscow, was the predecessor state of the early modern Tsardom of Russia. The Grand Duchy originated with Moscow at the end of the high period. The power eclipsed and eventually absorbed its parent duchy of Vladimir-Suzdal in the beginning of the late Middle Ages. The power of Moscow expanded further, annexing the Novgorod Republic and the Grand Duchy of Tver. It remained tributary to the Golden Horde (the "Tatar Yoke") until near the end of the Middle Ages. Ivan III of Russia consolidated the state, campaigning against his major remaining rival power, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and had tripled the territory of Muscovy, adopting the title of tsar and "Ruler of all Rus'".

Northern Europe Union

Hundred Years' War

{|align=right style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%" align="center" colspan="2" |Joan of Arc |- | [[File:Joan of arc miniature graded.jpg|thumb|center| Joan of Arc in a 15th-century miniature ---- A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the coronation of Charles VII. She was captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English, tried by an ecclesiastical court, and burned at the stake when she was 19 years old. ]] |} The Hundred Years' War was a conflict between the Kingdom of France and the Kindom of England lasting 116 years, from 1337 to 1453. It was fought primarily over claims by the English kings to the French throne and was punctuated by several brief and two extended periods of peace before it finally ended in the expulsion of the English from France, except for the Calais Pale. This series of conflicts is commonly divided into three or four phases:

Militarily, the Hundred Years' War saw the introduction of new weapons and tactics, which eroded the older system of feudal armies dominated by heavy cavalry. The first standing armies in Western Europe since the time of the Western Roman Empire were introduced for the war, thus changing the role of the peasantry. For all this, as well as for its long duration, it is often viewed as one of the most significant conflicts in the history of medieval warfare.

After the advent of gunpowder artillery in the Middle Ages, the Battle of Crécy took place and was one of the most important battles of the Hundred Years' War. The combination of new weapons and tactics has caused many historians to consider this battle the beginning of the end of classic chivalry. "Ribaldis," which shot large arrows and simplistic grapeshot, were first mentioned in the English Privy Wardrobe accounts during preparations for the Battle. The Florentine Giovanni Villani recounts their destructiveness, indicating that by the end of the battle, "the whole plain was covered by men struck down by arrows and cannon balls." As an absolutely unusual event for the Middle Ages, Hunyadi's son, Matthias, was elected as King for Hungary by the nobility. For the first time, a member of an aristocratic family (and not from a royal family) was crowned.

The King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1458–1490) was one of the most prominent figures of this Age, as he directed campaigns to the west conquering Bohemia answering to the Pope's claim for help against the Hussite Protestants, and also for solving the political hostilities with the German emperor Frederick III of Habsburg he invaded his west domains. Matthew organized the Black Army, composed of mercenary soldiers that is considered until the date as the biggest army of its time. Using this powerful tool, the Hungarian king led wars against the Turkish armies and stopped the Ottomans during his reign. Though the Ottoman Empire grew in strength and, with end of the Black Army, Central Europe was defenseless after the death of Matthew. At the Battle of Mohács, the forces of the Ottoman Empire annihilated the Hungarian army, and in trying to escape Louis II of Hungary drowned in the Csele Creek. The leader of the Hungarian army, Pál Tomori, also died in the battle. This episode is considered to be one of the final ones of the Medieval Times.

Far East restoration

China restoration

The Empire of the Great Ming rule began in China during the mid-late Middle Ages, following the collapse of the Yuan Dynasty. The Ming was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic Han Chinese. Ming rule saw the construction of a vast navy and army. Although private maritime trade and official tribute missions from China had taken place in previous dynasties, the tributary fleet under the Muslim eunuch admiral Zheng He surpassed all others in size. There were enormous construction projects, including the restoration of the Grand Canal of China and the Great Wall of China and the establishment of the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Society was fashioned to be self-sufficient rural communities in a rigid, immobile system that would have no need to engage with the commercial life and trade of urban centers. Rebuilding of China's agricultural base and strengthening of communication routes through the militarized courier system had the unintended effect of creating a vast agricultural surplus that could be sold at burgeoning markets located along courier routes.

Rural culture and commerce became influenced by urban trends. The upper echelons of society embodied in the scholarly gentry class were also affected by this new consumption-based culture. In a departure from tradition, merchant families began to produce examination candidates to become scholar-officials and adopted cultural traits and practices typical of the gentry. Parallel to this trend involving social class and commercial consumption were changes in social and political philosophy, bureaucracy and governmental institutions, and even arts and literature.

Japan restoration

Beginning around the mid-late Middle Ages, the Muromachi period marks the governance of the Ashikaga shogunate. The first Muromachi shogun was established by Ashikaga Takauji, two years after the brief Kemmu restoration of imperial rule was brought to a close. The period ended with the last shogun, Ashikaga Yoshiaki, driven out of the capital in Kyoto by Oda Nobunaga. The early Muromachi period, or the Northern and Southern Court period, experienced continued resistance of the supporters of the Kemmu restoration. The end of the Muromachi period, or the Sengoku period, was a time of warring states. The Muromachi period has the two cultural phases, the medieval Kitayama and modern Higashiyama periods.

Medieval European culture

Medieval European life

European medieval cuisine includes the foods, eating habits, and cooking methods of various European cultures during the Middle Ages, a period roughly dating from the 5th to the 16th century. During this period, diets and cooking changed less across Europe than they did in the briefer early modern period that followed, when those changes helped lay the foundations for modern European cuisine. In the European region, Medieval gardening during the period had a primary purpose of providing food for households. European medieval gardening saw the cultivation of plants herbs, fruits, flowers, or vegetables.

Horses in the Middle Ages differed in size, build and breed from the modern horse, and were, on average, smaller. They were central to medieval society, unlike their contemporary counterparts, being essential for war, agriculture, and transport. Significant technological advances in equestrian equipment, often introduced from other cultures, allowed for significant changes in both warfare and agriculture.

Medieval hunting in Europe consisted of hunting wild animals. While game was at times an important source of food, it was rarely the principal source of nutrition. Hunting was engaged by all European classes, but by the High Middle Ages, the necessity of hunting was transformed into a stylized pastime of the Western aristocracy. More than a pastime, it was an important arena for social interaction, essential training for war, and a privilege and measurement of nobility. As with heraldry, too, the conventions and vocabulary of hunting were originally French in origin, via the transmission of Roman property laws through Frankish monarchs. There exists a rich corpus of Medieval poetry and literature, manuals, art and ceremonies surrounding the hunt, increasingly elaborated in the 14th and 15th centuries as part of the vocabulary of aristocratic bearing.

The European medieval household was, like contemporary western households, the centre of the family for all classes of European society. Yet in contrast to the modern household, it consisted of many more individuals than the nuclear family. From the household of the king to the humblest peasant dwelling, more or less distant relatives and varying numbers of servants and dependents would cohabit with the master of the house and his immediate family. The structure of the medieval household was largely dissolved by the advent of privacy in early modern Europe. Variations were of course great, over an entire continent and a time span of about 1000 years. The classical model of the medieval household evolved in Carolingian France and from there spread over Europe.

Western feudal Society

In Medieval warfare, the medieval knight was usually a mounted and armoured soldier, often connected with nobility or royalty, although (especially in north-eastern Europe) knights could also come from the lower classes, and could even be unfree persons. The cost of their armor, horses, and weapons was great; this, among other things, helped gradually transform the knight, at least in western Europe, into a distinct social class separate from other warriors. During the crusades, holy orders of Knights fought in the Holy Land (see Knights Templar, the Hospitallers, etc.). Medieval tournaments in the feudal society, as described by Roger of Hoveden, were "military exercises carried out, not in the spirit of hostility (nullo interveniente odio), but solely for practice and the display of prowess (pro solo exercitio, atque ostentatione virium)."

Manorialism was the organizing principle of several rural western and central Europe economies that originated in the villa system of the Late Roman Empire. It eventually was replaced by money-based market economy and agrarian contracts. Manorialism was characterised by the vesting of legal and economic power in a lord, supported economically from his own direct landholding and from the obligatory contributions of a legally subject part of the peasant population under his jurisdiction. Manorialism was continued to be practiced later than feudalism and serfdom in the Middle Ages

Medieval European art and buildings

European Medieval theatre is composed of a variety of genres because the time period covers approximately a thousand years of the art form and an entire continent. Most European medieval theatre is not well documented due to a lack of surviving records and texts, a low literacy rate of the general population in the Old World, and the opposition of the Christian clergy to some types of performance. European Medieval music was both sacred and secular. During the earlier medieval period, the liturgical genre, predominantly Gregorian chant, was monophonic. Polyphonic genres started to develop in Europe during the high medieval era, becoming prevalent by the later 13th and early 14th century. European medieval music was performed by a variety of Instruments which still exist, though in different forms.

On its completion in 1406 it was the largest brick castle in the world.}}

Medieval architecture in Europe represent various forms of architecture. Ecclesiastical architecture of Christianity takes the Roman basilica as its primary model with subsequent developments. European military architecture served for defense. European castles and fortified walls provide the most notable remains. Civil architecture in Europe included manor houses.

{|align=right style="width: 222px; margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%;" align="center" | Medieval architecture |- | [[File:Duomo di amalfi.jpg|thumb|center| Amalfi Cathedral, Amalfi, Italy (1206) ---- Predominantly of Arab-Norman Romanesque architectural style, it has been remodeled several times, adding Romanesque, Byzantine, Gothic, and Baroque elements. ]] |} Few large stone buildings were attempted between the Constantinian basilicas of the 4th century, and the 8th century. At this time, the establishment of churches and monasteries, and a comparative political stability, caused the development of a form of stone architecture loosely based upon Roman forms and hence later named Romanesque. Where available, Roman brick and stone buildings were recycled for their materials. From the fairly tentative beginnings known as the First Romanesque, the style flourished and spread across Europe in a remarkably homogeneous form. The features are massive stone walls, openings topped by semi-circular arches, small windows, and, particularly in France, arched stone vaults and arrows.

In the decorative arts, Celtic and Germanic barbarian forms were absorbed into Christian art, although the central impulse remained Roman and Byzantine. High quality jewellery and religious imagery were produced throughout Western Europe; Charlemagne and other monarchs provided patronage for religious artworks such as reliquaries and books. Some of the principal artworks of the age were the fabulous Illuminated manuscripts produced by monks on vellum, using gold, silver, and precious pigments to illustrate biblical narratives. Early examples include the Book of Kells and many Carolingian and Ottonian Frankish manuscripts.

Medieval guilds and associations

Medieval science and technology

in a 14th century copy of L'Image du monde (c. 1246)]] During the early Middle Ages and the Islamic Golden Age, Islamic philosophy, science, and technology were more advanced than in Western Europe. Islamic scholars both preserved and built upon earlier Ancient Greek and Roman traditions and added their own inventions and innovations. Islamic al-Andalus passed much of this on to Europe (see Islamic contributions to Medieval Europe). The replacement of Roman numerals with the decimal positional number system and the invention of algebra allowed more advanced mathematics.

Medieval thought and rationality

Actually, reason was generally held in high regard during the European Middle Ages. The historian of science Edward Grant, writes that "If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed [in the 18th century], they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities". Also, contrary to common belief, David Lindberg says "the late medieval scholar rarely experienced the coercive power of the church and would have regarded himself as free (particularly in the natural sciences) to follow reason and observation wherever they led".

The caricature of the European period is also reflected in a number of more specific notions. For instance, a claim that was first propagated in the 19th century and is still very common in popular culture is the supposition that all European people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat. This claim is mistaken. In fact, lecturers in the medieval universities commonly advanced evidence in favor of the idea that the Earth was a sphere. Lindberg and Numbers write: "There was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference".

Other misconceptions of the European people such as: "the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages", "the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science", and "the medieval Christian church suppressed the growth of natural philosophy", are all cited by Ronald Numbers as examples of widely popular myths that still pass as historical truth, although they are not supported by current historical research. They help maintain the idea of a "Dark Age" spanning through the European medieval period.

Gallery

See also

General Topics

Historians

Science historians

Chroniclers

References

Bibliography

External links