1 CE-899

The first nine centuries of the Common Era were a period of great turbulence. Continuities with the previous period and within the period itself were frequently shattered. But it was also a time for the formation of long-lasting political entities and of characteristic regions. The foundations were laid for political trends in centuries to come. Three crucial discontinuities were the fall of Parthia, the period of disunity after Han in China, and the fall of Rome. Parthia was succeeded by the Sasanid Empire, which in turn fell to Islam. In China, disunity was followed by the Tang dynasty, which eventually also fragmented. Rome was beset on its eastern frontiers by Germans, Huns, Avars, and other barbarians, and it gave way to new states. Some of these, like Visigothic Spain, Frankish Gaul, and Lombard Italy, were ephemeral. There were two outstanding saplings which grew out of the massive Roman trunk: one, the Carolingian Empire, did not last long; the other, the Byzantine Empire, the true successor of Rome, had life in it until the mid-15th century. Rome itself (the city), became the core of the Papal States. England was formed on the periphery of the empire.

Georgia was founded in the Caucasus. The upheavals in India with the incursions of the steppes Indo-Iranians culminated in the formation of the Kushana empire, whose existence is undeniable but which left no chronicles. As Kushana dimmed, the Guptas created an empire in northern India and Central and Southern India were stages for hectic but not unifying political activity. The Guptas too dissipated and India sank into political fragmentation, which was barely alleviated by Harsha's Empire or Kingdom, centered on Kanauj, and so brief that it is normally referred to by its founder's name. Bengal was created in eastern India. The rest of Asia saw the historical debuts of Japan, Tibet, and Cambodia. An important group in South East Asia were the Mons, related to the Khmers of Cambodia, but, despite being civilizers in what today are Myanmar and Thailand, they did not manage to consolidate political power. The Mons were eventually displaced by peoples, the Burmese and the Thais, who originally inhabited the independent but vague Chinese principality of Nanchao. All of South East Asia was culturally indebted to India, as was the case of the Buddhist Sri Vijaya sea-empire, of the states founded in Java, and of Champa, a badly coordinated Hinduist kingdom in central Vietnam. In Africa, the Eritrean kingdom of Axum was the cradle of Christian Ethiopia.

Islam was an unified theocratic empire until its capital was moved by the Abbasids from Damascus to Baghdad, after which it broke up into many pieces: Buyid Persia, the Maghreb, Egypt, and Al Andalus, which is the general Arab name for Spain after it was conquered by Muslims from Morocco. The Christian answer to Islamic conquest in Spain was the kingdom of Asturias.

The dissolution of the Carolingian Empire left the cores for France and Germany, both very feudalized. Germany was constituted as the loose federation of duchies known as the Holy Roman Empire, which ironically claimed legitimacy from the Roman empire which Germans did so much to destroy. Venice was founded in Italy by native fishermen and people fleeing the rampaging Lombards, who were tamed by the Carolingians.
The Slavs began forming proto-states in central Europe (Moravia) and in the Balkans (Serbs and Bulgaria). Bulgaria is not a Slavic name but a Turkish name. The Turks elsewhere were nomadic. They converted to Islam while still in the steppes of central Asia. The period ends with the cusp of Norsemen attacks all over Europe, where, most notably, they eventually gained the foothold of Normandy in France and, sailing down rivers, they founded the principalities that in time coalesced into Russia.

25-280

China: Eastern Han to start of the Period of disunity after Han

29-138

Rome to the height of empire

ca30

Possible date of Christ’s crucifixion

ca50-ca450

Kushana

ca50-ca450

Southern India: Pandyas, Cholas, and Kalabhras

ca50-ca1290

Axum and Ethiopia

The Semitic kingdom of Saba was founded in the territory of today's Yemen. According to legend, the queen of Saba (Sheba in the Bible) visited Solomon (10th century BCE). The ruins of a huge damn have been found near Marib (6th century BCE), which presumably was the capital of Saba. Across the Red sea a state existed around the city of Axum (in northern Ethiopia) with a port on the Red Sea near modern Massawa (1st century CE). Literacy spread from Saba to Axum, where a script was developed for the Semitic Axumite language Geez (also known as Ethiopic). Saba's inscriptions derive from the Aramaic alphabet, although the Sabaean and Axumite scripts are syllabic. Axum's history is more conjectural than documentary. Large temples and huge monolithic monuments were erected before the Common Era. In the 4th century CE, Axum converted to monophysite Christianity, probably through commercial contacts with Egypt. Geez was adopted, and still functions, as the liturgical language of the Monophysitic Ethiopian Christian church. (Monophysitism is the Byzantine doctrine that Christ's nature was solely divine.) Under a king Ezana, Axum invaded Nubia and destroyed Meroe (Kush). During its floruit (5th-6th centuries), Axum emitted its own coinage. In 525, Axum invaded Saba, but was expelled by the Sasanid Empire. In the 7th century, Axum expanded at the expense of its neighbors, but the kingdom was unstable. As Islamic influence extended to Eritrea (early 8th century), Axum was abandoned and succeeded by Christian dynasties in central Ethiopia.

ca100

Kanishka, king of Kushana, convokes the Fourth Buddhist Council in which Mahayana doctrine was formulated and from which Buddhism spread to China via Afghanistan.

117-224

Parthia to the fall of the empire to the Sasanians

138-423

Rome to the final division of the empire

after 200

Some authorities consider the Manusmriti, or the Indian systemic law code, was written then.

Kautylia writes the Arthasastra, the classical Indian work on statecraft, which however was only discovered in 1904.

ca250-628

Saba (Yemen) to Muslim conquest

224-575

Sasanid Empire to its conquest by Islam

280-589

China: Period of disunity after Han

ca320-ca570

Northern India: Guptas

The Puranas were composed and possibly first written versions of the Vedic epics.  The Bhagavad Gita might first have been inserted in the Mahabharata.

ca350-ca650

Formation of Nepal

ca350-ca1050

Mons

During the 4th century CE, there were proto-states with varying degrees of organization and stability in central Thailand and southern Burma. The Mons, linguistically related to the Cambodians, were dominant. There are Mon inscriptions in Thailand and Myanmar from the 6th century. Founded by Mon people, Dvaravati (7th-11th centuries), with its main centers in Nakhon Pathom, U-Thong, and Lavo (modern Lop Buri), all west of the Chao Phraya river (although Dvaravati sites are scattered throughout central Thailand), was a ramshackle Theravada Buddhist kingdom. In fact, there is little evidence that Dvaravati was anything more than the general name for different sites occupied by the Mons. The occasional inscriptional mention of a king of Dvaravati probably refers to local rulers.

Dvaravati sites, often characterized by ovoidal moats or defenses (observable in aerial photography), have yielded carvings and statues but little in the way of architecture. A frequent motif is the Dharmacakra or wheel of the law. Seated Buddhas, not the most common posture for the master, are found in Dvaravati. Buddha is sometimes depicted imparting learning to Hindu gods, but there are also Dvaravati in-the-round statues of mitred Shiva. In the Hindu epic Mahabharata, Dvaravati (sometimes translated as "gateway to the port or haven") was the name of Krishna's earthly kingdom. Other important Mon centers were Ligor in Thailand (modern Nakhon Si Thammarat) and Thaton in lower Burma. Ligor was also known as Tambralinga.

There was an early Burmese kingdom called Linyang, capital Srikshetra, near today's Prome, whose likely dates are 670 to 830. It was peopled by Pyu, who were culturally influenced by the Mons. The Mons had control of the Irrawaddy delta and Thailand. In the 9th century they founded Pegu, near modern Yangon (Rangoon).
Khmer hegemony

By 937, the Cambodian Angkor empire had subjected the Mons in eastern Thailand. The Burmese king of Bagan, Anawratha (Anuruddha), captured Thaton in 1057. Mon Buddhism, a mixture of Theravada and Mahayana (Magadha), was important in the early history of Bagan, but the view that Theravada Buddhism was transmitted whole to Bagan from Thaton is now not generally accepted.

The Khmer monarch Suryavarman I (1002-1050), supposedly a son of a king of Tambralinga, but of Cambodian royal lineage, landed in eastern Cambodia (today southern Vietnam) ca1001 and after a long civil war was installed in Angkor ca1010. Suryavarman conquered Lavo and subjected Mon lands as far as Ligor. Buddhist monks and Brahmins lived side by side in Lavo, but the style of the remains there is mainly Hindu-Khmer.

The first mention of Mirma or Myanmar appears in a Mon inscription of 1102. Towards the end of the 12th century, Mon inscriptions disappear from Bagan completely substituted by Burmese. The Thais seized Lop Buri from the Mon-Khmer in the 13th century. Bagan was in political decadence by the time the Mongols invaded Burma (late 13th century). The Thais had by then replaced Khmer rule in central Thailand.

357-1203

Cambodia to the height of the Khmer empire

386-ca1000

Turks in the steppes I

ca400-410

The Chinese Buddhist monk Faxian travels widely in India.

ca400-ca550

Georgia: origins to fragmentation

ca400-1185

Japan: Nara and Heian to Kamakura

ca410-ca1490

Central India to the conquest by the Delhi Sultanate

ca410-711

Visigothic Kingdom

ca410-1002

Burgundy to French suzerainty

ca410-1066

England: the Heptarchy to the Norman conquest

ca410-1174

Scotland to the conquest of Strathclyde

ca410-1282

Wales to English conquest

423-476

Rome: puppet emperors to deposition of Romulus Augustulus

440-604

Papal States to pope Gregory the Great

ca450-1236

Sri Lanka: Indian invasion and native reaction

ca450-ca1350

Southern India: Pallavas to Vijayanagara

ca466-752

Franks to the Carolingians

476-565

Rome: Odoacer, Ostogrogoths, and Justinian

ca500

Teotihuacán

ca550-ca950

Serbs penetrate the Balkans

ca550-697

Formation of Venice

ca550-ca1290

Sri Vijaya

552-ca850

Avars

Lombards

562-ca850

Korea to the rise of Silla

565-641

Formation of Byzantine Empire

572-633

Sasanid Empire: wars with the Roman empire

589-618

China: Sui dynasty

ca590-ca850

Tibet

after 600

Period of activity of Kalidasa, considered the greatest classical Sanskrit author and playwright

604-1054

Papal States to schism with Greek Orthodox Church

606-ca910

Kanauj

618-979

China: Tang and Period of Disunity after Tang

622-656

Formation of Islam and “elective caliphs”

628-1840

Yemen to independence from Egyptian rule

641-1081

Byzantine Empire to the Seljuk invasions

ca650-ca1050

Khazars

ca650-ca1510

Java to Islamic penetration

ca650-1431

Thailand to the destruction of Angkor

ca650-ca1750

Nubia

656-788

Islam to the fall of the Umayyads and the fragmentation of empire

ca670-1550

Myanmar to its final unification

681-1018

First kingdom of Bulgaria

697-1381

Venice to the defeat of Genoa at Chioggia

ca710-1253

Nanchao

711-1230

Asturias to its annexation by Castile

711-750

Al Andalus to formation of Cordoba

749-1258

Abbasids

ca750-1202

Bengal to Muslim conquest

756-1078

Córdoba

764-880

Carolingian Empire

778-824

Basques to the foundation of Navarre

ca800-909

Tunisia: Aghlabids

824-1035

Navarre to the reign of Sancho the Great

840-1048

Lorraine to union with Alsace

ca850-1055

Persia: Buyids

ca850-ca1050

Moravia

ca850-1066

Norsemen

ca850-1610

Champa to annexation by Vietnam

ca850-1442

Anjou

ca850-1863

Khurasan

Khurasan comprises partially or totally the ancient Indo-Iranian regions of Parthia, Aria, Hyrcania, and Drangiana. It is roughly eastern Iran and for most of history included Herat, its traditional political center, now part of the Persian-speaking part of Afghanistan. Herat is a corruption of Alexander. Ancient Merv (modern Mary), today part of Turkmenistan, was also considered part of Khurasan, although unlike Herat it became completely Turkified.

The Tahirids were a Persian dynasty that ruled Khurasan in the 9th century as vassal of the Abbasids and begat the historical tendency to separate eastern from western Iran. They were overthrown by the Saffarids (ca860), who originated in Seistan (southeastern Persia), a land settled by Saka or Asian Scythians. The Saffarids attempted to take Baghdad. They were driven from Khurasan by the Persian Samanids (ca900) and retreated to their homeland.

In the first half of the 10th century, a Turkic clan separated from the kingdom of the Samanids in Transoxiana and established itself in Ghazni (south west of Kabul in Afghanistan). The Ghaznavids overran the rest of Afghanistan and seized Khurasan ca950.

The Seljuk invasions began in the 11th century. Around 1040, the Seljuks defeated Mahmud of Ghazni in Merv and took Khurasan. In 1117 the Seljuk Sanjar of Khurasan seized Afghanistan and became suzerain of Transoxiana. Khwarizm, a Turkic though not a Seljuk state, incorporated Khurasan (1180) and destroyed Seljuk Persia (1194). It conquered north Afghanistan from the Afghan Ghurids (ca1200).

The Mongols destroyed and overran Khurasan and all of Persia (13th century). Herat became the seat of the Kerts, a Persian Sunni dynasty that ruled there from 1251. Initially Mongol vassals, the Kerts strengthened under Ghiyath ad-Din (d1329). They were at war with the Shia Sarbedarians, who set up a kingdom in northwestern Khurasan (1337) with lands they wrested from the Kerts.

Herat was bloodily conquered by Timur or Tamerlane (1381), who also subjected the Sarbedarians. Khurasan was ruled by Shah Rukh, the most capable of Timur's sons, who tried but failed to keep the Persian and Samarkandian cores of his father's empire together. Shah Rukh died in 1447.

The Timurid heirs were usually quarreling and warring among each other. In 1457, Abu Said, grandson of Timur, became master of Transoxiana and from there occupied Khurasan, which he defended against a takeover attempt by the Akkoyunlu from western Persia. Abu Said then tried to conquer the Akkoyunlu but was defeated and killed (1469).

From then onwards, Transoxiana and Khurasan were prey to internecine struggles and by ca1500 both regions fell to the Uzbek Shaybanids. The dispossession by the Safavids of the Akkoyunlu in western Persia (1501) and of the Shaybanids in Khurasan (ca1590) signaled the reconstitution of Persia. Herat was taken by Afghanistan in 1863.

ca850-1392

Korea to the Choson dynasty

ca860-1236

Russia to Mongol conquest

862-ca1250

Flanders: French suzerainty and industrial development

868-1174

Egypt: from the Tulunids to the Ayyubids

ca880-ca990

Persia: Samanids

ca890-ca1450

Georgia: reconstitution and political fragmentation

ca890-ca1650

The Sahel is the band of territory in Africa in which the Sahara shades into savannah grassland. Under Islamic influence from northern Africa, kingdoms were formed in the Sahara and the Sahel. The most important were Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Wadai, and Bornu.

In the conventional sense of lists of kings or even approximate geographical delimitations, states did not arise in Sub-Saharan Africa. On a primary demographic level, Sub-Saharan Africa was lightly populated when Europeans started visiting its coasts. There were no cities anywhere. The enclosure at Great Zimbabwe and its surrounding area cannot have contained more than 20,000 inhabitants, and this is the exception that proves the rule.

Even after the arrival of Europeans, the filip to state-formation did not involve the growth of urban centers. Sub-Saharan Africa used to be called the dark continent. It is probably more accurate to call it the isolated continent, almost as isolated as was the western hemisphere from events in the rest of the world until the arrival of Europeans.

The isolation of sub-Saharan Africa was not only from the cultures that lay to the north of the Sahara but also of its peoples from each other. Sub-Saharan Africa was a land of villages and these villages were in contact with contiguous villages but not much beyond these. The proto-kingdoms that existed might have involved a royal compound from which at most rule was exerted over congeries of villages and some additional territories such as, for instance, the gold mines of Asante. Additionally, these villages did not thrive everywhere.

Much of Africa was thick tropical jungle, uninhabitable desert, or dry, scrubby flatland good only for hunting, collecting, or scavenging. Savannah land, lying between jungle and desert and subject to fickle weather patterns, was considered prime real estate. The Arabs, who for centuries had been sailing down the eastern coast of Africa, did not make any significant urban foundations before the 16th century.

Sub-Saharan Africa was pristine, awesome, even sublimely beautiful, but it was not propitious for the development of higher cultures. And behind the immediate façade there lurked and had lurked since the beginning of human settlement, the scourge of endemic diseases that wasted away those it spared.

The habitat of the Tsetse fly in Africa delimits the areas where cattle-raising is possible. This insect affects humans and cattle by injecting a micro-organism called trypanosome, which produces sleeping sickness, a disease that still affects the inhabitants of ten million square kilometers of tropical Africa. Bilharzia and hookworm infiltrate human organs and produce lifelong physical debility.

The greatest of all killers was a lethal form of malaria--other varieties were recurrent and prostrating--for which Africans developed a defense in the form of blood corpuscles called sickle cells. The problem with this adaptation is that when sickle-cell genes are inherited from both parents it produces an anemic sickness which is usually fatal.

Caught in the reciprocally reinforcing traps of difficult environments, enervating climates, and killing or wasting diseases, the population of Sub-Saharan Africa did not grow very much. Overall population estimates for the Americas in the 15th century are even lower than those for Africa, but they were as high as those in Europe in the heartlands of the Aztec and the Inca empires.

Isolated from cultural diffusion from the north by immense desert wastes, African populations by themselves never attained the concentration needed for the cultural density that would have produced more evolved political formations. As would be expected, the arrival of Europeans for the sole purpose of economic exploitation not only did not raise the cultural level at which Sub-Saharan Africa was but it exacerbated the social conditions that made slavery a virtual universal institution.

This political backwardness does not necessarily mean that there were no cultural achievements of note. The antecessors of the famous Ife castings were already being created in the 9th century by the Igbo people (southeastern Nigeria). In some parts of Africa there were societies that made an optimum utilization of their ecologies without the disadvantages of the conflicts involved in state-building.

There is also evidence of incipient, potentially grandiose state-formation. The archaeological remains of Great Zimbabwe comprise drystone walls on a monumental scale. This kingdom possibly began in the 12th century, built its impressive enclosure in the 14th century, but by ca1500 its capital had been abandoned. There were some minor successor states which did not grow beyond a basically tribal stage.

One of the most important ethnic groups of sub-Saharan Africa are the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria (with some settlement areas in modern Benin and Togo). The Yoruba never created an unified state, but there was a very strong Yoruba cultural identity that spread with the slave trade to America.

The closest the Yoruba came to relative political unification was with the Oyo kingdom. Benin, to the east of Oyo in southern Nigeria, was also a Yoruba state. Dahomey, also probably Yoruba, lay to the west of Oyo. Both Oyo and Benin, known mainly from traditional sources, traced their origins to the city of Ife, in southwestern Nigeria, possibly within Oyo. In the 13th and 14th centuries Ife was the source of magnificently sculpted heads moulded by the cire perdue technique.

Yoruba settlements grew to become important cities and political centers, principally Ibadan, Ilesha, and Ilorin. In the 15th century, the Mossi people created proto-states in Ouagadougou (today the capital of Burkina Fasso) and in Yatenga. In the territory of modern Ghana, there existed the Akwamu kingdom, founded by the Akan people. North of the Akan during the 17th century, the Mande people formed proto-states known as Gonja and Dagomba. Saharan and Sahelian Africa today comprise Burkina Fasso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and northern Nigeria.

896-996

France to Hugh Capet

896-973

Formation of Holy Roman Empire