The Medieval World
Events · 110
- 330 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Founding of Constantinople
In 330 CE the Roman emperor Constantine the Great dedicated a magnificent new capital on the site of the old Greek city of Byzantium, at the strategic crossing between Europe and Asia. He called it 'New Rome,' but it became known as Constantinople — the city of Constantine. Christian from its foundation, it was built to be the greatest city in the world.
Reputable source - 476 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Survival of the Roman East
When the Germanic commander Odoacer deposed the last Western emperor in 476 CE and the Western Roman Empire dissolved into barbarian kingdoms, the wealthier, more urbanized eastern half survived intact. Ruled from Constantinople, it carried on as the Roman Empire — Greek-speaking and Christian, but proudly Roman. Historians call it the Byzantine Empire; its people simply called themselves Romans.
Reputable source - 476 CEThe Middle Ages
The Fall of Rome
In 476 the Germanic commander Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, and sent the imperial insignia to the emperor in Constantinople. Much of the west had already slipped from Roman control; the event is taken as the symbolic end of the ancient world in Europe.
Reputable source - 527–565 CEThe Byzantine Empire
Justinian I and the Dream of Rome Restored
The emperor Justinian I came to the throne in 527 determined to restore the Roman Empire to its ancient glory. In a reign of nearly forty years he launched wars to reconquer the lost West, rebuilt Constantinople in splendour, and reformed the empire's law and administration — the last great flourishing of the ancient Roman world.
Reputable source - 527–548 CEThe Byzantine Empire
Theodora and the Nika Riots
Justinian's wife Theodora, a former actress of humble birth, became one of the most powerful empresses in history. In 532, when the Nika Riots — sparked by the chariot-racing factions of the Hippodrome — engulfed Constantinople and nearly toppled Justinian, he prepared to flee. Theodora is said to have shamed him into staying with the words that royal purple made a fine burial shroud. The revolt was crushed, with tens of thousands killed, and Justinian's throne was secured.
Reputable source - 533–554 CEThe Byzantine Empire
Belisarius and the Reconquest
Justinian's brilliant general Belisarius carried out the emperor's dream of reconquest. In 533–534 he destroyed the Vandal kingdom of North Africa, and from 535 he led the long, grinding Gothic War to retake Italy, capturing Rome and Ravenna. Byzantine armies also won a foothold in southern Spain.
Reputable source - 529–534 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Code of Justinian
Justinian ordered a team of jurists led by Tribonian to gather a thousand years of tangled Roman law into a single, coherent body of work — the Corpus Juris Civilis. It comprised the Codex of imperial laws, the Digest distilling the writings of the great Roman jurists, the Institutes as a textbook for students, and later new laws called the Novellae. Rediscovered in medieval Italy, it was studied at Bologna and spread across Europe.
Reputable source - 527–565 CEThe Middle Ages
Justinian and the Byzantine Empire
The Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) reconquered much of the old Roman west from the Vandals and Goths, codified Roman law in his famous law code, and rebuilt the great church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, dedicated in 537.
Reputable source - 537 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Hagia Sophia
After the old cathedral was burned in the Nika Riots, Justinian rebuilt it on a scale never seen before. Completed in 537, the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) was crowned by an enormous dome that seemed to float on light. On entering it, the emperor is said to have exclaimed, 'Solomon, I have outdone you.' For nearly a thousand years it was the largest enclosed space in the world.
Reputable source - 541–549 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Plague of Justinian
At the height of Justinian's reign, the first recorded outbreak of bubonic plague erupted in the empire. Spreading along trade routes from Egypt, it reached Constantinople in 542, killing enormous numbers — the emperor himself caught it but survived. The pandemic recurred for two centuries and may have killed tens of millions around the Mediterranean.
Reputable source - c. 550 CEThe Byzantine Empire
Procopius and the Secret History
Procopius of Caesarea, who served on Belisarius's staff, became the great historian of Justinian's age. His official Wars and Buildings chronicled the emperor's campaigns and monuments — but in a scandalous private work, the Secret History, he savaged Justinian and Theodora as corrupt and even demonic. It was not published until long after his death.
Reputable source - 610–641 CEThe Byzantine Empire
Heraclius and the Last Great War of Antiquity
Heraclius seized the throne in 610 to find the empire on the brink of collapse, its eastern provinces overrun by the Sasanian Persians, who had even carried off the True Cross from Jerusalem. Against the odds he reorganized the state and, in a daring counteroffensive, crushed Persia at the Battle of Nineveh in 627. He recovered the lost provinces and the True Cross — but the two exhausted empires were left defenceless.
Reputable source - 622–650 CEThe Middle Ages
The Rise of Islam
After the prophet Muhammad united much of Arabia under the new faith of Islam in the early 7th century, his successors, the Rashidun caliphs, led astonishingly rapid conquests. Within a few decades Arab-Muslim armies had taken Syria, Egypt, Persia, and North Africa from the exhausted Byzantine and Sasanian empires.
Reputable source - 634–642 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Arab Conquests and the Loss of the East
In the 630s the armies of the new Islamic caliphate exploded out of Arabia. At the Battle of Yarmouk in 636 they annihilated a Byzantine army, and the empire abandoned Syria; Jerusalem fell in 637 and Egypt by 642. The empire's richest and most populous provinces — the granary of Egypt and the wealth of the Levant — were gone forever.
Reputable source - the Viking Age, c. 790–1100 CEThe Vikings
Who Were the Vikings?
The Vikings were seafaring peoples from Scandinavia — modern Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Most were farmers, fishers and traders, but from the late 8th century some turned to raiding, and their name became a byword across Europe for sudden violence from the sea.
Reputable source - 674–718 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Arab Sieges and Greek Fire
Twice the Arab armies laid siege to Constantinople itself — in 674–678 and again in 717–718 — and twice the city held. Its salvation lay in two great defences: the massive triple Theodosian Walls, the strongest fortifications of the medieval world, and 'Greek fire,' a secret incendiary weapon sprayed from siphons that burned even on water and terrified enemy fleets. Its exact recipe was so closely guarded that it is lost to this day.
Reputable source - 8th century CEThe Vikings
The Longship: Masters of the Sea
The Vikings' power rested on their ships. The sleek, clinker-built longship had a shallow draft that let it cross open ocean and row far up rivers, striking deep inland and vanishing before defenders could gather.
Reputable source - 726–843 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Iconoclasm Controversy
For over a century the empire was torn by a bitter dispute over religious images, or icons. Beginning with Emperor Leo III around 726, iconoclast emperors who believed icons were idolatrous ordered them destroyed, while their opponents venerated them. The conflict convulsed church and state until the veneration of icons was finally and permanently restored in 843, an event still celebrated as the 'Triumph of Orthodoxy.'
Reputable source - Norse religionThe Vikings
The Norse Gods and Ragnarök
The Norse worshipped a pantheon led by one-eyed Odin, the thunder-god Thor and the trickster Loki, in a cosmos of nine realms hung on the world-tree Yggdrasil — destined to end in Ragnarök, the twilight battle of the gods.
Reputable source - Viking AgeThe Vikings
Norse Society and the Sagas
Viking society was ranked into enslaved thralls, free karls and noble jarls, governed by assemblies called things. Their deeds were later preserved in the Icelandic sagas — vivid, semi-historical prose epics written down centuries afterward.
Reputable source - the futhark alphabetThe Vikings
Runes: The Viking Script
The Norse wrote with runes — an angular alphabet called the futhark, carved into wood, stone and metal. Runes marked ownership, commemorated the dead on towering runestones, and were sometimes believed to carry magic.
Reputable source - June 793 CEThe Vikings
The Raid on Lindisfarne
In June 793, Norse raiders fell upon the wealthy, undefended monastery of Lindisfarne off the coast of northern England, slaughtering monks and carrying off its treasures. Christian Europe was horrified.
Reputable source - 8th–11th centuriesThe Vikings
Viking Warfare and the Berserkers
Viking warriors fought with axe, sword, spear and round shield, protected at most by mail and iron helmets — never the horned ones of legend. Sagas tell of berserkers, fighters who worked themselves into a trance-like battle fury.
Reputable source - 800 CEThe Middle Ages
Charlemagne Crowned Emperor
On Christmas Day 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne 'Emperor of the Romans' in Rome — the first western emperor since the fall of Rome in 476. Charlemagne had united much of western Europe by conquest and sponsored a revival of learning known as the Carolingian Renaissance.
Reputable source - 841 CEThe Vikings
The Vikings in Ireland: Founding of Dublin
After decades of raiding Ireland's monasteries, Norse invaders established a fortified ship-camp at Dublin in 841. It grew into a thriving town and one of the greatest slave markets of the early medieval world.
Reputable source - 4th–11th centuriesThe Byzantine Empire
The Gold Solidus: Byzantium's Coin
Introduced by Constantine in the early 4th century, the Byzantine gold coin — the solidus or nomisma — held its weight and purity almost unchanged for some 700 years. Trusted from western Europe to India, it functioned as the medieval world's dollar: the standard against which other currencies were measured. Only in the 11th century was it debased, before Alexios I Komnenos replaced it in 1092.
Reputable source - 865–878 CEThe Vikings
The Great Heathen Army and the Danelaw
In 865 a coalition of Norse warlords — the 'Great Heathen Army' — landed in England to conquer, not just raid. They overran three of the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms; the survivors' lands became the Danelaw, ruled under Danish law.
Reputable source - c. 872 CEThe Vikings
Harald Fairhair Unifies Norway
According to the sagas, King Harald Fairhair won the Battle of Hafrsfjord around 872 and became the first king to unite Norway under a single crown. Chieftains who refused his rule are said to have fled to settle Iceland.
Reputable source - c. 874 CEThe Vikings
The Settlement of Iceland
Around 874, Norse settlers led by Ingólfr Arnarson began colonising uninhabited Iceland. Within decades thousands had claimed its land, founding a free-farmer society that in 930 created the Althing — one of the world's oldest parliaments.
Reputable source - 882 CEThe Vikings
The Varangians and the Kievan Rus
Swedish Norsemen known as the Rus pushed east along Russia's rivers, trading and raiding. By 882 they had taken Kiev, founding the Kievan Rus — a realm that would grow into the ancestor of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Reputable source - 9th–10th centuriesThe Vikings
Viking Trade: Silver, Slaves and Furs
Along the eastern rivers the Rus grew rich trading furs, honey, amber and thousands of enslaved people to the Islamic world, hauling home vast quantities of Arab silver dirhams that flooded the Norse economy.
Reputable source - 793–1066 CEThe Middle Ages
The Viking Age
From the raid on Lindisfarne in 793 to the mid-11th century, Norse seafarers from Scandinavia raided, traded, and settled across Europe and beyond, from the British Isles and Normandy to the rivers of Russia, Iceland, Greenland, and even North America.
Reputable source - 911 CEThe Vikings
Rollo and the Founding of Normandy
In 911 the Frankish king Charles the Simple granted the Viking leader Rollo lands at the mouth of the Seine in exchange for defending them from other raiders. Rollo's followers gave the region its name: Normandy, 'land of the Northmen.'
Reputable source - c. 965 CEThe Vikings
Harald Bluetooth and the Conversion of Denmark
King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark converted to Christianity around 965 and proclaimed it on the great Jelling runestone, boasting that he had 'made the Danes Christian.' The Norse gods slowly gave way to the new faith.
Reputable source - c. 985 CEThe Vikings
Erik the Red Settles Greenland
Banished from Iceland for killing, Erik the Red sailed west and founded a Norse colony on Greenland around 985, luring settlers with its enticing name. The colonies endured for some 400 years before mysteriously dying out.
Reputable source - c. 988 CEThe Vikings
The Varangian Guard in Constantinople
The wealth and splendour of Byzantium drew Norsemen south to Constantinople, where from around 988 the emperors employed them as the Varangian Guard — an elite corps of axe-wielding Norse and Rus bodyguards.
Reputable source - 988 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Conversion of the Rus
In 988 Vladimir, grand prince of Kievan Rus, adopted Christianity from Constantinople and had his people baptized in the Dnieper. The conversion was sealed by a marriage alliance with the emperor Basil II. Byzantine priests, art, and the Church Slavonic liturgy followed, and Kyiv became a great centre of Orthodox Christianity.
Reputable source - 10th–14th centuriesThe Byzantine Empire
The Varangian Guard
Around 988 the emperor Basil II received 6,000 warriors sent by Vladimir of the Rus and forged them into an elite personal bodyguard — the Varangian Guard. Recruited from Norse, Rus, and later Anglo-Saxon fighting men, these axe-wielding foreigners, loyal to the emperor alone, guarded the person of the ruler for centuries.
Reputable source - 4th–15th centuriesThe Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Art and the Icon
Across its long life Byzantium produced some of the most influential art of the Middle Ages: shimmering gold-ground mosaics, luxurious ivories and enamels, illuminated manuscripts, and above all the icon — a sacred image of Christ, the Virgin, or the saints, believed to open a window onto the divine. This tradition spread with Orthodoxy across the Slavic and Mediterranean worlds.
Reputable source - c. 1000 CEThe Vikings
Leif Erikson Reaches Vinland
Around the year 1000, Erik the Red's son Leif Erikson sailed from Greenland to a land he called Vinland — almost certainly North America. Archaeologists later found a Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, confirming the sagas.
Reputable source · 2 sources - 976–1025 CEThe Byzantine Empire
Basil II, the Bulgar-Slayer
Under Basil II the medieval empire reached its height. A tireless soldier-emperor, he crushed internal rebellions and waged a decades-long war against the Bulgarian Empire. After his decisive victory at Kleidion in 1014, he is said to have blinded thousands of Bulgar captives — earning the name 'Bulgar-Slayer.' By his death in 1025 he had roughly doubled the empire's territory.
Reputable source - 1016 CEThe Vikings
Cnut the Great and the North Sea Empire
In 1016 the Danish prince Cnut became king of England, adding it to Denmark and Norway to rule a vast 'North Sea Empire.' A capable Christian king, he governed his English and Scandinavian realms alike.
Reputable source - 1054 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Great Schism
Centuries of growing division between the Greek-speaking Eastern church, led by the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Latin Western church, led by the Pope in Rome, came to a head in 1054. Legates of the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated one another, formalizing a split over papal authority, doctrine, and ritual.
Reputable source - September 25, 1066The Vikings
Stamford Bridge: The Last Viking King
In 1066 the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada invaded England to claim its throne. He was defeated and killed by King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Stamford Bridge — days before Harold himself fell to the Normans at Hastings.
Reputable source - 1066 CEThe Middle Ages
The Norman Conquest
On 14 October 1066 William, Duke of Normandy, defeated and killed the Anglo-Saxon king Harold II at the Battle of Hastings, and by Christmas he was crowned king of England. Over the next years the Normans replaced the Anglo-Saxon ruling class and remade England's government, church, and language.
Reputable source - 1071 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Battle of Manzikert
At Manzikert in eastern Anatolia in 1071, the Byzantine army was crushed by the Seljuk Turks and the emperor Romanos IV himself was captured. In the chaos and civil war that followed, the Turks overran Anatolia — the empire's heartland and its main source of soldiers and revenue.
Reputable source - 1081–1118 CEThe Byzantine Empire
Alexios I Komnenos and the First Crusade
Alexios I Komnenos seized the throne in 1081 and hauled the empire back from the brink, rebuilding its finances, army, and coinage. Facing the Seljuk Turks, he appealed to the West for mercenaries — and in 1095 Pope Urban II answered by launching the First Crusade. The passing crusader armies helped Byzantium recover territory, but also sowed dangerous distrust between East and West.
Reputable source - 1095–1099The Crusades
The First Crusade
In 1095, at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II called on the knights of western Europe to march east and recover Jerusalem from Muslim rule, promising spiritual rewards. Tens of thousands answered. After a long and brutal campaign across Anatolia and Syria, the crusaders stormed Jerusalem in 1099, massacring much of its population.
Reputable source - 1095–1099 CEThe Middle Ages
The First Crusade
In 1095 Pope Urban II called on the knights of Europe to march east and recover Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim rule. After a long and brutal campaign, the crusaders captured Jerusalem on 15 July 1099, massacring many of its inhabitants, and founded a set of Crusader states.
Reputable source - c. 1100 CEThe Vikings
The End of the Viking Age
By around 1100 the Viking Age was over. Scandinavia had become Christian kingdoms integrated into medieval Europe; the raids ceased as the Norse settled into the nations of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
Reputable source - 12th centuryThe Crusades
The Crusader States
In the wake of their conquest, the crusaders carved out a string of Christian states along the eastern Mediterranean, the greatest being the Kingdom of Jerusalem. A Frankish ruling class governed a diverse local population, built great castles, and lived in a precarious frontier world surrounded by Muslim powers.
Reputable source - founded c. 1119–1120sThe Crusades
The Military Orders: Templars and Hospitallers
To defend the Holy Land and protect pilgrims, new religious orders of warrior-monks were founded — above all the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller. Bound by monastic vows yet trained for war, they became elite fighting forces, built formidable castles, and — especially the Templars — grew into a wealthy international banking network.
Reputable source · 2 sources - 8th–15th centuriesThe Crusades
The Reconquista in Spain
In Iberia, Christian kingdoms waged a centuries-long campaign — the Reconquista — to reconquer the peninsula from its Muslim rulers. Blessed by the popes as a crusade, it ground on for centuries until the fall of Granada, the last Muslim state in Spain, in 1492 — the same year Columbus sailed west.
Reputable source - 1147–1149The Crusades
The Second Crusade
After the fall of the Crusader County of Edessa, a new crusade was preached — championed by the influential Bernard of Clairvaux — and led east by the kings of France and Germany. Poorly coordinated, it ended in a humiliating failure at the walls of Damascus, achieving nothing.
Reputable source - c. 1148 CEThe Byzantine Empire
Anna Komnene and the Alexiad
Anna Komnene, the learned daughter of Alexios I, wrote the Alexiad — a sweeping history of her father's reign and the coming of the First Crusade, composed in archaizing Greek. Barred from power after a failed bid for the throne, she retired to a convent and turned to scholarship, producing one of the masterpieces of medieval literature.
Reputable source - 1143–1180 CEThe Byzantine Empire
Manuel I Komnenos and the Last Revival
Manuel I Komnenos, the last great emperor of his dynasty, presided over a final flowering of Byzantine power, wealth, and culture. An energetic and ambitious ruler, he campaigned from Italy to the Holy Land and dominated the empire's neighbours. But his overreaching wars strained the state, and his defeat by the Seljuks at Myriokephalon in 1176 dashed hopes of retaking the Anatolian interior.
Reputable source - c. 1162The Mongol Empire
The Birth of Temüjin
The future Genghis Khan was born Temüjin, son of the Mongol chieftain Yesügei, around 1162 on the harsh grasslands of Mongolia. By tradition he came into the world clutching a clot of blood in his fist — an omen, the sagas said, of the conqueror he would become.
Reputable source - c. 1171The Mongol Empire
A Fatherless Boy on the Steppe
When Temüjin was still a boy, his father Yesügei was poisoned by rival Tatars. His clan then abandoned the widow and her children on the open steppe, left to survive on roots and small game. In these desperate years the young Temüjin killed his own half-brother in a dispute and was for a time held captive in a wooden cangue.
Reputable source - 1187The Crusades
Saladin and the Fall of Jerusalem
The great Muslim leader Saladin united Egypt and Syria and turned against the Crusader States. In 1187, at the Battle of Hattin, he annihilated the main crusader army, and within months he recaptured Jerusalem — this time sparing its inhabitants, in contrast to 1099.
Reputable source - 1189–1192The Crusades
The Third Crusade
The greatest kings of Europe — including Richard the Lionheart of England — marched to recover Jerusalem. Richard won battles and captured Acre and the coast, but could not retake the holy city. In 1192 he and Saladin made a truce leaving Jerusalem in Muslim hands but allowing Christian pilgrims to visit.
Reputable source - c. 1190s–1204The Mongol Empire
Temüjin Unites the Steppe Tribes
Rising through alliance and war, Temüjin bound himself to the powerful Kereyid khan Toghrul (Ong Khan) and to his blood-brother Jamukha — then broke with both as he outgrew them. In a series of campaigns he crushed the great tribal confederations one by one: the Tatars, the Kereyids, the Naimans, and the Merkids, absorbing their warriors into his own growing following.
Reputable source - 12th–13th centuryThe Middle Ages
Gothic Cathedrals
Beginning with Abbot Suger's rebuilding of Saint-Denis near Paris around 1140, a new architecture arose across Europe. Using pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and flying buttresses, Gothic cathedrals such as Chartres soared to great heights and filled their interiors with coloured light through vast stained-glass windows.
Reputable source - 12th–15th centuriesThe Crusades
The Northern Crusades
Crusading also turned north, against the last pagan peoples of the Baltic. German and Scandinavian crusaders — above all the Teutonic Knights — conquered and forcibly converted the Prussians, Livonians, and others, carving out a monastic state along the Baltic coast.
Reputable source - 1204 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople
In 1204 the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, diverted from the Holy Land, turned on Constantinople itself. They stormed and brutally sacked the great Christian city, carrying off or destroying its treasures and installing a short-lived Latin empire in its place. The Byzantine state fractured into rival successor kingdoms.
Reputable source - 1202–1204The Crusades
The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople
Diverted by debts to Venice and Byzantine politics, the Fourth Crusade never reached the Holy Land. Instead, in 1204, the crusaders turned on the greatest Christian city in the world and brutally sacked Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, carrying off its treasures and installing a Latin emperor.
Reputable source Genghis Khan Proclaimed at the Kurultai
In 1206 a great assembly (kurultai) of the Mongol nobility proclaimed Temüjin their supreme leader, giving him the title Genghis Khan — usually rendered 'universal ruler.' He now stood at the head of a unified Mongol nation, and set about organizing it for war and government, including a new written script for the Mongol language.
Reputable source- from 1206The Mongol Empire
The Yasa and the Machinery of Empire
Genghis Khan built a state as well as an army. He issued a body of law, the Yasa, that bound Mongol and conquered peoples alike; promoted men by merit and loyalty rather than birth; and organized society and the military into a strict decimal system of tens, hundreds, thousands, and ten-thousands. Across the empire he established the Yam, a network of relay stations where couriers could change horses and carry messages and travelers vast distances at speed.
Reputable source - early 13th centuryThe Mongol Empire
The Mongol War Machine
The Mongols conquered so much so fast because of an army unlike any other. Every man was a mounted archer, able to shoot the powerful composite bow accurately at a gallop and to ride for days on a string of hardy ponies. Organized in a strict decimal system, they used feigned retreats, encirclement, and coordinated columns, adopted siege engineers and gunpowder weapons from conquered China, and were linked across the empire by the yam relay network.
Reputable source The Conquest of Western Xia
Genghis Khan's first great campaign against a settled state struck the Tangut kingdom of Western Xia in northwestern China. Mongol armies raided and besieged its cities and forced its king to submit and pay tribute, giving the nomads their first taste of siege warfare against walled towns.
Reputable source- 1209–1229The Crusades
The Albigensian Crusade
The papacy launched a crusade not against Muslims but against fellow Christians: the Cathars, a heretical sect in southern France. The Albigensian Crusade devastated the region — the sack of Béziers alone killed thousands — and paved the way for the medieval Inquisition to hunt down remaining heretics.
Reputable source - 1212The Crusades
The Children's Crusade
In 1212, according to the chronicles, thousands of common people — including many youths — set out from France and Germany, believing that the pure and innocent could recover Jerusalem where armies had failed. They never reached the Holy Land; many turned back, died on the way, or, by some accounts, were sold into slavery.
Reputable source The Fall of Jin China's Capital, Zhongdu
From 1211 Genghis Khan invaded the Jin dynasty, the Jurchen state that ruled northern China. After years of war the Jin moved their court south, and in 1215 the Mongols captured and burned their northern capital, Zhongdu — on the site of modern Beijing — in a sack remembered for its slaughter and destruction.
Reputable source- 1215 CEThe Middle Ages
Magna Carta
In 1215 the barons of England forced King John to seal Magna Carta, the 'Great Charter,' which limited royal power, required the king to consult his barons before levying certain taxes, and guaranteed free men protection from arbitrary imprisonment and the right to a fair trial.
Reputable source - 1219–1221The Mongol Empire
The Destruction of the Khwarazmian Empire
When the Khwarazmian shah, ruler of a vast realm across Central Asia and Persia, executed a Mongol trade caravan and envoys, Genghis Khan unleashed a war of annihilation. Between 1219 and 1221 the Mongols stormed the great cities of the Silk Road — Bukhara and Samarkand among them — massacring populations and razing whole towns in a campaign of extraordinary devastation.
Reputable source · 2 sources - August 1227The Mongol Empire
The Death of Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan died in August 1227, aged around 65, while campaigning to crush the Western Xia's final revolt. The cause is unknown — perhaps illness or a fall from his horse. By his wish he was buried in secret; the location of his tomb has never been found. He left the empire to his family, with his third son Ögedei designated as heir.
Reputable source Ögedei Khan and Karakorum
When Genghis Khan died in 1227, the empire passed not to a single heir but to his family, with his son Ögedei elected Great Khan in 1229. Ögedei pressed the conquests forward on every front and built a fixed capital at Karakorum in the Mongolian heartland — a cosmopolitan city drawing merchants, craftsmen, and envoys from across Eurasia, with churches, mosques, and temples side by side.
Reputable source · 2 sources- 1237–1240The Mongol Empire
The Conquest of the Rus' and the Sack of Kiev
A great western campaign under Genghis Khan's grandson Batu and the veteran general Subutai fell on the Rus' principalities. Riding out of the frozen steppe, the Mongols stormed and burned Ryazan and Vladimir, and in December 1240 took Kiev after a short siege, putting its people to the sword and reducing the once-great city to ruins.
Reputable source - 1241 CEThe Middle Ages
The Mongol Invasion of Europe
Between 1237 and 1242 the Mongols swept out of the east, overrunning the Rus principalities and then Poland and Hungary. In 1241 they crushed European armies at Legnica and at Mohi, and sacked cities as far west as Hungary — only to withdraw when the Great Khan Ögedei died.
Reputable source - April 1241The Mongol Empire
The Invasion of Europe: Legnica and Hungary
In the spring of 1241 the Mongols drove deep into Central Europe on two fronts. At Legnica (Liegnitz) in Poland they destroyed an army of Polish and German knights under Duke Henry the Pious, who was killed and his head paraded on a spike. Days later another Mongol army shattered the Hungarians and ravaged the kingdom, sacking Buda, Pest, and Esztergom.
Reputable source Ögedei's Death Spares Europe
With Europe seemingly at their mercy, the Mongols suddenly turned back. News had arrived of the death of the Great Khan Ögedei in December 1241, and the princes of the blood withdrew east toward Mongolia to take part in choosing his successor. By 1242 the armies had pulled back north of the Black Sea.
Reputable source · 2 sources- from the 1240sThe Mongol Empire
The Golden Horde and the Yoke over Russia
The western Mongol lands became the khanate of the Golden Horde, founded by Batu Khan on the lower Volga. For more than two centuries it dominated the Russian principalities, exacting tribute and confirming or deposing their princes. Russian rulers had to travel to the Horde's court to secure the right to rule.
Reputable source - 1241–1246The Mongol Empire
Töregene Khatun's Regency
After Ögedei's death, his widow Töregene Khatun seized control as regent and ruled the empire for some five years, maneuvering to have her son Güyük elected Great Khan at a kurultai in 1246. She dismissed her husband's ministers and installed her own, wielding real power over the largest empire on earth.
Reputable source - c. 1240s–1252The Mongol Empire
Sorghaghtani Beki, Mother of Khans
Sorghaghtani Beki, the widow of Genghis Khan's youngest son Tolui, was among the most capable politicians of the age. A Nestorian Christian who patronized many faiths and prized education, she groomed her four sons for power and, through skillful alliance-building, engineered the transfer of supreme rule to her line.
Reputable source Möngke Khan and the Reunified Empire
In 1251, with his mother Sorghaghtani's backing, Möngke — Tolui's eldest son — was elected Great Khan, wresting supreme power from the line of Ögedei in a bloody purge of rivals. An energetic and able ruler, he reformed the administration and launched two great new campaigns: his brother Hülegü westward into the Islamic world, and his brother Kublai southward against Song China.
Reputable sourceHülegü and the Sack of Baghdad
In 1258 Genghis Khan's grandson Hülegü led a Mongol army against Baghdad, capital of the Abbasid Caliphate and a great center of Islamic learning. After a short siege the city fell and was sacked, its libraries destroyed and the caliph and much of the population killed. Hülegü founded the Ilkhanate to rule Persia and the Middle East.
Reputable sourceThe Death of Möngke Khan
In 1259, while campaigning against Song China, the Great Khan Möngke died suddenly — of illness, or perhaps dysentery or a battle wound. With no clear successor and the ruling brothers scattered across three continents, the vast empire was thrown into a succession crisis.
Reputable source- September 1260The Mongol Empire
The Battle of Ain Jalut
As Hülegü pulled the bulk of his army back after Möngke's death, the Egyptian Mamluks marched to meet the remaining Mongol force in Palestine. At Ain Jalut ('the Spring of Goliath') in September 1260, the Mamluk sultan Qutuz and his general Baybars lured the Mongols under Kitbuqa into a trap and destroyed them.
Reputable source - 1204–1261 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Empire in Exile and the Recovery of Constantinople
After 1204 Byzantine exiles founded a successor state at Nicaea in Anatolia, which kept the imperial tradition alive and slowly gathered strength. In 1261 the Nicaean emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos recaptured Constantinople almost by chance, when his general slipped into the poorly defended city. The empire was restored — but as a much-diminished power.
Reputable source - 1260–1264The Mongol Empire
The Toluid Civil War: Kublai vs Ariq Böke
Möngke's death set his brothers against each other. Kublai, in China, and Ariq Böke, in Mongolia, each had himself proclaimed Great Khan by rival assemblies in 1260, and for four years they fought a civil war for supremacy. Kublai, drawing on the wealth of China, finally forced Ariq Böke to surrender in 1264.
Reputable source - 1260s onwardThe Mongol Empire
The Empire Splits into Four Khanates
After the civil war, the Mongol Empire settled into four increasingly independent realms: the Yuan dynasty of Kublai in the east; the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia; the Golden Horde on the Russian steppe; and the Ilkhanate in Persia and the Middle East. The Great Khan in China held only nominal authority over the others.
Reputable source Kublai Khan Founds the Yuan Dynasty
In 1271 Kublai Khan proclaimed a new Chinese dynasty, the Yuan, ruling as both Great Khan of the Mongols and Emperor of China. He built a magnificent capital at Dadu, on the site of modern Beijing, and adopted Chinese forms of government while keeping the Mongols a privileged ruling caste.
Reputable source- c. 1271–1295The Mongol Empire
Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai Khan
Around 1275 the young Venetian merchant Marco Polo reached the court of Kublai Khan, entered his service, and — by his own account — spent some seventeen years traveling and working within the empire. The book of his travels, dictated after his return, later amazed Europe with its tales of the fabulous wealth and marvels of the East.
Reputable source The Conquest of Song China Completed
After decades of hard fighting against the wealthy, populous Southern Song — including the years-long siege of the Yangtze fortress of Xiangyang — Kublai's forces finally overwhelmed the last Song resistance. In 1279 the dynasty ended in a naval catastrophe at Yamen, where a loyal official is said to have leapt into the sea clutching the boy emperor rather than surrender.
Reputable source- 1274 & 1281The Mongol Empire
The Failed Invasions of Japan
Twice, in 1274 and 1281, Kublai Khan sent enormous fleets to conquer Japan. Both times the samurai defended fiercely, but it was violent typhoons — remembered by the Japanese as the kamikaze, or 'divine winds' — that wrecked the Mongol fleets and saved Japan from invasion.
Reputable source - late 13th–14th centuryThe Mongol Empire
The Pax Mongolica
With a single power holding the Silk Road from China to the Black Sea, the 'Mongol peace' made overland trade and travel safer than ever before. Merchants, missionaries, and envoys crossed Eurasia; goods, technologies, and ideas — paper money, gunpowder, printing, art, and knowledge — flowed between East and West. The Mongols, though brutal in war, were famously tolerant in religion, protecting many faiths across their domains.
Reputable source - 1291The Crusades
The Fall of Acre and the End of the Crusades
Over the 13th century, further crusades failed and the Crusader States dwindled to a strip of coast. In 1291 the Mamluks of Egypt captured Acre, the last major crusader stronghold, ending nearly two centuries of Latin Christian rule in the Holy Land.
Reputable source The Death of Kublai Khan
Kublai Khan died in 1294, aged nearly 80, after a reign that saw the empire at its height and himself grown heavy and grief-stricken in his final years. He was the last Great Khan whom the other khanates even nominally recognized, and the last to command real prestige across the Mongol world.
Reputable sourceGhazan and the Ilkhanate's Conversion to Islam
In 1295 the Ilkhan Ghazan, ruler of Mongol Persia, converted to Islam — the faith of most of his subjects — and made it the state religion, the first Ilkhan to do so. He also carried out sweeping reforms of taxation, coinage, and administration and sponsored a great flowering of Persian art, science, and history.
Reputable sourceThe Collapse of the Ilkhanate
The Ilkhanate reached a cultured peak in the early 1300s, but when the last effective Ilkhan, Abu Sa'id, died without an heir in 1335, the state rapidly disintegrated. Rival warlords and puppet khans fought over the fragments, and within a generation the Mongol dynasty in Persia had vanished.
Reputable source- 1337–1453The Middle Ages
The Hundred Years' War
From 1337 to 1453 England and France fought an intermittent war, sparked when English kings pressed a claim to the French crown. Famous English victories at Crécy (1346) and Agincourt (1415) were eventually reversed, and by 1453 the French had driven the English from all of France except Calais.
Reputable source - 1346–1353The Mongol Empire
The Black Death Rides the Trade Routes
The same Mongol peace that carried silk and silver across Eurasia also carried plague. Erupting in Central Asia, the Black Death spread west along the trade routes; according to one account it was hurled into the Genoese port of Caffa on the Black Sea when a besieging Mongol army catapulted infected corpses over the walls. From there it reached Europe by 1347 and killed perhaps a third of its people within a few years.
Reputable source - 1347–1352The Middle Ages
The Black Death
Carried west along trade routes from Central Asia, the Black Death — a plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis — reached Europe in 1347. Over the next five years it killed an estimated one-third or more of the continent's population, perhaps tens of millions of people.
Reputable source - from 1354The Byzantine Empire
The Ottoman Advance into Europe
As Byzantium tore itself apart in civil wars, a new power rose on its eastern frontier: the Ottoman Turks. In 1354 the Ottomans seized Gallipoli and gained their first foothold in Europe, then swept across the Balkans — taking Adrianople around 1362 and encircling Constantinople. The emperors were reduced to vassals and tribute-payers of the sultan.
Reputable source The Fall of the Yuan Dynasty
Weakened by factional strife, corruption, floods, famine, and the arrival of the Black Death, Mongol rule in China faltered in the 14th century. In 1368 a peasant-led rebellion drove the Yuan out of Beijing and founded the native Ming dynasty. The Mongol court retreated back to the steppe.
Reputable source- 14th–15th centuryThe Mongol Empire
The Long Decline of the Golden Horde
The Golden Horde outlasted the other khanates but slowly weakened through the 14th century, torn by succession struggles and battered by the Black Death. In 1380 a Russian army under Dmitry Donskoy of Moscow won a famous victory at Kulikovo — a crack in Mongol invincibility — and over the following century the Horde fractured into smaller khanates before fading away.
Reputable source - 1370–1405The Mongol Empire
Timur: The Last Great Steppe Conqueror
From the ruins of the Chagatai Khanate, a Turco-Mongol warlord named Timur (Tamerlane) built a new empire from his capital at Samarkand. Between 1370 and his death in 1405 he waged devastating campaigns across Persia, India, and the Middle East, crushing the Golden Horde and the rising Ottomans, and leaving towers of skulls in his wake — all while claiming the mantle of Genghis Khan.
Reputable source - 1429–1431The Middle Ages
Joan of Arc
A teenage peasant girl who said she was guided by divine visions, Joan of Arc rallied French forces at the low point of the Hundred Years' War. In 1429 she helped lift the siege of Orléans and saw the dauphin crowned King Charles VII at Reims. Captured and handed to the English, she was tried and burned at the stake for heresy in 1431.
Reputable source - 1453 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Fall of Constantinople
By 1453 the Byzantine Empire had shrunk to little more than the city of Constantinople, defended by fewer than 5,000 men. The young Ottoman sultan Mehmed II besieged it with the largest cannon yet built, and after a 53-day siege his troops breached the ancient walls on 29 May 1453. The last emperor, Constantine XI, died fighting, and the city fell.
Reputable source - 1453 CEThe Middle Ages
The Fall of Constantinople
On 29 May 1453, after a siege of some seven weeks, the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II broke through the great walls of Constantinople with the help of enormous cannon, ending the thousand-year Byzantine Empire — the last surviving remnant of the Roman world.
Reputable source - 1461 CEThe Byzantine Empire
The Last Byzantines: The Fall of Trebizond
A few Byzantine splinter-states outlived Constantinople itself. The Despotate of the Morea in Greece fell to the Ottomans in 1460, and in 1461 the Empire of Trebizond, a Black Sea remnant that had endured since 1204, surrendered to Mehmed II after a siege. With it, the last independent fragment of the Roman world was extinguished.
Reputable source