home | before 1000 BCE | 1000 BCE to the 5th century | 16-17th centuries | 18-19th centuries
Byzantium and the Sassanids make way for Islam – two great empires weaken themselves with war
Islam, Power and Empire, to 677 CE – the Prophet, successions, civil wars and expansions
Islamic Empire and Disintegration, 672 to 1055 CE – more expansion, the Umayyads, the Abbasids and Fatimids
India, 501 to 1200 – Hephthalites and declining trade; Islam arrives; stagnation and economic decline
China, 501 to 1200 – dynastic rises and falls, conceit and military weakness
Europe: 501 to 1000 – darkness, Anglo-Saxons, Slavs, Bulgars, Hispania, Charlemagne, Vikings and feudalism
Europe: 1001 to 1212 – towns, intellectuality, Hispania, Norman kings in Britain, knights and chivalry
Europe: 1201 to 1500 – plague, Hundred Years' War, Machiavelli, Russia, Portugal, Spain, Renaissance
Turks, Conquests and the Crusades – the Seljuk Turks, crusades, Zengid dynasty, Saladin, 840 to 1212
Genghis Khan and the Great Mongol Empire – unity, law, conquest, succesion and division, 1200 to 1281
China from Mongols to the Ming – rebellion and first Ming emperor; ocean voyages, Confucianism, to 1400
Japan to 1336 CE – failed reforms; emperor figureheads; privilege and disorder; the Mongol invasions
Timur (Tamerlane), 1336 to 1405 – blood, guts and empire from Georgia to India
The Ottoman Turks, to 1500 – empire into the Balkans and their conquest of Constantinople
African Empires to 1500 – monarchs and the divine, Ethiopia, Muslim migrations and trade with Europeans
Maya, Aztec, pre-Inca, Inca, Inuit: before Columbus – people of the Americas
Contending Ideas in Western Europe – from a Dark Age to William of Ockham and "Aucassin and Nicolette"
Christian Organization and Confllct – monasteries, East-West schism, heresy, inquisition
Islam as Idea – core beliefs; Hadiths and the Ibadis, Mutazilites, Kharijites, Murji'ah and Sufis
Muslims, Science and Philosophy – al-Kindi, Ibn Sena (Avicenna), al-Ghazali, Omar Khayyam
Changing Hinduism – Bakhti, Krishna vs Vishnu.
Philosophy in China – Cheng-Yi, Xhu-Xi, neo-Confuciansim
Religion and Zen Buddhism in Medieval Japan – imported from China and changing with circumstances
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