|
|
|
|

|

|
|
Visual History of the World
(CONTENTS)
|
|
|
The Middle Ages
5th - 15th century
|
The upheaval that
accompanied the migration of European peoples of late antiquity
shattered the power of the Roman Empire and consequently the entire
political order of Europe. Although Germanic kingdoms replaced Rome,
the culture of late antiquity, especially Christianity, continued to
have an effect and defined the early Middle Ages. Concurrent to the
developments in the Christian West, in Arabia the Prophet Muhammad
in the seventh century founded Islam, a new religion with immense
political and military effectiveness. Within a very short time,
great Islamic empires developed from the Iberian Peninsula and the
Maghreb to India and Central Asia, with centers such as Cordoba,
Cairo, Baghdad, and Samarkand.
|

The Cathedral Notre Dame de Reims, built in the 1 3th—14th century
in the Gothic style; the cathedral served for many centuries as the
location for the ceremonial coronation of the French king.
The Cathedral of Reims, by Domenico Quaglio
|
|
|
|
The Mongolian Empire and Its Successors
|
12TH-15TH CENTURY
|
|
|

1 Genghis Khan, founder of the
Mongolian empire
|
The conquests of 1 Genghis Khan and
his successors fundamentally changed the structures of Asia and Eastern
Europe. The "Mongolian storm" that hit Baghdad in 1258 brought about the
end of the old Islamic world. The destructive force of the mounted
nomads resulted in the downfall of many cities and kingdoms. The
Mongols' religious tolerance enabled them to assimilate into the
dominant cultures of the territories they conquered, such as China and
Persia. The huge empire founded by Tamerlane in the 14th century saw
itself as heir to both the Mongolian and Islamic traditions but rapidly
disintegrated after his death.
|
|
The Campaigns of Conquest of Genghis Khan
|
Genghis Khan united most of the Mongolian tribes and undertook
campaigns of conquest in every cardinal direction. With them came
dreadful devastation.
|
|
Even before the rise of Genghis Khan, Central Asia had been dominated
by Turkish and Mongolian 2 nomadic tribes since the migrations of late
antiquity.
Their strength lay in their 3 swift and flexible
fighting methods, which included attacks by mounted archers in small,
mobile units.

2 Yurts-Mongolian tents-covered with felt,
Persian miniature, 14th
century
|

3 Mounted Mongolian warlord,
painted ceramic tile
|
|

4 Genghis Khan's Mongol army storms
a fortress during the invasion of
the
northern Chinese province of Tangut,
miniature painting, ca. 1590

6 Meeting of Genghis Khan's sons,
Persian book illustration, 14th ñ
|
Between 1133 and 1211, Mongolians of the Qara-Khitai
tribal group ruled vast stretches of central Asia, but they were driven
back to the east by the Khwarizm-shahs after 1200.
At the end of the 12th century, Temujin, who was descended from the
ruling family of a small tribe in the northeast of present-day Mongolia,
was able to unite several tribes and assemble a strong army. In 1206, he
took the title Genghis Khan ("Universal Ruler") and began his carefully
planned campaigns of conquest.
First he subjugated southern Siberia in
1207 and in 1211-1216 conquered 4 northern China.
He made an
unsuccessful attempt to advance into central China, but the Uigurs
submitted to him in 1209. A careless act by the Khwarizm-shahs
presented the opportunity for a long-planned campaign in the west.
Between 1219 and 1221 Genghis Khan overran Transoxiana and also wide
stretches of the Khwarizm territories. In 1220, he founded his capital,
Karakorum, in the north of Mongolia. He then captured northern Persia,
Armenia, and Georgia and defeated the Russian princes in 1223.
Genghis Khan waged his campaigns with extreme cruelty and presided over
widespread plundering and destruction. He did, however, lay the
foundation for an empire supported by caravan trade, establishing a huge
network of trading posts and communications points; he also kept the
Silk Road free of banditry. The Mongolians also demonstrated a pragmatic
tolerance of different religions. The subjugated empires were absorbed
into a "friendship union" and required to pay tribute, from which
considerable Mongolian state rserves were accumulated.
Genghis Khan 5
died in 1227, after which the empire was divided among his
6 four sons.

5 Genghis Khan's mausoleum, inner Mongolia
|
|
|
The Spread of Mongolian Rule
|
The empire may have been divided among the sons of Genghis Khan,
but it was the third generation that proved its military power through
the conquest of wide stretches of Asia and Eastern Europe.
|
|
Genghis Khan's son 7 Ogodei, who succeeded him as the "great khan,"
decided in a war council in 1236 to conquer Russia, Poland, and Hungary
and from there to move into the rest of Europe.
His nephew Batu Khan
subjugated most of Western Russia between 1236 and 1242. In 1240, he
stormed Kiev and advanced almost to the Baltic Sea.
In 1240-1241, his
troops devastated Poland and Hungary and annihilated an army of German
and Polish knights at 8 Liegnitz, in Silesia, in early 1241.
Europe
appeared to lie open to the Mongolians when, in December 1241, Ogodei
died and Batu Khan turned his army back east to settle the succession.
In 1251, Mangu Khan, another grandson of Genghis Khan, became great khan
in Karakorum and began the systematic construction of a great empire.
In
the meantime, his cousin 9 Batu and his successors made themselves
largely independent and founded the khanates of the Golden and Blue
Hordes in Muscovy and Eastern Europe.
However, they lost territory in
battles against the Russian grand dukes in the 14th century, and in 1502
the states were destroyed. Mangu Khan, whose cultured court was
characterized by religious tolerance, respectfully received a papal
legation headed by Willem van Ruysbroeck in 1253.
|

7 Great khan Ogodei
|

8 Battle of Liegnitz, April 9, 1241
|

9 Batu Khan on his throne,
Persian book illustration, 14th century
|
|
He charged his younger
brother 10 Kublai Khan, who in 1260 inherited the title of great khan,
with new conquests to the East and South; Kublai Khan then invaded
12
China and founded the Yuan dynasty, which survived until 1368.
Htilegu
Khan conquered Persia and led the Mongolian sacking of Baghdad that
ended the caliphate and the old Islamic order in 1258. After disposing
of the small principalities in the Middle East, he was finally halted by
the Egyptian Mamelukes. Htilegu Khan founded the Il-khan dynasty, which
ruled over Iran, Iraq, Syria, East Anatolia, and the Caucasus from the
royal palace in Tabriz.
The dynasty converted to 11 Islam during the
reign of Khan Ghazan in 1300.
In 1335, the Mongolian Empire
disintegrated into a series of minor principalities. Though it only
existed for 150 years, the Mongolian empire affected peoples and states
across the known world, from China to Eastern Europe.
|

10 Great khan Kublai Khan
|

12 Occupation of fortresses strung along
the Yangtse River in 1275
during
Kublai Khan's invasion of China,
from an Indian miniature, ca.
1590
|

11 Niche in the Friday mosque
in Yazd, Iran, built in 1325-34
|
|
|
|
Baghdad before the Mongolian Attack on February 10, 1258:
"Together with them [two high officials and the army leader of Baghdad],
the Baghdad army decided to withdraw, and much of the population hoped
in this way to be saved.
However, they were divided up between the
thousand-, hundred-, and ten-man units of the Mongolian army and were
killed. Those who remained in the city dispersed and hid themselves
beneath the Earth and underneath the baths."
Rashid ad-Din's Book of The Tribes

The conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols led by Hiilegu in 1 258, Persian
miniature
|
|
|
|
The Empire of Tamerlane
|
After 1370, the conqueror Tamerlane united Islamic and Mongolian
traditions in his vast Asian empire. He brought scholars and artists to
his capital, Samarkand, making it a center of culture.
|
|
In the 14th century, an aggressive expanding empire, combining
Mongolian and Islamic characteristics once again emerged in Central
Asia. The Jagatai khanate, the descendants of the second son of Genghis
Khan, ruled in Central Asia, but its dominion had split into various
tribal groupings during the 14th century. In the context of this
political turmoil, a Turkic prince known as Tamerlane was able emerge as
a powerful leader.
1 Tamerlane seized power in Samarkand in 1366, and in April
1370 united the majority of the khanates of 5 Transoxiana under
his leadership.
|

1 Tamerlane, artist's reconstruction
based on contemporary
descriptions
|

5 Hiob's well in Bukhara, one of the most important cities in
Transoxiana
(present-day Uzbekistan) built in the 14th century
|
|
In 1370 he occupied the Mongolian vassal Khwarizm, and in 1379 plundered
the rebellious Konya Urgench. By 1381 he had conquered most of
Afghanistan. He either integrated local rulers into his "union of
friendship" or climinated them.
Tamerlane captured 2 Isfahan in 1387 and
seized Shiraz from the Muzaffarids in 1393.
By 1391 he had made a
fugitive of his most dangerous rival, Tokhtamysh, the khan of the Golden
Horde, who had carved out an empire in western Russia and the Caucasus;
The conquest yielded enormous treasures that were hauled back to his
royal residence in Samarkand. In 1393, Tamerlane occupied Iraq and the
of Baghdad, crushing the local warlords ruling there. In 1394, he
besieged Damascus, and then plundered it in 1401.
In July 1402, Tamerlane annihilated the 3 Ottomans in Anatolia and took Sultan Bayezid I, who had refused the offer of an alliance, prisoner.
The restless general, who ruled his world empire
4 from his saddle, had
already waged a military campaign against India in 1398-1399, in the
course of which he occupied Lahore and Delhi and had 100,000 Indian
prisoners executed.
|

2 Conquest of the city of Isfahan
by Tamerlane, 1387
|

3 After defeating Ottoman armies
in Anatolia, Tamerlane takes the
Sultan Bayezid I prisoner, holding
him in a golden cage,
lithograph, 18th ñ
|

4 Tamerlane on horseback, atop a mound of skulls
|
|
Tamerlane tended to treat cities and rulers
relatively mildly if they surrendered to him, but showed no mercy to
those who resisted. The fate of those who rebelled was even worse, as
with the cities of Isfahan and
Baghdad when they revolted in 1387 and 1401; Tamerlane had 10,000
inhabitants killed and their heads piled up in pyramids outside the city
walls.
Aside from his conquests Tamerlane, who ruled over one of the largest
empires in history, also gathered around him scholars, poets, and court
painters. Many of these came from from the occupied territories, carried
off to Samarkand where they made the capital the "center of the world"
and the "threshold of Paradise," building magnificent mosques and
madrassas. Tamerlane was a strict Sunni, but also sought to preserve the
pre-lslamic Mongolian nomad traditions. In the autumn of 1404, he set
off to the north with an enormous army to conquer China, but died in
Utrar on February 19,1405.
|
|
The Rule of the Timurids
|
The empire that Tamerlane founded was divided up among his
successors, but these new kingdoms continued to influence Central Asia
well into the 16th century.
|
|
Tamerlane's heirs, the Timurids, divided the empire among themselves
as dictated by Mongolian tradition after Tamerlane's chosen
successor—his grandson Pir Muhammad, governor of Kandahar—was murdered
in 1407. In the course of time, Tamerlane's youngest son, Shah Rokh, who
had reigned in Herat since 1405, established himself as the most
important of the heirs and head of the clan. He gained control of
Transoxiana and Persia, and most of the rulers of the Uzbeks and the
Golden Horde submitted. Iraq, however, was lost to local dynasties. Shah
Rokh, a notable patron of the arts and sciences, was one of the more
peaceful and cultivated Timurids.
His son,7 Ulugh Beg, who had been an
autonomous khan in Samarkand since 1409, was one of the most significant
scholars of his time.
In 1428-1429, he had an observatory with telescopical instruments
constructed, from which he made the most exact calculations of the stars
possible in the period. The capital, Samarkand,
which had been founded by his grandfather Tamerlane, continued to shine
under his reign.
The rulers were also buried 8,
9 here in a magnificent
necropolis.
|

7 Ulugh Beg Madrasa in Samarkand, built between 1417-20,
painting by W.
W. Werestschagin, ca. 1870

9 The necropolis, Shah-i Zinda, outside Samarkand,
painting by W. W. Werestschagin, ca. 1870
|

8 Ceramic tombstone from a mausoleum
in Shah-i Zinda, Samarkand
|
|
In 1447, he waged war against his own son Abd al-Latif over
the succession to the empire of Shah Rokh. The conflict ended with the
murder of Ulugh Beg in 1449 and Abd al-Latif a year later.
Abu Said, a great-grandson of Tamerlane, emerged victorious from the
ensuing turmoil to rule over Transoxiana. In 1469, he was taken captive
and executed by Turkic tribesmen of the Aq-Qoyunlu, the "White Sheep
Turks," who advanced out of Persia. His son, Sultan Ahmad, held on to
the Samarkand area, but was constantly under pressure from the Uzbek
Shaibanids. Ahmad's nephew was Babur, the first great Mogul of
India.
The last Timurid still ruled from Herat over a part of
10 Afghanistan, but died in 1506 during a campaign against the Shaibanids, after they attacked the city.
The last rulers descended from Tamerlane are remembered more for their
6 patronage of the arts than for
their conquests.
|

10 The Blue Mosque in Mazar i-Sharif, Afghanistan,
built ca. 1480
|

6 Timuridian miniature painting
from Herat, Afghanistan, ca. 1488
|
|
|
|
The Gur-e Amir Mausoleum
Tamerlane and his successors were buried in the magnificent mausoleum
Gur-e Ami, in Samarkand. In 1941, Russian scientists under the direction
of anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov investigated the remains, and
Gerasimov reconstructed the facial characteristics of Tamerlane and his
sons, Miranshah and Shah Rokh.
An examination of Tamerlane's skeleton
showed deformities on the right elbow and the right hip; the right
kneecap had also grown together with the thigh. He was practically a
hemiplegic.

The ruins of the Gur-e Amir mausoleum,
painting by W. W. Werestschagin, ca. 1870
|
|
|
|
|

|