11th century

As a means of recording the passage of time, the 11th century was that century which lasted from 1001 to 1100. In the history of European culture, this period is considered the early part of the High Middle Ages. In Song Dynasty China it was a highpoint of classical Chinese civilization, technology, and science. For Chola-era India and Fatimid-era Egypt, it was a highpoint in military might and international influence.

Overview

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The astronomical clock tower of Kaifeng, built by 1088 AD, engineered by Su Song of the Chinese Song Dynasty.

The eleventh century is, in European history, a century of change. It is usually marked as the first period of the High Middle Ages and is therefore sometimes termed the Early Middle Ages, though this term has another common meaning synonymous with Dark Ages. The century began while the translatio imperii of 962 was still somewhat novel and ended in the midst of the Investiture Controversy. It saw the final Christianisation of Scandinavia and the emergence of the Peace and Truce of God movements, the Gregorian Reforms, and the Crusades which revitalised a church and a papacy which survived tarnished by the tumultuous tenth century. In 1054, the Great Schism rent the church in two, however.

In Germany, it was marked by the ascendancy of the Holy Roman Emperors, who hit their high watermark under the Salians.

In Italy, it opened with the integration of the kingdom into the empire and the royal palace at Pavia was sacked in 1024. By the end of the century, Lombard and Byzantine rule in the Mezzogiorno had been usurped by the Normans and the power of the territorial magnates was being replaced by that of the citizens of the cities in the north.

In Britain, it saw the transformation of Scotland into a single, more unified and centralised kingdom and the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The social transformations wrought in these lands brought them into the fuller orbit of European feudal politics.

In France, it saw the nadir of the monarchy and the zenith of the great magnates, especially the dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy, who could thus foster such distinctive contributions of their lands as the pious warrior who conquered Britain, Italy, and the East and the impious peacelover, the troubadour, who crafted out of the European vernacular its first great literary themes.

In Spain, the century opened with the successes of the last caliphs of Córdoba and ended in the successes of the Almoravids. In between was a period of Christian unification under Navarrese hegemony and success in the Reconquista against the taifa kingdoms which replaced the fallen caliphate. Spain emerged fully "Europeanised".

In China, political factions rise at the imperial court of Kaifeng during the Song Dynasty. The political reformers at court, called the New Policies Group (新法, Xin Fa), were led by Emperor Shenzong of Song and the Chancellors Fan Zhongyan and Wang Anshi, while the political conservatives were led by Chancellor Sima Guang and Empress Gao, regent of the young Emperor Zhezong of Song. Heated political debate and sectarian intrigue followed, while political enemies were often dismissed from the capital to govern frontier regions in the deep south where malaria was known to be very fatal to northern Chinese people (see History of the Song Dynasty). This period also represents a high point in classical Chinese science and technology, with figures such as Su Song and Shen Kuo.

In India, the Chola Dynasty reaches its height of naval power under leaders such as Rajaraja Chola I and Rajendra Chola I, dominating southern India (Tamil Nadu), Sri Lanka, and regions of South East Asia. They also sent raids into what is modern-day Thailand.

In Japan, the Fujiwara clan dominates central politics by acting as regents, controlling the actions of the Emperor of Japan, who acted merely as a 'puppet monarch' during the Heian period.

Events

Bayeux Tapestry depicting events leading to the Battle of Hastings

• c. 1000, the Al-Tasrif is written by the physician and scientist Abu al-Qasim
• 1001 ± 40 years, Baitoushan volcano on what would be the Chinese-Korean border, erupts with a force of 6.5, the fourth largest Holocene blast.
• 1001, Mahmud of Ghazni, Muslim leader of Ghazni, begins a series of raids into Northern India; he finishes in 1027 with the destruction of Somnath.
• Circa 1001, Vikings, led by Leif Eriksson, establish small settlements in and around Vinland in North America
• 1005, the Treaty of Shanyuan was signed between the Chinese Song Dynasty and the Khitan Liao Dynasty.
• 1008, the Fatimid Egyptian sea captian Domiyat travels to the Buddhist pilgrimage site in Shandong, China, to seek out the Chinese Emperor Zhenzong of Song with gifts from his ruling Imam Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, successfully reopening diplomatic relations between Egypt and China that had been lost since the collapse of the Tang Dynasty.
• 1010, with the aid of scholars such as Song Zhun, Lu Duosun compiles a massive work of cartography in 1566 chapters, including the mapped topography of each provincial region in China down to the minute level of small towns and villages; this was an imperial compendium first issued by Emperor Taizu of Song in 971 AD.
• 1021, the ruling Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah disappears suddenly, possibly assassinated by his own sister Sitt al-Mulk, which leads to the open persecution of the Druze by Ismaili Shia; the Druze proclaimed that Al-Hakim went into hiding (ghayba), whereupon he would return as the Mahdi savior.
• 1025, the Chola Dynasty of India uses its naval powers to conquer the South East Asian kingdom of Srivijaya, turning it into a vassal.
• 1028, the King of Srivijaya appeals to the Song Dynasty Chinese, sending a diplomatic mission to their capital at Kaifeng.
• 1040, Duncan I of Scotland slain in battle. Macbeth succeeds him.
• 1041, Samuel Aba became King of Hungary.
• 1041-1048, Chinese artisan Bi Sheng invents ceramic movable type printing

A Chinese Song Dynasty naval ship with a traction trebuchet catapult, from the Wujing Zongyao of 1044 AD.

• 1044, the Chinese Wujing Zongyao (武经总要), written by Zeng Gongliang and Yang Weide, is the first book to describe gunpowder formulas; it also described their use in warfare, such as gunpowder-impregnated fuses for flamethrowers. It also described an early form of the compass, a thermoremanence compass.
• 1052, earliest date for the publication of Ibn Sina's The Canon of Medicine
• 1054, the Great Schism, in which the Western (Roman Catholic) and Eastern Orthodox churches separated from each other. Similar schisms in the past had been later repaired, but this one continues after nearly 1000 years.
• 1060, Norman conquest of Sicily
• 1065, independence of the Kingdom of Galicia and Portugal under the rule of Garcia
• 1066, Edward the Confessor dies; Norman conquest of England in the Battle of Hastings
• 1071, Defeat of the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Manzikert by the Seljuk army of Alp Arslan, ending 3 centuries of a military and economic Golden Age
• 1076, Ghana Empire began break-up after capital (Kumbi) sacked
• 1079, Malik Shah I reforms the Iranian Calendar
• 1084, the enormous Chinese historical work of the Zizhi Tongjian is compiled by scholars under Chancellor Sima Guang, completed in 294 volumes and included 3 million written Chinese characters
• 1085, Alfonso VI of Castile captures the Muslim city of Toledo.
• 1086, compilation of the Domesday Book by order of William I of England
• 1087, a new office at the Chinese international seaport of Quanzhou is established to handle and regulate taxes and tariffs on all mercantile transactions of foreign goods coming from Africa, Arabia, India, Sri Lanka, Persia, and South East Asia.
• 1088, Su Song of the Chinese Song Dynasty completes the pilot model for his astronomical clock tower in Kaifeng; Chinese scientist Shen Kuo makes the world's first reference to the magnetic compass in his Dream Pool Essays.

Capture of Jerusalem, 1099

• 1094, El Cid, the great Spanish hero, conquers the Muslim city of Valencia
• ca. 1095-1099, earliest extant manuscript of the Song of Roland
• 1099, First Crusade captures Jerusalem
• King Anawrahta of Myanmar made a pilgrimage to Ceylon, returning to convert his country to Theravada Buddhism.
• The Tuareg migrate to the Aïr region.
• Kanem-Bornu expands southward into modern Nigeria.
• The first of seven Hausa city-states are founded in Nigeria.
• The Hodh region of Mauritania becomes desert.

Significant people

• Empress Agnes
• Al-Ghazali, celebrated Muslim scholar
• Al-Muqtadi, Abbasid Caliph
• Al-Qadir, Abbasid Caliph
• Al-Qa'im, Abbasid Caliph
• Alexius I Comnenus byzantine Emperor (lived 1048-1118; reigned 1081-1118)
• Alp Arslan
• Archbishop Anno II of Cologne
• Saint Anselm, reputed founder of scholasticism and creator of the ontological argument
• Atisha, influential Buddhist teacher to Tibet
• Abū ‘Alī al-Husayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā al-Balkhī (Avicenna), Persian physician, philosopher, and scientist
• Basil II Byzantine Emperor (lived 958-1025; reigned 976-1025)
• Canute the Great
• Cheng Yi (philosopher)
• El Cid (Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar)
• Fan Zhongyan
• Fujiwara Michinaga
• Pope Saint Gregory VII (Hildebrand)
• Guido of Arezzo
• Emperor Henry III
• Emperor Henry IV
• Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani
• Konrad II
• Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury
• Leif Eriksson
• Macbeth
• Malik Shah I
• Minamoto no Yorimitsu
• Minamoto no Yorinobu
• Murasaki Shikibu
• Rajaraja Chola I
• Rajendra Chola I
• Saint Robert, founder of the Cistercians
• Sei Shōnagon
• Emperor Shenzong of Song
• Emperor Shirakawa of Japan
• Sima Guang
• Shen Kuo, Chinese scientist, author of Dream Pool Essays
• Stephen I of Hungary
• Su Shi
• Su Song, Chinese astronomer and mechanical engineer
• Tāriqu l-Ḥakīm bi Amr al-Lāh, Sixth Fātimid Caliph
• Tunka Manin ruler of the Ghana Empire
• Pope Urban II
• Wang Anshi
• William the Conqueror

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

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The Iron Pagoda of Kaifeng, China, 1049 AD.

• Troubadours appear in what is now southern France.
• The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu is one of the first novels in the Japanese language.
• The tittle was created.
• Main body of Aristotle's works rediscovered.
• The Chinese mechanical engineer and astronomer Su Song incorporates the world's first known chain drive to operate the armillary sphere of his astronomical clock tower.
• Chinese scientist Shen Kuo creates a theory for land formation, or geomorphology, theorized that climate change occurred over time, discovers the concept of true north, improves the design of the astronomical sighting tube to view the polestar indefinitely, hypothesizes the retrogradation theory of planetary motion, and by observing lunar eclipse and solar eclipse he hypothesized that the sun and moon were spherical.
• The roots of European Scholasticism are found in this period, as the renewed spark of interest in literature and Classicism in Europe would bring about the Renaissance. In the 11th century, there were early Scholastic figures such as Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Peter Lombard, and Gilbert de la Porrée.
• The Iron Pagoda of Kaifeng, China is built by 1049 AD.
• Bi Sheng of Song Dynasty China invents movable type printing using individual ceramic characters
• The Chinese engineer Yan Su recreates the mechanical compass vehicle of the South Pointing Chariot, first invented by Ma Jun in the 3rd century