Eastern Hemisphere at the end of the 11th century.
As a means of recording the passage of time, the 11th century is the period from 1001 to 1100 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian/Common Era.
In the history of European culture, this period is considered the early part of the High Middle Ages. There was a sudden decline of Byzantine power and rise of Norman domination over much of Europe, along with the prominent role in Europe of notably influential popes. In what is now Northern Italy, a growth of population in urban centers gave rise to early organized capitalism and more sophisticated, commercialized culture by the late 11th century.
In Germany, the century 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. There were also the first figures of the intellectual movement known as Scholasticism, which emphasized dialectic arguments in disputes of Christian theology as well as classical philosophy.
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 that replaced the fallen caliphate.
In China, there was a triangular affair of continued war and peace settlements between the Song Dynasty, the Tanguts-led Western Xia in the northwest, and the Khitans of the Liao Dynasty in the northeast. Meanwhile, opposing political factions evolved at the Song imperial court of Kaifeng. The political reformers at court, called the New Policies Group (??, Xin Fa), were led by Emperor Shenzong of Song and the ChancellorsFan Zhongyan and Wang Anshi, while the political conservatives were led by Chancellor Sima Guang and Empress Dowager 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, as well as the age where the matured form of the Chinese pagoda was accomplished in Chinese architecture.
In the Middle East, the Fatimid Empire of Egypt reached its zenith only to face steep decline, much like the Byzantine Empire in the first half of the century. The Seljuks came to prominence while the Abbasid caliphs held traditional titles without real, tangible authority in state affairs.
In Korea, the rulers of the Goryeo Kingdom were able to concentrate more central authority into their own hands than in that of the nobles, and were able to fend off two Khitan invasions with their armies.
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.
1010?1011: the Second Goryeo-Khitan War; the Korean king was forced to flee the capital temporarily, but unable to establish a foothold and fearing a counterattack, the Khitan forces withdrew.
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 IsmailiShia; 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.
1030: the Battle of Stiklestad (Norway): Olav Haraldsson loses to his pagan vassals and is killed in the battle. He is later canonized and becomes the patron saint of Norway and Rex perpetuum Norvegiae ('the eternal king of Norway').
1035: Raoul Glaber chronicles a devastating three year famine induced by climatic changes in southern France
1035: Canute the Great dies, and his kingdom of present-day Norway, England, and Denmark was split amongst three rivals to his throne.
1042: the Normans establish Melfi as the capital of southern Italy.
1042: Bhoja, the Indian ruler, philosopher, and polymath of Malwa, completes the reconstruction of the temple of Somnath after its destruction by Mahmud of Ghazni.
1044: the Chinese Wujing Zongyao, written by Zeng Gongliang and Yang Weide, is the first book to describe gunpowder formulas;[2] it also described their use in warfare, such as blackpowder-impregnated fuses for flamethrowers.[3] It also described an early form of the compass, a thermoremanence compass.[4]
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.
1054: a large supernova is observed by astronomers, the remnants of which would form the Crab Nebula.
1069?1076: with the support of Emperor Shenzong of Song, Chancellor Wang Anshi of the Chinese Song Dynasty introduces the 'New Policies', including the Baojia system of societal organization and militias, low-cost loans for farmers, taxes instead of corvée labor, government monopolies on tea, salt, and wine, reforming the land survey system, and eliminating the poetry requirement in the imperial examination system to gain bureaucrats of a more practical bent.
1075: the Investiture Controversy is sparked when Pope Gregory VII asserted in the Dictatus papae extended rights granted to the pope (disturbing the balance of power) and new interpretation of God's role in founding the Church itself.
1075: Chinese official and diplomat Shen Kuo asserts the Song Dynasty's rightful border lines by using court archives against the bold bluff of Emperor Daozong of Liao, who had asserted that Liao Dynasty territory exceeded its earlier-accepted bounds.
1075?1076: a civil war in the Western Chalukya Empire of India; the Western Chalukya monarch Somesvara II plans to defeat his own ambitious brother Vikramaditya VI by allying with a traditional enemy, Kulothunga Chola I of the Chola Empire; Somesvara's forces suffered heavy defeat, and was eventually captured and imprisoned by Vikramaditya, who proclaimed himself king.
A flat casket of carved of ivory from Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain), c. 1050
1075?1077: the Song Dynasty of China and the Lý Dynasty of Vietnam fight a border war, with Vietnamese forces striking first on land and with their navy, and afterwards Song armies advancing as far as modern-day Hanoi, the capital, but withdraw after Lý makes peace overtures; in 1082, both sides exchange the territories that they had captured during the war, and later a border agreement is reached.
1076: the Chinese Song Dynasty places strict government monopolies over the production and distribution of sulfur and saltpetre, in order to curb the possibility of merchants selling gunpowder formula components to enemies such as the Tanguts and Khitans.
1076: the Song Chinese allied with southern Vietnamese Champa and Cambodian Chenla to conquer the Lý Dynasty, which was an unsuccessful campaign.
1077: Chinese official Su Song is sent on a diplomatic mission to the Liao Dynasty and discovers that the Khitan calendar is more mathematically accurate than the Song calendar; Emperor Zhezong later sponsors Su Song's astronomical clock tower in order to compete with Liao astronomers.
1080?1081: The Chinese statesman and scientist Shen Kuo is put in command of the campaign against the Western Xia, and although he successfully halts their invasion route to Yanzhou (modern Yan'an), another officer disobeys imperial orders and the campaign is ultimately a failure because of it.
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
1086: compilation of the Domesday Book by order of William I of England; it was similar to a modern day government census, as it was used by William to thoroughly document all the landholdings within the kingdom that could be properly taxed.
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: the renowned polymath Chinese scientist and official Shen Kuo made the world's first reference to the magneticcompass in his book Dream Pool Essays,[5][6] along with encyclopedic documentation and inquiry into scientific discoveries.
1093: when the Chinese Empress Dowager Gao dies, the conservative faction that had followed Sima Guang is ousted from court, the liberal reforms of Wang Anshi reinstated, and Emperor Zhezong of Song halted all negotiations with the Tanguts of the Western Xia, resuming in armed conflict with them.
The Chinese official Cai Xiang oversaw the construction of the Wanan Bridge in Fujian, and may have been the leading member of an engineering school due to many other bridges of similar construction built in Fujian.
1024 ? The world's first paper-printed money can be traced back to the year 1024, in Sichuan province of Song Dynasty China. The Chinese government would step in and overtake this trend, issuing the central government's official banknote in the 1120s.
1031 ? Ab? Rayh?n al-B?r?n? observes in his astronomy book Kitab al-qanun al-Mas?udi that the planets revolve in elliptical orbits rather than circular orbits as theorized by the ancient Greeks, and rejects theories which cannot be verified through experimentation.
1075 ? the Song Chinese innovate a partial decarbonization method of repreated forging of cast iron under a cold blast that Hartwell and Needham consider to be a predecessor to the 18th century Bessemer process.[84]
1088 ? As written by Shen Kuo in his Dream Pool Essays, the earlier 10th century invention of the pound lock in China allows large ships to travel along canals without laborious hauling, thus allowing smooth travel of government ships holding cargo of up to 700 tan (49½ tons) and large privately owned-ships holding cargo of up to 1600 tan (113 tons).[87]
By the 11th century, every city in the Islamic world had Bimaristans, the first hospitals in the modern sense, after they began receiving funds from the Waqf instititions, the first charitable trusts.[89]
The first mechanical clocks to be driven by weights and gears are invented by medieval Muslim engineers.[95][96] The first geared mechanical clock is invented by the Arab engineer Ibn Khalaf al-Muradi in Islamic Spain; and the first weight-driven mechanical clocks, employing a mercury escapement mechanism and a clock face similar to an astrolabe dial, are also invented by Muslim engineers in the 11th century.[97]
Abattouy, Mohammed. (2002), "The Arabic Science of weights: A Report on an Ongoing Research Project", The Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies 4, pp. 109?130:
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Chan, Alan Kam-leung and Gregory K. Clancey, Hui-Chieh Loy (2002). Historical Perspectives on East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine. Singapore: Singapore University Press. ISBN 9971692597
Darlington, Oscar G. "Gerbert, the Teacher", The American Historical Review (Volume 52, Number 3, 1947): 456 ? 476.
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, Anne Walthall, James B. Palais (2006). East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-618-13384-4.
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Hartwell, Robert. "Markets, Technology, and the Structure of Enterprise in the Development of the Eleventh-Century Chinese Iron and Steel Industry", The Journal of Economic History (Volume 26, Number 1, 1966): 29?58.
Holmes, Jr., Urban T. "The Idea of a Twelfth-Century Renaissance", Speculum (Volume 26, Number 4, 1951): 643 ? 651.
Mohn, Peter (2003). Magnetism in the Solid State: An Introduction. New York: Springer-Verlag Inc. ISBN 3540431837.
Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part 1, Physics. Taipei: Caves Books Ltd.
Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part 2, Mechanical Engineering. Taipei: Caves Books Ltd.
Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part 3, Civil Engineering and Nautics. Taipei: Caves Books Ltd.
Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 1: Paper and Printing. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd.
Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 7, Military Technology; the Gunpowder Epic. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd.
Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 1, Botany. Taipei: Caves Books Ltd.
Prioreschi, Plinio. (2003). A History of Medicine. Omaha: Horatius Press. ISBN 1-888456-05-1.
Abdus Salam (1984), "Islam and Science". In C. H. Lai (1987), Ideals and Realities: Selected Essays of Abdus Salam, 2nd ed., World Scientific, Singapore, pp. 179?213.
Salhab, Walid Amine. (2006). The Knights Templar of the Middle East: The Hidden History of the Islamic Origins of Freemasonry. San Francisco: Red Wheel/Weiser LLC. ISBN 1-57863-346-X.
Seife, Charles. (2000) Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 067088457X.
Sivin, Nathan (1995). Science in Ancient China: Researches and Reflections. Brookfield, Vermont: VARIORUM, Ashgate Publishing.
Tester, S. Jim. (1987). A History of Western Astrology. Rochester: Boydell & Brewer Inc. ISBN 0851154468.
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