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6th to 15th Centuries:
The Far and Middle
East; to the 1400s
Time Line of Art History: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In his famous book, "Organism," Abraham Maslow originated the idea of self-actualization within a hierarchial structure of physilogical and psychological needs. Within this structure are what Maslow calls "esteem needs." From the very beginning of time historians have made manifest evidence of man's expression of "esteem needs." Over 30,000 years ago in Chauvet France the discovery of dynamic, vibrant paintings of animals drawn on limestone cave walls stand as a testament to man's need to express his world through art.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,
That is all ye know on earth and
All ye need to know.
-------- John Keats (1819) "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
Take the time to see the truth, to see the beauty that man has created across time and space. "Click away!"
South and Southeast Asia,1000-1400 C.E.
Time Line Index:
Sui Wendi, Founder Sui Dynasty 541-604 C.E.
Emperor Gaozong of Song 1107-1187 C.E.
Genghis Khan, Unified the Mongols 1162 - 1227
Kublai Khan, Mongolian Leader 1215-1294
Hongwu, Founder Ming Dynasty 1328-1398
Yongle, 3rd Emperor Ming Dynasty 1360-1424
Mehmed II, The Conqueror 1432-1481
The Fall of Constantinople 1453
Suleiman I, The Magnificent 1494 - 1566
Readings: Washington State University-World Cultures to 1500
China:
The decline and fall of the Later Han dynasty produced a long period of independent states each contending for hegemony over neighboring states; this period, in fact, lasted so long that the more or less uniform Chinese culture almost died out completely. Starting in 384 AD, however, the Northern Wei kingdom began the long, arduous process of reuniting the kingdoms into a single empire. They moved their capital to the ancient site of Loyang and adopted Chinese as their language, as well as Chinese culture. Although they failed to unify the kingdom, they had managed to preserve Chinese culture during the fractious centuries of the Three Kingdoms. By 534, the Northern Wei faded from view, and China fell into a brief period of short-lived kingdoms. In 589, however, a Turkic-Chinese general, Sui Wen-ti, would found a new dynasty over a restored empire.
When Li Yuan seized power after the assassination of Sui Yang-ti, he founded the T'ang dynasty, which would rule from 618 to 907 CE. Li Yuan promptly set about building a powerful central government; in order to do so, however, he had to make concessions to provincial governments (he himself had been a provincial governor under the Sui). His efforts, though, were not successful.
Tang Dynasty The Golden Age: Confuscianism
Confucianism is an ancient philosophy that originated
in approximately the 5th Century B.C. and is still present in China today,
after dominating Chinese society for over 2,400 years. The founder, a man
named Confucius, developed this set of ideas as a code of behavior to live
by.
The Later Empire: The Sung (960-1279CE)
After the fall of the T'ang dynasty, China entered into a period of disunion which lasted from 907-960 AD. At the end of the period, a new dynasty, the Sung, partially reunified the country. Its capital was Kaifeng on the Yellow River, and it managed to rule a large area more or less effectively for 170 years. This period is called the Northern Sung (960-1127). In 1127, however, it lost the northern part of China to a new empire, the Chin, and relocated its capital to the south in Hangchow. For another one hundred and fifty years, the Sung ruled in the south in the period known as the Southern Sung (1127-1279).
The Mongolian Empire: The Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368 CE)
The Mongols were an obscure people who lived in the outer reaches of the Gobi Desert in what is now Outer Mongolia. They were a pastoral and tribal people that did not really seem to be of any consequence to neighboring peoples. The Mongols were in fact a group of disunified tribes that would gather regularly during annual migrations; although they elected chiefs over the tribes at these meetings, they never unified into a single people. Their religion focused on a sky-god that ruled over nature deities, similar to the Japanese native religion Shinto, and the gods communicated to them through shamans. All that would change however, under the leadership of a powerful and vigorous leader named Timuchin or Genghis Khan.
Video Presentations
China:
See that China was the most vibrant, open and technologically advanced civilization. Islam, less than 400 years old at this time, had become the most far reaching civilization in trade and travel. Cordoba, in Southern Spain, was one of the most important cities on the Earth. India, rich in natural resources, was the only other civilization that the Chinese respected. Enriched by contact with China, Japan looked promising but turned increasingly in on itself. Also, examine life in the imperial palace through an intimate diary left by Sei Shonagon, who was "a lady in waiting," to the Heian royalty. Further, Christianity was divided into two rival camps. The Western Catholic Church looked to Rome, in Italy. The Eastern Orthodox Church looked to Constantinople, in Turkey. In 1054, the political wrangling reached a climax when the Pope excommunicated the Eastern Church.
They were the dreaded forces on the fringes of civilization, the bloodthirsty warriors who defied the Roman legions and terrorized the people of Europe. They were the Barbarians, and their names still evoke images of cruelty and chaos. But what do we really know of these legendary warriors? From the frigid North Sea to the Russian steppes, this ambitious series tells the fascinating stories of four of the most fabled groups of fighters in history, tracing 1,000 years of conquest and adventure through inspired scholarship and some of the most extensive reenactments ever filmed.
Readings: Washington State University-World Cultures to 1500
Japan:
Because of the thought and philosophy of the Tokugawa period in Japan (1600-1868), nothing says "Japan" like the Shinto religion. The Tokugawa "Enlightenment" inspired a group of thinkers who studied what they called kokugaku , which can be roughly translated "nativism," "Japanese Studies," or "Native Studies." Kokugaku was no dry-as-dust academic discipline as the term "Japanese Studies" seems to imply; it was a concerted philosophical, literary and academic effort to recover the essential "Japanese character" as it existed before the early influences of foreigners, especially the Chinese, "corrupted" Japanese culture. Recovering the essential Japanese character meant in the end distinguishing what was Japanese from what is not and purging from the Japanese culture various foreign influences including Confucianism (Chinese), Taoism (Chinese), Buddhism (Indian and Chinese), and Christianity (Western European). The kokugakushu ("nativists") focussed most of their efforts on recovering the Shinto religion, the native Japanese religion, from fragmentary texts and isolated and unrelated popular religious practices.
The most profound change in Japanese government was the adoption of Chinese, particularly Confucian, models of government in Prince Shotoku's Seventeen Article Constitution . The reforms undertaken by Shotoku not only addressed the internal problems the Yamato court was faced with, they also dramatically changed Japanese history.
The Heian period (794-1192) was one of those
amazing periods in Japanese history, equaled only by the later Tokugawa period
in pre-modern Japan, in which an unprecedented peace and security passed over
the land under the powerful rule of the Heian dynasty. Japanese culture during
the Heian flourished as it never had before; such a cultural efflorescence
would only occur again during the long Tokugawa peace. For this reason, Heian
Japan along with Nara Japan (710-794) is called "Classical" Japan.
Early Japanese Buddhism:
In 552, the emperor of the Korean Paekche sent to Japan an image of Buddha along with some Buddhist scriptures. The Emperor of Japan, Kimmei, was pleased with the gift and the head of the most powerful clan in Japan, the Soga, urged that Buddhism be embraced as the new religion of Japan. For Buddhism was the religion of the civilized west and Japan had just begun actively importing the culture of China and Korea.
Mount Hiei and the Tendai School
In 788 a Chinese Buddhist priest named Saicho (767-822) founded an unpretentious, tiny Buddhist temple on the slopes of Mount Hiei near Kyoto. As small as its beginnings were, Mount Hiei would quickly become the cultural, religious, and artistic center of Japan until it was destroyed by Oda Nobunaga in 1571. At the time Saicho founded his monastery, the area around the mountain was unproductive marsh-lands. All this changed in six years when the Emperor Kammu moved the capital from Nara to the area around Mount Hiei. It was one of those strange practical jokes of history: Kammu, a devoted Confucian, originally moved the capital in order to get away from the Buddhists. The move, however, would make the Buddhists of Mount Hiei the most powerful political force in early and medieval Japanese history.
Although the Hiei Mount was the most significant
Buddhist monastery in early Japanese history, Kukai (774-835) is perhaps the
most significant individual in the history of Heian Buddhism. Unlike Saicho,
Kukai was native Japanese; he came from an aristocratic family. He was a brilliant
and creative man, and as a young man he began by studying Confucianism, but
soon mastered Taoism and Buddhism as well.
Video Presentations
Japan:
A brief presentation on Shintoism
Readings: Washington State University-World Cultures to 1500
India:
The Mughals were the last powerful descendants of the Mongols; descended from Mongol stock in Turkestan, in the early 1500's they engaged in the last series of conquests to bear the Mongol name. They were, however, quite distant from their original ancestors. The Mughals had become Islamic, for the Middle Eastern Mongol invaders had converted to Islam long before. They had also thoroughly absorbed Middle Eastern culture, especially Persian culture (the Persian word for Mongol is "Mughal," from which we get the English word, "mogul," meaning "tycoon"), and their wars of invasion spread Persian culture throughout India. Much of Persian culture was based on Shi'a Islam and its mystical doctrine of a Divine Light present in the earth in the form of the Imam, or religious guide on earth. It was equally influenced by Sufi mysticism, a branch of Islamic religion that stressed the mystical union of human with god. Much of Persian culture was also derived from Mongolian culture, particularly art, which was based on Chinese models of painting. In many ways, then, the Mughal invasion of India and its importation of Persian culture was a roundabout way of importing far eastern culture into India.
The founder of the Mughal dynasty was Babur, "The Tiger," who ruled from 1483 to 1530. Babur was not fully a Mongol: his mother was descended from Genghis Khan, but his father was descended from Timur. Like his ancestors, he rose from comparatively little to become one of the great conquerors of his time. He ruled over a small kingdom in Turkestan; he expanded his kingdom by attacking Afghanistan and capturing Kabul in 1504. From there he crossed over the mountains into Hindustan and attacked the Dehli Sultanate. With an army of only twelve thousand men, he defeated the Sultan at Panipat, captured Agra and Dehli, and established himself as Sultan. He then attacked a confederation of Rajput states. When he died in 1530 he had conquered all of Hindustan and controlled an empire that extended from the Deccan to Turkestan. Besides his fierce military genius, his conquest of this vast territory was aided by technological superiority. He was the first Islamic conqueror to employ muskets and artillery, and even though these weapons were somewhat primitive, they were more than a match for the armies of the Hindustan.
Muslim, Indian, and Western historians all see Akbar as the greatest ruler of Indian history. When his father, Humayun, died in 1556, Akbar became padshah ("ruler of the empire") at the age of thirteen. Under the guidance of Bairam Khan, who had been instrumental in Humayun's reconquests of Panipat, Dehli, and Agra, Akbar instantly began seizing more territory throughout Hindustan. Bairam Khan fell from power in 1560, but Akbar continued his conquest of India and Afghanistan. By the time he died in 1605 (his reign, 1556 to 1605, corresponds almost exactly to that of Elizabeth I of England), his Empire was greater than that of Babur and included almost all of northern India.
Video Presentations
India and Islam:
Short clip Of a look at the history of islam in India through the eyes of a dhimmi.
Origins of civilization-INDIA-The Empire of Spirit Part 4
India, the origin of civilization and empire of spirit & religion. it also describes the affect of western and arabic invaders and conquerer.
20th-21st Century Relationship Between Islamic and Hindu Faiths in India
Readings: Washington State University-World Cultures to 1500
The Ottomans:
The Ottomans are one of the greatest and most powerful civilizations of the modern period. Their moment of glory in the sixteenth century represents one of the heights of human creativity, optimism, and artistry. The empire they built was the largest and most influential of the Muslim empires of the modern period, and their culture and military expansion crossed over into Europe. Not since the expansion of Islam into Spain in the eighth century had Islam seemed poised to establish a European presence as it did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Like that earlier expansion, the Ottomans established an empire over European territory and established Islamic traditions and culture that last to the current day (the Muslims in Bosnia are the last descendants of the Ottoman presence in Europe).
The Ottomans arose from the obscure reaches of Anatolia in the west of Turkey; these Western Turks were called the Oghuz. They had come primarily as settlers during the reign of the Seljuks in Turkey (1098-1308); the Anatolian frontier was largely hostile to Islam Some of them were warriors to the Islamic faith carrying out jihad, or "holy struggle," to spread the faith among hostile unbelievers. It was a tough life in Anatolia; the Seljuks had been the first to maintain power over the area.
Suleyman in his time was regarded as the most significant ruler in the world, by both Muslims and Europeans. His military empire expanded greatly both to the east and west, and he threatened to overrun the heart of Europe itself. In Constantinople, he embarked on vast cultural and architectural projects. Istanbul in the middle of the sixteenth century was architecturally the most energetic and innovative city in the world. While he was a brilliant military strategist and canny politician, he was also a cultivator of the arts. Suleyman's poetry is among the best poetry in Islam, and he sponsored an army of artists, religious thinkers, and philosophers that outshone the most educated courts of Europe.
Video Presentations
Islam and the Ottoman Empire:
Islam: Empire of Faith - Part 3
This portion deals with the growing Ottoman Empire, which would control the bridge between 3 continents: Africa, Europe and Asia. This empire would begin at the close of the Crusades until World War I, from the 1300s to 1923. They would rule the entire Middle East and make there way into Europe. Before there was the state of Israel, there was great peace in the Holy Land regulated by the Ottomans.
The Western Tradition: The Fall of Byzantium
Nearly a thousand years after Rome's fall, Constantinople was conquered by
the forces of Islam.
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