E.L.D. Cornerstone.  Life in words & pictures

European History, Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

The missing Minoans: 20th - 15th century BC

It is astonishing that history should lose all track of a civilization which lasts for six centuries, makes superb ceramics and metalwork, trades extensively over a wide region, and houses its rulers in palaces elaborately decorated with superb fresco paintings. Yet this has been the case with the Minoans in Crete, until the excavation of Knossos. We still know little more about them than is suggested by Minoan art and artifacts. It is typical that the name they have been given derives from a figure of myth rather than history - Minos, the legendary king of Crete whose pet creature is the Minotaur, a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull which feeds on young human flesh. 

Three very similar palaces have been excavated in Crete from the Minoan period - at Knossos, Mallia and Phaistos. Built from around 2000 BC, each is constructed round a large public courtyard; each has provision for the storage of large quantities of grain; each is believed to be the administrative centre for a large local population. The number at Knossos has been variably estimated as between 15,000 and 50,000 people. Administrative records and accounts are kept on clay tablets in a script as yet undeciphered (it is known as Linear A). Archaeological discoveries reveal that trade is carried on all around the entire Mediterranean coast; from Sicily in the west to Egypt in the southeast. 

Overseas there are outposts of Minoan culture. It is not known whether they are colonies or more in the nature of trading partners, influenced by the culture of Crete. Notable among them is the city of Akrotiri, on the island of Thera. Its houses, apparently those of rich merchants, have survived with their frescoes intact. Several of the houses stand to a height of three storeys, with their floors still in place. The reason for their preservation is the eruption of the island's volcano in about 1525 BC. Like Pompeii a millennium and a half later, Akrotiri is pickled in volcanic ash. 

Defensive walls are notably absent in Minoan Crete, as also are paintings of warfare. This seems to have been a peaceful as well as a prosperous society. But its end is violent. In about 1425 BC all the towns and palaces of Crete, except Knossos itself, are destroyed by fire. 

It is not known whether this is a natural disaster, which gives Greeks from the mainland their chance, or whether Greek invaders destroy Minoan Crete - keeping only the main palace for their own use. But it is certain that the next generations of rulers introduce the culture of mainland Mycenae, and they keep their accounts in the Mycenaean script - Linear B. It seems probable that a Mycenaean invasion ends Minoan civilization.

The first Greek civilization: from the 16th century BC

The discovery that Linear B is a Greek script places Mycenae at the head of the story of Greek civilization. Its right to this place of honor is reinforced in legend and literature. The supposed occupants of the Mycenaean palaces are the heroes of Homer's Iliad. Archaeology reveals the rulers of these early Greeks to have been as proud and warlike as Homer suggests. 

Their fortress palaces are protected by walls of stone blocks, so large that only giants would seem capable of heaving them into place. This style of architecture has been appropriately named Cyclopean, after the Cyclopes (a race of one-eyed giants encountered by Odysseus in the Odyssey). The walls at Tiryns, said in Greek legend to have built by the Cyclopes for the legendary king Proteus, provide the most striking example. At Mycenae it is the gateway through the walls which proclaims power, with two great lions standing above the massive lintel.

Royal burials at Mycenae add to the impression of a powerful military society. The tombs of the 16th century (known as 'shaft graves' because the burial is at the bottom of a deep shaft) contain a profusion of bronze swords and daggers, of a kind new to the region, together with much gold treasure, including death masks of the kings. 

By the 14th century the graves themselves become more in keeping with the status of their occupants, with the development of the tholos or 'beehive' style of tomb. The most impressive is the so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae, with its high domed inner chamber (independently pioneered in Neolithic Western Europe 2500 years previously). 

The earliest known suit of armor comes from a Mycenaean tomb, at Dendra. The helmet is a pointed cap, cunningly shaped from slices of boar's tusk. Bronze cheek flaps are suspended from it, reaching down to a complete circle of bronze around the neck. Curving sheets of bronze cover the shoulders. Beneath them there is a breast plate, and then three more circles of bronze plate, suspended one from the other, to form a semi-flexible skirt down to the thighs. Greaves, or shin-pads of bronze, complete the armor. The Mycenaean warrior's weapons are a bronze sword and a bronze-tipped spear. His shield is of stiff leather on a wooden frame. Similar weapons are used, several centuries later, by the Greek hoplites. 

Trade and conquest: 13th - 12th century BC

By the 13th century Mycenaean rulers control to varying degrees the whole of the Peloponnese, together with the eastern side of mainland Greece as far north as Mount Olympus, the large islands of Crete and Rhodes and many smaller islands. This is indeed a civilization which spreads around and through most of the Aegean. Mycenaeans trade the length of the Mediterranean, from the traditional markets of the eastern coasts to new ones as far away as Spain in the west. They also have long-range trading contacts with Neolithic societies in the interior of Europe. 

In the latter half of the 13th century, according to well-established oral tradition, the rulers of Mycenaean Greece combine forces to assault a rich city on the other side of the Aegean Sea. The city is Troy. Some four centuries later the oral tradition will be written down as the Iliad. In Homer's poem it takes many years before Troy is finally subdued. If there is truth in this, the war perhaps fatally weakens the Greeks. Certainly archaeology reveals that the successful Mycenaean civilization comes to an abrupt end not very much later - in about 1200 BC. 

The sudden destruction of Mycenaean palaces in Greece is part of a wider pattern of chaos in the eastern Mediterranean. As far away as Egypt, the pharaohs fight off invasion by raiders whom they describe as people 'from the sea'. It is a mystery, then as now, exactly where these predators come from. The most likely answer is the southern and western coasts of Anatolia. The rulers of Anatolia, the Hittites, are among their victims. So also are the communities of the eastern Mediterranean, where some of the Sea Peoples settle - to become known as the Philistines. 

Doric and Ionic: from the 12th century BC

In muted form Mycenaean Greece survives this first assault. But it suffers a final blow later in the 12th century at the hands of the Dorians - northern tribesmen, as yet uncivilized, who speak the Doric dialect of Greek. The Dorians move south from Macedonia and roam through the Peloponnese. They have the advantage of iron technology, which helps them to overwhelm the Bronze Age Mycenaeans. 

The Dorian incursion plunges Greece into a period usually referred to as a dark age. But Dorian military traditions survive to play a profound part in the heyday of classical Greece. The ruthlessly efficient Spartans will claim the Dorians as their ancestors, and model themselves upon them. The rival tradition in classical Greece is linked with Athens, an outpost of Mycenaean culture. Athens successfully resists the Dorians and becomes something of a place of refuge for those fleeing the invaders. 

With the encouragement of Athens, from about 900 BC, non-Dorian Greeks migrate to form colonies on the west coast of Anatolia. These colonies eventually merge to form Ionia. In subsequent centuries Ionia, with Athens, becomes a cradle of the classical Greek civilization. So there is a genuine continuity from Mycenae. It is reflected in the romantic idea of Mycenaean Greeks expressed by Homer - himself probably a native of Ionia.

European History, Austria

The Siege of Vienna in 1529, as distinct from the Battle of Vienna in 1683, was the first attempt of the Ottoman Empire, led by Sultan Suleiman I (the magnificent), to capture the city of Vienna, Austria. The siege signaled the Ottoman Empire's highwater mark and signalling the end of Ottoman expansion in central Europe, though 150 years of tension and incursions followed, culminating in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Some historians believe that Suleiman's main objective in 1529 was to re-establish Ottoman control over Hungary, and that the decision to attack Vienna so late in the season was opportunistic.

Background: In August 1526, Sultan Suleiman I, also known as Suleiman the Lawgiver and Suleiman the Magnificent, had defeated the forces of King Louis II of Hungary at the Battle of Mohács. As a result, the Ottomans gained control of southern Hungary, while the Archduke of Austria, Ferdinand I of Habsburg, brother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, claimed the vacant Hungarian throne in right of his wife, Anna Jagellonica, sister of the childless Louis II. Ferdinand, however, won recognition only in western Hungary; a noble called John Zápolya, from a power-base in Transylvania, north-eastern Hungary, challenged him for the crown and was recognised as king by Suleiman in return for accepting vassal status within the Ottoman Empire. Following the Diet of Bratislava on 26 October, Ferdinand was declared King of Hungary due to his mariage to Louis' sister and his own sister being the widow of Louis. Ferdinand set out to enforce his claim on Hungary and captured Buda. These gains were short-lived and by 1529, an Ottoman counter-attack swiftly negated all of the gains by Ferdinand in his campaigns in 1527 and 1528 .

Ottoman army: In spring 1529, Suleiman mustered a great army in Ottoman Bulgaria, with the aim of securing control of Hungary and reducing the threat posed at his new borders by Ferdinand and the Holy Roman Empire. Various historians have estimated Suleiman's troop strength at anything from 120,000 to more than 300,000 men. As well as units of sipahi, or light cavalry, and elite janissary infantry, the Ottoman army incorporated a contingent of Christian Hungarians fighting for their new Turkish ruler. Suleiman acted as the commander-in-chief, and in April he appointed his grand vizier, a former Greek slave called Ibrahim Pasha, as serasker, a commander with powers to give orders in the sultan's name.

Suleiman launched his campaign on 10 May 1529 and faced obstacles from the outset. The spring rains characteristic of south-eastern Europe were particularly heavy that year, causing flooding in Bulgaria and rendering parts of the route barely passable. Many large-calibre guns became hoplessly mired and had to be left behind, and camels were lost in large numbers. Suleiman arrived in Osijek on 6 August. On 18 August, on the Mohács plain, he met up with a substantial cavalry force led by John Zápolya, who paid him homage and helped him recapture several fortresses lost since the Battle of Mohács to the Austrians, including Buda, which fell on 8 September. The only resistance came at Bratislava, where the Turkish fleet was bombarded as it sailed up the Danube.

Defensive measures: As the Ottomans advanced, those inside Vienna prepared to resist, their determination stiffened by news of the massacre of the Buda garrison in early September. Ferdinand I had withdrawn to the safety of Habsburg Bohemia following pleas for assistance to his brother, Emperor Charles V, who was too stretched by his war with France to spare more than a few Spanish infantry to the cause. The able Marshall of Austria, Wilhelm von Roggendorf, assumed charge of the garrison, with operational command entrusted to a seventy-year-old German mercenary named Niklas Graf Salm, who had distinguished himself at the Battle of Pavia in 1525. Salm arrived in Vienna at the head of a relief force which included German Landsknechte mercenary pikemen and Spanish musketmen and set about shoring up the three-hundred-year-old walls surrounding St. Stephen's Cathedral, near which he established his headquarters. To make sure the city could withstand a lengthy siege, he blocked the four city gates and reinforced the walls, which in some places were no more than six feet thick, and erected earthen bastions and an inner earthen rampart, levelling buildings where necessary.

Siege: The Ottoman army which arrived in late September had been depleted during the long advance into Austrian territory, leaving Suleiman short of camels and heavy equipment. Many of his troops arrived at Vienna in a poor state of health after the privations of the long march, and of those fit to fight, a third were light cavalry, or sipahis, ill-suited for siege warfare. The sultan despatched emissaries who were 3 richly dressed austrian prisnors to negotiate the city's surrender; Salm sent 3 richly dressed muslims back without a response. Suleiman's artillery then began pounding the city's walls, but it failed to significantly damage the Austrian defensive earthworks; his archers fared little better, achieving nuisance value at best. As the Ottoman army settled into position, the garrison launched sorties to disrupt the digging of sap trenches and mines, in one case almost capturing Ibrahim Pasha. The Austrians detected and blew up several mineheads, and on 6 October they sent out 8,000 troops to attack the Ottoman mining operations, destroying many of the mines but sustaining serious losses when congestion hindered their retreat into the city. More rain fell on October 11, and with the failure of the mining strategy, the chances of a quick Ottoman victory were receding by the hour. In addition, the Turks were running out of fodder for their horses, and casualties, sickness, and desertions began taking a toll on their ranks. Even the elite janissaries now voiced discontent at the state of affairs. In view of these factors, Suleiman had no alternative but to contemplate retreat. He held a council of war on 12 October which decided on one last attack, with extra rewards offered to the troops. However, this assault, too, was repulsed, as once again the arquebuses and long pikes of the defenders prevailed in keeping out the Turks. On the night of 14 October, screams were heard from the opposing camp, the sound of the Ottomans killing their prisoners prior to moving out. Some defenders who had foreseen only surrender interpreted their deliverance as a miracle. 

Aftermath: Some historians speculate that Suleiman's final assault wasn't necessarily intended to take the city but to cause as much damage as possible and weaken it for a later attack, a tactic he had employed at Buda in 1526. He led his next campaign in 1532 but was held up too long reducing the western Hungarian fort of Kőszeg, by which time winter was close and Charles V, now awakened to Vienna's vulnerability, assembled 80,000 troops. So instead of carrying out the planned siege, the invading troops retreated through and laid waste to Styria. The two campaigns proved that Vienna was situated at the extreme limit of Ottoman logistical capability. The army needed to winter at Constantinople so that its troops could attend to their fiefs and recruit for the next year's campaigning.

Suleiman's retreat did not mark a complete failure. The campaign underlined Ottoman control of southern Hungary and left behind enough destruction in Habsburg Hungary and in those Austrian lands it had ravaged to impair Ferdinand's capacity to mount a sustained counterattack. Suleiman's achievement was to consolidate the gains of 1526 and establish the puppet kingdom of John Zápolya as a buffer against the Holy Roman Empire.

The invasion and its climactic siege, however, exacted a heavy price from both sides, with tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians dead and thousands more sold into slavery. It marked the end of the Ottomans' expansion towards the centre of Europe and arguably the beginning of their long decline as the dominant power of the Renaissance world. "The delivery of Vienna by a brave garrison under Count Niklas Salm in 1529," suggested historian Rolf Adolf Kahn, "was probably a greater though less spectacular achievement than the liberation five generations later brought about primarily by the efforts of a rather large army of combined imperial and Polish forces".
Ferdinand I set up a funeral monument for Niklas Graf Salm — who had been injured during the last Ottoman assault and died on 4 May 1530 — to express his gratitude to the defender of Vienna. This Renaissance sarcophagus is now on display in the baptistry of the Votivkirche in Vienna. Ferdinand's son, Maximilian II, later built the summer palace of Neugebaeude on the spot where Suleiman is said to have pitched his tent.

The Holy Roman Empire, European History

Holy Roman Emperor: 800 AD
In 799, for the third time in half a century, a pope is in need of help from the Frankish king. After being physically attacked by his enemies in the streets of Rome (their stated intention is to blind him and cut out his tongue, to make him incapable of office), Leo III makes his way through the Alps to visit Charlemagne at Paderborn. It is not known what is agreed, but Charlemagne travels to Rome in 800 to support the pope. In a ceremony in St Peter's, on Christmas Day, Leo is due to anoint Charlemagne's son as his heir. But unexpectedly (it is maintained), as Charlemagne rises from prayer, the pope places a crown on his head and acclaims him emperor. 
 Charlemagne expresses displeasure but accepts the honor. The displeasure is probably diplomatic, for the legal emperor is undoubtedly the one in Constantinople. Nevertheless this public alliance between the pope and the ruler of a confederation of Germanic tribes now reflects the reality of political power in the west. And it launches the concept of the new Holy Roman Empire which will play an important role throughout the Middle Ages. 
The Holy Roman Empire only becomes formally established in the next century. But it is implicit in the title adopted by Charlemagne in 800: 'Charles, most serene Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific emperor, governing the Roman Empire.' 
 

Emperors and popes: 962-1250
The imperial role accorded by the pope to Charlemagne in 800 is handed on in increasingly desultory fashion during the 9th century. From 924 it falls into abeyance. But in 962 a pope once again needs help against his Italian enemies. Again he appeals to a strong German ruler. 
The coronation of Otto I by Pope John XII in 962 marks a revival of the concept of a Christian emperor in the west. It is also the beginning of an unbroken line of Holy Roman emperors lasting for more than eight centuries. Otto I does not call himself Roman emperor, but his son Otto II uses the title - as a clear statement of western and papal independence from the other Christian emperor in Constantinople.
Otto and his son and grandson (Otto II and Otto III) regard the imperial crown as a mandate to control the papacy. They dismiss popes at their will and instal replacements more to their liking (sometimes even changing their mind and repeating the process). This power, together with territories covering much of central Europe, gives the German empire and the imperial title great prestige in the late 10th century. 
But subservience was not the papal intention in reinstating the Holy Roman Empire. A clash is inevitable. 
 

Papal decline and recovery: 1046-1061
The struggle for dominance between emperor and pope comes to a head in two successive reigns, of the emperors Henry III and Henry IV, in the 11th century. The imperial side has a clear win in the first round. 
In 1046 Henry III deposes three rival popes. Over the next ten years he personally selects four of the next five pontiffs. But after his death, in 1056, these abuses of the system bring a rapid reaction. Pope Nicholas II, elected in 1058, initiates a process of reform which exposes the underlying tension between empire and papacy. 
In 1059, at a synod in Rome, Nicholas condemns various abuses within the church. These include simony (the selling of clerical posts), the marriage of clergy and, more controversially, corrupt practices in papal elections. Nicholas now restricts the choice of a new pope to a conclave of cardinals, thus ruling out any direct lay influence. Imperial influence is his clear target. 
In 1061 the assembled bishops of Germany - the emperor's own faction - declare all the decrees of this pope null and void. Battle is joined. But meanwhile the pope has been enlisting new allies. 
In 1059 Nicholas II takes two political steps of a kind, unusual at this period, which will later be commonplace for the medieval papacy. He grants land, already occupied, to recipients of his own choice; and he involves those recipients in a feudal relationship with the papacy, or the Holy See, as the feudal lord. 
This time the beneficiaries are the Normans, who are granted territorial rights in southern Italy and Sicily in return for feudal obligations to Rome. The pope, in an overtly political struggle against the German emperor, is playing a strong hand. The issue will be brought to a head within a few years by another pope, Gregory VII. 
 
Gregory VII and investiture: 1075
Pope Gregory seizes political control by decreeing, in 1075, that no lay ruler may make ecclesiastical appointments. Powerful bishops and abbots are henceforth to be pope's men rather than emperor's men. The issue becomes known as the investiture controversy, being in essence a dispute over who has the right to invest high clerics with the robes and insignia of office. 
The appointment of bishops and abbots is too valuable a right to be easily relinquished by secular rulers. Great feudal wealth and power is attached to these offices. And high clerics, as the best educated members of the medieval community, are important members of any administration. 
In subsequent periods compromises are made on both sides, particularly in the Concordat of Worms, in 1122, where a distinction is made between the spiritual and secular element in clerical appointments. But investiture remains a bone of contention between the papacy and lay rulers - not only in the empire, after the first dramatic flare up between Gregory and Henry IV, but also in France and England. 

Rome and the struggle for power: 1076-1138
The nine-year struggle between pope Gregory VII and the emperor Henry IV provides a vivid glimpse of the political role of the medieval papacy. St Gregory, canonized in the Catholic Reformation, is one of the great defenders of papal power. His career involves incessant power-broking and military struggle. 
Henry IV, alarmed at the demands being made over investiture, sends a threatening letter to the pope in 1076. The pope responds by excommunicating the emperor. By his public penance at Canossa, Henry has the excommunication lifted. But the truce is short-lived. Henry's enemies, prompted by the pope's action, take a hand. 
German princes opposed to Henry IV elect and crown, in 1077, a rival king - Rudolf, the duke of Swabia. Rudolf and Henry engage in a civil war, which Henry wins in 1080. By then the pope has recognized Rudolf as the German king and has again excommunicated Henry. 
This time Henry's response is more aggressive. He summons a council which deposes the pope and elects in his place the archbishop of Ravenna (as pope Clement III). Henry marches into Italy, enters Rome and is crowned emperor by this pope of his own creation. Meanwhile the real pope, Gregory, is living in a state of siege in his impregnable Roman fortress, the Castel Sant'Angelo. 
Gregory appeals for help to his vassals the Normans, recently invited by the papacy to conquer southern Italy and Sicily. A Norman army reaches Rome in 1084, drives out the Germans and rescues Gregory. But the Norman sack of the city is so violent, and provokes such profound hostility, that Gregory has to flee south with his rescuers. He dies in 1085 in Sicily. 
Clement III returns to Rome and reigns there with imperial support as pope (or in historical terms as antipope) for most of the next ten years. Urban II, the pope who preaches the first crusade in 1095, is not able to enter the holy city for several years after his election. Unrest prevails in Rome, and uncertainty in the empire, until the Hohenstaufen win the German crown in 1138.

African History, Continental Evolution

Walking tall: from 4 million years ago

Africa is the setting for the long dawn of human history. From about four million years ago ape-like creatures walk upright on two feet in this continent. Intermediate between apes and men, they have been named Australopithecus. Later, some two million years ago, the first creatures to be classed as part of the human species evolve in Africa. They develop a technology based on sharp tools of flint, introducing what has become known as the Stone Age. 
About a million years ago humans explore northwards out of Africa, beginning the process by which mankind has colonized the planet. During the later part of the Old Stone Age (see Divisions of the Stone Age), humans in Africa produce some of the earliest and most significant examples of prehistoric art. Paintings on stone slabs, found in Namibia, date from nearly 30,000 years ago. Rock and cave paintings survive from widely separated areas. They range from those of the San people, in southern Africa, to others dating from about 8000 BC in what is now the Sahara. The Sahara is also the site of the earliest new Stone Age (or Neolithic) culture to have been discovered in Africa. 
 
A damp Sahara: 8000 - 3000 BC

The Sahara at this time supports not only elephant, giraffe and rhinoceros but hippopotamus and even fishes. It is a friendly landscape in which Neolithic communities progress from hunting and gathering into a partly settled way of life, with the herding of cattle. Their paintings show that dogs have been domesticated and are sometimes used in the hunt - and that hunting methods include the pursuit of hippopotamus from boats made of reeds. 

The paintings also suggest that these people wear woven materials as well as animal skins. The remains from their settlements reveal that they are skilful potters. Around 3000 BC a climatic change gradually turns the Sahara to a desert (over the millennia it seems to have gone through a succession of humid and dry periods). The change brings to an end the first settled culture of Africa. The Sahara becomes the almost impenetrable barrier which throughout recorded history has separated the Mediterranean coast and North Africa from the rest of the continent. At much the same time North Africa becomes the site of one of the world's first great civilizations, Egypt. There may perhaps be a link, in the migration eastwards of the Sahara people, but archaeology has found no evidence of it. 
 
Africa's first civilizations: from 3000 BC

Egypt's natural links are in a northeasterly direction, following the Fertile Crescent up into western Asia. Similarly Ethiopia, the other early civilization of northeast Africa, is most influenced by Arabia, just across the Red Sea. So these two regions, Egypt and Ethiopia, flanked by desert to the west and equatorial jungle to the south, evolve at first in isolation from the rest of Africa. But the development of maritime trade along the Mediterranean coast, pioneered by the Phoenicians in the 8th century BC, does increasingly bring Egypt into a specifically North African context. 
 
The people of sub-Saharan Africa: 2000 - 500 BC
 

Much of the southern part of the African continent is occupied by tribes known as Khoisan, characterized by a language with a unique click in its repertoire of sounds. The main divisions of the Khoisan are the San (often referred to until recent times as Bushmen) and the Khoikhoi (similarly known until recently as Hottentots). 

The tropical forests of central Africa are occupied largely by the Pygmies (with an average height of about 4'9', or less than 1.5m). But the Africans who will eventually dominate most of sub-Saharan Africa are tribes from the north speaking Bantu  languages.The Bantu languages probably derive from the region of modern Nigeria and Cameroon. This western area, bordering the Gulf of Guinea, is also the cradle of other early developments in African history. 

Iron smelting is known here, as in other sites in a strip below the Sahara, by the middle of the 1st millennium BC. And the fascinating but still mysterious Nok culture, lasting from the 5th century BC to the 2nd century AD, provides magnificent pottery figures which stand at the beginning of a recognizably African sculptural tradition.  Probably during the first millennium BC, tribes speaking Bantu languages begin to move south. They gradually push ahead of them the Khoisan, in a process which will eventually make the Bantu masters of nearly all the southern part of the continent. 
Meanwhile, in the regions immediately south of the desert, the first great kingdoms of sub-Saharan Africa become established during the first millennium AD.

The trading kingdoms of West Africa: 5th - 15th c.

Successions of powerful kingdoms in West Africa, spanning a millennium, are unusual in that their great wealth is based on trade rather than conquest. Admittedly much warfare goes on between them, enabling the ruler of the most powerful state to demand the submission of the others. But this is only the background to the main business of controlling the caravans of merchants and camels. 

These routes run north and south through the Sahara. And the most precious of the commodities moving north is African gold. The first kingdom to establish full control over the southern end of the Saharan trade is Ghana - situated not in the modern republic of that name but in the southwest corner of what is now Mali, in the triangle formed between the Senegal river to the west and the Niger to the east. 

Ghana is well placed to control the traffic in gold from Bambuk, in the valley of the Senegal. This is the first of the great fields from which the Africans derive their alluvial gold (meaning gold carried downstream in a river and deposited in silt, from which grains and nuggets can be extracted). Like subsequent great kingdoms in this region, Ghana is at a crossroads of trade routes. The Saharan caravans link the Mediterranean markets to the north with the supply of African raw materials to the south. Meanwhile along the savannah (or open grasslands) south of the Sahara communication is easy on an east-west axis, bringing to any commercial centre the produce of the whole width of the continent. 

While gold is the most valuable African commodity, slaves run it a close second. They come mainly from the region around Lake Chad, where the Zaghawa tribes make a habit of raiding their neighbors and sending them up the caravan routes to Arab purchasers in the north. Other African products in demand around the Mediterranean are ivory, ostrich feathers and the cola nut (containing caffeine and already popular 1000 years ago as the basis for a soft drink). 

The most important commodity coming south with the caravans is salt, essential in the diet of African agricultural communities. The salt mines of the Sahara (sometimes controlled by Berber tribes from the north, sometimes by Africans from the south) are as valuable as the gold fields of the African rivers (see Salt mines and caravans). Traders from the north also bring dates and a wide range of metal goods - weapons, armor, and copper either in its pure form or as brass (the alloy of copper and zinc). 
 

Ghana and its successors: 8th - 16th century

Ghana remains the dominant kingdom of West Africa for a very long period, from well before the 8th century to the 13th. The prosperity resulting from its activities is evident in the town of Jenne - by800 already a thriving town on the Niger. In the 13th century the gold field of Bure, on the upper reaches of the Niger, becomes more important than Bambuk. The shift in economic power is followed by a political change when a warrior by the name of Sundiata conquers Ghana and establishes the even more extensive kingdom of Mali - stretching from the Atlantic coast to beyond the Niger. 
 

In the 15th century the western trade route through the Sahara to Morocco declines in importance, and a central one up to Tunis carries more of the desert trade. This change prompts the decline of the Mali kingdom - to be replaced for a while by another power further to the east, that of the Songhay people. Their capital is the city of Gao, built on both banks of the Niger downstream of the great curve in the river. 

At the end of the 16th century Gao too loses its dominant position. By then a new foreign power is establishing a presence on African coasts, with a new religion, Christianity. But the Christians are four centuries behind the Muslims in penetrating these regions. 
 

Islam in east Africa: 8th - 11th century

Africa is the first region into which Islam is carried by merchants rather than armies. It spreads down the well-established trade routes of the east coast, in which the coastal towns of the Red Sea (the very heart of Islam) play a major part. 

There is archaeological evidence from the 8th century of a tiny wooden mosque, with space enough for about ten worshippers, as far south as modern Kenya - on Shanga, one of the islands offshore from Lamu. Shanga's international links at the time are further demonstrated by surviving fragments of Persian pottery and Chinese stoneware. By the 11th century, when Islam makes its greatest advances in Africa, several settlements down the east coast have stone mosques. 

At Kilwa, on the coast of modern Tanzania, a full-scale Muslim dynasty is established at this period. Coins from about 1070 give the name of the local ruler as 'the majestic Sultan Ali bin al-Hasan'. Three centuries later the Muslim traveler Ibn Batuta finds Kilwa an extremely prosperous sultanate, busy with trade in gold and slaves. In the 20th century Muslims remain either a majority or a significant minority in most regions of the east African coast. But the early penetration of Islam is even more effective down the caravan routes of west Africa. 
 

Islam in west Africa: 8th - 11th century

From the 8th century Islam spreads gradually south in the oases of the Sahara trade routes. By the 10th century many of the merchants at the southern end of the trade routes are Muslims. In the 11th century the rulers begin to be converted. 

The first Muslim ruler in the region is the king of Gao, from about the year 1000. The ruling classes of other communities follow suit. The king of Ghana, the most powerful realm, is one of the last to accept Islam - probably in the 1070s. The effect of Islam on African communities, with their own strong traditional cultures, is a gradual process. In 1352 Ibn Batuta visits Mali. He is impressed by the people's regularity in saying their prayers, but he looks with stern disapproval at certain practices which are more evidently African. He particularly frowns upon performances by masked dancers, and on the tendency of women to walk about in an unseemly shortage of clothing. Mali is famous throughout the Islamic world at the time of Ibn Batuta's visit, because only a generation earlier its ruler has astonished Cairo by his wealth. 

In 1324 Mansa Musa, the sultan of Mali, decides to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. His richly attired retinue and his heavily laden animals reflect his financial status - for he effectively controls the African gold trade which now supports the currency not only of Islamic states but of European communes and kingdoms. (The most valuable coins of Roman Catholic Europe have until recently been minted in silver, but Genoa, Florence and Venice reintroduce gold in the late 13th century and northern kingdoms soon follow their example.) 
Contemporary accounts say that when Mansa Musa passes through Cairo, on his way to Mecca, his caravan numbers 60,000 people and his camels carry 12 tons of gold. He distributes largesse to religious institutions and to fawning courtiers alike. Indeed he is so generous with the abundant gold of Mali that the value of the metal in Cairo suffers a temporary slump. But the reputation of Africa and its wealth is securely established. 
 

The forest kingdoms of west Africa: 11th - 15th c.

The great trade routes to the north, through the kingdoms first of Ghana and then of Mali and Gao, gradually provide a market for the produce of the forest regions of west Africa. Unlike the open savannah of the northern kingdoms, the conditions of life in the tropical rain forest make it difficult for small communities to coalesce into more powerful states. But one such state emerges among the Yoruba people during the 11th century. It is Ife, famous now for its sculpture (see the Sculpture of Ife and Benin). Lying west of the Niger and just within the border of the forest (in present-day Nigeria), Ife has the economic advantage of being close to a gold field. 
 
In the 15th century Ife is eclipsed by a neighboring kingdom, Benin, lying a little to the southeast and further into the forest. Rule from Benin City is established by a warrior king, Ewuare, over a forest region some seventy-five miles in extent. When the Portuguese arrive, in 1486, they are greatly impressed by many elements of Benin. They are struck by the sophistication of life in the royal palace. They admire the efficiency of the administration. 

But most of all they marvel, as the world has continued to marvel, at the brass sculptures of Benin - in a realistic tradition deriving from the nearby example of Ife (see the Sculpture of Ife and Benin). 
 

Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe: 11th - 15th c.

The plateau between the rivers Zambezi and Limpopo, in southeast Africa, offers rich opportunities for human settlement. Its grasslands make excellent grazing for cattle. The tusks of dead elephants provide an easy basis for a trade in ivory. A seam of gold, running along the highest ridge, shows signs of having been worked in at least four places before 1000 AD. The earliest important trading centre is at Mapungubwe, on the bank of the Limpopo. The settlement is established by a cattle-herding people, whose increasing prosperity leads to the emergence of a sophisticated court and ruling elite. 
 
In 1075 the ruler of Mapungubwe separates his own dwelling from those of his people. He moves his court from the plain to the top of a sandstone hill, where he rules from a palace with imposing stone walls. It is the first example of the Zimbabwe of this region - a word in Shona, the local Bantu language, meaning literally 'stone houses’. Zimbabwe becomes the characteristic dwellings of chieftains, and about 100 hilltop ruins of this kind survive. Easily the most impressive is the group known as Great Zimbabwe, which in the 13th century succeeds Mapungubwe as the dominant Shona power - with a kingdom stretching over the whole region between the Limpopo and the Zambezi. 
 
Great Zimbabwe is not close to the local gold seam, but its power derives from controlling the trade in gold. By this period mine shafts are sunk to a depth of 100 feet. Miners (among them women and children) descend these shafts to bring up the precious metal. As much as a ton of gold is sometimes extracted in a year. The buildings of Great Zimbabwe are evidence of equally great labor. Massive stone walls enclose a palace complex with a great conical tower, while impressive dry-stone granite masonry is used in a fortress or acropolis at the top of a nearby hill. The buildings date from the 13th and 14th centuries, the peak of Great Zimbabwe's power. 
 
In the 15th century Great Zimbabwe is eclipsed by two other kingdoms, one to the south at Khami (near modern Bulawayo) and one to the north, near Mount Darwin. This latter kingdom is established by a ruler who is known as the Munhumutapa - a title adopted by all his successors. The Munhumutapa is the potentate of whom word is sent home to Europe by new arrivals on the African coast in the early 16th century. His court is first reached by a Portuguese traveler in about 1511.

Outsiders around Africa: 16th century

The story of Africa from the 16th century is that of outsiders prying round its coasts in search of plunder or trade. The north receives the attention of the two most powerful Mediterranean nations. The so-called Barbary Coast, stretching from Algeria to modern Libya, is disputed between the Spanish and the Turks - with the Turks prevailing. Around the rest of Africa, from Morocco down to the Cape and then up the east coast, European interest is pioneered by the Portuguese. 
 

The beginnings of Portugal's empire: 15th - 16th c.

The Portuguese, in their bold exploration along the coasts of Africa, have an underlying purpose - to sail round the continent to the spice markets of the east. But in the process they develop a trading interest and a lasting presence in Africa itself. 

On the west coast their interest is in the slave trade, resulting in Portuguese settlements in both Guinea, and Angola. On the east coast they are drawn to Mozambique and the Zambezi River by news of a local ruler, the Munhumutapa, who has fabulous wealth in gold. In their efforts to reach the Munhumutapa, the Portuguese establish in 1531 two settlements far up the Zambezi - one of them, at Tete, some 260 miles from the sea. The Munhumutapa and his gold mines remain beyond the grasp of the intruders. But in this region of east Africa - as in Guinea and Angola in the west - Portuguese involvement becomes sufficiently strong to survive into the 20th century. 

Throughout the 16th century the Portuguese have no European rivals on the long sea route round Africa. The situation changes in the early 17th century, when both the Dutch and the British create East India companies. The Dutch, in particular, damage Portugal's eastern trade. 
 

Dutch and British trade: 17th-18th centuries

The commercial interest of the East India companies is focused on the spice islands of the East Indies. Africa is merely a large object to be sailed around. But sailing ships need secure ports where they can take on water and fresh meat and vegetables. 

The British ships make the island of St Helena, far out in the Atlantic, their main port of call. The East India Company forms a settlement there in 1659; it has remained a British possession, but a place of little consequence, ever since. By contrast the Dutch choice of a similar settlement has had momentous repercussions in history. They select in 1652 a harbor at the southern tip of Africa, nestling beneath Table Mountain at the Cape. The expansion of the Dutch colony at the Cape is one of the two most significant developments in Africa during the 17th and 18th centuries. The other is a vast increase in the long-established African slave trade. European ships - increasingly from Britain - pick up their human cargo at collection points along the west coast of Africa and transport the slaves, in appalling conditions, across the Atlantic to plantations in the West Indies and continental America. In both these undertakings the Europeans make contact only with the coastal regions of Africa. The 19th century brings an increasing interest in the interior of this last unexplored continent.

Commerce and Christianity: 1841-1857

In 1857 the most famous explorer of the day addresses an audience of young men in Cambridge's Senate House. He urges upon them an idealistic mission worthy of their attention in Africa. He is about to return there, he tells them, in the hope of opening a path into the continent 'for commerce and Christianity'. He needs young enthusiasts to continue this work. The speaker is David Livingstone, aptly described by a commentator of the time as an 'indefatigable pedestrian'.

Livingstone's first involvement with Africa has been purely as a missionary, sent out to South Africa in 1841 by the London Missionary Society. But he soon becomes interested in other tasks far beyond the responsibilities placed on him by the society. 
The challenge which first inspires Livingstone is to establish mission stations ever further north into the unexplored interior of the continent. This in turn brings him experiences which dictate the pattern of his life.

In these remote regions he sees the continent's slave trade at its source, where the victims are captured by fellow Africans for sale to the Arab traders who dispatch them to markets on the east coast. Livingstone becomes convinced that this pernicious trade will only be suppressed if routes are established along which European goods can reach the interior of the continent, providing the basis for new and different trading activities. 

Along such routes missionaries too will travel, benefiting the Africans' spiritual as well as their material needs - hence 'commerce and Christianity'. But finding such routes requires from Livingstone the skills for which he becomes renowned, those of the explorer. The great journey which has recently made his name, when he speaks in 1857 in Cambridge, has lasted the best part of three years. 

Livingstone's first great journey: 1853-1856

In 1853 Livingstone is provided with twenty-seven men by a friendly chieftain at Sesheke on the Zambezi. With them he sets off west, into unknown territory, to find a way to the coast. Six months later, after appalling difficulties from disease and hostile tribes, the group arrives at Luanda on the Atlantic coast. There are British ships in the harbor, whose captains offer Livingstone a passage home to instant fame. But he insists that he must take his men back to Sesheke. Returning by a different route takes him even longer, suggesting that there is no easy access to the interior from the west side of the continent. Instead Livingstone now attempts a journey east from Sesheke down the Zambezi, this time accompanied by more than 100 tribesmen. 

Within fifty miles their way is blocked by the Victoria Falls. This brings Livingstone the credit of being the first European to discover this marvel of nature, though to him it is merely an irritating obstacle. However in this direction the terrain does prove easier to cross on foot. Reaching Portuguese Mozambique, Livingstone this time leaves his tribesmen at the coast (he returns two years later to guide them home). He sets sail in 1856 for England. Here he publishes Missionary Travels (1857), a dramatic account of his adventures which makes him famous. But by the end of 1858 he is back to Africa. 

Over the next fifteen years his adventures form part of an intense search, mainly conducted by British explorers, to discover the sources of the Nile and the Congo among Africa's central cluster of great lakes. 
 

Burton, Speke and the Nile: 1857-1876

The quest to discover the source of the Nile becomes an obsession of the mid-19th century. For it is an extraordinary fact that this great river was at the heart of one of the world's first civilizations and yet, 5000 years later, no one knows where its enriching waters arrive from. It is true that the source of one its two branches, the Blue Nile (which merges with the White Nile at Khartoum), is known with some degree of certainty from the 17th century - for its waters flow from Lake Tana in Ethiopia, a civilized area familiar to many visitors. But the White Nile comes from much further south, in impenetrable equatorial regions. 
 
The first serious attempts to explore far up the waters of the White Nile are made from 1839 on the order of Mohammed Ali, ruler of Egypt and recent conqueror of the Sudan. His explorers reach a point slightly upstream of Juba, where rising land and tumbling rapids make it impossible to continue any further on the river itself. A land approach by another route towards the elusive headwaters is clearly required. Such an expedition is planned in 1856 by the Royal Geographical Society in London. Chosen to lead it are two young men, Richard Burton (already famous for the astonishingly bold pilgrimage which he has made in 1853 to Mecca, disguised as a Muslim) and the relatively inexperienced John Hanning Speke. 

Burton and Speke arrive in December 1856 in Zanzibar, where they spend six months planning their journey into the interior of Africa. In June 1857 they are ready to set off from the coast at Bagamoyo. At first they are able to follow the well-trodden routes of Arab merchants which bring them by November to Tabora, the long-established hub of east African trading routes. Here they are told of three great lakes in the region. To the south is Lake Nyasa (in western terms discovered in the following year by Livingstone, now back in Africa from England). To the west is Lake Tanganyika and to the north Lake Victoria, both about to be discovered by Burton and Speke. 

It is a strange concept that Europeans should be described as discovering geographical features on which the local populations are well able to provide them with information. Yet the first description of such places by outsiders does have a real significance. Travelers returning from remote places to the developed world contribute news of them for the first time to a global pool of ever-developing knowledge. The detailed maps which we now take for granted, and which in the 19th century had many uncharted blank spaces, depend entirely on such second-hand 'discoveries' and on subsequent visits by other explorers to fill in the details. 

Burton and Speke first explore westwards, towards Lake Tanganyika, which they reach in February 1858 at Ujiji (the site thirteen years later of Stanley's dramatic meeting with Livingstone - see Stanley and Livingstone). When they arrive back in Tabora, Burton is ill. Speke therefore strikes north alone to reach (and name) Lake Victoria. 

Speke conceives the hunch, on no firm evidence, that this great stretch of water is probably the source of the White Nile. It could just as well be Lake Tanganyika, and the issue is hotly debated on the return of the explorers to England. The Royal Geographical Society therefore supports another expedition by Speke to try and resolve the matter. Speke sets off again in 1860 with a new companion, James Grant. (A disgruntled Burton has meanwhile hurried west to inspect and describe the Mormons in their recently established utopia at Salt Lake City.) 

Speke and Grant reach the southern shore of Lake Victoria in 1861 and begin exploring up its western coast. In July 1862 they discover and name the Ripon Falls, over which water tumbles from the northern extremity of the lake towards the distant Mediterranean. With considerable confidence Speke can now maintain that this great lake is indeed the source of the White Nile. But two more pieces of the jigsaw are required to clinch it.

Baker, Stanley and the Nile: 1863-1872

While travelling round Lake Victoria, Speke hears news of another large lake to the northwest. He guesses that the water from the Ripon Falls may reach and flow through this other lake, but he is prevented by a local war from following the course of the river towards it. On their way north Speke and Grant rejoin the Nile at Konokoro, near Juba. Here, in February 1863, they meet the most eccentric pair of characters of all those involved in the Nile exploration. Samuel Baker and his intrepid Hungarian wife, Florence von Sass, have equipped their own expedition and have travelled upstream from Khartoum with ninety-six attendants in three boats. 
 

Speke and Baker, friends already from earlier encounters, treat each other with exemplary generosity. Speke tells Baker of the reported lake and hands over to him the maps which he has made since leaving Lake Victoria. Baker, forced now by the approaching rapids to take to the land, gives Speke and Grant his three boats for their continuing journey downstream. Baker and his wife now plunge into two years of extreme danger among hostile tribes from whom their only protection is alliances with unscrupulous Arab slave-traders or powerful local potentates, one of whom even tries to claim Florence as payment for services rendered. 
 
Not until March 1865 are Baker and his wife safely back in Konokoro. But in the interim they have reached the stretch of water which Baker names Lake Albert (thus nominally securing the entire upper reaches of the Nile for the British royal family). Baker has explored far enough round the lake to identify the points at which the water from Lake Victoria both arrives and departs.

The only unsolved question is whether the huge Lake Tanganyika might also contribute to the flow. This is finally answered in 1872, when Stanley and Livingstone explore the northern shores. They discover that the only river at that point flows into rather than out of Lake Tanganyika. 
 

Livingstone, Stanley and the Congo: 1872-1877

When Stanley departs for England in March 1872, he leaves Livingstone at Lake Tanganyika - for the veteran explorer is determined to investigate another river system, west of the lake, which he believes must be linked either to the Nile or to the Congo. In August 1872, receiving supplies and men sent from the coast by Stanley, he sets off south to the marshy area round Lake Bangweulu. Here, exhausted by dysentery, he dies in April 1873.

Stanley, devoted to Livingstone after the four months he has spent with him, is also well aware of the Livingstone legend, contact with which has secured his own fame. He decides to continue on his own account the explorer's final quest (see Stanley and Livingstone). 

Stanley raises support in London for a new expedition to explore the Lualaba, the river whose source Livingstone was hoping to find near Lake Bangweulu. In November 1874 he and his party of three Europeans and about 300 Africans (some of them women and children) set off from the east coast at Bagamoyo and head for Lake Victoria. 

They have with them a collapsible boat, the Lady Alice, in which Stanley surveys the entire circuit of the shores of Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika before moving on further west to the Lualaba. In 1876 he reaches Nyangwe, the furthest point reached by Livingstone in a journey of exploration along the river. 
 
Beyond this is inhospitable territory, of dense rain forest and savage tribes, unreached even by the Arab traders whose routes have long crisscrossed the continent. Stanley presses on till he can launch the Lady Alice on the Congo itself, a meandering river often four miles broad. Eventually he reaches a vast basin which he names Stanley Pool (now the site of Brazzaville on one bank and Kinshasa on the other). Beyond this the river plunges down a long series of cataracts, named by Stanley the Livingstone Falls. Many of Stanley's men drown here. For the last part of his transcontinental journey, from Isangila Falls, he strikes out cross-country. He reaches the estuary of the Congo, at Boma, in August 1877. 
 
It has been the most dramatic and arduous of all the great journeys of African exploration of the previous twenty years. When the remnants of the party reach Boma, more than half the Africans recruited three years previously in Zanzibar are dead. So are Stanley's three European companions.

The cost has been high. But with the Congo charted, the pattern of the great rivers rising in central Africa is now finally clear. And Stanley's achievement turns out to be a pivotal event in the 19th-century European involvement in the continent. This last installment of the mid-century saga of exploration is also the first chapter of the subsequent 'scramble for Africa'. 
 
King Leopold and the Congo: 1875-1878

For two years it is known around the world that Stanley, if alive, is somewhere in west central Africa. The last news received from him is in 1875, just after he has sailed the Lady Alice round Lake Victoria. There is therefore much excitement and curiosity concerning his exploits as an explorer. But only one European ruler sees Stanley's adventure as a prelude to imperialism. This exception is Leopold II, king of Europe's newest country, the small and relatively insignificant Belgium. At a time when the main imperial powers, Britain and France, are extremely reluctant to take on more commitments, Leopold sees the chance of prestige in a new colonial role. 
 
In September 1876 Leopold invites the world's leading African explorers and experts to a lavish conference in Brussels. He invites them to join him in setting up an International African Association, the purpose of which will be 'to open to civilization the only part of our globe to which it has yet to penetrate'. The king emphasizes in his opening remarks that in this he has no selfish designs. 'No, gentlemen, if Belgium is small, she is happy and satisfied with her lot.'

But in a subsequent letter to the Belgian ambassador in London, he is more frank: 'I do not want to miss a good chance of getting us a slice of this magnificent African cake.' 
Leopold's interest can be taken as the beginning of the scramble for Africa (a phrase coined in 1884). But as yet there is little of a practical nature that he can do. Stanley, the man who will be best equipped to help Leopold realize his ambitious plan, is in September 1876 only just striking west from Lake Tanganyika to reach the Lualaba and begin his exploration of the Congo.

A year later, in September 1877, news reaches Europe of Stanley's success. Leopold sends agents to intercept the explorer on his journey back to England. They approach him in January 1878, in the railway station at Marseilles, and invite him to accompany them immediately to Brussels. Stanley declines the invitation. He is determined that Britain shall benefit from the riches (mainly ivory and rubber) which he has observed in the Congo basin. He spends the next few months - on the crest of a hero's welcome - preaching to politicians, businessmen and philanthropists a renewed version of Livingstone's original message. It is Britain's duty and opportunity to take commerce and Christianity into the heart of Africa. Stanley's clarion call falls on deaf ears. Within six months, in June 1878, he sends a message to Leopold. He is coming to Brussels. 
 
The race for Stanley Pool: 1879-1882

Stanley agrees to work for Leopold for five years. His task is to create a viable link between Boma and Stanley Pool. This lake is the all-important strategic site on the Congo, for Stanley has proved that upstream from here the river is navigable for 1000 miles or more. The immediate and daunting undertaking is to use tons of explosive to blast roads, bypassing the stretches of river where cataracts make navigation impossible. Along these roads, and on the calm stretches of water, the parts of two steamboats, the Royal and the En Avant, will be transported - to be assembled in Stanley Pool and then to trade on the upper river. By August 1879 Stanley is back at Boma, ready to begin this mighty labor. 
Progress is predictably slow. A year later, Stanley has still covered less than half the distance. And he is as yet unaware that a French rival, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, has stolen a march on him.

Brazza has spent the years 1875-8 exploring the Ogooué River, north of the Congo in Gabon. Hearing on his return of Stanley's discoveries, and eager to claim the Congo for France, Brazza realizes that he knows a relatively quick and secret route to the great river. With considerable difficulty, he wins French support for a bold plan. Brazza proposes to forestall Stanley at his own strategically placed Stanley Pool. 
 
Brazza starts his journey up the Ogooué late in 1879. By September 1880, with his rival still miles downstream, he is in Stanley Pool introducing himself to the local potentate, King Makoko, ruler of the territory along the north bank of the river. Within days Makoko puts his royal seal on a solemn treaty, placing his kingdom under the protection of France and agreeing to have no dealings with any Europeans other than the French.

With this achieved, Brazza makes his way down the lower Congo to the coast. In doing so he meets Stanley, busy with his laborious road works. Brazza mentions nothing to Stanley of his triumph, or of the treaty in his pocket. 
 

Stanley discovers the unpleasant truth in the summer of 1881, when he reaches Stanley Pool. A tricolor is flying over a guard post (on the site of what later becomes Brazzaville) and Stanley finds that he is refused all assistance on the north bank of the river. Even the local markets are closed to him. He has no option but to cross to the south.

Here there is a friendly ruler, Ngaliema. He and Stanley became blood brothers when they met in 1877. After some difficulties Stanley establishes in 1882 a foothold in Ngaliema's kingdom, on a site which he names Léopoldville. Thus the race between the two explorers results in the first unmistakable carve-up of African territory - French Congo north of the river, Belgian Congo to the south. 
 

Because of Leopold's passionate interest in his venture, it is the Belgian undertaking which makes rapid progress. Stanley, unlike Brazza, is in situ. With his two steamers plying the reaches of the middle Congo, he is busy building trading stations. A serious commercial venture, the first in the interior of Africa, may perhaps be in the making in what soon becomes the Congo Free State. 

The scale of Leopold's ambition (evident, for example, when he tries in 1882 to persuade General Gordon to take command in the Congo) suddenly alarms the larger European powers. They have shown no interest in any race for African territory. But if there is to be such a race, perhaps they cannot afford not to be part of it. 
 

Before the scramble: 1882-1884

In 1882, when Stanley is securely established in Léopoldville, the European involvement in Africa is still limited to a few colonial ventures around the coast. Some, such as Portugal's holdings in Mozambique and Angola, date back to the early voyages of exploration.

The next African colony to be founded, a century and more after the pioneering efforts of the Portuguese, has meanwhile developed into by far the best established of the European settlements. The 17th-century Dutch presence at the Cape of Good Hope has evolved into Britain's Cape colony and two independent Boer republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The 19th century brings increasing European involvement in North Africa, where economic interests cause France to annex Algeria and Tunisia. They also draw a reluctant Britain into close involvement in Egyptian affairs.

Elsewhere there are only a few places, all of them in West Africa, where there is any European involvement other than in coastal trade. Nearly all the European settlements derive originally from depots for the purchase and embarkation of slaves. But closer involvement in a few of them during the 19th century has a different purpose. In most cases the new aim is to develop markets for legitimate trade in place of slavery. In a few it is to mitigate the evil of slavery by providing havens for freed slaves. 
 
Past and present patterns of trade lie behind the French involvement in the Ivory Coast (originally a source of ivory and slaves) and in Senegal (valuable gums and slaves). The same gradual development explains the British presence in Ghana (gold and slaves) and Nigeria (mainly slaves). But the purpose of the British fort built on the Gambia in 1816 is to control the slave trade. Similarly a British trading group, the Sierra Leone Company, founds Freetown as early as 1791 to settle freed slaves. And France has the identical purpose in establishing Libreville on the Gabon in 1848.
 

Two much smaller colonies,Portuguese Guinea and Spain's Equatorial Guinea, complete this group of about a dozen territories. Together they are the only regions where any degree of formal European control is established before 1882. Over the next twenty years this situation will change dramatically, until only a few African states remain out of European clutches. The catalyst for this sudden development is the German chancellor, who has been adamant that Germany is uninterested in African colonies. In 1884 Bismarck changes his mind. 
 

The scramble begins: 1884-1886

In March 1884 Bismarck sends a secret cable to Gustav Nachtigal, a distinguished German explorer of the Sahara. It appoints him Imperial Consul-General for the west coast of Africa and instructs him to annexe for the empire three regions in which settlements of German merchants are engaged in trade. One is Togo. The next is Cameroon. And the third, much further down the coast, is Angra Pequena. At Angra Pequena there is only a single German merchant, Heinrich Vogelsang, who has been trading there for less than a year after winning permission to do so in 1883 from the local Khoikhoi chief. 
 

In 1883 Bismarck is so uninterested in a colonial presence in southwest Africa that he requests the British to confirm that this German outpost at Angra Pequena may rely on the protection of the Cape Colony. Yet in 1884 he sends his secret cable ordering the annexation of the region.

What changes his mind? The failure of the British government to send any reply to his query about Angra Pequena can only have been an irritation. A more likely influence is a growing enthusiasm among the German public for the idea of empire. Newspaper reports of the exploits of Stanley and Brazza prompt the fear that a great and profitable adventure is under way from which Germany, unless she hurries, may be excluded. 
 
A word is coined in the spring of 1884 for this new mood among the German electorate -Torschlusspanic, 'door-closing panic', the fear of being on the outside while the door to a treasure trove is shut. From the German chancellor's point of view, there is the added appeal that involvement in Africa will help him play off against each other his two European rivals, France and Britain.

Whatever his precise motives, in the summer of 1884 Bismarck gives his own shove to the closing door. Nachtigall arrives in Cameroon and Togo with the necessary flags and proclamations in the name of the German emperor. The captain of a passing German ship does the honors in Angra Pequena (henceforth to be German South West Africa). 
 

Even at this stage Bismarck's predatory act barely ruffles feathers in London, since the territories which he has acquired (particularly Angra Pequena) seem of little value. The British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, remarks condescendingly that he looks 'with satisfaction, sympathy and joy upon the extension of Germany in these desert places of the earth'. But Bismarck has no intention of letting matters rest. Playing to the hilt his new imperial role, he invites the powers to a West Africa Conference in Berlin in November 1884. In his opening address Bismarck emphasizes the philanthropic concept of colonialism, evoking the original ideal of Livingstone - now extended from two to three Cs, 'commerce, Christianity and civilization'.

In practice much of the diplomacy in Berlin centers on the problem of the great private empire which Leopold II of Belgium is trying to create in the heart of the continent. Each of the powers is terrified that this plum might fall into the lap of one of the others if it slips from Leopold's grasp. The resulting consensus, much to Leopold's relief, is acceptance of the Congo Free State (amounting to about a million square miles) as an internationally recognized kingdom under his sovereignty. 
 

Other decisions of the conference (guarantees of free trade in the Congo, and of free navigation on the Niger and Congo rivers) are the result of the powers jockeying to ensure that nobody wins a conclusive advantage in the coming race. But the significant underlying assumption is that Africa is about to be consumed in its entirety by Europe.

In 1886 a British colonial administrator, Harry Johnston, submits a roughly sketched map to the foreign office suggesting how the continent should be divided. Every single corner of the map is allocated to Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Spain or Belgium. (Johnston also reveals, all too vividly, the colonial concept of how the European example is expected to improve the natives.)

World History, Asia

The mountain ranges of Europe and Asia

When the great land masses of Africa and India collide with Europe and Asia, about 100 million years ago, they cause the crust of the earth to crumple upwards in a long almost continuous ridge of high ground - from the Alps, through Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan to the Himalayas. This barrier will have a profound influence on human history. 

To the south and east of the mountain range are various fertile regions, watered by great rivers flowing from the mountains. By contrast, north of the mountain range is a continuous strip of less fertile grasslands - the steppes, on which a horseman can ride almost without interruption from Mongolia to Moscow. This unbroken stretch of land north of the mountains, reaching from the Pacific in the east to the Atlantic in the west, means that the boundary between Asia and Europe is a somewhat vague concept. Indeed Europe is really the western peninsula of the much larger mass of Asia. 

In the south there is a natural barrier, long accepted as a dividing line - formed by the waters of the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Black Sea. North from here the boundary is notional. In recent times it has been accepted as passing east from the Black Sea to the Caspian and then stretching north from the Caspian along the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains.

Out of Africa: more than a million years ago

Homo erectus is the variety of human who moves out of the continent of Africa, to spread through much of Asia and Europe. This move from Africa is usually dated to about a million years ago, but this may be too recent. First reports of two skulls found in 1999 at Dmanisi, in South Georgia, describe them as 1.8 million years old. 

Fossil remains of this kind have been found as far afield as Java in Southeast Asia (the first to be discovered, in 1891), Beijing in northern China, and within Europe in Greece, Germany and England - in addition to numerous sites in Africa. The European skulls differ from the Asian in various ways (larger brains, smaller teeth), causing some anthropologists to classify them not as Homo erectus but as an archaic version of our own species, Homo sapiens.

The spread of our species: from 60,000 years ago

After Homo erectus has spread through the linked central land mass of our planet (Africa and Eurasia), he is succeeded within that region by varieties of Homo sapiens- the Neanderthals and then modern humans. It is modern humans who take the next step in colonizing the habitable earth. The dates are still uncertain and much disputed. But at some time after 60,000 years ago people cross from Southeast Asia to Borneo, the Philippines, New Guinea and Australia. And at some time after 30,000 years ago humans make the short but difficult leap from northeast Asia to northwest America.

The unsettling and the settled: from 8000 BC

Only nomads can live on the steppes north of Asia's mountain ranges, moving with their flocks of animals to survive together on the meager crop of grass. It is a tough life, and the steppes have bred tough people - pioneers in warfare on horseback. From the Indo-European tribes of ancient times to the Mongols and Turks of more recent history, the people of the steppes descend frequently and with devastating suddenness upon their more civilized neighbors. There are many tempting victims. Beneath the mountain ridges Asia offers ideal locations for civilized life. 

The regions bordering the Asian shores of the Mediterranean are where mankind appears first to have settled in villages and towns - a development requiring at least the beginnings of agriculture. Two of the earliest settlements to deserve the name of towns are Jericho in Palestine and Catal Huyuk in Anatolia. For the emergence of a more developed society, justifying the name of civilization, history suggests that there is one incomparable advantage, indeed almost a necessity - the proximity of a large river, flowing through an open plain. In several places Asia provides this. 

On a map showing the fertile plains of Asia, between the mountains and the sea, three such areas stand out: Mesopotamia, watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates; the valley of the Indus; and the plains of north China, from the Hwang Ho (or Yellow River) down to the Yangtze. Other waterways, such as the Ganges or the Mekong, are in areas too heavily forested to make agriculture easy. But in Mesopotamia, western India and northern China, great rivers flow through open plains, providing ample flood water for the nurturing of crops. These regions of Asia become the sites of three of the early civilizations.

Indo-Europeans: from 2000 BC

Tribes speaking Indo-European languages, and living as nomadic herdsmen, are well established by about 2000 BC in the steppes which stretch from the Ukraine eastwards, to the regions north of the Black Sea and the Caspian. Over the coming centuries they steadily infiltrate the more appealing regions to the south and west - occasionally in something akin to open warfare, and invariably no doubt with violence. But the process is much more gradual than our modern notions of an invading force.

India-Europeans in Asia: from 1800 BC

In Asia the first significant movement of this kind is by the Hittites, who establish themselves in Anatolia. Subsequently the Medes and the Persians become the dominant tribes on the Iranian plateau. These Indo-Iranians are related in language and culture to the Aryans who move down into India, profoundly influencing the subcontinent. Their tribal religion contributes largely to Zoroastrianism in Persia and Hinduism in India (see the gods of the Aryans). At a much later date, one of the Indo-European tribal groups in India makes a further move south. They are the Sinhalese. They settle in Sri Lanka, probably in the 6th century BC.

In doing so, they isolate themselves from the Indo-Europeans of north India, for they move to the south of a different linguistic group - the Dravidians, whose origin is unknown but whose language has no links with Indo-European. After another lengthy gap, in about the 11th century AD, members of the largest Dravidian community, the Tamils, move into Sri Lanka from southern India and settle in the north of the island.

Western Asia: from 1000 BC

The great civilizations of south and east Asia - India and China - are relatively isolated by the accidents of geography. But western Asia, and in particular the Mediterranean coast, is vulnerable to invaders from all sides. By about 1000 BC the Hebrew are established in Palestine. The Phoenicians are their neighbors to the north. These desirable territories will be a continuous battleground, first in a triangular rivalry between Mesopotamia, Egypt and Anatolia; and later, when strong rulers control the Iranian plateau, in a prolonged struggle between the Persian Empire to the east and Greece and Rome to the west.

Between India and China: 1st c. BC - 8th c. AD

Cultural influence in Southeast Asia comes at first either from India or China. In the 1st century BC Indian traders penetrate Burma. Further east, in Vietnam, Bronze Age culture infiltrates gradually from China at some time before the 3rd century BC. With these exceptions, the region is still occupied at this time by Neolithic communities. The development of more advanced cultures in the region derives largely from the spread of India's two great religions, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Both travel east by sea in the early centuries of the Christian era. The Indians at this time are adventurous seafarers. Merchants gradually spread the two religions and their related architectural traditions along coastal regions on the way towards the South China Sea. This religious and cultural imperialism from India, combined with political and military pressure from China (particularly in Vietnam) gives Southeast Asia its lasting character. At a slightly later date Buddhism spreads also from China, which it has reached along the Silk Road from India. After becoming well established in Korea, Buddhist monks bring the faith during the 6th century to Japan. Buddhism reaches Tibet in the 8th century from two directions - from China and from Nepal, the original birthplace of the religion in India.

Western Asia: 1st millennium AD

At the start of the Christian era western Asia is part of the Roman Empire which confronts, to the east, a Persian empire of varying size and complexion. The region will remain an uneasy border between these two blocks until the 4th century, when the adoption of Christianity begins to transform the western antagonist from the Roman into the Byzantine Empire. The balance nevertheless remains much the same until it is violently and rapidly upset by the emergence of Islam in the 7th century. For the last centuries of the period western Asia, with the exception of Anatolia, is Muslim.

East Asia: 1st millennium AD

India and China, the two ancient civilizations of East Asia, are large enough to follow their own course at this stage without much influence from outside. It is instead their influence which spreads outwards, profoundly affecting the development of Sri Lanka, Korea and Japan - all of which develop their own local and lasting characteristics during this period. 

North of the mountain ranges the nomads exert pressure southwards from time to time. For the most part they are easily contained. Early in the next millennium their turn will come, first with minor groups gaining territory in northern China and then with the violent eruption of the Mongols.

Turks and Mongols: 1000-1517
 
The first half of our own millennium is dominated, in Asia, by the movement of Turks and Mongols. Almost every part of the continent (southern India and southeast Asia are the exceptions) is invaded or occupied in this period by conquerors whose own roots lie in the steppes north of the mountain ranges. The first is Mahmud of Ghazni who raids into India from the year 1000, beginning a long Turkish presence in the north of the subcontinent. Later in the 11th century the Seljuk Turks rule from Afghanistan west to the Mediterranean.

In the 13th century the Mongols emerge from the steppes to seize a vast and virtually instant empire; by the time of Kublai Khan almost the whole habitable continent is theirs, except Palestine and Syria in the west and India, Southeast Asia and Japan in the east. In the 15th century Timur almost repeats their great feat of conquest, but the effect is only to place his Turkish descendants on thrones previously held by Mongols - except for the imperial throne in China, by now returned to a native dynasty (the Ming). In the 15th century a new Turkish power, that of the Ottomans, wins control of Anatolia. The first two decades of the 16th century bring renewed upheaval in two areas. A native ruler, the first of the Safavids, wins power in Persia. And in 1517 the Ottoman Turks extend their rule round the eastern Mediterranean and down into Egypt and Arabia.

The resulting situation remains the status quo for some time. The Ottoman Empire includes the whole of southwest Asia. Persia is in Persian hands. Much of India is ruled by Muslims of Turkish origin. The steppes remain the province of Turkish and Mongol nomads, though this region and Siberia will increasingly attract Russia.

The involvement of Europeans: 16th - 19th century

In 1498 a Portuguese ship reaches Calicut in southern India. Its captain, Vasco da Gama, sails away again after three months. But this European visit to Asia is very different from the overland journeys made by Marco Polo and others in previous centuries. Europeans now have new maritime skills and ocean-going ships. Over the coming centuries their command of the seas will give them a massive presence in Asia. The Spice Islands, dominated by the Dutch from the 17th century, are the first part of Asia to attract European attention. India, fought over by French and English in the 18th century, is the next focus of colonial attention.

China retains a dignified isolation until brutally subdued by Britain in the two Opium Wars of the 19th century. Meanwhile China is acquiring a European neighbor to the north, with the expansion of the Russian empire to the Pacific. And the French win control of the part of Southeast Asia which becomes known as Indo-China. 

By the mid-19th century the European presence in Asia is so all-pervasive that wars in Afghanistan derive from imperial rivalries between Russia to the north and the British in neighboring India. Not till the unscrambling of imperialism in the 20th century are the historic regions of Asia fully restored to Asian control. Japan, only briefly intruded upon by Europe, has been an independent exception

Alexander The Great, European History, Leaders, 356 BC

HISTORY OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

An inspiring inheritance: 356 BC

Alexander is born in Pella, the Macedonian capital, at about the time his father becomes king of Macedonia. Philip II's expansion of the kingdom, an unfolding saga of glory and excitement, is Alexander's boyhood. At an early age he proves himself well equipped to share in these military adventures. He is only sixteen when he is left in charge of Macedonia, while his father campaigns in the east against Byzantium. During his father's absence he crushes a rebellious tribe, the Thracians. As a reward he is allowed to found a new town in their territory - Alexandropolis, the first of many to be named after him. Macedonia is considered by other Greek states to be a backward place, but the education of the prince is the best that Greece can provide. In 343, when Alexander is thirteen, Philip invites Aristotle to become the royal tutor. 
 

For three years the philosopher teaches the prince. No doubt they study Homer together. The Iliad becomes a profound source of inspiration to Alexander. Scrolls of the text will later be kept beside him in his tent while he achieves military feats to put the Homeric heroes to shame. Alexander and his most intimate friend from childhood days, Hephaestion, are compared by their contemporaries to the Homeric hero Achilles and his lover Patroclus. 
 

Philip's campaign in 340 against Byzantium provokes Athens and Thebes into taking the field against the Macedonians. The two sides meet in 338 at Chaeronaea. Later tradition credits the 18-year-old Alexander with leading a cavalry charge which decides the outcome of the battle. There is no historical evidence for this. But the prince certainly fights at Chaeronaea, and the day ends with a conclusive win for the Macedonians. This victory enables Philip to present himself as the leader of all the Greek states. His position is formally acknowledged at a congress in Corinth, in 337. 
 

The campaign against Persia: from 336 BC

One of the resolutions of the League of Corinth is to launch a war against Persia, with Philip as commander of the confederate forces. In the following spring (336) an advance guard of 10,000 troops sets off eastwards. But that same summer, at a feast to celebrate the wedding of his daughter, Philip is murdered by one of his courtiers. 

The League immediately elects his son, Alexander, in his place as commander. But this degree of unity is short-lived. The Thebans rebel against the League. Alexander storms Thebes in 335 BC, killing 6000. He then puts into effect a stern judgment by the council of the League. Theban territory is divided between its neighbors. The surviving Thebans are enslaved. 
 

This display of ruthless authority enables Alexander to leave Macedonia under the control of a regent, with reasonable confidence that Greece will remain calm during what may prove to be a prolonged absence. In the spring of 334, still at the age of only twenty-two, Alexander marches east with some 5000 cavalry and 30,000 foot soldiers. There are ancient scores to be settled between Greece and Persia. And they will be settled fast. But first he engages in some romantic tourism, making a pilgrimage to the site of Troy. In a classic Greek ceremony he runs naked to the supposed tomb of Achilles, to place a garland. He is presented with a shield, said to have been dedicated by the Trojans to Athena.
 

From now on this sacred shield invariably accompanies Alexander into battle. It soon sees action. A short distance to the east of Troy a Persian army awaits the Macedonians. The battle is fought at the river Granicus, with Alexander leading a cavalry charge through the water. The Persians are routed. Many of their troops are Greek mercenaries, of whom thousands are captured. Most of them are killed, but 2000 are sent back to Macedonia in chains to provide slave labor in the mines. 

A year later, at Issus, Alexander defeats an army led by the Persian emperor, Darius III. He captures the emperor's mother, wife and children and treats them with every courtesy - a detail which does much for his reputation. 
 

The destruction of the Persian empire: 333 - 330 BC

Within a mere eighteen months Alexander has cleared the Persians out of Anatolia, which they have held for two centuries. The conqueror now moves south along the coast through present-day Syria, Lebanon and Israel. The ports here are the home bases of the Persian fleet in the Mediterranean. By occupying them he intends to cripple the fleet and deprive it of contact with the cities of the empire, including Persepolis. Most of the Phoenician towns open their gates to him. The exception is the greatest of them all, Tyre, which he besieges for seven months (see the Siege of Tyre). 

By the autumn of 332 Alexander is in Egypt. The Persian governor rapidly surrenders. Alexander spends the winter in Egypt. His actions there are the first indication of how he will set about keeping control of distant conquests, places with their own cultural traditions. One method is to establish outposts of Greek culture. In Egypt he founds the greatest of the cities known by his name -Alexandria. 

Another method, equally important, is to present himself in the guise of a local ruler. To this end he carries out a sacrifice to Apis, a sacred bull at Memphis, where the priests crown him pharaoh. And he makes a long pilgrimage to a famous oracle of the sun god Amon, or Amen-Re, at Siwa. The priest duly recognizes Alexander as the son of the god. In the spring of 331 Alexander is ready to move northeast into Mesopotamia, where he meets and defeats the Persian emperor Darius in the decisive battle of Gaugamela. His way is now open to the great Persian capital city of Persepolis. 

In a symbolic gesture, ending conclusively the long wars between Greeks and Persians, he burns the palace of Xerxes in 330 (legend maintains that he is prompted to this act of vandalism by his Athenian mistress, Thaïs, after a drunken party). To make plain who now rules the Persian Empire, Alexander adopts the ceremonial dress and court rituals of the emperor. 

Alexander in the east: 330 - 323 BC

For two years Alexander moves through his newly acquired empire (which stretches north beyond Samarkand and eastwards through modern Afghanistan) subduing any pockets of opposition and establishing Greek settlements. Then he goes further, in 327, through the mountain passes into India.

One of the towns founded by Alexander in India is called Bucephala. It is named to commemorate his famous horse, Bucephalus, which dies here at what turns out to be the furthest point of this astonishing expedition. Alexander's troops threaten to mutiny in the Indian monsoon. At last, in 325, he turns for home. With his army reinforced by some Indian elephants, Alexander is back in Persia. In 324 he holds a great feast at Susa to celebrate the capture of the Persian Empire. During the festivities, to emphasize that Greece and Persia are now one, he and eighty of his officers marry Persian wives. His own bride on this occasion is one of the daughters of Darius. Another daughter is married to Hephaestion. 

Later that year Hephaestion dies of a fever at Ecbatana. Alexander mourns extravagantly for his most intimate friend, ordering great shrines to be built in Hephaestion's honor. But in the following year, 323, after a banquet at Babylon, he himself is suddenly taken ill and dies. The greatest conqueror in history, he is still only thirty-two. 
 

The legacy of conquest: from 323 BC

Alexander has no heir (though the posthumous son of one of his wives is formally referred to as the king, until murdered in his early teens in 309). So Alexander's generals set about carving up the new empire. After prolonged warfare two of them emerge with sizable portions. Ptolemy establishes himself in Egypt. And Seleucus wins control of a vast area - Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Persia and the eastern part of the empire, including at first even the territories in India.
 
Ptolemy adds legitimacy to his rule in Egypt by acquiring Alexander's body. He intercepts the embalmed corpse on its way to burial, brings it to Egypt and places it in a golden coffin in Alexandria. It will remain one of the famous sights of the town for many years, until probably destroyed in riots in the 3rd century AD. The companions of Alexander the Great are Greek in origin, as Macedonians, and their descendants continue to see themselves as Greeks. A veneer of Greek culture is the lasting result of Alexander's conquests. It is spread thinly from Egypt to Persia and even beyond the Khyber Pass, in addition to the many Mediterranean regions lying closer to Greece. 

These places do not become Greek, but they acquire a Greek tinge - for which the 19th century coins a name, Hellenistic. Alexander's victories launch the Hellenistic ('Greek-ish') Age, which will last until the death of Cleopatra in 30 BC. 
 

Macedonia itself, Alexander's homeland, is subject to a succession of violent upheavals. In one of them his mother, Olympia, arrives with an army in 317 BC and kills his half-witted half-brother, Philip III, together with Philip's wife and 100 of his supporters. She loses her own life in the next coup, in the following year. In 276 a stable dynasty is at last established by descendants of Antigonus, another of Alexander's generals. But its future is relatively short. As the most westerly part of Alexander's empire, Macedonia is the first region to be devoured by its imperial successor. Rome first invades Macedonia in 197 BC. From 148 Macedonia is reduced to the status of a Roman province. Not until the 19th century does it feature prominently again in history. But nothing can dim the memory of Alexander the Great. 

The regimental song of the British Grenadiers, seeking to list heroes in the Grenadier class, begins with the line: 'Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules'. The tourist to Troy, in 333 BC, would be pleased with the choice of his companion for the opening line - and pleased too with the order of listing, even if it is imposed by considerations of rhythm and rhyme.

European History, Roman History, Leaders

Caesar's heir: 44 - 37 BC

Gaius Octavius, known to history first as Octavian and then as Augustus Caesar, is born in 63 BC in a relatively obscure patrician family. His only evident advantage in life is that his grandmother is Julia, sister of Julius Caesar. His great-uncle sees talent in the boy and encourages him.

Octavian is an 18-year-old student at Apollonia (in what is now Albania) when news comes in 44 BC that his uncle has been assassinated in Rome. Soon there is further information. In his will Caesar has named Octavian as his successor and has left him three quarters of his estate. 

Octavian moves decisively. Hurrying back to Rome, he pays for games in honor of Caesar and raises a force of 3000 men from his uncle's veterans. But among the supporters of Caesar he has a natural opponent -Mark Antony, the dictator's trusted lieutenant, who did more than anyone to calm the situation after the Ides of March. 

The armies of the two men meet near Modena in 43. A victory for the young and inexperienced Octavian gives him the prestige to negotiate on equal terms with Antony. They form an alliance against the enemies of Caesar. In 42 they cross the Adriatic together in pursuit of his assassins. The armies of Octavian and Mark Antony, supporters of the murdered Caesar, and of Brutus and Cassius, his assassins, meet in 42 BC at Philippi. In two separate engagements the forces of Brutus and Cassius fare the worse. Both men commit suicide. 

The two victors separate to secure control of the empire. Octavian busies himself with the western territories, while Antony moves east - into regions which he will find increasingly seductive, in the arms of Cleopatra.

Signs of tension between Octavian and Antony are eased in 40 BC when Antony returns briefly to Italy and marries Octavian's sister, Octavia. But family relations are not improved three years later when news comes that Antony, back with his army in the east, has also married Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt. The marriage is not legal in Roman law, for Cleopatra is not a Roman citizen. But it signals the end of any pretence of alliance between the two rivals for power. 

Actium and after: 31-27 BC

The Battle of Actium, in 31, decides the issue. Octavian wins. Antony and Cleopatra flee back to Egypt, where Octavian pursues them. On his arrival, in 30, they both commit suicide. Octavian stays in the east long enough to secure Cleopatra's Egypt as a new province of the empire. In August 29 Octavian enters Rome in triumph, the undisputed master of both east and west. The example of Julius Caesar's end makes Octavian cautious in pursuit of supreme power. During the years after his victorious return to Rome he seems to sidle, sometimes almost reluctantly, into the role which he will fill with such skill - that of emperor. 

A turning point comes in the year 27 BC, when he voluntarily gives up all his military powers and is then granted by the senate a 10-year-command over three important outposts of empire - Spain, Gaul and Syria. Meanwhile he holds various civilian offices which provide him with political power at the centre. 

The Roman empire: 27 BC - AD 14

It is typical of Octavian's political skill that under this arrangement the much-cherished republic of Rome appears still to be intact. Yet with hindsight historians have judged 27 BC to be the founding year of the empire. In this same year the senate gives Octavian the life-long title of Augustus, the name by which he is subsequently known to history. The rule of Augustus Caesar brings an unprecedented forty years of peace in Italy. With few setbacks on distant frontiers, Rome and its territories enjoy a steady increase in prosperity and trade. 

The frontiers of empire are slightly extended. More important, they become stabilized and properly defended. Professional careers are now possible in the army (recruits sign on for sixteen years, later increased to twenty) and in the civil service. Improved roads make it easier to keep in close touch with distant parts of the Roman world, and to move troops wherever they are needed. New towns, built to Roman design, are established in areas where there was previously no administrative structure. 

The region in which Augustus makes the most effort to extend the empire is beyond the Alps into Germany. By 14 BC the German tribes are subdued up to the Danube. In the next five years Roman legions push forward to the Elbe. But this further border proves impossible to hold. In AD 9 Arminius, a German chieftain of great military skill destroys three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest. The Romans pull back (though they return briefly to avenge what seems a shameful defeat). The conclusion, bequeathed by Augustus to his successors, is that the Roman Empire has some natural boundaries; to the north these are the Rhine and the Danube. 

The Augustan Age: 27 BC - AD 14

The stability of Rome makes possible a flowering of the arts. The term Augustan Age will come to represent the idea of cultural excellence, just as the name of Augustus's close friend Maecenas - enthusiastic supporter of both Virgil and Horace- is now synonymous with artistic patronage. The emperor is also an enthusiastic builder. He boasts, with some justification, that he finds Rome a city of brick and leaves it a city of marble. One of the hardest problems confronting Augustus is the question of his own succession. His attempts to solve it are often authoritarian and blunt, but they are innocence itself compared to the connivances of his family in the five decades after his death in AD 14.

African History, Egypt

Alexander and Ptolemy: 332-285 BC

Alexander the Great decides that the small Egyptian port of Rhacotis is a natural base for future operations in the eastern Mediterranean. It is close to the delta of the mighty Nile, but far enough removed to avoid silting up; it has a protective island, Pharos, a little way offshore; and it is well placed for trade or warfare with the Middle East. He builds a new suburb beside the old town (inhabited already for more than 1000 years) and calls old and new jointly after himself - Alexandria. 

Under Ptolemy, Alexander's successor in Egypt, the new city begins a glittering career. Ptolemy adds legitimacy to his rule in Egypt by acquiring Alexander's body. He intercepts the embalmed corpse on its way to burial, brings it to Egypt and places it in a golden coffin in Alexandria. It will remain one of the famous sights of the town for many years, until probably destroyed in riots in the 3rd century AD. 

Alexandria as a capital city: from about 320 BC

Ptolemy recognizes in Alexandria the natural advantages which had attracted Alexander to the site. He makes it his capital and begins to transform it into one of the greatest centers of learning in the Greek world. He founds here in Egypt what is in effect a university, though the word he uses for it is 'museum', home of the Muses. Mathematicians of the stature of Euclid, Archimedes and Eratosthenes will be connected with this academy. Its library becomes the greatest in the ancient world (see the Library at Alexandria). And immigrants from elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean soon turn this relatively new place into a great cosmopolitan centre. 

The Jews of Alexandria demonstrate the ability of a Jewish community to flourish in a new context without losing its identity. They integrate so fully with the secular life of the city that their own first language becomes Greek. It is they who first use the word Diaspora (Greek for 'dispersion') to describe Jewish communities living outside Israel. 

Soon many of them no longer understand Hebrew. But they refuse to let this diminish their strong sense of a shared identity as God's special people, according to the covenant revealed in a book which they now cannot read. They commission, with Ptolemy's support and approval, the first translation of the Bible, the famous Greek version known as the Septuagint. And their synagogue is the earliest of which there is evidence. 

In addition to the library, Ptolemy plans the great lighthouse on the island of Pharos at the entrance to the harbor. It is built in about 280, under his successor Ptolemy II. 

It is by far the most impressive lighthouse of antiquity, becoming famous as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The lighthouse consists of a three-tier stone tower, said to be more than 120 meters high, which has within it a broad spiral ramp leading up to the platform where fires burn at night. They are reflected out to sea by metal mirrors. Above the fires is a huge statue, of either Alexander or Ptolemy in the guise of the sun god, Helios. The lighthouse survives until the 12th century. In the 15th century a fort, still standing today, is built from its ruins. 

Greek science in Alexandria: from the 3rd century BC

Classical Greece has produced a brilliant tradition of theorists, the dreamers of science. Attracted by the intellectual appeal of good theories, they are disinclined to engage in the manual labor of the laboratory where those theories might be tested. 

This limitation is removed when the centre of the Greek world transfers, in the 3rd century BC, to Alexandria. In this bustling commercial centre, linked with long Egyptian traditions of skilled work in precious metals, people are interested in making practical use of Greek scientific theory. If Aristotle says that the difference in material substances is a matter of balance, then that balance might be changed. Copper might become gold. Among the practical scientists of Alexandria are men who can be seen as the first alchemists and the first experimental chemists. Their trade, as workers in precious metals, involves melting gold and silver, mixing alloys, changing the color of metals by mysterious process. These are the activities of chemistry. The everyday items of a chemical laboratory - stills, furnaces, flasks - are all in use in Alexandria. 

Euclid and Archimedes: 3rd century BC

Euclid teaches in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy. No details of his life are known, but his brilliance as a teacher is demonstrated in “the Elements”, his thirteen books of geometrical theorems. Many of the theorems derive from Euclid's predecessors (in particular Eudoxus), but Euclid presents them with a clarity which ensures the success of his work. It becomes Europe's standard textbook in geometry, retaining that position until the 19th century. Archimedes is a student at Alexandria, possibly within the lifetime of Euclid. He returns to his native Syracuse, in Sicily, where he far exceeds the teacher in the originality of his geometrical researches. 

Human vivisection: c.300 BC

Early in the 3rd century BC two surgeons in Alexandria, Herophilus and Erasistratus, make the first scientific studies designed to discover the workings of human anatomy.  The cost of their contribution to science would be considered too high in modern times (they acquire much of their information from Human vivisection, the patients being convicted criminals). But Celsus, a Roman writer on medical history, energetically justifies the suffering of the criminals as providing 'remedies for innocent people of all future ages'. 

Mechanical organ: 3rd century BC

Pipes of varying sorts are among the earliest of musical instruments, and pipers must often have imagined a pipe too large for human lungs. A scientist in Alexandria, by the name of Ctesibius, is credited with being the first to invent an organ - with a hand-operated pump sending air through a set of large Pipes. Each pipe is played by pressing a note on a board. This is the beginning of keyboard instruments. 

By the time of the Roman Empire, a few centuries later, the organ is a familiar and popular instrument - playing a prominent part in public games and circuses as well as private banquets. The emperor Nero, an enthusiastic performer, is proud of his talents on the organ.

The circumference of the earth: calculated c. 220 BC

Eratosthenes, the librarian of the museum at Alexandria, has more on his mind than just looking after the scrolls. He is making a map of the stars (he will eventually catalogue nearly 700), and he is busy with his search for prime numbers; he does this by an infinitely laborious process now known as the Sieve of Eratosthenes. But his most significant project is working out the circumference of the earth. 

Eratosthenes hears that in noon at midsummer the sun shines straight down a well at Aswan, in the south of Egypt. He finds that on the same day of the year in Alexandria it casts a shadow 7.2 degree from the vertical. If he can calculate the distance between Aswan and Alexandria, he will know the circumference of the earth (360 degrees instead of 7.2 degrees, or 50 times greater). 

He discovers that camels take 50 days to make the journey from Aswan, and he measures an average day's walk by this fairly predictable beast of burden. It gives him a figure of about 46,000 km for the circumference of the earth. This is, amazingly, only 15% out (40,000 km is closer to the truth).

European History, from 7000BC

Centre of innovation: from 7000 BC

The high plateau between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean is the setting for many of the most significant advances of Neolithic man and his successors in the early stages of civilization. 

In the use of metals Anatolia is regularly first, or among the first. Copper implements are found here from around 7000 BC. Bronze is used in the 3rd millennium BC, later than Sumeria but not by much. Iron is first worked here, in about 1500 BC.

One of the world's first towns, Catal Huyuk, is on the southern edge of the Anatolian plateau. Excavation has revealed evidence of quite developed agricultural communities living on this site from about 6500 to 5700 BC. 

Several millennia later Anatolia is the site of the first of the many empires established by Indo-European tribes - eventually the dominant group in the Eurasian land mass all the way from the Atlantic to India. These first Indo-European conquerors, ruling Anatolia from the 17th to 12th century BC, are the Hittites. 

Troy: 1900-1250 BC

Contemporary with the Hittites, but controlling a much smaller tract of territory in the northwest of Anatolia, are the Trojans. They too are an Indo-European tribe, arriving in the region in about 1900 BC. Troy is ideally placed to prosper from trade, being on the north-south sea link between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and on the east-west land route between Asia and Europe. 

Troy survives many disasters, including several major fires, but none is so destructive as the sacking of the town by Greeks, in about 1250 BC, in the Trojan War. Not long after this the Hittites too are destroyed, by marauders from the coasts of Anatolia known as the Sea Peoples.

Ionia and Lydia: 8th - 6th century BC

The centuries after the collapse of both Hittites and Trojans are unsettled ones. Stability begins to return to Anatolia, at any rate on the west coast, with the establishment of Greek colonies. The most important of these is Ionia. Consisting originally of many small independent settlements, Ionia emerges in the 8th century as a league of twelve cities which between them dominate western Anatolia. Some, such as Miletus, will take a prominent role in the spread of Greek civilization. 

The region becomes known at this time by its classical name, Asia Minor - accurately acknowledging that this is indeed a small appendage of Asia, dangerously exposed to the east. At present the threat comes from Lydia. Lydia emerges in the 7th century BC as a rich and powerful state in the interior of Anatolia, with its capital at Sardis. The last king of Lydia, Croesus, has survived in popular memory as a man of legendary wealth (he is the first ruler in history to mint coins of gold and silver). 

The Lydians raid into Ionia, with increasing success. By the mid-6th century Croesus controls Ephesus and many other Greek cities in Asia Minor. But in 546 he is defeated by a greater conqueror from the east, Cyrus. Within a year or two the Persian Empire has engulfed Ionia. Greek civilization is confronted with its defining challenge.

Fault line between empires: 6th c. BC - 15th c. AD

With the rise of the Persian empire to the east, and the combined strength of Greece to the west, Anatolia acquires the role which it will fulfill through much of history - that of a buffer state, over which the powers of southeast Europe and southwest Asia repeatedly clash. 

The prolonged struggle of the Greco-Persian wars is finally resolved in Greece's favor, in the late 4th century BC, when Alexander the Great marches east. But for the subsequent three centuries Anatolia is disputed between Hellenistic rulers, competing for the scraps of Alexander's territorial acquisitions. 

By the 1st century BC a new western force is securely in place. The Roman Empire has extended its rule to the eastern Mediterranean coast. The Roman legions hold Anatolia with little more than occasional corrective expeditions (of which Caesar's Veni, vidi, vici records one rapid triumph). Nevertheless, successive empires in Persia remain a constant threat. In the 7th century AD, on two separate occasions, Persian armies reach the walls of the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. 

The 7th century also sees the rise of a new force which will eventually wrest Anatolia from the Byzantine Empire, making it instead the heart of a Turkish empire. Within fifty years of the death of Muhammad, the Muslims are threatening Anatolia. They attack Constantinople in 673. This proves a campaign too far, and Anatolia remains within the Christian empire. But just to the east of Anatolia, Syria and Armenia are lost to Islam. 

By the end of the 11th century Muslim Turkish tribes have infiltrated much of Anatolia. The entire region becomes, once again, a shifting frontier between two great power blocs - representing now Christianity and Islam. Muslim victory in the struggle is finally assured with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Anatolia becomes the centre of a Turkish empire, and today comprises most of modern Turkey.

Arabian History

An Empty Quarter

Arabia is the huge peninsula lying between northeast Africa and the bulk of continental Asia. Its long southern coast faces across the Indian Ocean towards India. So it is well placed for trade. 

But until the 20th century the region has had no other natural advantages. The centre is a desert, as inhospitable as its name suggests ('Rub' al Khali', the Empty Quarter). Here only nomads can live, moving with their camels from oasis to oasis. The tough simplicity of their existence becomes the characteristic of the people of this peninsula, the Arabs, and of the religion which they spread from here through much of the world, Islam. 

The Sheba of legend: from the 8th century BC

Only the southwestern coastal area of Arabia is sufficiently fertile to encourage a settled existence - indeed this is the only part of the peninsula with enough rainfall to provide permanent rivers. By the 8th century BC there are rival kingdoms in existence in this area. The most successful of them is Saba, featuring as Sheba in the Bible. 

According to the Bible, the Queen of Sheba visits Solomon because she has heard of his wisdom. To please the great king, she brings camels laden with spices and gold and precious stones. 

There is no historical basis for the story, but by about 715 BC the rulers of Saba do feature in the records of tribute sent to Assyria. And the queen's rich caravan of camels is a fair reflection of the trade which brings wealth to this corner of Arabia. Spices from India and the east come ashore at Aden and are carried up the western coast of the peninsula to Egypt and Mesopotamia. 

Mecca before Islam

The town of Mecca, in a rocky valley with no agricultural resources, develops in the centuries immediately preceding Islam into a place of considerable prosperity. There are two good reasons. It is a trading post on the caravan route from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. And it has become Arabia's most important place of pilgrimage. 

By at least the 4th century large numbers of pilgrims arrive in Mecca to perform a ritual act of walking seven times round a small square building known as the Ka'ba (Arabic for 'cube'). The building is full of idols, which are the objects of worship. It also includes a sacred black stone, possibly in origin a meteorite. 

Islam: 7th century

In the 7th century Arabia becomes the cradle of the world's third great monotheistic religion. All three have begun within a small area of southwest Asia. First Judaism, somewhere in the region stretching up from the Red Sea to Palestine; then Christianity at the northern end of this area; and finally Islam to the south, in Mecca, close to the Red Sea. 

Each of the later arrivals in this close family of religions claims to build upon the message of its predecessors, bringing a better and more up-to-date version of the truth about the one God - in this case as revealed to the Messenger of God, Muhammad. Islam means 'surrender' (to God), and from the same root anyone who follows Islam is a Muslim. 

Rulers of Arabia: 8th - 20th century

In the centuries following the rise of Islam the Arabian peninsula, though subject to violent local disturbances, is broadly under the control of the successive overlords of the surrounding Muslim world - the Umayyad dynasty, then the Abbasids, the Mamelukes and finally the Ottoman empire. Only around the coast do stable independent kingdoms develop. Territories round the coast of Arabia develop into the kingdoms and emirates which will result in the modern states of Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yemen. But the arid centre of the peninsula remains the anarchic preserve of nomadic tribesmen or Bedouin (from the Arabic 'bada', meaning to live in the desert). 

Arabia and the Sa'udi: from 1744

Central Arabia begins to unite under the influence of a puritanical reformer, Muhammad ibn 'Abd-al-Wahhab, who preaches the strictest tenets of Islam. In 1744 he makes common cause with a local ruler, Muhammad ibn Sa'ud, and together they extend their joint power from small beginnings in Dar'iya. 

At the time of Ibn Sa'ud's death in 1765, the whole of central and eastern Arabia is his kingdom. It is the beginning of the Sa'udi claim to territories which are further enlarged over the next two generations. By 1804 the whole of Arabia, except for Yemen and Oman in the south, is effectively under Sa'udi control and under strict Wahhabi influence in spiritual matters. 

Arabia and Palestine: 1916

When the Turks enter the war, in 1914, the hereditary emir of Mecca (Husayn ibn Ali) sees a chance of extricating his territory from Ottoman rule. He secretly begins negotiating with the British. By June 1916 he is ready to launch an Arab revolt along the Red Sea coast. The most effective part of this uprising is conducted by Faisal, one of Husayn's sons, in conjunction with T.E. Lawrence, a young British officer seconded for the purpose. Together they attack the most strategically important feature in the region, the railway which runs south from Damascus, through Amman and Ma'an, to Medina. This is the only route by which the Turks can easily send reinforcements to Arabia. 

The policy succeeds and by the summer of 1917 the Arabs have moved far enough north to capture Aqaba. This is achieved on July 6 in a dramatic raid by Lawrence and some Arab chiefs with a few hundred of their tribesmen. Together they kill or capture some 1200 Turks at a cost of only two of their own lives.

The port of Aqaba occupies an important position at the head of the gulf of the same name. It offers relatively easy access up towards the Dead Sea. Faisal's army is now well placed to support a British thrust into Palestine, by operating from the desert region of the Negev to bring pressure on the eastern flank of the Turks. 

During the winter of 1916 the British have been laying a railway along the northern coast of the Sinai Peninsula. This makes possible an attack on Gaza, the gateway into Palestine. But on two separate occasions - in March and April 1917 - the campaign is seriously bungled. As a result a new commander, Edmund Allenby, is brought in.

Allenby succeeds in taking Gaza on November 7. He follows this with the capture of Jerusalem a month later, on December 9. Meanwhile Britain's fortunes in Mesopotamia have also been transformed by a new commander, Stanley Maude. Maude retakes Kut on 24 February 1917 and captures Baghdad on March 11. 

So by the end of 1917 the Allies, occupying both Jerusalem and Baghdad, have completed half the necessary task in the Middle East. But they are still a long way from the frontier of Turkey itself. On the Mediterranean front Damascus and Aleppo lie ahead, in Mesopotamia there is still Mosul to be taken. And even then there is the almost impenetrable terrain of Anatolia before one can reach Istanbul.

With massive armies confronting each other on the western front, this all seems a long way from the centre of the action. But this year of 1917 has meanwhile brought two major developments, in the USA and Russia, which in their very different ways profoundly alter the equation of the war.

World History, Arabs, Culture

HISTORY OF THE ARABS

Gindibu and his camels: 853 BC

Shalmanezer, king of Assyria, fights a major but inconclusive battle at Karkar against his enemy, the ruler of Damascus. An Assyrian scribe, recording the event in cuneiform, notes the impressive size of the enemy forces: 63,000 infantry, 2000 cavalry, 4000 chariots and 1000 warriors on camels. The men on camels, the scribe adds, are brought to the battle by Gindibu the Arab. 

This is the first known reference to the Arabs as a distinct group. But nomads from Arabia (probably the source of the entire group of Semitic languages) have been spreading through the desert fringes of the Fertile Crescent since at least 3000 BC. 

The nomads of Arabia: before the 7th century AD

The life of a nomad, without architecture or possessions (other than what can be loaded on a camel), leaves few physical traces. The richness of nomadic culture is in the mind. It is embodied in well-loved stories, in heroic memories of battles with rival tribes, in dreams of love or of the oases of paradise. 

As such it is normally lost, once tribes settle. It merges into a generalized mythology. But an accident of history has preserved early Arabic culture in more distinct form. These nomads are the backbone of the first Muslim armies. Their way of life is revered by early Muslim scholars, who collect and record the poems and stories handed down in a long oral tradition. 

Arabic oral poetry: pre-Islamic

The poems of the Arab nomads are invented, embroidered, recited by specialists known assha'ir (meaning approximately 'one who knows', and therefore close to the English word 'seer'). Recorded in anthologies of the 8th century and 9th century, and dating from perhaps two centuries earlier, the surviving examples provide a rare glimpse of poems from a pre-literate era. 

They fall into two categories. The earlier tradition consists of short poems of a passionately partisan kind. With few exceptions, the theme is praise of one's own tribe or abuse of the enemy. The other kind of poem, known asqasidah, is longer (up to 100 lines) and more elaborate in form. 

The qasidah consists of four sections, the first three of which have well-established themes. In the opening section (nasib), the poet describes himself on a journey with some companions; they reach a deserted encampment, and he tells how he was once here with a loved one until fate parted them when their tribes moved on to fresh pastures (a sentimental beginning considered essential to put the listeners in a good mood). 

The second section is devoted to praise of an animal, the camel on which the poet is riding. The third is a tour de force, describing a dramatic scene such as a hunt or battle. With the fourth section the poet finally reaches his topic - again usually praise, of tribe or patron or of the poet himself.

The Arab conquests: 7th century

One of the most dramatic and sudden movements of any people in history is the expansion, by conquest, of the Arabs in the 7th century (only the example of the Mongols in the 13th century can match it). The desert tribesmen of Arabia form the bulk of the Muslim armies. Their natural ferocity and love of warfare, together with the sense of moral rectitude provided by their new religion, form an irresistible combination. 

When Muhammad dies in 632, the western half of Arabia is Muslim. Two years later the entire peninsula has been brought to the faith, and Muslim armies have moved up into the desert between Syria and Mesopotamia. 

The great Christian cities of Syria and Palestine fall to the Arabs in rapid succession from635. Damascus, in that year, is the first to be captured. Antioch follows in 636. And 638 brings the greatest prize of all, in Muslim terms, when Jerusalem is taken after a year's siege. 

It is a moment of profound significance for the young religion, for Islam sees itself as the successor of Judaism and Christianity. The city of the people of Moses, in which Jesus also preaches and dies, is a holy place for Muslims too. Moses and Jesus are Muhammad's predecessors as prophets. A link with Muhammad himself will also soon emerge in Jerusalem. 

Muslim Persia: 637-751

Persia falls to the Arabs as a consequence of the battle of Kadisiya, close to the Euphrates, in 637. After their victory the Arabs sack the city of Ctesiphon (carefully sharing out the famous Spring Carpet). The last Sassanian emperor, Yazdegerd III, is five at the time. He and his court escape to the east, but he is eventually assassinated, in 651, at Merv. His name remains, even today, in use in the chronology of the Parsees. They number their years from the start of his reign in 632. Meanwhile the Arabs win another victory over Persian forces at Nahavand in 641. They capture Isfahan in 642 and Herat in 643. Persia becomes, for a century, part of the Umayyad caliphate. 

The final push eastwards for Islam, in the central Asian plateau, is in more difficult terrain and is more protracted. Throughout the second half of the 7th century there is fighting in and around the Hindu Kush, but by the early years of the 8th century the Arabs control the full swath of territory from the Arabian Sea in the south (they enter Sind and move into India as far north as Multan by 712), up through Kandahar and Balkh (either side of the Hindu Kush) to Bukhara and Samarkand in the north, beyond the Amu Darya. At this northern extreme they are neighbors of the T'ang Chinese. The eventual clash between these two powers, an encounter won by the Arabs, comes in 751 at the Talas River. 

Muslim North Africa: from 642

The Arab conquest of Egypt and North Africa begins with the arrival of an army in 640 in front of the Byzantine fortified town of Babylon (in the area which is now Old Cairo). The Arabs capture it after a siege and establish their own garrison town just to the east, calling it Al Fustat. 

The army then moves on to Alexandria, but here the defenses are sufficient to keep them at bay for fourteen months. At the end of that time a surprising treaty is signed. The Greeks of Alexandria agree to leave peacefully; the Arabs give them a year in which to do so. In the autumn of 642, the handover duly occurs. One of the richest of Byzantine provinces has been lost to the Arabs without a fight. 

The Arabs continue rapidly westwards along the coast of North Africa, capturing Cyrenaica in 642 and Tripoli in 643. But these remain largely ineffective outposts. For nearly three decades the Arabs make little progress in subduing the indigenous Berber inhabitants of this coastal strip. 

The turning point comes in 670 with the founding of a new Arab garrison town at Kairouan, about sixty miles south of the Byzantine city of Carthage. From this secure base military control becomes possible. Carthage is destroyed (yet again) in 698. By the early 8th century northwest Africa is firmly in Arab hands. In 711 an Arab general takes the next expansionist step. With a Berber army he crosses the straits of Gibraltar and enters Spain. 

Arabs in Spain and France: 711-732

The short journey across the water from Africa, bringing an army into Spain in 711, begins the final thrust of Arab expansionism in the west. In a frequently repeated pattern of history the invaders, invited to assist one side in a quarrel, rapidly take control and suppress both squabbling parties. Within a few months the Arabs drive the Visigoths from their capital at Toledo. 

Soon governors appointed by the caliph in Damascus are ruling much of Spain. The Arabs press on northwards. Their armies move into Gaul, and here at last they are halted - near Poitiers in 732. 

The Arabs and Constantinople: 674-717

In the overwhelming assault on the Byzantine empire by the Arabs during the 7th century, only one campaign is consistently unsuccessful. This is their frequently repeated attempt to capture Constantinople itself. 

The city is first unsuccessfully attacked, by sea and land, in669. The last of several expeditions ends in disaster for the Arabs in 717, when a fleet of some 2000 ships is destroyed by a storm and the army straggles homewards through a wintry Anatolia. From the mid-670s the Byzantines have one strong psychological advantage - a mysterious new device in their armory which becomes known as Greek fire. 

Greek fire: 674

In 674 a Muslim fleet enters the Bosphorus to attack Constantinople. It is greeted, and greatly deterred, by a new weapon which can be seen as the precursor of the modern flamethrower. It has never been discovered precisely how the Byzantine chemists achieve the jet of flame for their 'Greek fire'. The secret of such a lethal advantage is jealously guarded. 

Contemporary accounts imply that the inflammable substance is petroleum-based, floats on water, and is almost impossible to extinguish. It can be lobbed in a canister. But in its most devastating form it is projected, as a stream of liquid fire, from a tube mounted in the prow of a ship. Sprayed among a wooden fleet, its destructive potential is obvious. 

Arabs and Muslims: 8th century

During the explosive first century of Arab expansion, the relationship subtly changes between two concepts - Arab and Muslim. At first they are inseparable. The Muslim armies are made up entirely of Arab tribesmen, and it is taken for granted that only Arabs can be Muslims. Between campaigns the Arab armies stay together in winter camps or garrison towns. They are an occupying force, having little link with the inhabitants of the conquered territories. But by the early 8th century, when the Muslim expansion has reached something approaching its peak, there are not enough Arabs to provide the troops. 

Out of necessity, people of other groups begin to be received into Islam, fighting alongside the Arabs. Berbers do so in the west, and Persians in the east. Inevitably there are resentments. Non-Arabs often feel they are treated as second-class Muslims, particularly when it comes to sharing out loot after a campaign. And the conversion of outsiders to Islam brings a financial burden. Non-Muslims are charged a poll tax, which is not paid by believers. The spread of the faith is a drain on the treasury. These various tensions, and the inevitable difficulty of controlling the vast new empire, result in a rebellion in 747 against the Umayyad caliph.

The Abbasid caliphate: from 750

Persia is the region in which resistance comes to a head against the caliphate of the Umayyads in Damascus. The uprising is partly a simple struggle between Arab factions, each of impeccable pedigree in relation to the pioneers of Islam. A revolt in Persia in 747 is headed by descendants of al-Abbas, an uncle of the prophet Muhammad. Their new caliphate, established in 750, will be known as Abbasid. 

The involvement of Persia is also significant. The Umayyad caliphate in Damascus derives from the early days of Islam when all Muslims are Arabs. But many Muslims in the east are now Persian, and Persian sophistication is beginning to divert Muslim culture from its simple Arab origins. 

Abbasid forces reach and capture Damascus in 750. Abul Abbas is proclaimed the first caliph of a new line. Male members of the Umayyad family are hunted down and killed (though one survives to establish a new Umayyad dynasty in Spain). 

The centre of gravity of the Muslim world now moves east, from Syria to Mesopotamia. In 762 a new capital city, Baghdad, is founded on the Tigris. It is about twenty miles upstream from Ctesiphon, one of the leading cities of the preceding Persian dynasty, the Sassanians. 

The Arabs and the Chinese: 751-758

By the mid-8th century, with the Arabs firmly in control of central Asia and the Chinese pressing further west than ever before, a clash is sooner or later inevitable. It comes, in 751, at the Talas River. The result is a shattering defeat for the Chinese. For the Arabs an interesting fringe benefit of victory is the valuable secret of how to make paper. Seven years later the Arabs again demonstrate their strength with an impertinent gesture at the opposite extreme of the Chinese empire. Arriving in 758 along the trade route of the south China coast, they loot and burn Canton. 

Umayyad dynasty in Spain: 756-1031

The defeat of the Arabs in 732 by Charles Martel in Gaul is followed by Berber rebellions in north Africa and in Spain. The effect is to limit Arab territorial ambitions in Europe to the Iberian Peninsula. Even this proves hard to hold because of hostilities between rival Arab groups. Stability in Spain is restored by an Umayyad prince, Abd-al-Rahman, who escapes the Abbasid massacre of his family in Syria. He establishes himself in 756 at Cordoba. Here he founds the first great Muslim civilization of Spain. 

Abd-al-Rahman begins the process of making Cordoba one of the outstanding cities of the medieval world. On the site of a Roman temple and Visigothic church he builds the famous mosque, with schools and hospitals attached, which survives today as a place of great beauty - even though its vistas of columns and striped arches are brutally interrupted by alterations made for its later use as the city's cathedral. 

Cordoba continues to grow in size and wealth and reputation, known equally for its skilled craftsmen and its scholars. Under Abd-al-Rahman III, in the 10th century, it has probably half a million inhabitants. He is the first Amir of Cordoba to accord himself the resounding title of caliph. 

During the three centuries of Umayyad rule in Spain the Arabs are for the most part in control of almost the entire peninsula. The Christian re-conquest makes several tentative beginnings during the period, but northern territories are often then regained by Arab rulers - relying heavily on the wild Berber mercenaries who form the bulk of their armies. 

The Berbers eventually prove too hard to control. Concessions to their demands lead in 1031 to the collapse of the Umayyad caliphate and the effective end of Arab rule in Spain. There follows a period of steady Christian advance southwards. It is halted, in 1086, by a tribal leader from North Africa. He is head of a Berber dynasty, the Almoravids. 

Baghdad: 8th century

In their new city of Baghdad the Abbasid caliphs adopt the administrative system of the long-established Persian empire. Persian Muslims are as much involved in the life of this thriving place as Arab Muslims. Here Islam outgrows its Arab roots and becomes an international religion. Here the Arabic and early Persian languages coalesce to become, from the 10th century, what is now known as Persian - combining words from both sources and using the Arabic script. Here Mesopotamia briefly recovers its ancient status at the centre of one of the world's largest empires. At no time is this more evident than in the reign of the best-known of the Abbasid caliphs, Harun al-Rashid. 

The luxury and delight of Harun al-Rashid's Baghdad, in the late 8th century, has been impressed on the western mind by one of the most famous works of Arabic literature – the Thousand and One Nights. Some of the stories are of a later date, but there are details in them which certainly relate to this period when for the first time a Muslim court has the leisure and prosperity to indulge in traditional oriental splendor. 

The caliphate is now at its widest extent, with reasonable calm on most borders. The international fame of Harun himself can be judged by the emphasis of Charlemagne's biographers on the mutual esteem of these two contemporary potentates, who send each other Rich gifts. 

Arab civilization: from the 8th century

By the end of the 8th century a distinctive Arab civilization is emerging in widely separated regions. It is evident from the 8th century in Baghdad in the east and in Cordoba in the west. By the 10th century, between the two, there is a similar centre in the new city of Cairo. 

The shared characteristics of these great cities are Islam, the Arabic language and a tolerance which allows Christians and Jews to play a full part in the community. The results include an expansion of trade (making these places the most prosperous of their time, apart from T'ang China), and a level of scholarship and intellectual energy superior to contemporary Christian cities.

Together with the spread of Islam, a lasting result of the events of the 7th century is the triumph of Arabic as a language in the Middle East and North Africa. In Palestine and Syria it gradually replaces Aramaic as the popular tongue; in Egypt it does the same with Coptic; further west along the North African coast, it edges the language of the Berbers into a minority status. 

The sense of identity of Arabs in subsequent centuries does not necessarily involve descent from the tribes of Arabia. It depends instead on the sharing of Arabic as both language and culture (implying also in most cases a commitment to Islam). It is this which provides the strong Arabic element in the civilization of the middle Ages, from Mesopotamia to Spain. 

Greek and Arabic scholarship: from the 8th century
 

The eastern Mediterranean coast, occupied so rapidly by the Arabs in the 7th century, has been part of the Greek world since the time of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC. Conquest by the Romans does not displace Greek civilization in this region, nor at first do the Arab caliphs. They rule over communities which understand Greek and which possess manuscripts of the classic works of Greek literature. Many have already been translated in Antioch into Syriac - a local version of Aramaic. Of the medical works of Galen for example; as many as 130 exist in Syriac. 

In the 8th century, when the caliphate has moved to Baghdad, scholars begin translating these available Greek and Syriac texts into Arabic. Science and philosophy are of equal interest to the Arabs, and they find a full measure of each in Aristotle. Of the many learned commentators on his work, three are outstanding. Each writes on medicine as well as philosophy, combining the practical and theoretical. The first is born in the eastern part of the Arab world, in Turkestan. The other two come from Spain, and one of them is Jewish rather than Muslim. 

Avicenna, born near Bukhara in 980, has Persian as his native language but he writes mostly in Arabic. He is known in particular for two great encyclopedic compilations, one of philosophy (Ash-Shifa, 'The Recovery') and the other of medicine (Al-Qanun fi'l-Tibb, 'The Canon of Medicine'). 

Averroës and Maimonides are born in Cordoba within a few years of each other, in1126 and 1135 respectively. They both become leading physicians as well as philosophers. But their religion affects their careers differently. 

Averroës, a Muslim, is for a while the chief physician to the ruler of the Almohads, who capture Cordoba in 1148. He lives his whole life in Cordoba and makes his reputation with his extensive commentaries on Aristotle. He also writes a complete handbook of medicine (Al-Kulliyyat, 'The Compendium').

Maimonides, by contrast, leaves Cordoba as a child, with his family, when the new rulers of the Almohads - failing to live up to the tradition of previous Muslim dynasties in Spain - introduce restrictions on the local Jews. He eventually settles in Cairo, where he becomes the city's leading rabbi and for a while a court physician to Saladin. 

Maimonides' best-known philosophical work, with the endearing title Guide of the Perplexed, is a treatise in Arabic which attempts to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy with Jewish rabbinic theology. 

From Greek to Latin via Arabic: 8th - 13th century

Although Greece is geographically close to Italy, and Greek literature is highly prized in ancient Rome, western Europe loses touch with its Greek intellectual roots during the centuries after the collapse of the Roman empire. The new barbarian clients of papal Rome whether Franks or Anglo-Saxons; have no interest in Greek. And Byzantine Constantinople has no incentive to enlighten them. 

It is the Arab interest in Greek philosophy and science that eventually transmits the tradition to Western Europe, along the unbroken belt of Muslim civilization stretching from Greek Antioch in the northeast Mediterranean to Latin Toledo in the west. The chain of communication stretches from the school of translators set up in Baghdad in the 8th century (Greek into Arabic) to a school of translators established in Toledo in the 13th century (Arabic into Latin). 

In the early medieval years Toledo has been a multi-cultural Muslim city, where Christians and Jews prosper under Arab rulers. From the 11th century it maintains, for a while, the same excellent tradition as a Christian city. From this interface between the Arab and Christian worlds, the Latin translations of Greek philosophy (in particular Aristotle) enter the bloodstream of medieval Christianity - in the scholasticism associated above all with Thomas Aquinas.

The hidden centuries: 12th - 19th century

For a long while, beginning in the late Middle Ages, the Arabs play a less prominent role in the Middle East than has been the case in the early centuries of the caliphate. In the 12th century the defense of Islam against the crusaders is led not by an Arab but by a Kurd, Saladin. The caliphate in Baghdad, long under the effective control of the Seljuk Turks, is brought to a brutal end in the 13th century by the Mongols. The entire region of the Middle East is overrun by the Ottoman Turks in the early 16th century. 

The Arabic language remains central to Islam, because the Qur'an must always be studied in its original divinely inspired form. But the Arabs as a group are excluded from their previously central role in Muslim affairs. A measure of this change can be seen in the contemporary words for Muslims in the languages of outsiders. They are known either as Saracens (the term used by the crusaders, the original meaning of which in uncertain) or as Moors - people from Morocco, reflecting the importance in medieval Europe of the Berber dynasties in Spain. 

Not until the 20th century, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, will the Arabs recover the dominant position in the Middle East which was theirs in the first centuries of Islam.

World History, Byzantium

HISTORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

A new Rome: AD 330

Constantine, now in firm command of the entire Roman Empire (the first man for a long while to be in that position), is planning another initiative as significant as his adoption of Christianity. Immediately after the defeat of Licinius he sets about rebuilding Byzantium as a Christian capital city - one in which pagan sacrifice, the central rite of imperial Rome until this time, is specifically forbidden. 

The city is ready by AD 330 for a ceremony of inauguration. Byzantium acquires two new names - New Rome and Constantinople, the city of Constantine. The Roman Empire, within eighteen years of Constantine's first victory, has a new religion, a new centre of gravity and a significant change of culture. 

Greece has always been the main cultural influence on Rome, and Greek is the language of the inhabitants of Byzantium. With the founding of Constantinople, the older culture effectively absorbs its vigorous younger challenger. Even the name Constantinopolis is Greek (polis meaning city). Yet Constantinople is also the new Rome, capital of the Roman Empire. The Greeks of this city will long continue to describe themselves as Romans. For several centuries Constantinople represents both the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Byzantine Empire. Meanwhile Rome gradually establishes a new identity - as the seat of the Christian pope. 

Byzantium offers the Roman emperor a clear strategic advantage as a centre of operation, for it is much closer than Rome to the threatened regions of the empire. The main problems in the past century have been defending the Balkans from invaders beyond the Danube and protecting the Middle East from the Persians. Byzantium, renewed now as Constantinople, sits firmly between these troubled regions. 

Constantine and his city: from AD 330

The emperor wastes no time in building monuments to proclaim Byzantium a Christian city. The focal point is a structure called the milion or milestone, from which all distances in the empire are now to be measured. It consists of four triumphal arches supporting a dome. Nearby is the first church built here by Constantine. In this Greek city it is dedicated not to a martyr but to a concept, Holy Peace - the church of St Eirene. Probably before the end of Constantine's life, work begins on its famous neighbor, complete by 360 and sacred this time to Holy Wisdom - St Sophia. 

Falling ill in AD 337, Constantine is at last baptized - only a few days before his death. It has often been asked why he left this necessary act of Christian commitment so late. The answer is probably so as not to waste the magic of baptism, which washes away sins. An emperor can hardly live a blameless life, and there are many blots on Constantine's record - such as his unexplained execution of his eldest son and his second wife in 326. A late baptism guarantees a clean record on the Day of Judgment. 

Three sons of Constantine: AD 337-361

On the death of Constantine, in AD 337, the empire is divided between his sons Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans. Since the time of his father, Constantius, the family has had a streak of constancy in its choice of names. 

The sons inherit the parts of the empire which they have already ruled, on behalf of their father, as Caesars. Constantius II, though not the eldest, has the lion's share - Greece, Constantinople and the entire eastern empire. His elder brother, Constantine II, has Spain, Gaul and Britain. The youngest, Constans left with controls Italy and Spain. 

Peace and wisdom, in honor of which churches are now rising in Constantinople, do not make the brothers any more loving than other imperial families. Large numbers of their male relations are butchered at the start of the reign, and Constantine II meets his death in Italy in 340 when marching against Constans. Ten years later Constans is murdered in Gaul by an army commander with an eye on the throne. From AD 350 Constantius II is the only legitimate emperor. With difficulty he recovers control of the entire empire. But from the point of view of Christianity, on which he is as keen as his father, he makes one cardinal error. He gives command of the west to his cousin Julian. 

Julian the Apostate: AD 337-361

Son of a half-brother of Constantine the Great, Julian escapes the massacre of male members of the family which follows Constantine's death - probably because he is only six at the time. In his early 20s he studies in Athens, which still retains its status as the centre of Greek learning and pagan philosophy. Brought up strictly as a Christian, Julian now becomes a devotee of Greek culture. He is himself a talented writer in Greek, and several of his works survive. 

Little of this would be remembered today, but for the unexpected accident of his becoming emperor. Subsequent events, in the two brief years of the 'apostate' on the throne, have mesmerized Christian historians. In AD 356, when Julian is twenty-five, the emperor Constantius II appoints him Caesar in command of the Roman armies in Gaul. To everyone's surprise the young intellectual proves a brilliant general, winning a succession of victories over powerful tribes along the Rhine border. 

In 359, needing reinforcements against Persia, Constantius orders many of Julian's best legions to march east. Instead, the troops stationed near Paris mutiny and proclaim Julian emperor. He moves slowly eastwards with them to what would have been a rebellious confrontation. But in 361 Constantius, moving westwards to meet him dies in Asia Minor. Julian is emperor. 

The revival of the pagan cult: AD 361-363

It is not known exactly when the new emperor, Julian, decides to reinstate the ancient gods of Rome and Greece. At first he behaves with religious tolerance - returning to their sees, for example, Catholic bishops who have been exiled by Constantius, a committed follower of Arius. But by 362 Julian is making a prominent display of the ritual sacrifices which he carries out personally at revived pagan temples. When Christians protest, he removes their relics from ancient shrines, imposes special taxes on Christian priests and gives preference to pagans in the civil service. 

Julian is repeating, in reverse, the actions of his uncle Constantine in favoring Christianity. He intends to put in place a network of pagan priests and officials throughout the empire of the kind established by the Christians. This view of tomorrow does not appeal to yesterday's elite. 

To what extent the young emperor might have achieved his aim is one of history's interesting speculations. In Christian eyes God gives a swift and decisive answer when Julian is killed, in 363, in a skirmish against the Persians. A rumor, first heard a century later, offers wry satisfaction. It is said that in his dying words the apostate cedes victory to Christ: Vicisti, Galilaee(Thou hast conquered, Galilean). 

The frontiers of empire: AD 364-378

The death of Julian in warfare with Persia leads indirectly to a rare spell of peace on that frontier. The army selects as emperor a member of the royal household, by the name of Jovian, who extracts the Roman legions from a dangerous situation by making major concessions. Large tracts of territory in Mesopotamia and Armenia, long disputed, are abandoned to Persia. Jovian dies of natural causes less than a year after becoming emperor. His concessions are regarded as shameful in Constantinople, but it is another forty years before war with Persia resumes. 

On the other permanently threatened frontiers of empire, the Danube and the Rhine, the situation is very different. The pressure of barbarian tribes, themselves suddenly under threat from the Huns, is at last about to break down the barriers and flood the western empire. 

The catastrophe begins when the emperor Valens is defeated and killed by the Visigoths at Adrianople in 378. His successor, Theodosius - an emperor subsequently accorded the title 'the Great' - solves the problem in the short term by settling the Visigoths as federates within the empire, or allies. But the intrusion of Goths, Vandals and Huns will over the next century disturb and finally destroy the Roman Empire in the west. 

Christian emperor and Christian bishop: AD 379-390

Theodosius becomes the eastern emperor in AD 379 and rapidly settles the religious splits within the empire by declaring pagan worship and Christian heresies (such as Arianism) to be illegal. A law of 380 orders all citizens to subscribe to the Catholic doctrines agreed under the chairmanship of Constantine the Great at the Council of Nicaea in 325. A close link between church and state, with the state giving the lead, becomes a characteristic of the eastern or Byzantine empire. But Theodosius discovers, in a famous clash, that western bishops have authoritarian ideas of their own.

The cleric who sets a high standard for the western church in its relationship to the secular powers is Ambrose, bishop of Milan. In AD 390, when Theodosius is in Milan, there is a riot in Greece by supporters of a popular charioteer. A city governor is killed, and Theodosius sends orders for a brutal reprisal. The charioteer's fans are invited into a circus for a special performance. Then the gates are locked. More than 5000 are slaughtered by troops in a massacre lasting three hours. 

When news of the atrocity reaches Milan, Ambrose refuses to give communion to the emperor unless he does public penance for the crime. Theodosius at first stays away from church. But eventually he appears bare-headed and wearing sackcloth in place of his sumptuous imperial robes. He repeats the performance on several occasions before Ambrose relents, finally giving his emperor the sacrament on Christmas Day. In the threat of excommunication the western church discovers a powerful weapon for dealing with wayward rulers. 

Rome and Constantinople: 4th - 5th century AD

The balance between Rome and Constantinople, and the potential for an upset, is becoming more clearly defined. Two imperial courts, east and west, have been a familiar part of the empire's history. In effect they are more like two army camps, permanently on the move. If they come too close to each other, the result has often been war. 

With two rival cities, both interested in political and religious priority, the situation is more complex. In the mid-4th century, under Constantius II, the senate in Constantinople is given equal authority with that of Rome. A few years later, at the Council of Constantinople in 381, it is stated that the bishop of Constantinople is of equal status to the bishop of Rome. 

On the religious front an uneasy truce is maintained for several centuries. The final schism between Rome and Constantinople, acknowledging the separate Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches, becomes only gradually evident during the Middle Ages. 

In the military sphere the pace is forced by events largely beyond the emperors' control. Theodosius rules the entire empire with considerable skill until 395, and his descendants remain at least nominally in control of both east and west until 455. But any measure of peace in the west has been bought by compromise with German tribes. 

Odoacer, king of Italy: AD 476-493

German mercenaries by now form an important part of any Roman army, and Roman armies play a major role in the making and breaking of emperors. This is the case in a fairly normal putsch of AD 476, but it is followed by an unusual demand from the mercenaries. They want to settle in Italy. They suggest that a third of every landowner's estate should be made over to them. The suggestion is not as unreasonable as it sounds. Roman soldiers have in the past been rewarded with land, and barbarian tribes have been settled in provinces of the empire as federates. But it is a shocking thought to Romans that this provincial system might apply to Italy itself. The mercenaries' demand is rejected. 

There is an immediate mutiny. The tribesmen elect one of their members, Odoacer, as their king. He leads them to a rapid victory, but immediately makes it clear that his intention is not to destroy the western empire. He wants to be part of it. He sends ambassadors to the emperor Zeno in Constantinople, acknowledging the emperor's rule but asking to be allowed to govern Italy as king of his own people. Zeno reluctantly agrees, subject to certain points of protocol. The senate in Rome accepts the fait accompli with better grace, for Odoacer proves an effective ruler within the traditional Roman system. He even finds land for his German tribesmen without causing undue upheaval. 

The end of the Roman Empire?: AD 476

The acceptance of Odoacer as king of Italy in 476 causes this year to be seen as the end of the Roman empire. And in a real sense it is. Kings and popes, neither of them part of Roman imperial tradition, will henceforth wield power in the Italian peninsula. But this is the perspective of hindsight. To historians Constantinople is by this time the capital of the young Byzantine Empire. To Europeans in the 5th century it is still the centre of the very ancient Roman Empire. In imperial terms there is nothing new about chaos and upheaval in the west, and Roman emperors in Constantinople will continue to take active steps to reassert their authority. In 488 this is done with the help of the Ostrogoths. 

Theodoric the Ostrogoth: AD 487-526

The Ostrogoths have as yet intruded less than the Visigoths upon the imperial territories of Rome and Constantinople. In recent times, in their region north of the Black Sea, they have been subdued by the Huns. But after the collapse of the Huns, in the mid-5th century, the Ostrogoths press down across the Danube into the Balkans. 

In 487, under the leadership of Theodoric, they almost succeed in capturing Constantinople. The Byzantine emperor, Zeno, finds a brilliant short-term solution to this immediate problem. Having recently had to relinquish Italy to one barbarian, Odoacer, he now invites Theodoric to invade Italy and take Odoacer's place. 

Theodoric arrives in Italy in AD 489. In the twelve months from August 489 his Ostrogoths confront Odoacer in three separate battles. In each they are victorious, but they fail to dislodge Odoacer from his stronghold at Ravenna. This is eventually achieved by negotiation, with the bishop of Ravenna as the intermediary. It is agreed that Theodoric and Odoacer will rule Italy jointly. On 5 March 493 the gates of the city are opened to Theodoric. Ten days later Theodoric invites Odoacer to a banquet. During the event he kills his guest with his own hand, after which Odoacer's retinue is murdered. 

Theodoric's long reign in Italy begins with this treachery, but the murder of Odoacer proves untypical of the Ostrogothic king. His thirty-three years on the throne bring a period of calm to turbulent Italy, justifiably earning him the title Theodoric the Great. He is the first barbarian king from the Germanic tribes of northern Europe to establish a settled and civilized rule - to which his buildings in Ravenna still bear witness. His achievements win him a lasting place in legend, as Dietrich von Bern. 

Theodoric never deviates from his arrangement with Constantinople. He rules in Italy as the emperor's appointed military governor - becoming thereby an accepted part of the Roman Empire rather than its enemy. Theodoric has the good sense to leave the administration of Italy virtually unchanged and in the hands of Romans. They are prevented from serving as soldiers, but similarly Goths may not join the bureaucracy. The arrangement suits even the papacy. Though himself an Arian, Theodoric makes no attempt to interfere in Roman Catholic affairs. Indeed he is so much trusted that when there are two rival claimants to the papal seat, in 498, he is invited to choose between them. Nevertheless the rule of a barbarian Arian in Italy is unacceptable in the longer term. The inadequacy of Theodoric's immediate successors prompts the campaign of 535 by Justinian to recover Ravenna.

Justinian and Theodora: 527-548

The emperor who comes to the throne in 527 restores the western empire to much of its former glory, reforms the legal and administrative system of his realm, and commissions churches and mosaics which emphasize the imperial dignity of Christianity. He also contracts a marriage which makes him and his bride the most famous couple in Byzantine history. He is Justinian. His wife, an ex-courtesan, is Theodora. They feature in mosaic, facing each other from opposite walls, in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna. 

Justinian is born in 483 into a peasant family in the Balkans, near Skopje, but from his early years he receives a good education in Constantinople; his uncle has risen to high command in the army and becomes emperor in 518 as Justin I. Theodora is of much less respectable origins. Born the daughter of a bear-keeper in the circus at Constantinople, she makes her mark as a child actress and then as a courtesan in various cities of North Africa and Anatolia. In Constantinople she attracts the attention of Justinian, nearly twenty years her senior. He persuades his uncle, now emperor, to revoke a law banning marriage between men of senatorial rank and actresses. 

Justinian and Theodora are married in 525 in Constantine's church, the first Santa Sophia. Two years later Justinian's uncle dies and they become emperor and empress. Until her early death, in 548, Theodora plays an almost equal role with her husband in running the empire - not least in the resolve which she shows in persuading him to stay in Constantinople in the civil disorder which nearly ends his rule, the so-called Nika revolt of 532. 

The rioters burn many of the most famous buildings of the capital city, including the church in which Justinian and Theodora were married. Together the couple supervises its replacement with one of the world's most spectacular buildings. 

Santa Sophia: 537

In Santa Sophia in Constantinople (completed astonishingly in only five years) the architects working for Justinian achieve with triumphant skill a new and difficult feat of technology - that of placing a vast circular dome on top of a square formed of four arches. The link between the curves of two arches (diverging from a shared supporting pillar) and the curve round the base of the dome is made by a complex triangular shape known as a pendentive (see Squinch and pendentive). Santa Sophia (or Hagia Sophia, the two being Latin and Greek for 'Holy Wisdom'), is not the first building in which a pendentive is used. But it is by far the most impressive. 

A code of law: 527-534

By the time of Justinian nearly 600 years have passed since the last years of the Roman republic, in the 1st century BC. Many laws from all these centuries are still in force, but they exist only in scattered and often rare manuscripts. Consistency is impossible. Justinian begins his reign with an energetic program of reform in the administration of the civil service, in the collection of tax and in the field of law. Tackling corruption in the bureaucracy and improving the tax revenue bring immediate unpopularity (seen in The Nika revolt of 532). But tidying up the Roman law is an achievement for which Justinian has won lasting fame. 

On his accession Justinian immediately appoints a ten-man commission to collate all the statutes of past administrations and thus provide a clear version of the constitution. They complete their task in fourteen months. The resulting Codex Constitutionum is published in529. In 530 Justinian sets a team of sixteen to the task of assembling the opinions of the jurists. This too is completed within three years and is published in 533 as Digesta. The result modifies to some extent the conclusions of the earlier Codex, which is issued in a revised form in 534. 

The Codex of 534 is the Justinian code of law which has come down in history. It consists of twelve books containing 4652 laws and amendments, spanning the four centuries from Hadrian to Justinian himself. This great legal effort, carried out on the emperor's behalf, is not legislation in the same sense as the Napoleonic code of civil law (which breaks new ground). It is more in the nature of academic clarification - of inestimable value in its own time to legal practitioners, and in subsequent ages to those who study Roman law. 

Justinian's armies: 532-561

When Justinian comes to the throne, the empire is engaged as usual in the struggle in the east against Persia. A peace is agreed in 532 with a new Persian monarch, Khosrau I (who breaks it dramatically in his raid on Antioch in 540). Later a series of settlements culminate in a 50-year-truce signed in 561. The eastern frontier is a distraction from the campaigns which more greatly inspire Justinian. He is determined to recover the Roman Empire in the west from heretical barbarians. With the help of a brilliant general, Belisarius, he has considerable success - against the Arian Vandals in North Africa, the Arian Ostrogoths in Italy and the Arian Visigoths in Spain. 

Byzantine Africa: 6th - 7th century

The expansionist energy of Justinian in Constantinople, and of his great general Belisarius in the field, brings the whole of the North African coast back under Roman rule for one final century. In 533 Belisarius defeats the Vandals in battle, captures their king and enters Carthage unopposed. 

The authority of the emperor is restored, though the northwest tip of the continent is never again brought fully under control (in spite of pioneering efforts by Belisarius in the building of castles). Carthage rejoins Alexandria as a great imperial city on this important coast, rich in grain. But in the next century they both fall, in turn, to an entirely unexpected new power – the Arabs. 

The recovery of Byzantine Italy: 535-568

In 535 a fleet sails from Constantinople with orders to re-establish direct imperial rule in Italy. The campaign is under the command of Belisarius, hero of the recent African successes. He begins his task in the south, capturing Sicily in 535 and moving north to take Naples and Rome in the following year. Once again the fortified capital city, Ravenna, proves the hardest place to subdue. The Ostrogoths hold out against him here until 540. When Ravenna finally falls in that year, the task seems complete. Belisarius returns to Constantinople. But Byzantine confidence is premature. 

Within a few years the whole of Italy has been recaptured by the Ostrogoths, apart from three well guarded enclaves on the east coast (Ravenna, Ancona and Otranto). A long campaign by a eunuch general, Narses, eventually restores Byzantine control over the entire peninsula but this is not achieved until 562 - less than a decade before the arrival on the Italian scene of yet another Germanic tribe. The Lombards, invading in 568, rapidly overrun the rich north Italian plain, from which the Byzantines never again shift them. Their arrival introduces the many centuries in which a united Italy will be nothing more than a dream, based on nostalgic memories of imperial Rome. 

Exarchate of Ravenna: 584-751

In an attempt to hold the remaining Byzantine possessions in Italy against the Lombards, the emperor Maurice groups them from about 584 in a new administrative structure based in Ravenna. In command of the entire region is an exarch - a provincial governor with absolute power over both military and civilian affairs.

At first the exarch governs most of Italy south of the Po, together with the coastal strip round the north Adriatic - including the modest settlements on the islands of the Venetian lagoon, recently established by refugees from the advancing Lombards. Corsica and Sardinia come under another exarch, ruling from Carthage. Sicily becomes linked more directly with Constantinople. This swathe of territory soon proves impossible to hold. During the 7th century the Lombards steadily extend their territory in the north, and local dukes take possession of much of the south of Italy. In the 8th century ancient cities such as Naples and papal Rome show increasing signs of independence. In 726, even upstart Venice begins to choose its own dukes, or doges. 

By the middle of the 8th century the Lombards have seized much of the territory inland from Ravenna, and in 751 they take Ravenna itself. Byzantine influence on places such as Venice will remain strong. But Italy can no longer be said to be part of the old Roman Empire. 

Byzantium and Persia: 6th - 7th century

The final and most destructive chapter in the rivalry between the Byzantine empire and Persia begins in an improbable way. In 591 both emperors find themselves fighting on the same side. Khosrau II has fled from Persia after the murder of his father. He enlists the support of the Byzantine emperor, Maurice, who marches east to restore Khosrau to his inheritance - in return for some useful territorial concessions in Armenia and Mesopotamia. The result is peace between the two sides until 602, when Maurice is murdered in a Byzantine upheaval. Khosrau, seeing his own opportunity, moves to avenge his friend's death. In the next few years the Persians devastate the Byzantine cities of the Middle East. 

The first Christian city to fall to Khosrau's armies is Antioch, in 611. Damascus follows in 613. In the spring of 614 a Persian army enters Palestine and moves through the countryside, burning churches. Only the church built by St Helena in Bethlehem is spared; the Persians recognize themselves in the costumes of the Magi, seen bringing their gifts to the infant Jesus in a mosaic above the entrance. 

The army reaches Jerusalem in April. The Patriarch urges the inhabitants to surrender, so as to avoid bloodshed, but they resist for a month. When the city falls, it is said that some 60,000 Christians are massacred and another 35,000 sold into slavery. From the point of view of the Christian hierarchy, far away in Constantinople, the Persians commit one even greater affront. After sacking Jerusalem, they carry off to Ctesiphon the most holy relic of Christendom, the True Cross of Christ. Its restoration to Jerusalem becomes an urgent matter of state. 

Recovering the relic: 622-629

Under the emperor Heraclius, Byzantium has been quietly regaining its strength. In 622 Heraclius feels ready to take the field against the Persians. His successes are as rapid and spectacular as the reverses of the previous decade. By 624 he has swept through Asia Minor and Armenia to reach Azerbaijan, to the north of Persia between the Black Sea and the Caspian. Here, as if avenging the violation of the True Cross, he destroys one of the most sacred fire temples of Zoroastrianism. 

In the next few years the swings of fortune become even more extreme. In 626 a Persian army reaches the Bosphorus, but fails to cross the water to support a siege of Constantinople's massive walls by a barbarian horde of Slavs and Avars. In 627 a Byzantine army under Heraclius penetrates Mesopotamia far enough to defeat the Persians at Nineveh and destroy Khosrau's palace at Ctesiphon. 

From a position of strength Heraclius negotiates the return of the True Cross. He takes it back to be displayed in Constantinople, and then personally returns it, in 629, to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. But the relic proves powerless against the next threat to Jerusalem in 638.

The Arab conquests: 7th century

One of the most dramatic and sudden movements of any people in history is the expansion, by conquest, of the Arabs in the 7th century (only the example of the Mongols in the 13th century can match it). The desert tribesmen of Arabia form the bulk of the Muslim armies. Their natural ferocity and love of warfare, together with the sense of moral rectitude provided by their new religion, form an irresistible combination. 

When Muhammad dies in 632, the western half of Arabia is Muslim. Two years later the entire peninsula has been brought to the faith, and the Arab nomads are Muslim in the desert to the east of Palestine and Syria. The great Christian cities of Syria and Palestine fall to the Arabs in rapid succession from 635. Damascus, in that year, is the first to be captured. Antioch follows in 636. And 638 brings the greatest prize of all, in Muslim terms, when Jerusalem is taken after a year's siege. 

It is a moment of profound significance for the young religion, for Islam sees itself as the successor of Judaism and Christianity. The city of the people of Moses, in which Jesus also preaches and dies, is a holy place for Muslims too. Moses and Jesus are Muhammad's predecessors as prophets. A link with Muhammad himself will also soon emerge in Jerusalem. 

Muslim North Africa: from 642

The Arab conquest of Egypt and North Africa begins with the arrival of an army in 640 in front of the Byzantine fortified town of Babylon (in the area which is now Old Cairo). The Arabs capture it after a siege and establish their own garrison town just to the east, calling it Al Fustat. The army then moves on to Alexandria, but here the defenses are sufficient to keep them at bay for fourteen months. At the end of that time a surprising treaty is signed. The Greeks of Alexandria agree to leave peacefully; the Arabs give them a year in which to do so. In the autumn of 642, the handover duly occurs. One of the richest of Byzantine provinces has been lost to the Arabs without a fight. 

The Arabs continue rapidly westwards along the coast of North Africa, capturing Cyrenaica in 642 and Tripoli in 643. But these remain largely ineffective outposts. For nearly three decades the Arabs make little progress in subduing the indigenous Berber inhabitants of this coastal strip. 

The turning point comes in 670 with the founding of a new Arab garrison town at Kairouan, about sixty miles south of the Byzantine city of Carthage. From this secure base military control becomes possible. Carthage is destroyed (yet again) in 698. By the early 8th century northwest Africa is firmly in Arab hands. In 711 an Arab general takes the next expansionist step. With a Berber army he crosses the straits of Gibraltar and enters Spain.

The Arabs and Constantinople: 674-717

In the overwhelming assault on the Byzantine empire by the Arabs during the 7th century, only one campaign is consistently unsuccessful. This is their frequently repeated attempt to capture Constantinople itself. The city is first unsuccessfully attacked, by sea and land, in669. The last of several expeditions ends in disaster for the Arabs in 717, when a fleet of some 2000 ships is destroyed by a storm and the army straggles homewards through a wintry Anatolia. From the mid-670s the Byzantines have one strong psychological advantage - a mysterious new device in their armory which becomes known as Greek fire. 

Greek fire: 674

In 674 a Muslim fleet enters the Bosphorus to attack Constantinople. It is greeted, and greatly deterred, by a new weapon which can be seen as the precursor of the modern flamethrower. It has never been discovered precisely how the Byzantine chemists achieve the jet of flame for their 'Greek fire'. The secret of such a lethal advantage is jealously guarded. 

Contemporary accounts imply that the inflammable substance is petroleum-based, floats on water, and is almost impossible to extinguish. It can be lobbed in a canister. But in its most devastating form it is projected, as a stream of liquid fire, from a tube mounted in the prow of a ship. Sprayed among a wooden fleet, its destructive potential is obvious. 

Iconoclasm: 726-843

In 726, the Byzantine emperor Leo III; issues a dramatic order demanding the desyruction of a significant icon. Above the bronze gates leading into his imperial palace there has been, since the time of Justinian, a vast golden image of Jesus Christ - the partner and the source of the authority of Byzantine emperors. Leo sends a body of troops to destroy this great icon (from eikon, Greek for 'image'). 

Local outrage is so great that the crowd kills the officer in charge. The event begins a century and more of the so-called Iconoclastic Controversy, which wrecks the empire and contributes considerably to the developing split between Rome and Constantinople. Leo has the support of many in the eastern provinces of the empire, and he has strong arguments on his side. Icons are greatly venerated within the Byzantine church, in unmistakable disregard of God's second Commandment (prohibiting 'graven images'). Islam, taking the same prohibition with the utmost seriousness, has been for almost a century a neighboring source of rebuke. A majority of Christian leaders in the east (the region most affected by Islam) support Leo's policy. 

Undeterred by widespread popular unrest following the first iconoclastic act of 726, Leo goes further down his chosen route. In 730 he declares the possession of icons to be illegal, and orders their destruction. The battle between the iconoclasts (klastes, Greek for 'breaker') and the iconodules (doulos, 'servant' and thus 'worshipper') is a political one with violent consequences for early Byzantine art. But Pope Gregory III in Rome will have none of it, and Roman Catholics have always remained passionate iconodules. 

In the eastern empire there is an interlude from 787, when iconodules win power, but iconoclasm is restored as imperial policy in 814. The controversy lasts until 843. In that year Theodora, the widow of the emperor Theophilus, officially sanctions the veneration of icons - an event still celebrated each year in the Eastern Church as the Feast of Orthodoxy. From 843 icons recover their special position in Greek Orthodox Christianity, never again to lose it. The screen between the nave and the altar sanctuary in an Orthodox church is dedicated to the display of holy images - as its name iconostasis specifically states. 

As other regions are converted to the Greek religion, in the Balkans and in Russia, the veneration of images spreads. Indeed too many people nowadays, after a millennium of the rich tradition of Russian Orthodox Christianity, the word 'icon' suggests first and foremost a Russian religious painting. And Russian icons, still being painted today, preserve much of the ancient Byzantine style. 

Byzantine revival: 10th century

During the 10th century the fortunes of Byzantium undergo a remarkable revival. Control is re-established over much of the Balkans when the Slavs are brought within the empire - first by their conversion to Greek Orthodox Christianity, then by treaties and alliances. Beyond the Danube the Russians also are converted to the faith, and are from time to time kept friendly by intermarriage with the imperial family in Constantinople. At the same period Byzantine armies recover Anatolia, Syria and northern Mesopotamia - extending the imperial frontiers in a manner unprecedented since the eruption of Islam in the 7th century. 

Even in Italy the Byzantine territory is enlarged in the south, where eviction of the Arabs brings the entire coastline of heel and toe (Apulia and Calabria) back under imperial control. Sicily at the same period is lost to the Arabs, in a prolonged struggle from the fall of Palermo in 831 to the loss of the last Byzantine stronghold in 965. But overall, at the time of the first Christian millennium, the prospects for the Byzantine Empire seem brighter than for many years. They are to be darkened again in the next century by the emergence of a new enemy on each flank - the Normans in the west, the Seljuk Turks in the east.

Byzantines and Turks: 1064-1071

In 1064 the Seljuk Turks, under their sultan Alp Arslan, invade Armenia - for many centuries a disputed frontier region between the Byzantine empire and neighbors to the east. Alp Arslan follows his success here with an attack on Georgia, in 1068. These acts of aggression prompt a response from the Byzantine emperor, Romanus IV Diogenes. 

The armies meet in 1071 at Manzikert, near Lake Van. The battle, a resounding victory for the Seljuks, is a turning point in the story of the Byzantine Empire. Within a few years there are Turkish tribes in many parts of Anatolia. Some of them are bitter enemies of the Seljuks, but the Seljuks are now the main power in this borderland between Islam and Christianity. 

Emotive appeals: 1095-1096

In March 1095 the pope, Urban II, is holding a council of his bishops at Piacenza. It is attended by ambassadors from Constantinople. When the pope allows them to address the assembly, they make a passionate appeal for Christian soldiers to come and help the Byzantine emperor, Alexios I, in his struggles against the Turks. Everyone is impressed. This seems to have been a seminal moment in inspiring the pope with an ambitious new idea. In November of the same year, at another council (this time at Clermont), Urban takes the issue a crucial step further. Word is spread that on November 27 he will make a great announcement. A platform is set up in a field outside the city gate. A large crowd assembles. The pope rises to address them. 

He describes a pitiful state of affairs in the holiest places of Christendom, now in the hands of the Turks. Pilgrims are persecuted and even prevented from reaching the shrines. He urges Christians, rich and poor alike, to march east to recover Jerusalem. He contrasts the poverty and squabbling of life in Europe with an image of a promised land of prosperity and peace. He even offers a new inducement - a plenary indulgence to all who take part. (An indulgence saves the sinner some of the pain of Purgatory, with a plenary one promising greater remission.) Crusaders should be ready, says the pope, to leave their homes in the late summer of 1096 (after the harvest is in). They should make their way to Constantinople, where a Christian army will assemble. 

Constantinople and western Christians: 1097-1099

By April 1097 the various crusading groups are ready to advance together from Constantinople. They are accompanied at this stage by a Byzantine army, for the first task is to clear a route through Anatolia - recently seized from the Byzantines by the Seljuk Turks. The immediate target, close to hand, is the Seljuk capital in the heavily fortified Byzantine town of Nicaea. After a siege it is taken, in June, and restored to the Byzantine emperor. This is virtually the last act of cooperation between the crusading armies of western Christians and the Greek emperor in Constantinople. 

The first crusade recovers northwest Anatolia for the Byzantine Empire, but the rest remains in Turkish hands. During the next century troubles multiply for Constantinople, particularly in its relations with western Europeans. The Normans of south Italy and Sicily, profoundly hostile to eastern Christianity, frequently raid the shores and islands of Greece. Antioch, beyond Anatolia, is also in Norman hands - after the leaders of the first crusade betray their agreement with the Byzantine emperor, allotting this ancient Greek city to the Norman Bohemund as a hereditary principality. But there are even more intense hostilities at closer quarters, among merchants competing bitterly for trade in Constantinople. 

Venice and Constantinople: 1082-1201

During the 12th century Venetian merchants make excellent use of the exclusive trading privilege granted them in the Byzantine empire, in 1082, for their help against the Normans. But their wealth and arrogance provoke profound hostility in Constantinople. 

In an attempt to curb them, the emperor makes trading agreements with Genoa in 1169 and with Pisa in 1170, following this in 1171 with the confiscation of the goods of every Venetian merchant in the empire. In 1182 the people of Constantinople take matters into their own hands with a massacre of the Latins (or Roman Catholics) living in the city. Dynastic conflicts in the last years of the 12th century compound the troubles of the Byzantine Empire, and accidentally play into the hands of Venice. In 1195 the emperor Isaac II is deposed and blinded by his brother. Isaac's son, Alexius, is imprisoned. In 1201 he escapes and makes his way to Western Europe to seek assistance in the recovery of his throne. 

In the same year arrangements are being made in Europe for yet another crusade, the fourth, to the Middle East. This time it is proposed that the crusaders depart in a great fleet from Venice. The Venetians, masters of secret diplomacy, suddenly have all the necessary threads in their hands. They weave them into an intricate and profitable web of deceit. 

The fourth crusade: 1202-1204

Inspired by the pope's preachers to set off for the east, a new wave of crusaders make travel arrangements in Venice in 1201. Their immediate target is Egypt, now thought to be the most vulnerable part of Saladin's empire in the eastern Mediterranean. Venice drives a hard bargain. The city will provide ships for 4500 knights and their horses, 9000 squires to serve them and 20,000 foot soldiers; food for a year for the entire expedition; and fifty galleys as an escort. For this the crusaders will pay 85,000 silver marks and will cede to Venice half of any lands they conquer. This is agreed, with a departure date planned for some time after June 1202. 

Venetian diplomats immediately get in touch with the sultan in Egypt, with whom they have excellent trading agreements, to assure him secretly that Venice will not allow the crusading fleet to reach his shores. Behind the scenes the doge is also negotiating with agents of Alexius, son of the deposed emperor in Constantinople. It seems possible that the crusaders might be diverted to this rich and ancient city, where Venice by now has several grudges to settle. Soon the hard facts of commerce are playing into Venetian hands. The crusading army is assembled in Venice by the summer of 1202. But it has nowhere near assembled the agreed sum of 85,000 silver marks. 

The Venetians propose a compromise. They will accept deferred payment and yet honor their side of the bargain, if the crusading army will do them a small favor on the journey out to Egypt. Venice has for a while been disputing control of Dalmatia with the king of Hungary. The Hungarians have recently seized an important coastal city, Zara (now Zadar). It would be a fine thing if the crusaders would recover this city. 

The crusaders sail from Venice on November 8 and arrive at Zara on November 10. They besiege the city for five days and pillage it for three. It is then decided that it is too late in the year to continue eastwards. They make a winter camp. During the winter the Venetians agree terms with Alexius. If placed on the throne in Constantinople, he will have to pay Venice the sum owed by the crusaders. He will also provide funds and men to help the crusade on its way. 

The proposal is put to the crusading army and with some reluctance is accepted. The fleet reaches Constantinople in June 1203. The crusaders break through the great chain protecting the harbor and breach the city walls in July. On August 1, in Santa Sophia, Alexius is crowned co-emperor - alongside his blind father. With the immediate purpose achieved, the crusade should be able to continue on its way. But now it is Alexius who cannot deliver his side of the bargain. 

The sack of Constantinople: 1204

The crusaders camp outside Constantinople while Alexius, as emperor, tries to raise his debt to the Venetians by taxing the citizens and confiscating church property. For nine months growing resentment within the city is matched by increasing impatience outside. In April the Venetians persuade the crusaders to storm Constantinople and place a Latin emperor on the throne. For the second time they succeed in breaching the walls. The doge of Venice and the leading crusaders install themselves in the royal palace. The army is granted three days in which to pillage the city. 
 

The Venetians, from their long links with Constantinople, can appreciate the treasures of Byzantium. They loot rather than destroy. St Mark's in Venice is graced today by many rich possessions brought back in 1204 - parts of the Pala d'Oro, the porphyry figures known as the tetrarchs, and above all the four great bronze horses. The crusaders, mainly French and Flemish, are less refined in their tastes. They tend to smash what they find. They ride their horses into Santa Sophia, tear down its silken hangings, and destroy the icons in the silver iconostasis. A prostitute, placed on the patriarch's throne, obligingly sings a bawdy song in Norman French. 

Latin and Byzantine empires: 1204-1261

The seizure of Constantinople by the fourth crusade does wider damage than the physical destruction of the city. The Byzantine Empire is fatally weakened by the crusaders who now grab fiefs for themselves in Greece and western Anatolia (following the example of the first crusaders, a century earlier, in Palestine and Syria). A Latin empire is set up in Constantinople on the same feudal principle as the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. One of the crusaders, Baldwin, Count of Flanders and Hainaut, is elected emperor. On 16 May 1204 he is crowned in Santa Sophia. Later in the year he distributes lordships to his vassals. The Byzantine court survives, in a much reduced state, in the ancient city of Nicaea. From this base, over the next three generations, Byzantine emperors gradually push their Latin opponents westwards out of Anatolia. Eventually, in alliance with Venice's bitter enemy, Genoa, they succeed in 1261 in recovering Constantinople. 

Byzantine emperors rule in Constantinople for almost another two centuries. But they are isolated, weak, and in the end helpless against encirclement by a new and powerful enemy - the Ottoman Turks.

World History

Ashur and the Assyrians: from 2000 BC

Since about 2000 BC the Assyrians, a Semitic group, have worshipped their god Ashur at a shrine on the Tigris known by his name. The city of Ashur has had periods of influence; trading and conquering westwards into Turkey, but the Assyrians have also often been subject to more powerful groups from those regions, such as the Hittites. And they have tended to be overshadowed by their great neighbor to the south, Babylon. The balance changes markedly in Ashur's favour with the accession, in 883, of Ashurnasirpal II. In 879 he moves his capital to Nimrud, which he adorns with spectacular architecture and sculpture - giving clear notice that the Assyrians are now to be reckoned with. 

Apart from a few periods of setback, the successors of Ashurnasirpal establish the Assyrian empire as the greatest yet seen in the Middle East. They do so by regular military campaigns to control and to extend their territories, using an army famed for ruthless efficiency. The northern kingdom of Israel and the coastal cities of Phoenicia are destroyed or subdued in the late 8th and early 7th century (see Israel and Phoenicia). Next it is the turn of Egypt. Thebes, far up the Nile, is sacked in 663 BC. A well-publicized use of brutality does much to encourage any threatened town to capitulate in good time. Those who refuse to do so are submitted to the unprecedented efficiency of Assyria's siege engines.

Battering rams and siege towers: from the 9th century BC

Fortified towns arrive with civilization, and sieges are as old as organized warfare. But siege implements are simple until the Assyrians. They pay special attention to the battering ram. Soldiers in early sieges swing a heavy timber ram against a town gate. They are vulnerable to missiles or heated oil from above. Under the Assyrians the ram becomes an engine. It is suspended from the roof of a timber structure, which in turn is mounted on wheels so that it can be pushed into position. Protected within this contraption, soldiers can swing the ram relentlessly against the gate. Archers, in protected turrets on top of the engine, exchange shots on almost equal terms with the defenders on the walls.

The Assyrian war machine: 879-612 BC

Assyria is the first society to make militarism the central policy of state. A regular event each spring is the departure of the army for conquest. At the head of the march are standard bearers and priests; behind them come the king and his bodyguard, followed by the chariots, the cavalry, and the infantry and, bringing up the rear, the baggage train. This great cavalcade moves outwards through territories already under Assyrian control, growing as it moves, for each region is required to contribute troops. Eventually the great army reaches previously unconquered areas. 

Resistance may be brief, for the Assyrian custom is to make an example of any town which refuses to capitulate. Siege engines are brought up, and the end is usually swift. Soon citizens of the unfortunate town are dangling on poles all round the city walls. The prophet Ezekiel provides a terrifying imaginary account of a Town besieged, in his vision of Jerusalem destroyed by the wrath of God. 

Other towns understand the message and open their gates. If they seem liable to cooperate, they may be incorporated into the Assyrian empire, providing troops for the army in their turn. If not, their people will be taken as slaves and others will be moved into their territory (the probable fate of the lost tribes of Israel after 722 BC).

Any group rash enough to oppose the Assyrians in the field faces formidable opposition. The main fighting force of an Assyrian army is the foot soldiers, wielding slings and spears, or swords and battleaxes of iron and protected by armor and shields made mainly of leather. But the minority of specialist troops is also highly effective. They work as teams. 

Archers on foot, with bows as tall as themselves, are protected by two companions, one carrying a huge shield and the other a spear. The cavalry operate in pairs; one horseman shoots with a composite bow, while his colleague protects him with a shield. Two-wheeled chariots carry a driver and an archer, often with a shield-bearer, or even two.

Nineveh: 700-612 BC

After nearly two centuries of Assyrian rule from Nimrud another spectacular capital city is created by Sennacherib, in about 700 BC, at Nineveh. His grandson, Ashburbanipal, builds a palace in the new city ornamented with superb carvings in relief. He also stocks his palace with the world's first great library (see Ashurbanipal's library). But Ashurbanipal's death, in 626, is close to Assyria's end. His grandfather's city lasts less than a century. Sennacherib has ruled Mesopotamia with the customary Assyrian brutality. His treatment of his neighbors to the south, the Babylonians, eventually provokes the retaliation which proves fatal.

The revival of Babylon: from 625 BC

Sennacherib appalls many in Mesopotamia by his brutal destruction, in 689, of the ancient city of Babylon. This act leads to prolonged unrest, occasional periods of outright rebellion and, eventually, to devastating revenge. In 625 Nabopolassar, a Chaldean establishes a new dynasty in Babylon (it is variously described by historians as Chaldean or Neo-Babylonian). Nabopolassar attacks Assyria, allying himself with the Medes - eastern neighbors of Assyria, and technically one of their vassal states. In 612 Nineveh is captured and destroyed after a three-month siege. This brings to an abrupt end the story of Assyria. It will be absorbed, eventually, in the Persian Empire.