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Visual History of the World
(CONTENTS)
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The Middle Ages
5th - 15th century
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The upheaval that
accompanied the migration of European peoples of late antiquity
shattered the power of the Roman Empire and consequently the entire
political order of Europe. Although Germanic kingdoms replaced Rome,
the culture of late antiquity, especially Christianity, continued to
have an effect and defined the early Middle Ages. Concurrent to the
developments in the Christian West, in Arabia the Prophet Muhammad
in the seventh century founded Islam, a new religion with immense
political and military effectiveness. Within a very short time,
great Islamic empires developed from the Iberian Peninsula and the
Maghreb to India and Central Asia, with centers such as Cordoba,
Cairo, Baghdad, and Samarkand.
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The Cathedral Notre Dame de Reims, built in the 1 3th—14th century
in the Gothic style; the cathedral served for many centuries as the
location for the ceremonial coronation of the French king.
The Cathedral of Reims, by Domenico Quaglio
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Southeast Europe
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7TH-15TH CENTURY
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Bulgarian Kingdoms
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During the ninth and tenth centuries the Bulgars were the dominant
power in the Balkans.
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During the fifth century, elements of the Huns withdrew back
into the steppes of southern Russia, where they mixed with related
Turkic tribes and Slavic ethnic groups to become the Bulgars. Their
first major kingdom fell apart around 640 because of the advance of
other steppe peoples, dividing the Bulgarian people into the Volga and
Danube Bulgars. Thereafter, the Volga Bulgars prospered on the trade
route between Kicvan Rus and the Islamic lands to the south until their
kingdom was destroyed by Mongol invaders in 1236.
The Danube Bulgars established the first Bulgarian kingdom in the
Balkans around 681 under their khan, Asparukh, who claimed to be
descended from Attila.
Boris I introduced 2 Christianity in 865 to
facilitate the unification of the kingdom. His younger son,
Simeon, whom he had sent to Constantinople to be educated as a monk,
usurped the throne in 893.
2 Orthodox chapel overlooking Lake Ohrid,
in present-day Macedonia,
built in the late ninth ñ
Simeon I ("the Great"), the most significant
Bulgarian ruler, waged several 3 wars against Byzantium but was unable
to capture Constantinople.
In 925, he assumed the title "Tsar of All the
Bulgars." Simeon presided over a cultural golden era in the Bulgarian
Empire, promoting the use of the Cyrillic alphabet to enable Slavic
translations of the Bible and to facilitate the population's conversion
to Christianity.
Soon after Simeon's death in 927, during a time of conflicts with Kievan
Rus, the decline of the empire set in.
Bulgaria was so weakened in 1014
by its 5 defeat at the hands of Byzantine emperor Basil II, the "Slayer
of Bulgars", that four years later the Byzantines returned to
annex all of Bulgaria, managing to hold it for almost two centuries.
3 Fights between Bulgars and Byzantines outside
Thessaloniki, book
illustration, 13th century
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5 Bulgar prisoners, blinded by Basil II,
return from Byzantine
captivity, wood engraving, ca. 1900
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The Bulgarian nobles Peter and Ivan Asen used the distraction caused by
the attacks of the Seljuks on the Byzantine Empire to proclaim their
independence in 1186.
They founded the second Bulgarian kingdom, with
its capital at 6 Turnovo.
6 Fortifications and church of the old town Veliko Turnovo,
above the
river Yantrain, present-day Bulgaria
Their brother, 1 Kaloyan Asen, was recognized
as king by Pope Innocent III in 1204.
Shortly afterward, however, he
turned away from Rome and supported the Greek Orthodox Christians in
their struggle against the Latin Empire, defeating Emperor Baldwin I in
1205 at Adrianople. Kaloyan's nephew. Ivan Asen II, expanded the kingdom
all the way to the Aegean and Adriatic Seas and in 1235 founded a
Bulgarian patriarchate.
Following the invasion of the Mongols in 1242, the kingdom came under
the rule of Mongolian khans. In 1330, Bulgaria was defeated by the Serbs
at the Battle of Velbuzhd and was reduced to half of its previous size,
thus becoming a relatively insignificant state.
Bulgaria's last medieval
tsar, 4 Ivan Shishman, participated in the Christian defeat at the
Battle of Kosovo in 1389 against the Ottomans, and by 1396 the Bulgarian
territories were under the control of the Sultan.
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1 Kaloyan Asen in battle, mosaic, 16th ñ
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4 Ivan Shishman and his family,
book illustration, 14th century
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Serbian Kingdoms
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From the twelfth to the end of the 14th century, the Serbs were
able to establish a large kingdom in the western Balkan region.
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Like the Bulgars, the South Slavic Serbs, under Stephen Nemanja in 1167, used the decline of the Byzantine Empire in the twelfth
century to establish an independent state. He reorganized the Serbian
kingdom and Church. New Serbian bishops were selected and Serbian became
the liturgical language.
In 1196 he abdicated and retired to à 7
monastery.
7 Studenica Monastery, the largest in Serbia,
founded by Stefan Nemanja after his abdication in 1196
His son and successor, 8 Stephan II Nemanja, initially turned
toward the West and was granted the title of king by the pope in 1217.
In 1219, as a counterweight to Stefan's pro-Roman policies, his brother
12 Sava founded the Serbian Orthodox Church, which later became a key part
of Serbian national identity under foreign domination.
8 St. Stefan II Nemanja, king of Serbia,
portrait surrounded by scenes
from his life,
Serbian icon painting, 16th ñ
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12 St. Sava, fresco in the monastery
of Decani, Kosovo, 1572
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The monasteries
founded by St. Sava became cultural centers. Later in the 13th century,
Serbia, which had previously been characterized by clan groupings,
developed a feudal state after the Western European model, and the
peasants effectively became serfs.
In 1330 at Velbuzhd, the Serbs won an important victory against the
Bulgars, which brought additional territories to the Serbian crown.
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Stephen Dushan, crowned in 1331, continued these expansionist policies
and conquered Greece as far as the outskirts of Athens.
He had himself
crowned "Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks" in 1346 in Skopje and
established a Serbian 10 patriarchate.
11 Stephen Dushan, mosaic, 14th century
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10 Serbian Patriarchate Monastery in Pec,
built in the 13th—14th
centuries
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Domestically, he built up a
hierarchical government organized along Byzantine lines and codified the
legal system. His son, Stephan Urosh V, crowned in 1355, was unable to
hold the empire together and it splintered into a number of
principalities in 1371. The North Serbian prince, Lazar Hrebeljanovic,
tried in vain to halt the Ottoman advance. The Serbs suffered a massive
defeat in the Battle of Kosovo on the "Field of the Blackbirds" in 1389,
and Lazar's successors were forced to recognize Ottoman suzerainty.
In 1456, Belgrade was besieged by Mehmed II.
On that occasion 9 Janos
Hunyadi, the Hungarian regent, succeeded in relieving the city and
forced the Ottomans to retreat before he himself died of plague in his
army camp.
Nonetheless, in 1459 the Ottomans deposed the last of the
Serbian princes and integrated the region into their empire.
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9 Janos Hunyadi fighting against the Ottomans,
wood engraving, 19th ñ
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The Battle of Kosovo
"Field of the Blackbirds"
In June 1389, the armies of the Ottoman Sultan Murad I and the Serbian
prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic faced each other at the town of Kosovo Polje,
Serbian for "Field of the Blackbirds." With the defeat of the Serbs, the
Ottomans became undisputed masters of the Balkans.
Mythologized by
nationalists in the 39th and 20th centuries, the battle still plays a
role in Serbian national sentiment.
Battle at the "Field of the Blackbirds",
copper engraving, 18th
century
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Battle of Kosovo 1389, Turks killed Tsar Lazar's horse; by Adam
Stefanović
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Uros Predic
Kosovo Maiden
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