The great historian Ibn Khaldun met Tamerlane.
In 1401, during the siege of Damascus, he was lowered from the walls by rope and spent weeks in conversation with the conqueror, then wrote it all down.
The events
- Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah1377 · Qal'at Ibn Salama (Algeria). Taking refuge in a fortress on the edge of the desert, the Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldun wrote the Introduction to his world history. In it he explained how group solidarity (asabiyya) brings nomads to power and city life wears it away, so that dynasties turn over in three or four generations. He is seen as a forerunner of sociology and economics.
- Timur makes Samarkand his capital1370 · Samarkand. Timur (Tamerlane) seized power in Transoxiana and made Samarkand the capital of his empire. His campaigns devastated lands from Delhi to Anatolia, while craftsmen were brought to Samarkand to build its mosques and madrasas.
More amazing facts
- 1373 · 1386 · 1943 An alliance made in the 14th century was invoked in the Second World War. In 1943 Portugal, citing its treaties with England of 1373 and 1386, let the British use bases in the Azores.
- 1377 · 1450 Korean monks printed the Jikji with movable metal type in 1377, some 70 years before Gutenberg's press.
- 1377 The first quarantine lasted thirty days, not forty.
- 1377 Robin Hood first appears as the hero of songs known to a lazy priest.
- 1378 · 1409 In 1409 Catholics had three popes at once.
- 1378 · 1737 · 1798 Napoleon's soldiers did not shoot the nose off the Sphinx.