Magna Carta and the Mongol capture of Beijing happened in the same year.
In 1215, while English barons were forcing King John to seal the charter, Genghis Khan took Zhongdu, the city on the site of today's Beijing.
The events
- The Mongols take Zhongdu1215 · Zhongdu (Beijing). Genghis Khan's Mongols besieged Zhongdu, capital of the Jurchen Jin empire, for more than a year and took it in 1215. The Jin court fled south to Kaifeng, and the city on the site of modern Beijing reportedly burned for over a month.
- Magna Carta1215 · Runnymede. Under pressure from rebel barons, King John of England sealed Magna Carta. The charter curbed arbitrary royal power and became a cornerstone of the ideas of the rule of law and constitutional government.
- Temüjin proclaimed Genghis Khan1206 · Onon River. An assembly of Mongol nobles at the headwaters of the Onon proclaimed Temüjin Genghis Khan, supreme ruler of all the Mongols. Within decades the state he created became the largest contiguous land empire in history.
More amazing facts
- 1206 · 1227 The grave of Genghis Khan, founder of the largest contiguous empire in history, has never been found.
- 1206 · 1279 At its height the Mongol Empire was almost one and a half times the size of modern Russia.
- 1206 · 1209 Cambridge University is as old as Genghis Khan's empire.
- 1206 Al-Jazari's elephant clock put a whole world into one machine: Greek waterworks, an Indian elephant, Chinese dragons, an Egyptian phoenix and the driver's Islamic turban.
- 1215 · 1223 Eight years after Magna Carta, the princes of Rus first met the Mongols and were crushed on the Kalka River.
- 1215 · 1225 The original Magna Carta lasted about ten weeks.