Ashikaga Takauji
1305 – 1358 · 53 years · Kyoto · Asia
Reign: 1338 – 1358 (Japan: shoguns & emperors)
A general who first helped Go-Daigo topple Kamakura, then rebelled against him in 1336 and enthroned a Northern Court emperor. In 1338 he was named shogun and founded the second shogunate, based in Kyoto.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 14th century
Portrait: Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Dante Alighieri — poet, author of the Divine Comedy, 40 years older
- Edward III — king who began the Hundred Years' War and won at Crécy, 7 years younger
- Charles IV — emperor who made Prague an imperial capital and issued the Golden Bull, 11 years younger
- Petrarch — humanist poet, 1 year older
- Philip VI — first Valois king, defeated at Crécy, 12 years older
- Louis the Bavarian — emperor excommunicated by the pope and crowned in Rome without him, 23 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Sergius of Radonezh — saint and abbot, 9 years younger
- Ivan Kalita — prince who began the gathering of Russian lands around Moscow, 17 years older
- Simeon the Proud — grand prince "of all Rus" who died of the plague, 11 years younger
- Ivan II the Fair — grand prince of Moscow, father of Dmitry Donskoy, 21 years younger
- Yury of Moscow — first Moscow prince to become grand prince of Vladimir, 24 years older
Middle East
Africa
- Ibn Battuta — traveller, 1 year older
- Mansa Musa — ruler of the Mali Empire, 25 years older
- Ibn Khaldun — historian and thinker, 27 years younger
Asia
- Timur — emir and conqueror, 31 years younger
- Marco Polo — Venetian traveller, 51 years older
- Emperor Go-Daigo — emperor who overthrew the Kamakura shogunate, 17 years older
- Gajah Mada — prime minister of Majapahit, 15 years older
- Ashikaga Yoshiakira — second Ashikaga shogun, who held Kyoto against the Southern Court, 25 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1309–1377 Avignon Papacy — aged 4, Europe
- 1315–1317 Great Famine — aged 10, Europe
- 1324 Hajj of Mansa Musa — aged 19, Africa
- c. 1325 Founding of Tenochtitlan — aged 20, Americas
- c. 1327 The Djinguereber Mosque in Timbuktu — aged 22, Africa
- 1337–1453 Hundred Years' War — aged 32, Europe
- c. 1337 Sergius of Radonezh founds his monastery — aged 32, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1347–1351 Black Death — aged 42, Europe