Gajah Mada
c. 1290 – 1364 · 74 years · Trowulan, Java · Asia
A general and minister who vowed to abstain from 'palapa' until the archipelago was united; under him Majapahit became Southeast Asia's greatest power.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 14th century
Portrait: Gunawan Kartapranata · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Dante Alighieri — poet, author of the Divine Comedy, 25 years older
- Edward III — king who began the Hundred Years' War and won at Crécy, 22 years younger
- Charles IV — emperor who made Prague an imperial capital and issued the Golden Bull, 26 years younger
- Philip IV the Fair — king who destroyed the Knights Templar, 22 years older
- Edward I Longshanks — conqueror of Wales, called the Hammer of the Scots, 51 years older
- Petrarch — humanist poet, 14 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Ivan Kalita — prince who began the gathering of Russian lands around Moscow, 2 years older
- Sergius of Radonezh — saint and abbot, 24 years younger
- Dmitry Donskoy — Grand Prince of Moscow, 60 years younger
- Simeon the Proud — grand prince "of all Rus" who died of the plague, 26 years younger
- Yury of Moscow — first Moscow prince to become grand prince of Vladimir, 9 years older
- Ivan II the Fair — grand prince of Moscow, father of Dmitry Donskoy, 36 years younger
Middle East
Africa
- Ibn Battuta — traveller, 14 years younger
- Mansa Musa — ruler of the Mali Empire, 10 years older
- Ibn Khaldun — historian and thinker, 42 years younger
Asia
- Marco Polo — Venetian traveller, 36 years older
- Timur — emir and conqueror, 46 years younger
- Ashikaga Takauji — founder of the Muromachi shogunate who turned on Go-Daigo, 15 years younger
- Emperor Go-Daigo — emperor who overthrew the Kamakura shogunate, 2 years older
- Ashikaga Yoshiakira — second Ashikaga shogun, who held Kyoto against the Southern Court, 40 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1293 Founding of Majapahit — aged 3, Asia
- c. 1300 Onset of the Little Ice Age — aged 10, Europe
- 1309–1377 Avignon Papacy — aged 19, Europe
- 1315–1317 Great Famine — aged 25, Europe
- 1324 Hajj of Mansa Musa — aged 34, Africa
- c. 1325 Founding of Tenochtitlan — aged 35, Americas
- c. 1327 The Djinguereber Mosque in Timbuktu — aged 37, Africa
- 1337–1453 Hundred Years' War — aged 47, Europe
- c. 1337 Sergius of Radonezh founds his monastery — aged 47, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1347–1351 Black Death — aged 57, Europe