Petrarch
1304 – 1374 · 70 years · Avignon · Europe
Father of humanism whose sonnets to Laura set the model for European love poetry for centuries.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 14th century
Portrait: Altichiero · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Dante Alighieri — poet, author of the Divine Comedy, 39 years older
- Edward III — king who began the Hundred Years' War and won at Crécy, 8 years younger
- Charles IV — emperor who made Prague an imperial capital and issued the Golden Bull, 12 years younger
- Philip IV the Fair — king who destroyed the Knights Templar, 36 years older
- Philip VI — first Valois king, defeated at Crécy, 11 years older
- John II the Good — king captured by the English at Poitiers, 15 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Sergius of Radonezh — saint and abbot, 10 years younger
- Ivan Kalita — prince who began the gathering of Russian lands around Moscow, 16 years older
- Dmitry Donskoy — Grand Prince of Moscow, 46 years younger
- Andrei Rublev — icon painter, 56 years younger
- Simeon the Proud — grand prince "of all Rus" who died of the plague, 12 years younger
- Ivan II the Fair — grand prince of Moscow, father of Dmitry Donskoy, 22 years younger
Middle East
- Orhan — bey who took Bursa and led the Ottomans into Europe, 23 years older
- Murad I — sultan who took Adrianople and fell at Kosovo, 22 years younger
- Osman I — founder of the Ottoman Empire, 46 years older
- Bayezid I the Thunderbolt — sultan defeated and captured by Timur at Ankara, 56 years younger
- Hafez — Persian poet, 21 years younger
Africa
- Ibn Battuta — traveller, born the same year
- Ibn Khaldun — historian and thinker, 28 years younger
- Mansa Musa — ruler of the Mali Empire, 24 years older
Asia
- Timur — emir and conqueror, 32 years younger
- Marco Polo — Venetian traveller, 50 years older
- Ashikaga Takauji — founder of the Muromachi shogunate who turned on Go-Daigo, 1 year younger
- Emperor Go-Daigo — emperor who overthrew the Kamakura shogunate, 16 years older
- Ashikaga Yoshimitsu — shogun who reunited the two imperial courts and built Kinkaku-ji, 54 years younger
- Gajah Mada — prime minister of Majapahit, 14 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1309–1377 Avignon Papacy — aged 5, Europe
- 1315–1317 Great Famine — aged 11, Europe
- 1324 Hajj of Mansa Musa — aged 20, Africa
- c. 1325 Founding of Tenochtitlan — aged 21, Americas
- c. 1327 The Djinguereber Mosque in Timbuktu — aged 23, Africa
- 1337–1453 Hundred Years' War — aged 33, Europe
- c. 1337 Sergius of Radonezh founds his monastery — aged 33, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1347–1351 Black Death — aged 43, Europe
- 1368 Founding of the Ming dynasty — aged 64, Asia
- 1370 Timur makes Samarkand his capital — aged 66, Asia