The "Black Death" made its first appearance in Europe in this century. In the middle this period there was a world-wide depression manifested in Europe by the decline of the Champagne airs and the reduction of trade in general. In the East it was noticeable in the breakdown of the trans-Eurasian trade route previously established by the Mongols (although the land routes were never broken for very long) and possibly by the victory of the peasant revolt which brought the Mings to power in China. Yet there was continued trade throughout the southern seas from South China to the Mediterranean. The regular use of the decimal system and the abacus were accompaniments and stimulants of this trade. (Ref. 260, 279)
This was not a good era for the Catholic Christian Church. The states of Europe began to be supreme over the papacy and the various temporal rulers argued on the appointments of popes so that if the current choice did not please them, they simply appointed another pope of their own. At the death of Pope Boniface in 1304, Clement V moved the papacy from Rome to Bordeaux and later to Avignon, appointed his own French cardinals and was supposedly under the thumb of Philip the Fair, king of France. The next French pope was John XXII, but a German group had a second one, Nicholas IV, appointed at the Vatican and the period of the Great Schism began, to last from 1378 to 1417.
Nicholas was taken prisoner by John and died in a cell; when John XXII died he left a tremendous estate, including 18 million gold florins in specie and 7 million in plate and jewels. The other popes of this century need not be detailed, as none contributed much to the progress of the church or mankind. In Europe the Inquisition continued, however, and this alone prevented the complete dismemberment of Christianity. (Ref. 49)
It must be understood that at that time, particularly in England, there were actually two types of church affiliated groups. The word "religion" was used exclusively to refer to monks and nuns who were allegedly spiritual individuals given over to theology and praying, but not allowed to administer the sacraments. In contrast, the priests were called the "secular clergy" and were worldly men who could grant licences and dispensations, save souls by granting absolution after confession and penance, administer the Sacraments and above all, participate in politics. Many of the European kings ' governments were very largely carried on by priests, many of whom openly kept concubines and were not strangers to alcoholic excesses. Into this state of corruption came William of Ockham, a sceptic who questioned all doctrines of the Church and God and was a strong voice in the uprising of nationalist states against the Universal Church. He influenced John Wycliff, the father of Lollardism, who favored a Christian Church of poverty and service. They also denied that the bread and wine were transubstantiated by the words of the priest during mass and were, therefore, not the actual Body and Blood of Christ. This was considered the worst kind of heresy. Nevertheless, at the end of the century, Wycliff translated the Bible into the English tongue. (Ref. 49, 291)
NOTE: Insert 47. The Great Schism 1378-1417
In many areas of Europe Jewish persecution worsened with unsubstantiated charges of ritual murder, blood libel, desecration of the Host and well poisoning, especially at the time of the "Black Death" epidemic in 1348. As early as 1306 France had arrested her Jews, stripped them of their possessions and expelled them. England whipped and expelled about 100,000 at the same time. (Ref. 222)
Back to Africa: A.D. 1201 to 1300
The Somali have been documented as being in the Horn of Africa in this 14th century but they may have actually arrived much earlier. Although commentary and archaeological material is meagre, it is probable that the homeland of these Somali, as well as the Galla, Danakil and Sidama lies in the Rift Valley of southern Ethiopia. They were all speakers of eastern Cushitic languages and for all life was hard, with frequent bloody feuds adding to their troubles. The Solomonids from Shoa continued their civilization in Ethiopia, with Emperor Amda Siyon (A.D. 1314-44) expanding toward the south and then defeating the Muslims of eastern Ethiopia in A.D. 1332. A reformed monastic movement evangelized frontier districts and churches were built on mountain tops. (Ref. 83, 270)
The real power in northeast Africa, of course, was Egypt, where the Mamluk Dynasty continued to reign with relative stability and with increased aggressiveness as they even conquered Armenia in 1375. Cairo was the greatest city and its minor art, enameled glass and pottery work was exceptionally fine. One of the greatest Bahri Mamluk patrons of the arts was Sultan Hasan (1347-51 and 1354-61), who is remembered for his school and mausoleum which was decorated with carved stone and stucco, marble revetments, inlaid metal doors and gilded glass lamps. His successor, Shaban II, commissioned fabulously illuminated Korans, some in blocks three feet high. Each Mamluk sultan was always surrounded by a group of Amirs, also former slave Mamluks, and these in turn, also always had a new group of slave Mamluk bodyguards. The latter could earn their freedom and when they did, they were sent as governors and commanders to various provinces and given land for themselves. (Ref. 5) Cannons were in use in Cairo and Alexandria in the latter half of the century. Ibn Batuta, travelling to Cairo, described 12,000 water carriers and thousands of camel drivers plying for hire[204].
In this 14th century the majority of Egyptians, for the first time, were Arab-speaking Muslims and this must have resulted from many intermarriages with Bedouin Arabs. It is possible that the Black Death among the original native population may also have-been a factor in this ethnic shift, as about 1/3 of the inhabitants died in the first attack of that plague between 1347 and 1349. (Ref. 140)
In 1381 Malik al-Nasir Barquq, an amir of the Burji Mamluks, overthrew the east Bahri sultan and started a new dynasty, the Burji, dedicated to luxury and intrigue and violence, which soon led to social decay. This administration debased the coinage, taxed necessities and laid such heavy duty on India-European trade that Europe had to find a new route to India in the next century.
A creditable civilization remained in North Africa, although between the Marinids of Morocco and the Hafsids of Tunisia there was endless strife, particularly as to who should receive the homage of the intervening Ziyanids of Algeria. In 1360 the latter became independent and the Hafsid dominion divided into the Hafsid Emirate of Constantine and the plain Hafsid Caliphate, running to the east along the coast as far as Egypt. The Marinids of Morocco flourished as much from piracy as through commerce. (Ref. 137, 119)
At Timbuktu, far south across the great desert, there was a library of some 1,600 volumes, a famous university and beautiful mosques. The geographer Muhammad abu Abdullah ibn Batuta, after traveling about 75,000 miles, wrote a book about this area and Abd-er-Rahman of Tunis, perhaps the greatest historian of all time, wrote many treatises on the rise and fall of civilizations in general, anticipating and stimulating Arnold Toynbee in many respects. At the end of this 14th century repeated nomad conquerors from the fringes of the Sahara began raids into North Africa, starting a period of decadence.
While Europe suffered the Black Death and the Hundred Years War, black kingdoms of the Sudan were flourishing with great wealth and brilliant artistic accomplishments. Competing with the one at Timbuktu, a university at Jenne attracted students from far and wide. (Ref. 8) The Muslims of Mali had "-a greater abhorrence of injustice than any other people", said Ibn Battuta[205] The Mali emperor, Musa I, made a pilgrimage to Mecca, taking with him a great train of servants, courtiers, slaves and 3,800 kilograms of gold, sufficient to depress the price of that metal on the Cairo exchange. But about 1350, the expanding Empire of Songhai began to take over Mali territory, continuing to support their city of Timbuktu, but creating a new capital at nearby Gao. Between Songhai and Kanem-Bornu were the Hausa city-states. Of these, Kano and Katsina particularly were rich and industrious, with a specialty production of leather goods which was called "Moroccan" leather in England. If continued in the present region of Nigeria. On the Gulf of Guinea several kingdoms arose in the area now known as Ghana. The Yoruba people, who settled the tropical rain forest of the Niger Basin, built up powerful kingdoms of Benin and Oyo. (Ref. 175)
Many wealthy city-states appeared on the east coast of Africa in this and the next century. The city of Zimbabwe has been mentioned previously and this remained a very important religious, political and trading center of the Shona, a Bantu-speaking people among which building and pottery styles reached a peak in this and the 15th centuries. Stone walling was improved, the old burned out stone buildings were rebuilt and an attractive edifice 800 feet long and 32 feet high was constructed for some unknown purpose. (Ref. 88) The Shona are still today the majority people of that country.
Back to The Near East: A.D. 1201 to 1300
Although McNeill (Ref. 279) describes an homogeneous, organizational pattern and technique of trade which had been established all across the southern seas from the south China coast to the Mediterranean, the greater part of the Near East remained stagnant and unproductive. The decline of the irrigation works and the shift of the trade routes from the land to the sea had weakened the cities of Iraq and the centers of the Muslim society lay both farther west in Egypt and farther east in Persia. (Ref. 8) On the political side, the greatest episode of the era was Timur's conquest of Baghdad, in which his troops killed 90,000 people and erected 120 columns of their severed heads. (Ref. 71) More details of Timur's expeditions will follow in subsequent sections.
At Damascus, a fine physician, Ala'al-din ibn al-Nafis, expounded a theory of the pulmonary circulation of the blood 270 years before Servitus did-so in Europe.
One of the most striking changes in the first half of the century in the Near East was the disappearance of the Khanate of Persia and its subject Seljuq Sultanate of Iconium and their replacement by a variety of petty states. In eastern Persia there were native provincial governments, while the diminished central power remained with the Mongol dynasty of the Jalayrids. Just north of the Persian Gulf was the Muzaffarid Emirate. (Ref. 108) Even so, the Muslim culture of the east was productive, with the art of the miniature and a new architectural style. The Persian language, revived in an Islamic form, was the medium of great poetry. (Ref. 8) As the century ended the conquests and raids of Timur resulted in his complete control of the country.
The shrunken Byzantium was ruled by Michael IX and his father Andronicus as co-emperors, as the century opened. Antagonism with the Italians continued, so that in 1302 Andronicus hired Roger de Flor and his 6,000 Catalan mercenaries (The Catalan Company) from Barcelona, equipped with crossbows, to fight against those Italians who were in Constantinople. About 3,000 of the latter were killed and the Catalans then went on a rampage of their own through the Balkans. (Ref. 119)
As in Persia, throughout Anatolia there was a breakup of the previously ruling powers. The Seljuq Sultanate of Iconium, which had ruled the entire eastern portion of the peninsula under Persian suzerainty, gave way to a group of petty states. The Emirate of Karamanian, bordering on the Mediterranean corner, was at first the strongest but then all of the Byzantine Asia was conquered by the emir of Kastamuni, the six emirates of the southwest coast and finally the Ottoman sultanate on the northwest corner. (Ref. 137) The Ottoman capture of Bursa in 1326 was followed by the fall of the remaining Byzantine strongholds in the area so that by the middle of the century Byzantium existed essentially only on the European side of the Marmara Sea and a small portion of Greece. (Ref. 8)
NOTE: 53. The Byzantine and Ottoman Empires 1355
The Ottoman Turks continued to gain territory, crossing into Europe and gaining mastery of the Balkans as well as dominating the Anatolian princes. Their sultans, on assuming the throne, regularly practiced fratricide to remove potential claims to the crown. Later this was actually allowed by law, a practice they may have inherited from the Byzantines, themselves. Sir Mark Sykes, in The Caliphs' Last Heritage, stated:
"The relations between the Ottoman Sultans and the Emperors has been singular in the annals of Moslem and Christian states. The Turks had been involved in the family and dynastic quarrels of the Imperial City, were bound by ties of blood to the ruling families, frequently supplied troops for the defense of Constantinople, and on occasion hired parts of its garrison to assist them in various campaigns; the sons of the emperors and Byzantine statesmen even accompanied the Turkish forces in the field, yet the Ottomans never ceased to annex Imperial territories and cities both in Asia and Thrace." [206]
By the end of the century the Ottomans already had 12,000 Janissaries, chiefly from the Balkans. (See UPPER BALKANS, this chapter). It was at that time, too, that Timur invaded from the east and at Sivas, Turkey, he had 4,000 defenders buried alive, after a promise not to shed blood if they surrendered. (Ref. 71)
We noted in the last chapter that the Armenian civilization remained chiefly in Cilicia, or Little Armenia, but even there it was under attack by the Egyptian forces and by 1375 even this small area was completely conquered and destroyed by the Mamluks. The few Armenians who were not slaughtered scattered throughout the Near East. To add further insult, in 1386 Timur seized the original, Greater Armenia and massacred most of the people there. (Ref. 222)
Back to Europe: A.D. 1201 to 1300
Early in this century Europe, as a whole, experienced some extremely heavy rains and hard, severe winters in an otherwise warm period. Gunpowder was in use in Flanders, Germany, Italy and Moslem Spain early in the century and then in France and England in the second half. (Ref. 224, 213) Near the end of the century blast furnaces were developed, first in Germany and/or the Netherlands, but soon used also in France. Water powered bellows promoted these furnaces which then produced cast iron and "steeled" iron for the first time in Europe. Larger, stouter ships were now available which could sail as safely in winter as summer, making possible a still greater commercial web all around the continent. Bills of exchange and credit facilitated this commerce. From this time on European allowance for the private accumulation of relatively large amounts of capital made the fundamental superiority of this region over the rest of the civilized world. (Ref. 260, 279)
The aggressiveness of Christian Knighthood which had sent Germans to the Gulf of Finland, Crusaders to Jerusalem and attackers against the Moslems in southern Spain and Italy, came to a slow-down, as the basic foodstuffs for their support could no longer keep up the pace. The mold-board plow was not efficient in arid parts of Spain and in the cold of northern and eastern Europe. (Ref. 279)
The Black Death (plague) killed perhaps 1/3 of the population of Europe. Pope Clement VI gave a score of 42,866,486 dead, but this may be a mild exaggeration. (Ref. 122) Crop failures and the severe winters had already hit northern Europe and depopulation had begun. Then in 1346 a Mongol prince laid siege to Caffe in the Crimea. His army came down with plague and he withdrew, but the disease had entered the city and from there it spread by ship throughout the Mediterranean and ere long to northern and western Europe. The initial shock of A.D. 1346 was so severe that it spread not only by flea bite, but also from person to person by inhalation of droplets from coughing patients. Such lung infections were 100% fatal and the overall mortality rate probably was 60 to 70% of those infected. (Ref. 140) In this same period, western Europe and Germany had economic depression, prolonged and devastating wars (England and France) and political fragmentation (Germany). After recurrent plague epidemics of the 1360s and 1370s there were widespread manpower shortages in central and western Europe. In contrast, there was a rise and consolidation of powerful states in eastern Europe and there were far flung results from the mass production of paper. (Ref. 8)
Cookery for the average European remained, as in the past, prosaic at best. Alleged feasts at courts consisted chiefly of gorging on meats and wine and were rare events not available to the common man. There was a great change in costumes. Men's clothes were shortened and their tunics became form-fitting, never to return to robes, while women's bodices became more close-fitting and cut with large décolleté. (Ref. 260)
The islands close to the eastern shore were involved in some of the Crusade adventures and in this century Rhodes was taken by the Knights Hospitalers. Most of the other islands were dominated by Venice. Cyprus was worst hit by the Black Death in 1347. (Ref. 86, 38, 222)
After the murder of their leader, Roger de Flor (see TURKEY, page 659), the Catalan Company raided through the Balkans and down into Greece, setting up their own dynasty in Athens in 1311. As the Serbian Empire grew, most of northern Greece became part of the Serbian Principalities, while the Despotate of the Morea (Peloponnesus) passed from the Latin French, who had controlled it in the last century, first to some Aragonese and then to some free-booters from Navarre. Most of the Aegean islands were controlled by Venice. Although corrupt and frail, the Byzantine state was competent enough administratively to stand as somewhat of a bulwark against the spread of Islam and by the end of the century was making some inroads back into control of part of Greece.
The Turks of the Ottoman Empire, however, settled the question in 1389 by overwhelming the Serbian chivalry at the battle of Kossovo and as the Serbian Empire shriveled, most of Greece went to the Ottoman sultanate. A few Latin states remained in the west and Venice held on to the southern tip of Morea. (Ref. 139, 137)
The mercenary Catalan Company laid waste to Thrace and Macedonia between 1305 and 1311 but otherwise the early 14th century saw the peak of progress for all the Slavic peoples in this region. Serbia, under Stephen Dushan, Czar of the Serbs and Greeks, had a parliament of nobles and coded laws and a magnificent period of art. (Ref. 8) Militarily the Serbs conquered Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia and Thessally and put an end to Bulgar power until Dushan's death, when the empire fell apart. T