1202 (place)

Anno Domini 1202, 598-599 AH

• Italian mystic Joachim of Fiore, founder of his own monastic order.
• Tibetan physician Yuthog Yonten Gonpo.
• Russian Prince Igor Sviatoslavich, who would have epic poems, novels, and operas written about his exploits.
• Miezko III, Duke of Cracow (the closest thing to a King of Poland at the time).
• King Sverrir Sigurdsson of Norway.
• King Canute VI of Denmark, succeeded by his brother Valdemar II.
• Ghiasuddin Ghori, sultan of Delhi.  Mohammed Ghori succeeds him.

• Robert de Boron's epic poems Joseph d'Arimathie, Merlin, and Perceval appear about this time, uniting Arthurian legend with the Grail story.
• Qutub Minar, a minaret attatched to Delhi's Qutub Islam mosque, is built to the dizzying height of 71 meters.
• Kalinjar falls to Qutbuddin Aibak, general of Mohammed Ghori.  The Hindu inhabitants are enslaved and their temples are turned into mosques.
• Wladyslaw III succeeds King Miezko but he is replaced by 17-year-old Leszek I within the year.
• An earthquake devastates the Levant, with heavy damage in Caesarea and Jerusalem.
• The Fourth Crusade does not attract enough subscribers to pay the 84,000 marks for the fleet built in Venice.  Venetian Doge Dandolo suggests an alternative form of payment, that the Crusaders take the Dalmatian town of Zara for him. The fleet leaves Venice in November; Zara is Dandolo's within a week.  This, of course, is only the beginning of the fiasco.
• Western mathematics is reborn with Leonardo of Pisa (aka Fibonacci)'s Liber abaci.
• English King John's theft the fianceé of one of French King Philip II's counts is a great pretext for Philip's declaring John's possessions in France forfeit. Philip has John's fifteen-year-old nephew Arthur I, duke of Brittany, invested as ruler of these fiefs. Philip and Arthur invade Normandy, but John captures Arthur while the latter is attempting to capture Poitou, and the Duke is imprisoned in Rouen. Philip will eventually take Normandy, however.
• King John's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, retires to a monastery in Anjou. She will pass away two years later.
• John also puts controls on the price of bread.
• Temujin unites the Mongol tribes.  He will later take the name 'Genghis Khan', meaning 'ruler of the world'.
• A group of devout German knights (read: landless, supernumerary, fanatical German nobles) found their own chivalric order, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, with the purpose of converting the Balts, Prussians, and Pomeranians to Christianity.

1201 - 1202 - 1203

How They Were Made - 13th Century