1.
Marco Polo
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He learned the mercantile trade from his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, who travelled through Asia and met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for the first time, the three of them embarked on an epic journey to Asia, returning after 24 years to find Venice at war with Genoa, Marco was imprisoned and dictated his stories to a cellmate. He was released in 1299, became a merchant, married. He died in 1324 and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Venice, Marco Polo was not the first European to reach China, but he was the first to leave a detailed chronicle of his experience. This book inspired Christopher Columbus and many other travellers, there is a substantial literature based on Polos writings, he also influenced European cartography, leading to the introduction of the Fra Mauro map. Marco Polo was born in 1254 in Venice Republic and his exact date and place of birth are archivally unknown. Some historians mentioned that he was born on September 15 but that date is not endorsed by mainstream scholarship, Marco Polos birthplace is generally considered Venice, but also varies between Constantinople, and the island of Korčula. There is dispute as to whether the Polo family is of Venetian origin, the first recorded Polo is Venetian Domenico Polo who was mentioned in 971 regarding the prohibition of trade with the Arabs. Later other Polos were also mentioned in the service of the realm, whether they were related with the family of Marco Polo is uncertain, but this could indicate that his ancestors travelled between Venice and Dalmatia. Some of the first indications of where his family originated and were resident come from Venetian documents and manuscripts. Some scholars argued that this account could go along with the note from Il Milione that his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, the non-Venetian i. e. Sanuto also mentioned a captain from Korčula, Antonio di Polo. Moule cited two early 17th century Venetian manuscripts questi ueneno de dalmatia, Polo questi uene de Dalmatia, scholars etymologically argued that his family name derives from Latin Paulus, the name of a certain bird species, or like Albert tSerstevens considered - from Eastern origin. However, the habitat of the shorebird is non-existent on Korčula, the surname Polo seems related with other widespread Dalmatian surnames. The lack of evidence makes the Korčula theory as a specific birthplace strongly disputed, in 1168, his great-uncle, Marco Polo, borrowed money and commanded a ship in Constantinople. His grandfather, Andrea Polo of the parish of San Felice, had three sons, Maffeo, yet another Marco, and the travellers father Niccolò and this genealogy, described by Ramusio, is not universally accepted as there is no additional evidence to support it. His father, Niccolò Polo, a merchant, traded with the Near East, becoming wealthy, Niccolò and his brother Maffeo set off on a trading voyage before Marcos birth. In 1260, Niccolò and Maffeo, while residing in Constantinople, then the capital of the Latin Empire, foresaw a political change, they liquidated their assets into jewels and moved away. According to The Travels of Marco Polo, they passed through much of Asia, and met with Kublai Khan and their decision to leave Constantinople proved timely
2.
Republic of Venice
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It was based in the lagoon communities of the historically prosperous city of Venice. It was a leading European economic and trading power during the Middle Ages, the Venetian city state was founded as a safe haven for people escaping persecution in mainland Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. In its early years, it prospered on the salt trade, in subsequent centuries, the city state established a thalassocracy. It dominated trade on the Mediterranean Sea, including commerce between Asia, Europe and North Africa, the Venetian navy was used in the Crusades. Venice achieved territorial conquests along the Adriatic Sea, the city became home to an extremely wealthy merchant class, who patronized renowned art and architecture along the citys lagoons. Venetian merchants were influential financiers in Europe, the city was also the birthplace of great European explorers, including Marco Polo, as well as the classical music composer Vivaldi. The republic was ruled by the Doge, who was elected by members of the Great Council of Venice, the ruling class was an oligarchy of merchants and aristocrats. Venice and other Italian maritime republics played a key role in fostering capitalism, Venetian citizens generally supported the system of governance. The city-state enforced strict laws and employed ruthless tactics in its prisons, the opening of new trade routes to the Americas and the East Indies via the Atlantic Ocean marked the beginning of Venices decline as a maritime republic. The city state suffered defeats from the navy of the Ottoman Empire, in 1797, the country was colonized by Austria and France, following an invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte. Venice became a part of a unified Italy in the 19th century and it was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in reference to its title as one of the Most Serene Republics. He was the first historical Doge of Venice, whichever the case, the first doges had their power base in Heraclea. Ursuss successor, Deusdedit, moved his seat from Heraclea to Malamocco in the 740s and he was the son of Ursus and represented the attempt of his father to establish a dynasty. Such attempts were more commonplace among the doges of the first few centuries of Venetian history. They desired to remain well-connected to the Empire, another faction, republican in nature, believed in continuing along a course towards practical independence. The other main faction was pro-Frankish, supported mostly by clergy, they looked towards the new Carolingian king of the Franks, Pepin the Short, as the best provider of defence against the Lombards. A minor, pro-Lombard faction was opposed to close ties with any of these further-off powers, the successors of Obelerio inherited a united Venice. By the Pax Nicephori, the two emperors had recognised that Venice belonged to the Byzantine sphere of influence, many centuries later, the Venetians claimed that the treaty had recognised Venetian de facto independence, but the truth of this claim is doubted by modern scholars
3.
Old French
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Old French was the Gallo-Romance dialect continuum spoken from the 9th century to the 14th century. In the 14th century, these came to be collectively known as the langues doïl. The mid-14th century is taken as the period to Middle French. The areal of Old French in contemporary terms corresponded to the parts of the Kingdom of France, Upper Burgundy. As part of the emerging Gallo-Romance dialect continuum, the langues doïl were contrasted with the langue doc, in these examples, we notice a clear consequence of bilingualism, that sometimes even changed the first syllable of the Latin words. Pope estimated that perhaps still 15% of the vocabulary of modern French derives from Germanic sources, at the third Council of Tours in 813, priests were ordered to preach in the vernacular language, since the common people could no longer understand formal Latin. The second-oldest document in Old French is the Eulalia sequence, which is important for reconstruction of Old French pronunciation due to its consistent spelling. The Capetians langue doïl, the forerunner of modern standard French, did not begin to become the common speech of all of France, however, until after the French Revolution. In the Late Middle Ages, the Old French dialects diverged into a number of distinct langues doïl, during the Early Modern period, French now becomes established as the official language of the Kingdom of France throughout the realm, also including the langue doc-speaking territories in the south. Old French gives way to Middle French in the mid-14th century, the earliest extant French literary texts date from the ninth century, but very few texts before the 11th century have survived. The first literary works written in Old French were saints lives, the Canticle of Saint Eulalie, written in the second half of the 9th century, is generally accepted as the first such text. The first of these is the area of the chansons de geste. More than one hundred chansons de geste have survived in three hundred manuscripts. The oldest and most celebrated of the chansons de geste is The Song of Roland, a fourth grouping, not listed by Bertrand, is the Crusade cycle, dealing with the First Crusade and its immediate aftermath. Jean Bodels other two categories—the Matter of Rome and the Matter of Britain—concern the French romance or roman, around a hundred verse romances survive from the period 1150–1220. From around 1200 on, the tendency was increasingly to write the romances in prose, the most important romance of the 13th century is the Romance of the Rose which breaks considerably from the conventions of the chivalric adventure story. The Occitan or Provençal poets were called troubadours, from the word trobar to find, lyric poets in Old French are called trouvères. By the late 13th century, the tradition in France had begun to develop in ways that differed significantly from the troubadour poets
4.
Travel literature
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The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century AD, in the early modern period, James Boswells Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides helped shape travel memoir as a genre. The travel genre was a common genre in medieval Arabic literature. Travel literature became popular during the Song Dynasty of medieval China, the genre was called travel record literature, and was often written in narrative, prose, essay and diary style. One of the earliest known records of taking pleasure in travel, of travelling for the sake of travel and he states that he went to the mountaintop for the pleasure of seeing the top of the famous height. His companions who stayed at the bottom he called frigida incuriositas and he then wrote about his climb, making allegorical comparisons between climbing the mountain and his own moral progress in life. Antoine de la Sale, author of Petit Jehan de Saintre, climbed to the crater of a volcano in the Lipari Islands in 1407, councils of mad youth were his stated reasons for going. In 1589, Richard Hakluyt published Voyages, a text of the travel literature genre. In the 18th Century, travel literature was commonly known as the book of travels, in 18th century Britain, almost every famous writer worked in the travel literature form. Captain James Cooks diaries were the equivalent of todays best sellers, Other later examples of travel literature include accounts of the Grand Tour. Aristocrats, clergy, and others with money and leisure time travelled Europe to learn about the art, a very popular subgenre of travel literature started to emerge in the form of narratives of exploration, a still unexplored source for colonial and postcolonial studies. Travel books range in style from the documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic and they are often associated with tourism and include guide books, meant to educate the reader about destinations, provide advice for visits, and inspire readers to travel. Travel writing may be found on web sites, in periodicals and it has been produced by a variety of writers, such as travelers, military officers, missionaries, explorers, scientists, pilgrims, social and physical scientists, educators, and migrants. Travel literature often intersects with essay writing, as in V. S. Naipauls India, A Wounded Civilization, whose trip became the occasion for extended observations on a nation and this is similarly the case in Rebecca Wests work on Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Sometimes a writer will settle into a locality for an extended period, examples of such writings include Lawrence Durrells Bitter Lemons, Deborah Talls The Island of the White Cow, and Peter Mayles best-selling A Year in Provence and its sequels. Travel and nature writing merge in many of the works by Sally Carrighar, Gerald Durrell and these authors are naturalists, who write in support of their fields of study. Another naturalist, Charles Darwin, wrote his famous account of the journey of HMS Beagle at the intersection of science, natural history, a number of writers famous in another field have written about their travel experiences. H. Lawrences Twilight in Italy and Other Essays, Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, Rebecca Wests Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, in the world of sailing Joshua Slocums Sailing Alone Around the World is a classic of outdoor adventure literature
5.
Dewey Decimal Classification
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The Dewey Decimal Classification, or Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system first published in the United States by Melvil Dewey in 1876. It has been revised and expanded through 23 major editions, the latest issued in 2011 and it is also available in an abridged version suitable for smaller libraries. It is currently maintained by the Online Computer Library Center, a cooperative that serves libraries. OCLC licenses access to a version for catalogers called WebDewey. The Decimal Classification introduced the concepts of relative location and relative index which allow new books to be added to a library in their location based on subject. Libraries previously had given books permanent shelf locations that were related to the order of acquisition rather than topic, the classifications notation makes use of three-digit Arabic numerals for main classes, with fractional decimals allowing expansion for further detail. Using Arabic numerals for symbols, it is flexible to the degree that numbers can be expanded in linear fashion to cover aspects of general subjects. A library assigns a number that unambiguously locates a particular volume in a position relative to other books in the library. The number makes it possible to find any book and to return it to its place on the library shelves. The classification system is used in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries, the major competing classification system to the Dewey Decimal system is the Library of Congress Classification system created by the U. S. Melvil Dewey was an American librarian and self-declared reformer and he was a founding member of the American Library Association and can be credited with the promotion of card systems in libraries and business. He developed the ideas for his classification system in 1873 while working at Amherst College library. He applied the classification to the books in library, until in 1876 he had a first version of the classification. In 1876, he published the classification in pamphlet form with the title A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and he used the pamphlet, published in more than one version during the year, to solicit comments from other librarians. It is not known who received copies or how many commented as only one copy with comments has survived, in March 1876, he applied for, and received copyright on the first edition of the index. The edition was 44 pages in length, with 2,000 index entries, comprised 314 pages, with 10,000 index entries. Editions 3–14, published between 1888 and 1942, used a variant of this same title, Dewey modified and expanded his system considerably for the second edition. In an introduction to that edition Dewey states that nearly 100 persons hav contributed criticisms, one of the innovations of the Dewey Decimal system was that of positioning books on the shelves in relation to other books on similar topics
6.
Italian language
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By most measures, Italian, together with Sardinian, is the closest to Latin of the Romance languages. Italian is a language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City. Italian is spoken by minorities in places such as France, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Crimea and Tunisia and by large expatriate communities in the Americas. Many speakers are native bilinguals of both standardized Italian and other regional languages, Italian is the fourth most studied language in the world. Italian is a major European language, being one of the languages of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It is the third most widely spoken first language in the European Union with 65 million native speakers, including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries and on other continents, the total number of speakers is around 85 million. Italian is the working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Italian is known as the language of music because of its use in musical terminology and its influence is also widespread in the arts and in the luxury goods market. Italian has been reported as the fourth or fifth most frequently taught foreign language in the world, Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language based on Tuscan as spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society. Its development was influenced by other Italian languages and to some minor extent. Its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian, unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latins contrast between short and long consonants. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive, however, Italian as a language used in Italy and some surrounding regions has a longer history. What would come to be thought of as Italian was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri, written in his native Florentine. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language, and thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the language of Italy. Italian was also one of the recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Italy has always had a dialect for each city, because the cities. Those dialects now have considerable variety, as Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian. Even in the case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages
7.
Kublai Khan
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Kublai Khan, born Kublai and also known by the temple name Shizu, was the fifth Khagan of the Mongol Empire, reigning from 1260 to 1294. He also founded the Yuan dynasty in China as a conquest dynasty in 1271, Kublai was the fourth son of Tolui and a grandson of Genghis Khan. He succeeded his older brother Möngke as Khagan in 1260, but had to defeat his younger brother Ariq Böke in the Toluid Civil War lasting until 1264 and this episode marked the beginning of disunity in the empire. Kublais real power was limited to China and Mongolia, though as Khagan he still had influence in the Ilkhanate and, to a lesser degree. In 1271, Kublai established the Yuan dynasty, which ruled over present-day Mongolia, China, Korea, and some adjacent areas, by 1279, the Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty was completed and Kublai became the first non-native emperor to conquer all of China. Kublai Khan was the son of Tolui, and his second son with Sorghaghtani Beki. As his grandfather Genghis Khan advised, Sorghaghtani chose a Buddhist Tangut woman as her sons nurse, on his way home after the Mongol conquest of Khwarezmia, Genghis Khan performed a ceremony on his grandsons Möngke and Kublai after their first hunt in 1224 near the Ili River. Kublai was nine years old and with his eldest brother killed a rabbit and his grandfather smeared fat from killed animals onto Kublais middle finger in accordance with a Mongol tradition. After the Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty, in 1236, Ögedei gave Hebei to the family of Tolui, Kublai received an estate of his own, which included 10,000 households. Because he was inexperienced, Kublai allowed local officials free rein, corruption amongst his officials and aggressive taxation caused large numbers of Chinese peasants to flee, which led to a decline in tax revenues. Kublai quickly came to his appanage in Hebei and ordered reforms, Sorghaghtani sent new officials to help him and tax laws were revised. Thanks to those efforts, many of the people who fled returned, the most prominent, and arguably most influential, component of Kublai Khans early life was his study and strong attraction to contemporary Chinese culture. Kublai invited Haiyun, the leading Buddhist monk in North China, when he met Haiyun in Karakorum in 1242, Kublai asked him about the philosophy of Buddhism. Haiyun named Kublais son, who was born in 1243, Zhenjin, Haiyun also introduced Kublai to the formerly Daoist and now Buddhist monk, Liu Bingzhong. Liu was a painter, calligrapher, poet, and mathematician, Kublai soon added the Shanxi scholar Zhao Bi to his entourage. Kublai employed people of other nationalities as well, for he was keen to balance local and imperial interests, Mongol, in 1251, Kublais eldest brother Möngke became Khan of the Mongol Empire, and Khwarizmian Mahmud Yalavach and Kublai were sent to China. Kublai received the viceroyalty over North China and moved his ordo to central Inner Mongolia, during his years as viceroy, Kublai managed his territory well, boosted the agricultural output of Henan, and increased social welfare spendings after receiving Xian. These acts received great acclaim from the Chinese warlords and were essential to the building of the Yuan Dynasty, Möngke dismissed Mahmud Yalavach, which met with resistance from Chinese Confucian-trained officials
8.
Chivalric romance
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As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with ironic, satiric or burlesque intent. Still, the image of medieval is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word medieval evokes knights, distressed damsels, dragons. Originally, romance literature was written in Old French, Anglo-Norman, Occitan, and Provençal, during the early 13th century, romances were increasingly written as prose. In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love. Unlike the later form of the novel and like the chansons de geste, the earliest forms were invariably in verse, but the 15th century saw many in prose, often retelling the old, rhymed versions. Many influences are clear in the forms of chivalric romance, the epics of Charlemagne, unlike such ones as Beowulf, already had feudalism rather than the tribal loyalties, this was to continue in romances. The romance form is distinguished from the epics of the Middle Ages by the changes of the 12th century. This occurred regardless of congruity to the material, Alexander the Great featured as a fully feudal king. Chivalry was treated as continuous from Roman times, historical figures reappeared, reworked, in romance. The entire Matter of France derived from known figures, and suffered somewhat because their descendents had an interest in the tales that were told of their ancestors, unlike the Matter of Britain. Hereward the Wakes early life appeared in chronicles as the embellished, romantic adventures of an exile, complete with rescuing princess, fulk Fitzwarin, an outlaw in King Johns day, has his historical background a minor thread in the episodic stream of romantic adventures. The earliest medieval romances dealt heavily with themes from folklore, which diminished over time, morgan le Fay never loses her name, but in Le Morte dArthur, she studies magic rather than being inherently magical. Still, fairies never completely vanished from the tradition, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late tale, but the Green Knight himself is an otherworldly being. In Italy there is the story called Il Bel Gherardino and it is the most ancient prototype of an Italian singing fairy tale by an anonymous Tuscan author. It tells the story of a young Italian knight, depleted for its magnanimitas, other examples of Italian poetry tales are Antonio Puccis literature, Gismirante, Il Brutto di Bretagna or Brito di Bretagna and Madonna Lionessa. Another work of a second anonymous Italian author that is worth mentioning is Istoria di Tre Giovani Disperati e di Tre Fate, some romances, such as Apollonius of Tyre, show classical pagan origins. Tales of the Matter of Rome in particular may be derived from such works as the Alexander Romance
9.
Genoa
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Genoa is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015,594,733 people lived within the administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of Genoa, over 1.5 million people live in the wider metropolitan area stretching along the Italian Riviera. Genoa has been nicknamed la Superba due to its glorious past, part of the old town of Genoa was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2006. The citys rich history in notably its art, music. It is the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, Niccolò Paganini, Giuseppe Mazzini, Genoa, which forms the southern corner of the Milan-Turin-Genoa industrial triangle of north-west Italy, is one of the countrys major economic centres. The city has hosted massive shipyards and steelworks since the 19th century, the Bank of Saint George, founded in 1407, is among the oldest in the world and has played an important role in the citys prosperity since the middle of the 15th century. Today a number of leading Italian companies are based in the city, including Fincantieri, Selex ES, Ansaldo Energia, Ansaldo STS, Edoardo Raffinerie Garrone, Piaggio Aerospace, the Genoa area has been inhabited since the fifth or fourth millennium BC. In ancient times this area was frequented and inhabited by Ligures, Phoenicians, Phocaeans, Greeks, and Etruscans. The city cemetery, dating from the 6th and 5th centuries BC, testifies to the occupation of the site by the Greeks, but the fine harbour probably saw use much earlier, perhaps by the Etruscans. In the 5th century BC was founded the first oppidum at the foot of the today called the Castle Hill which now is inside the medieval old town. The ancient Ligurian city was known as Stalia, so referred to by Artemidorus Ephesius and Pomponius Mela, Ligurian Stalia was overshadowed by the powerful Marseille and Vada Sabatia, near modern Savona. Stalia had an alliance with Rome through a foedus aequum in the course of the Second Punic War, the Carthaginians accordingly destroyed it in 209 BC. The town was rebuilt and, after the Carthaginian Wars ended in 146 BC. it received municipal rights, the original castrum thenceforth expanded towards the current areas of Santa Maria di Castello and the San Lorenzo promontory. Trades included skins, wood, and honey, goods were shipped to the mainland, up to major cities like Tortona and Piacenza. Among the archeological remains from the Roman period, an amphitheatre was also found, another theory traces the name to the Etruscan word Kainua which means New City and still another from the Latin word ianua, related to the name of the God Janus, meaning door or passage. The latter is in reference to its position at the centre of the Ligurian coastal arch. The Latin name, oppidum Genua, is recorded by Pliny the Elder as part of the Augustean Regio IX Liguria, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Ostrogoths occupied Genoa
10.
Henry Yule
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Sir Henry Yule KCSI was a Scottish Orientalist. He published many books, including translations of the work of Marco Polo. He was also the compiler of a dictionary of Anglo-Indian terms, Henry Yule was born at Inveresk near Edinburgh in Scotland on 1 May 1820. He was the youngest son of Major William Yule and his wife Elizabeth Paterson, William Yule had served as an officer in the Bengal army of the East India Company and had retired in 1806. He was interested in Arabic and Persian literature and collected early manuscripts and these were later donated by his sons to the British Museum. He translated the Apothegms of Ali the son of Abu Talib Yules mother died before he was eight and William moved to Edinburgh with his sons. Yule attended the Royal High School and then in 1833 was sent to be coached by the Reverend Henry Hamilton at his rectory in the village of Wath near Ripon in North Yorkshire. When Hamilton moved to Cambridge in the following year Yule was transferred to the care of the Reverend James Challis, the other resident pupils were John Neale and Harvey Goodwin. Yules stay at Papworth Everard ended in 1826 when Challis was appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy, after a brief period at University College London, Yule entered the East India Military College at Addiscombe near Croydon, followed by the Royal Engineers Establishment at Chatham, Kent. He obtained his commission in December 1838, and joined the Bengal Engineers in 1840, both of Henrys brothers worked in India. The eldest, George Udny Yule, worked in the Bengal civil service, the other brother, Robert, died near Delhi during the Indian Rebellion. The statistician Udny Yule was the son of George and thus the nephew of Henry, Yule arrived in Calcutta at the end of 1840. His first posting was in the Khasi Hills, an area to the northeast of Bengal in the modern state of Meghalaya. His mission was to establish a method of transporting coal to the plains. In this he was unsuccessful but he became fascinated by the region, in 1842 he was transferred to a team of engineers led by Captain William Baker charged with the construction of irrigation canals. Their headquarters were at Karnal,130 km to the north of Delhi and he returned to England in 1843 and married his cousin Anna Maria, daughter of Major-General Martin White of the Bengal Infantry. In November 1843 she accompanied him back to India but returned owing to ill health and he was appointed to a committee charged with investigating the relationship between irrigation by the proposed Ganges Canal and its impact on public health in the area. He served in both the Sikh wars, in 1849 he took three years of extended leave and returned to live in Edinburgh with his wife
11.
Cathay
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Cathay is the Anglicized rendering of Catai and an alternative name for China in English. Originally, Catai was the name applied by Central and Western Asians and Europeans to northern China, the term Cathay came from the name for the Khitans. A form of the name Cathai is attested in a Uyghur Manichaean document circa 1000. The Khitans refer to themselves as Qidan, but in the language of the ancient Uyghurs the final -n or -ń became -y, and this version of the name was then introduced to medieval and early modern Europe via Muslim and Russian sources. The Persian scholar and administrator Nizam al-Mulk mentions Khita and China in his Book on the Administration of the State, the names currency in the Muslim world survived the replacement of the Khitan Liao dynasty with the Jurchen Jin dynasty in the early 12th century. When describing the fall of the Jin Empire to the Mongols, the Mongols themselves, in their Secret History talk of both Khitans and Kara-Khitans. Words related to Khitay are still used in many Turkic and Slavic languages to refer to China, however, its use by Turkic speakers within China, such as the Uyghurs, is considered pejorative by the Chinese authority who had tried to ban it. As European and Arab travelers started reaching the Mongol Empire, they described the Mongol-controlled Northern China as Cathay as well, the name occurs in the writings of Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, William of Rubruck. Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, ibn Battuta, Marco Polo all were referring to Northern China as Cathay, while Southern China, ruled by the Song dynasty, was Mangi, Manzi, Chin, or Sin. The name for South China commonly used on Western medieval maps was Mangi, while Central Asia had long known China under names similar to Cathay, that country was known to the peoples of South-East Asia and India under names similar to China. Meanwhile, in China itself, people referred to their nation state based on the name of the ruling dynasty, e. g. Da Ming Guo, or as the Middle Kingdom. When in the early 16th century the Portuguese reached South-East Asia and it was not immediately clear to the Europeans whether this China is the same country as Cathay known from Marco Polo. Therefore, it would not be uncommon for 16th-century map to apply the label China just to the region already well known to the Europeans. During his first 15 years in China Matteo Ricci formed a strong suspicion that Marco Polos Cathay is simply the Tatar name for the country he was in, people in China had not heard of any place called Cathay. This all made them quite convinced that Cathay is indeed China, china-based Jesuits promptly informed their colleagues in Goa and Europe about their discovery of the Cathay-China identity. This was stated e. g. in a 1602 letter of Riccis comrade Diego de Pantoja and this may also have been the genesis of the Prester John myth. Góis spent almost three years crossing Afghanistan, Badakhshan, Kashgaria, and Kingdom of Cialis with Muslim trade caravans, finally disappear from view, leaving China only in the mouths and minds of men. Riccis and de Gois conclusion was not, however, completely convincing for everybody in Europe yet, samuel Purchas, who in 1625 published an English translation of Pantojas letter and Riccis account, thought that perhaps, Cathay still can be found somewhere north of China
12.
Names of China
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The names of China include the many contemporary and historical appellations given in various languages to the East Asian country known as Zhongguo in its native language. China, the name in English for the country, was derived from Portuguese in the 16th century and it is believed to be a borrowing from Middle Persian, and some have traced it further back to Sanskrit. It is also thought that the state of Qin that later formed the Qin dynasty is the ultimate source of the name. Chinese names for China, aside from Zhongguo, include Zhonghua, Huaxia, Han and Tang are common names given for the Chinese ethnicity. The Peoples Republic of China and Republic of China are the names for the two contemporary sovereign states currently claiming sovereignty over the traditional area of China. Mainland China is used to refer to areas under the jurisdiction by the PRC usually excluding Hong Kong, there are also names for China that are derived from the languages of other ethnic groups other than the Han, examples include Cathay from the Khitan language and Tabgach from Tuoba. Zhōngguó is the most common name for China in modern times. The first appearance of 中國 on an artifact was in the Western Zhou on a vessel known as He zun. It is formed by combining the characters zhōng meaning central or middle, in later periods, however, Zhongguo was not used in this sense. Dynastic names were used for the state in Imperial China and concepts of the state aside from the dynasty were little understood. Rather, the country was called by the name of the dynasty, such as Han dynasty, Tang dynasty, The Great Ming, The Great Qing, as the case might be. Until the 19th century when the system came to require a common legal language. There were different usages of the term Zhongguo in every period and it could refer to the capital of the emperor to distinguish it from the capitals of his vassals, as in Western Zhou. It could refer to the states of the Central Plain to distinguish them from states in outer regions, during the Han dynasty, three usages of Zhongguo were common. The Shi Jing explicitly defines Zhongguo as the capital, the Records of the Grand Historian uses the concept zhong to indicate the center of civilization, Eight famous mountains are there in Tianxia. The Records of the Three Kingdoms uses the concept of the states in Zhōnghuá, or the states in Zhōnghuá which is the center. It records the following exhortation, If we can lead the host of Wu and Yue to oppose Zhongguo, in this sense, the term Zhongguo is synonymous with Zhōnghuá and Huáxià, names for China that comes from the Xia dynasty. From the Qin to Ming dynasty literati discussed Zhongguo as both a place or territory and as a culture
13.
Genghis Khan
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Genghis Khan, born Temüjin, was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death. He came to power by uniting many of the tribes of Northeast Asia. After founding the Empire and being proclaimed Genghis Khan, he started the Mongol invasions that conquered most of Eurasia, campaigns initiated in his lifetime include those against the Qara Khitai, Caucasus, and Khwarazmian, Western Xia and Jin dynasties. These campaigns were accompanied by large-scale massacres of the civilian populations – especially in the Khwarazmian. By the end of his life, the Mongol Empire occupied a portion of Central Asia. Before Genghis Khan died, he assigned Ögedei Khan as his successor and he died in 1227 after defeating the Western Xia. He was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Mongolia, many of these invasions repeated the earlier large-scale slaughters of local populations. As a result, Genghis Khan and his empire have a reputation in local histories. Beyond his military accomplishments, Genghis Khan also advanced the Mongol Empire in other ways and he decreed the adoption of the Uyghur script as the Mongol Empires writing system. He also practiced meritocracy and encouraged religious tolerance in the Mongol Empire, present-day Mongolians regard him as the founding father of Mongolia. This brought communication and trade from Northeast Asia into Muslim Southwest Asia and Christian Europe, Temüjin was related on his fathers side to Khabul Khan, Ambaghai, and Hotula Khan, who had headed the Khamag Mongol confederation and were descendants of Bodonchar Munkhag. When the Jurchen Jin dynasty switched support from the Mongols to the Tatars in 1161, Temüjins father, Yesügei, emerged as the head of the ruling Mongol clan. This position was contested by the rival Tayichiud clan, who descended directly from Ambaghai, when the Tatars grew too powerful after 1161, the Jin switched their support from the Tatars to the Keraites. Little is known about Temüjins early life, due to the lack of written records. The few sources that give insight into this period often contradict, Temüjins name was derived from the Mongol word temür meaning of iron, while jin denotes agency thus temüjin means blacksmith. Temüjin was probably born in 1162 in Delüün Boldog, near the mountain Burkhan Khaldun, the Secret History of the Mongols reports that Temüjin was born grasping a blood clot in his fist, a traditional sign that he was destined to become a great leader. He was the son of his father Yesügei who was a Kiyad chief prominent in the Khamag Mongol confederation. Temüjin was the first son of his mother Hoelun, according to the Secret History, Temüjin was named after the Tatar chief Temüjin-üge whom his father had just captured
14.
Mongols
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The Mongols are an East-Central Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia and Chinas Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. They also live as minorities in other regions of China, as well as in Russia, Mongolian people belonging to the Buryat and Kalmyk subgroups live predominantly in the Russian federal subjects of Buryatia and Kalmykia. The Mongols are bound together by a heritage and ethnic identity. Their indigenous dialects are known as the Mongolian language. The ancestors of the modern-day Mongols are referred to as Proto-Mongols, broadly defined, the term includes the Mongols proper, Buryats, Oirats, the Kalmyk people and the Southern Mongols. The latter comprises the Abaga Mongols, Abaganar, Aohans, Baarins, Gorlos Mongols, Jalaids, Jaruud, Khishigten, Khuuchid, Muumyangan, the designation Mongol briefly appeared in 8th century records of Tang China to describe a tribe of Shiwei. It resurfaced in the late 11th century during the Khitan-ruled Liao dynasty, after the fall of the Liao in 1125, the Khamag Mongols became a leading tribe on the Mongolian Plateau. However, their wars with the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty and the Tatar confederation had weakened them, in the thirteenth century, the word Mongol grew into an umbrella term for a large group of Mongolic-speaking tribes united under the rule of Genghis Khan. In various times Mongolic peoples have been equated with the Scythians, the Magog, based on Chinese historical texts the ancestry of the Mongolic peoples can be traced back to the Donghu, a nomadic confederation occupying eastern Mongolia and Manchuria. The identity of the Xiongnu is still debated today, although some scholars maintain that they were proto-Mongols, they were more likely a multi-ethnic group of Mongolic and Turkic tribes. It has been suggested that the language of the Huns was related to the Hünnü, the Donghu are mentioned by Sima Qian as already existing in Inner Mongolia north of Yan in 699–632 BCE along with the Shanrong. Mentions in the Yi Zhou Shu and the Classic of Mountains, the Xianbei chieftain was appointed joint guardian of the ritual torch along with Xiong Yi. These early Xianbei came from the nearby Zhukaigou culture in the Ordos Desert, where maternal DNA corresponds to the Mongol Daur people, the Zhukaigou Xianbei had trade relations with the Shang. In the late 2nd century, the Han dynasty scholar Fu Qian wrote in his commentary Jixie that Shanrong, againm in Inner Mongolia another closely connected core Mongolic Xianbei region was the Upper Xiajiadian culture where the Donghu confederation was centered. After the Donghu were defeated by Xiongnu king Modu Chanyu, the Xianbei, tadun Khan of the Wuhuan was the ancestor of the proto-Mongolic Kumo Xi. The Wuhuan are of the direct Donghu royal line and the New Book of Tang says that in 209 BCE, the Xianbei, however, were of the lateral Donghu line and had a somewhat separate identity, although they shared the same language with the Wuhuan. In 49 CE the Xianbei ruler Bianhe raided and defeated the Xiongnu, killing 2000, the Xianbei reached their peak under Tanshihuai Khan who expanded the vast, but short lived, Xianbei state. Three prominent groups split from the Xianbei state as recorded by the Chinese histories, the Rouran, the Khitan people, besides these three Xianbei groups, there were others such as the Murong, Duan and Tuoba
15.
Cartography
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Cartography is the study and practice of making maps. Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively, the fundamental problems of traditional cartography are to, Set the maps agenda and select traits of the object to be mapped. This is the concern of map editing, traits may be physical, such as roads or land masses, or may be abstract, such as toponyms or political boundaries. Represent the terrain of the object on flat media. This is the concern of map projections, eliminate characteristics of the mapped object that are not relevant to the maps purpose. This is the concern of generalization, reduce the complexity of the characteristics that will be mapped. This is also the concern of generalization, orchestrate the elements of the map to best convey its message to its audience. This is the concern of map design, modern cartography constitutes many theoretical and practical foundations of geographic information systems. The earliest known map is a matter of debate, both because the term map isnt well-defined and because some artifacts that might be maps might actually be something else. A wall painting that might depict the ancient Anatolian city of Çatalhöyük has been dated to the late 7th millennium BCE, the oldest surviving world maps are from 9th century BCE Babylonia. One shows Babylon on the Euphrates, surrounded by Assyria, Urartu and several cities, all, in turn, another depicts Babylon as being north of the world center. The ancient Greeks and Romans created maps since Anaximander in the 6th century BCE, in the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy wrote his treatise on cartography, Geographia. This contained Ptolemys world map – the world known to Western society. As early as the 8th century, Arab scholars were translating the works of the Greek geographers into Arabic, in ancient China, geographical literature dates to the 5th century BCE. The oldest extant Chinese maps come from the State of Qin, dated back to the 4th century BCE, in the book of the Xin Yi Xiang Fa Yao, published in 1092 by the Chinese scientist Su Song, a star map on the equidistant cylindrical projection. Early forms of cartography of India included depictions of the pole star and these charts may have been used for navigation. Mappa mundi are the Medieval European maps of the world, approximately 1,100 mappae mundi are known to have survived from the Middle Ages. Of these, some 900 are found illustrating manuscripts and the remainder exist as stand-alone documents, the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi produced his medieval atlas Tabula Rogeriana in 1154
16.
Fra Mauro
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Cam. was an Italian cartographer who lived in the Republic of Venice. He created the most detailed and accurate map of the world up until that time, Mauro was a monk of the Camaldolese Monastery of St. Michael, located on the island of Murano in the Venetian Lagoon. It was there that he maintained a cartography workshop and he also was employed by some very powerful men like Prince Henry the Navigator. Fra Mauro was born before or around the year 1400, in his youth, Mauro had traveled extensively as a merchant and a soldier. He was familiar with the Middle East and he is recorded in the records of the Monastery of St. Michael from 1409. As a lay member of the monastery, Mauro was employed as mapmaker, in the records of the monastery his main job was recorded as collecting the monasterys rents, but from the 1450s he is also mentioned as the creator of a series of world maps. Although he was no longer free to travel, due to his religious status, by 1450 he composed a great mappa mundi - a world map - with surprising accuracy, including extensive written comments reflecting the geographic knowledge of his time. The map is today as the Fra Mauro map. The Fra Mauro world map, or mappa mundi, was a major work that compiled much of the geographical knowledge of the time. The map covers over five square meters, the map is extremely detailed and contains many thousands of texts and illustrations. The world map took several years to complete and was the most detailed, Fra Mauro created the map under a commission by King Afonso V of Portugal. Andrea Bianco, a sailor-cartographer, is recorded as having collaborated with Fra Mauro in creating the map, the map was completed on 24 April 1459, and sent to Portugal, but that copy didnt survive. Along with the map was a letter from the Doge of Venice and it was intended for Prince Henry the Navigator, Afonso Vs uncle. It encouraged the prince to continue funding exploratory journeys, Fra Mauro died the following year, while he was making a copy of the map for the Signoria of Venice. The copy was completed by Andrea Bianco, a commemorative medal of the period struck in honor of his cartographic work describes Fra Mauro as chosmographus incomparabilis. Two copies of maps by Fra Mauro are known to survive, one is a portolan chart in the Vatican Library, published by Roberto Almagià in 1944. The crater Fra Mauro and associated Fra Mauro formation of the Moon are named after him. The Apollo 13 lunar mission was intended to explore the Fra Mauro formation, the formation was instead explored by astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell of the Apollo 14 mission in February 1971
17.
Fra Mauro map
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The Fra Mauro map, considered the greatest memorial of medieval cartography, is a map of the world made around 1450 by the Italian cartographer Fra Mauro. It is a circular planisphere drawn on parchment and set in a frame that measures over two by two meters. It includes Asia, the Indian Ocean, Africa, Europe and it is oriented with south at the top. The Fra Mauro world map is a major cartographical work and it took several years to complete and was very expensive to produce. The map contains hundreds of detailed illustrations and more than 3000 descriptive texts and it was the most detailed and accurate representation of the world that had been produced up until that time. As such, the Fra Mauro map is considered one of the most important works in the history of cartography and it marks the end of Bible-based geography in Europe and the beginning of embracing a more scientific way of making maps, placing accuracy ahead of religious or traditional beliefs. The maker of the map, Fra Mauro, was a Camaldolese monk from the island of Murano near Venice and he was employed as an accountant and professional cartographer. The map was made for the kings and rulers of Venice and Portugal, the map is usually on display in the museum Museo Correr in Venice in Italy. The map is very large – the full frame measures 2.4 by 2.4 meters and this makes Fra Mauros mappa mundi the worlds largest extant map from early modern Europe. The map is drawn on high quality vellum and is set in a wooden frame. The large drawings are highly detailed and uses a range of colors, blue, red, turquoise, brown, green. The main circular map of the world is surrounded by four smaller spheres, the top right is a diagram of the four elements – earth is followed by water, fire and air. The bottom left is an illustration of the Garden of Eden, significantly, Fra Mauro took the step of placing the Garden of Eden outside the world, rather than in its traditional place in the extreme east. The bottom right depicts Earth as a globe and it shows the North Pole, the South Pole as well as the Equator and the two tropics. About 3000 inscriptions and detailed texts describe the geographical features on the map as well as related information about them. The depiction of inhabited places and mountains, the maps chorography is also an important feature, castles and cities are identified by pictorial glyphs representing turreted castles or walled towns, distinguished in order of their importance. The making of the map was an undertaking and the map took several years to complete. The map was not created by Fra Mauro alone, but by a team of cartographers, artists and copyists led by him, the price of the map would have been about an average copyists annual salary
18.
Far East
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The Far East is an alternate geographical term in English, that usually refers to East Asia, the Russian Far East, and Southeast Asia. South Asia is sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons, since the 1960s, East Asia has become the most common term for the region in international mass media outlets. Far East is often deprecated as archaic and Eurocentric, along with the terms Near East and Middle East. The term Far East came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 12th century, for the same reason, Chinese people in the 19th and early 20th centuries called Western countries Tàixī —i. e. anything further west than the Arab world. Prior to the era, Far East referred to anything further east than the Middle East. In the 16th century, King John III of Portugal called India a rich, the term was popularized during the period of the British Empire as a blanket term for lands to the east of British India. Many European languages have terms, such as the French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Polish, Norwegian. Significantly, the term evokes cultural as well as separation, the Far East is not just geographically distant. It never refers, for instance, to the culturally Western nations of Australia and New Zealand and this combination of cultural and geographic subjectivity was well illustrated in 1939 by Robert Menzies, a Prime Minister of Australia. Reflecting on his countrys geopolitical concerns with the onset of war, Menzies commented that, what Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the Near North. Far East in its sense is comparable to terms such as the Orient, which means East. Southeast Asia, the Russian Far East, and occasionally the Indian Subcontinent might be included in the Far East to some extent, for the people who live in that part of the world, however, it is neither East nor West and certainly not Far. A more generally acceptable term for the area is East Asia, furthermore, the United Kingdom and United States have historically used Far East for several military units and commands in the region, British Far East Command RAF Far East Air Force U. S. Far East Air Force The U. S. Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations, Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western
19.
Christopher Columbus
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Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, colonizer, and citizen of the Republic of Genoa. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean and those voyages and his efforts to establish permanent settlements on the island of Hispaniola initiated the European colonization of the New World. Western imperialism and economic competition were emerging among European kingdoms through the establishment of routes and colonies. During his first voyage in 1492, he reached the New World instead of arriving at Japan as he had intended, landing on an island in the Bahamas archipelago that he named San Salvador. Over the course of three voyages, he visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles, as well as the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Central America. These voyages had, therefore, an impact in the historical development of the modern Western world. He spearheaded the transatlantic trade and has been accused by several historians of initiating the genocide of the Hispaniola natives. Columbus himself saw his accomplishments primarily in the light of spreading the Christian religion, Columbus never admitted that he had reached a continent previously unknown to Europeans, rather than the East Indies for which he had set course. He called the inhabitants of the lands that he visited indios, the name Christopher Columbus is the Anglicisation of the Latin Christophorus Columbus. His name in Italian is Cristoforo Colombo and, in Spanish and he was born before 31 October 1451 in the territory of the Republic of Genoa, though the exact location remains disputed. His father was Domenico Colombo, a wool weaver who worked both in Genoa and Savona and who also owned a cheese stand at which young Christopher worked as a helper. Bartolomeo, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo were his brothers, Bartolomeo worked in a cartography workshop in Lisbon for at least part of his adulthood. He also had a sister named Bianchinetta, Columbus never wrote in his native language, which is presumed to have been a Genoese variety of Ligurian. In one of his writings, he says he went to sea at the age of 10, in 1470, the Columbus family moved to Savona, where Domenico took over a tavern. In the same year, Christopher was on a Genoese ship hired in the service of René of Anjou to support his attempt to conquer the Kingdom of Naples. Some modern historians have argued that he was not from Genoa but, instead and these competing hypotheses have generally been discounted by mainstream scholars. In 1473, Columbus began his apprenticeship as business agent for the important Centurione, Di Negro, later, he allegedly made a trip to Chios, an Aegean island then ruled by Genoa. In May 1476, he took part in a convoy sent by Genoa to carry valuable cargo to northern Europe
20.
Biblioteca Ambrosiana
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The Biblioteca Ambrosiana is a historic library in Milan, Italy, also housing the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the Ambrosian art gallery. Named after Ambrose, the saint of Milan, it was founded by Cardinal Federico Borromeo, whose agents scoured Western Europe and even Greece and Syria for books. To house the cardinals 15,000 manuscripts and twice that many printed books, construction began in 1603 under designs and direction of Lelio Buzzi and Francesco Maria Richini. When its first reading room, the Sala Fredericiana, opened to the public on 8 December 1609 it was, after the Bodleian Library in Oxford, a printing press was attached to the library, and a school for instruction in the classical languages. Constant acquisitions, soon augmented by bequests, required enlargement of the space, Borromeo intended an academy and a collection of pictures, for which a new building was initiated in 1611–18 to house the Cardinals paintings and drawings, the nucleus of the Pinacoteca. Cardinal Borromeo gave his collection of paintings and drawings to the library, shortly after the cardinals death, his library acquired twelve manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci, including the Codex Atlanticus. Prized manuscripts, including the Leonardo codices, were requisitioned by the French during the Napoleonic occupation, on 15 October 1816 the Romantic poet Lord Byron visited the library. He was delighted by the letters between Lucrezia Borgia and Pietro Bembo and claimed to have managed to steal a lock of her hair held on display. The novelist Mary Shelley visited the library on 14 September 1840 but was disappointed by the tight security occasioned by the recent attempted theft of some of the relics of Petrarch housed there. Among Christian and Islamic Arabic manuscripts are treatises on medicine, a unique 11th-century diwan of poets, the library has a college of Doctors, similar to the scriptors of the Vatican Library. The building was damaged in World War II, with the loss of the archives of opera libretti of La Scala, artwork at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana includes da Vincis Portrait of a Musician, Caravaggios Basket of Fruit, and Raphaels cartoon of The School of Athens. S
21.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
22.
Giovanni da Pian del Carpine
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He is the author of the earliest important Western account of northern and central Asia, Rus, and other regions of the Mongol dominion. He was the Primate of Serbia, based in Antivari, from 1247 to 1252, Giovanni appears to have been a native of Umbria, in central Italy. His surname was derived from Pian del Carpine, an area known later as Magione and he was one of the companions and disciples of his near-contemporary and countryman Saint Francis of Assisi. Giovanni was provincial of Germany at the time of the great Mongol invasion of eastern Europe, the defeat of European forces at Legnica led almost to Ögedei, Khan of the Mongol Empire, controlling most of Europe. In Europe, dread of the Tatars was still four years later. The missionaries were sent partly in protest at the Mongol invasion of Christendom and partly to gain information regarding the Khans intentions, Pope Innocent IV chose Friar Joannes to head this mission. Joannes was around sixty-five at the time, and apparently was in charge of everything in the mission. As a papal legate, he bore a letter from the Pope to the Great Khan, Cum non solum. Joannes started from Lyon, where the Pope then resided, on Easter day, accompanied by another friar, Stephen of Bohemia, who broke down at Kaniv near Kiev and was left behind. After seeking counsel of an old friend, Wenceslaus, king of Bohemia, Joannes was joined at Wrocław by another Franciscan, Benedykt Polak, the route passed by Kiev, entered the Tatar posts at Kaniv, and then ran across the Nepere to the Don and Volga. Joannes is the first Westerner to give us the names for these rivers. On the Volga stood the Ordu, or camp, of Batu and he was one of the most senior princes of the house of Genghis Khan. Here the envoys, with their presents, had to pass between two fires to remove possible injurious thoughts and poisons, before being presented to the prince, Batu ordered them to proceed to the court of the supreme Khan in Mongolia. On Easter day once more, they started on the second, then they went along the shores of the Dzungarian lakes until, on the feast of St Mary Magdalene, they reached the imperial camp called Sira Orda, near Karakorum and the Orkhon River. Joannes and his companions rode an estimated 3000 miles in 106 days, since the death of Ögedei Khan, the imperial authority was in interregnum and Güyük, Ögedeis eldest son, was designated to the throne. On the 24th of August, they witnessed the formal enthronement at another camp in the vicinity called the Golden Ordu, after which they were presented to the new emperor. The great Khan, Güyük, refused the invitation to become Christian, the Khan did not dismiss the expedition until November. He gave them a letter to the Pope—written in Mongol, Arabic and they began a long winter journey home
23.
William of Rubruck
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William of Rubruck was a Flemish Franciscan missionary and explorer. His account is one of the masterpieces of medieval geographical literature comparable to that of Marco Polo, born in Rubrouck, Flanders, he is known also as William of Rubruk, Willem van Ruysbroeck, Guillaume de Rubrouck or Willielmus de Rubruquis. He travelled to places of the Mongol Empire in Asia before his return to Europe. William accompanied King Louis IX of France on the Seventh Crusade in 1248, on May 7,1253, on Louis orders, he set out from Constantinople on a missionary journey to convert the Tatars to Christianity. He actually followed the route of the first journey of the Hungarian Friar Julian, after reaching the Crimean town of Sudak, William continued his trek with oxen and carts. Nine days after crossing the Don he met Sartaq Khan, ruler of the Kipchak Khanate, the Khan sent William on to his father, Batu Khan, at Sarai near the Volga. Five weeks later, after the departure from Sudak, he reached the encampment of Batu Khan, Batu refused conversion but sent the ambassadors on to the Great Khan of the Mongols, Möngke Khan. He and his companions set off on horseback on September 16,1253 on a 9,000 km journey to the court of the Great Khan at Karakorum. Upon arrival they were received courteously, and he was given an audience on January 4,1254, Williams account provided an extensive description of the citys walls, markets and temples, and the separate quarters for Muslim and Chinese craftsmen among a surprisingly cosmopolitan population. He stayed at the Khans camp until July 10,1254, William and his companions reached the Crusader State of Tripoli on August 15,1255. William of Rubrucks was the fourth European mission to the Mongols, previous ones were led by Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and Ascelin of Lombardia in 1245, the King was encouraged to send another mission by reports of the presence of Nestorian Christians at the Mongolian court. In this report, he described the peculiarities of Mongolia as well as many geographical observations, there were also anthropological observations, such as his surprise at the presence of Islam in Inner Asia. Williams report is divided into 40 chapters, chapters 1-10 relate general observations about the Mongols and their customs. Chapters from 11 to 40 give an account of the course, the report of William of Rubruck is one of the great masterpieces of medieval geographical literature, comparable to that of Marco Polo, although they are very different. William was an observer, and an excellent writer. He asked many questions along the way and did not take folk tale and fable as truth, a Chinese participated with William in the competition. Rubrucks account was edited and translated into English by Richard Hakluyt in 1598-1600. The full account was published by the Société de Géographie in the Recueil de voyages et de mémoires, an English translation by William Woodville Rockhill, The Journey of William of Rubruk to the Eastern Parts, was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1900
24.
Chinese characters
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Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese, and sometimes also in English, they are called hànzì. They have been adapted to write a number of languages including, Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja. Collectively, they are known as CJK characters, in English, they are sometimes called Han characters. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world, Chinese characters number in the tens of thousands, though most of them are minor graphic variants encountered only in historical texts. Studies in China have shown that literacy in written Chinese requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters. In Japan,2,136 are taught through secondary school, the characters used in Japan are distinct from those used in China in many respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, in South Korea, when Chinese characters are used they are of the traditional variant and are almost identical to those used in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Old Chinese, most words were monosyllabic and there was a correspondence between characters and words. Rather, a character almost always corresponds to a syllable that is also a morpheme. However, there are a few exceptions to this correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes. Modern Chinese has many homophones, thus the same syllable may be represented by many characters. A single character may also have a range of meanings, or sometimes quite distinct meanings, cognates in the several varieties of Chinese are generally written with the same character. They typically have similar meanings, but often quite different pronunciations and these foreign adaptations of Chinese pronunciation are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations, and have been useful in the reconstruction of Middle Chinese. When the script was first used in the late 2nd millennium BC, words of Old Chinese were generally monosyllabic, increasing numbers of polysyllabic words have entered the language from the Western Zhou period to the present day. The process has accelerated over the centuries as phonetic change has increased the number of homophones and it has been estimated that over two thirds of the 3,000 most common words in modern Standard Chinese are polysyllables, the vast majority of those being disyllables. The most common process has been to form compounds of existing words, words have also been created by adding affixes, reduplication and borrowing from other languages. Polysyllabic words are written with one character per syllable
25.
Tea
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Tea is an aromatic beverage commonly prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis, an evergreen shrub native to Asia. After water, it is the most widely consumed drink in the world, Tea originated in Southwest China, where it was used as a medicinal drink. It was popularized as a drink during the Chinese Tang dynasty. Portuguese priests and merchants introduced it to Europe during the 16th century, during the 17th century, drinking tea became fashionable among Britons, who started large-scale production and commercialization of the plant in India to bypass the Chinese monopoly. The term herbal tea usually refers to infusions of fruit or herbs made without the tea plant, such as steeps of rosehip, chamomile and these are sometimes called tisanes or herbal infusions to prevent confusion with tea made from the tea plant. The tea industry often uses the term fruit tea to refer to what are in fact fruit-flavored black teas. The Chinese character for tea is 茶, originally written with a stroke as 荼. The word is pronounced differently in the different varieties of Chinese, such as chá in Mandarin, zo and dzo in Wu Chinese, there were other ancient words for tea, though ming is the only other one still in common use. Most Chinese languages, such as Mandarin and Cantonese, pronounce it along the lines of cha and these two pronunciations have made their separate ways into other languages around the world. Starting in the seventeen century, the Dutch played a dominant role in the early European tea trade via the Dutch East India Company. The Dutch borrowed the word for tea from Min Chinese, either through trade directly from Fujian or Formosa where they had established a port, or from Malay traders in Bantam, Java. The Dutch then introduced to other European languages this Min pronunciation for tea, including English tea, French thé, Spanish té and this pronunciation is also the most common form worldwide. The Portuguese adopted the Cantonese pronunciation chá, and spread it to India, the Korean and Japanese pronunciations of cha were borrowed into Korean and Japanese during earlier periods of Chinese history. A third form, the increasingly widespread chai, came from Persian چای chay, both the châ and chây forms are found in Persian dictionaries. English has all three forms, cha or char, attested from the 16th century, tea, from the 17th, however, the form chai refers specifically to a black tea mixed with honey, spices and milk in contemporary English. Tea plants are native to East Asia, and probably originated around the points of the lands of north Burma. Tea drinking may have begun in the Yunnan region during the Shang Dynasty in China, Chinese legends attribute the invention of tea to Shennong in 2737 BC, although evidence suggests that tea drinking may have been introduced from the southwest of China. The earliest written records of tea come from China, in the Chronicles of Huayang, it was recorded that the Ba people in Sichuan presented tu to the Zhou king
26.
Chopsticks
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Chopsticks are shaped pairs of equal-length sticks that have been used as the traditional ancient kitchen and eating utensils in virtually all of East Asia for over 6000 years. Chopsticks are smoothed and frequently tapered and are made of bamboo, plastic, wood. They are less commonly made from gold, silver, porcelain, jade, Chopsticks are held in the dominant hand, between the thumb and fingers, and used to pick up pieces of food. The English word chopstick may have derived from Chinese Pidgin English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest published use of the word is in the 1699 book Voyages and Descriptions by William Dampier, they are called by the English seamen Chopsticks. The Standard Chinese term for chopsticks is kuàizi, the first character is a semantic-phonetic compound with a phonetic part meaning quick, and a semantic part meaning bamboo. In ancient written Chinese, the character for chopsticks was zhu, although it may have been widely used in ancient spoken Chinese, its use was eventually replaced by the pronunciation for the character kuài, meaning quick. The original character, though used in writing, is rarely used in modern spoken Chinese. It, however, is preserved in Chinese dialects such as Hokkien, for written semantic differentiation between the fast versus chopsticks, a new character was created for chopsticks by adding the bamboo radical to it. In Japanese, chopsticks are called hashi and they are also known as otemoto, a phrase commonly printed on the wrappers of disposable chopsticks. Te means hand and moto means the area under or around something, the preceding o is used for politeness. In Korean, 저 is used in the compound jeotgarak, which is composed of jeo chopsticks, jeo cannot be used alone, but can be found in other compounds such as sujeo, meaning spoon and chopsticks. In Vietnamese, chopsticks are called đũa, which is written as
27.
Foot binding
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Foot binding was the custom of applying painfully tight binding to the feet of young girls to modify the shape of the foot. Foot binding became popular as a means of displaying status and was adopted as a symbol of beauty in Chinese culture. Its prevalence and practice however varied in different parts of the country, Feet altered by binding were called lotus feet. The Manchu Kangxi Emperor tried to ban foot binding in 1664, foot-binding resulted in lifelong disabilities for most of its subjects, and a few elderly Chinese women still survive today with disabilities related to their bound feet. There are many suggestions for the origin of foot binding, another story tells of a favorite courtesan of Emperor Xiao Baojuan, Pan Yuer, who had delicate feet, dancing barefeet over a floor decorated with golden lotus flower design. The emperor expressed admiration and said that lotus springs from her every step, a reference to the Buddhist legend of Padmavati under whose feet lotus springs forth. This story may have given rise to the golden lotus or lotus feet used to describe bound feet. The general view is that the practice is likely to have originated from the time of Emperor Li Yu, yao Niangs dance was said to be so graceful that others sought to imitate her. The binding of feet was then replicated by other upper-class women, the practice of foot binding became popular among the elite during the Song dynasty, and the earliest known references to bound feet appeared in the late eleventh century. In the twelfth century, in the earliest extant discourse on the practice of binding, Zhang Bangji considered that a bound foot should be arch-shape. A thirteenth-century writer, Che Ruoshui, complained that little children not yet four or five years old, I do not know what use this is. Evidence from archaeology indicates that footbinding was practiced among the wives, by the end of the Song dynasty, men would drink from a special shoe whose heel contained a small cup. During the Yuan dynasty, some would also directly from the shoe itself. This practice was called toast to the lotus and lasted until the late Qing dynasty. The practice however become common among the gentry families, later spreading to the general population, as commoners. By the Ming period, the practice was no longer the preserve of the gentry, however, few Han Chinese complied with the edicts and Kangxi eventually abandoned the effort in 1668. By the 19th century, it was estimated that 40-50% of Chinese women had bound feet, and among upper class Han Chinese women, Bound feet became a mark of beauty and was also a prerequisite for finding a husband. Her younger sisters would grow up to be bond-servants or domestic slaves and be able to work in the fields, but the eldest daughter would assume to never have the need to work
28.
Great Wall of China
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Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century BC, these, later joined together and made bigger and stronger, are now collectively referred to as the Great Wall. Especially famous is the wall built 220–206 BC by Qin Shi Huang, since then, the Great Wall has been rebuilt, maintained, and enhanced, the majority of the existing wall is from the Ming Dynasty. The Great Wall stretches from Dandong in the east to Lop Lake in the west, a comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has concluded that the Ming walls measure 8,850 km. This is made up of 6,259 km sections of wall,359 km of trenches and 2,232 km of natural defensive barriers such as hills. Another archaeological survey found that the wall with all of its branches measure out to be 21,196 km. The collection of fortifications now known as The Great Wall of China has historically had a number of different names in both Chinese and English. The Chinese character 城 is a compound of the place or earth radical 土 and 成. The longer Chinese name Ten-Thousand-Mile Long Wall came from Sima Qians description of it in the Records, though he did not name the walls as such. The AD493 Book of Song quotes the frontier general Tan Daoji referring to the wall of 10,000 miles, closer to the modern name. Since Chinas metrication in 1930, it has been equivalent to 500 metres or 1,600 feet. However, this use of ten-thousand is figurative in a manner to the Greek and English myriad. Because of the association with the First Emperors supposed tyranny. Instead, various terms were used in records, including frontier, rampart, barrier, the outer fortresses. Poetic and informal names for the wall included the Purple Frontier, only during the Qing period did Long Wall become the catch-all term to refer to the many border walls regardless of their location or dynastic origin, equivalent to the English Great Wall. The current English name evolved from accounts of the Chinese wall from early modern European travelers, by the 19th century, The Great Wall of China had become standard in English, French, and German, although other European languages continued to refer to it as the Chinese wall. The Chinese were already familiar with the techniques of wall-building by the time of the Spring, during this time and the subsequent Warring States period, the states of Qin, Wei, Zhao, Qi, Yan, and Zhongshan all constructed extensive fortifications to defend their own borders. Built to withstand the attack of small arms such as swords and spears, king Zheng of Qin conquered the last of his opponents and unified China as the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty in 221 BC. Intending to impose centralized rule and prevent the resurgence of feudal lords, to position the empire against the Xiongnu people from the north, however, he ordered the building of new walls to connect the remaining fortifications along the empires northern frontier
29.
Khanbaliq
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Khanbaliq or Dadu was the capital of the Yuan dynasty, the main center of the Mongol Empire founded by Kublai Khan and in what is now Beijing, also the capital of China today. It was located at the center of modern Beijing, the Secretariat directly administered the Central Region of the Yuan Empire and dictated policies for the other provinces. Kublai and his successors also claimed supremacy over the entire Mongol Empire, the name Khanbaliq comes from the Mongolian and Uyghur words khan and balik, City of the Khan. It was actually in use among the Eastern Turks and Mongols before the fall of Zhongdu and it is traditionally written as Cambaluc in English, after its spelling in Rustichellos retelling of Marco Polos travels. The name Dadu, formerly romanized as Ta-Tu, is the transcription of the Chinese name 大都. The Mongols also called the city Daidu, which was a transliteration directly from the Chinese, in modern Chinese, it is referred to as Yuan Dadu to distinguish it from other cities which have borne similar names. Zhongdu, the Central Capital of the Jurchen Jin dynasty, was located at a site now part of Xicheng District. It was destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1215 when the Jin court began contemplating a move south to a more defensible capital such as Kaifeng. The Imperial Mint established in 1260 and responsible for the printing of chao, in 1264, Kublai Khan visited the Daning Palace on Jade Island in Taiye Lake and was so enchanted with the site that he directed his capital to be constructed around the garden. The chief architect and planner of the capital was Liu Bingzhong and his student Guo Shoujing and the Muslim Ikhtiyar al-Din were also involved. The construction of the walls of the city began in the same year and it was broad in scale, strict in planning and execution, and complete in equipment. A year after the 1271 establishment of the Yuan dynasty, Kublai Khan proclaimed the city his capital under the name Dadu although construction was not fully completed until 1293 and his previous seat at Shangdu became the summer capital. As part of the Great Khans policy of tolerance, Khanbaliq had various houses of worship. It even was the seat of a Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Khanbaliq from 1307 until its 1357 suppression, the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming dynasty sent an army to Khanbaliq in 1368. The last Yuan emperor fled north to Xanadu while the Ming razed the palaces of their capital to the ground, the former capital was renamed Beiping and Shuntian Prefecture was established in the area around the city. The Hongwu Emperor was succeeded by his grandson the Jianwen Emperor. His attempts to rein in the fiefs of his powerful uncles provoked the Jingnan Rebellion and, ultimately, his usurpation by his uncle, yans powerbase lay in Shuntian and he quickly resolved to move his capital north from Yingtian to the ruins at Beiping. He shortened the northern boundaries of the Mongol city and added a new, upon the southern extension of the Taiye Lake, the raising of Wansui Hill over Mongol ruins, and the completion of the Forbidden City to its south, he declared the city his northern capital Beijing
30.
Yuan dynasty
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The Yuan dynasty, officially the Great Yuan, was the empire or ruling dynasty of China established by Kublai Khan, leader of the Mongolian Borjigin clan. His realm was, by point, isolated from the other khanates and controlled most of present-day China and its surrounding areas. Some of the Mongolian Emperors of the Yuan mastered the Chinese language, while others used their native language. The Yuan dynasty is considered both a successor to the Mongol Empire and an imperial Chinese dynasty and it was the khanate ruled by the successors of Möngke Khan after the division of the Mongol Empire. In official Chinese histories, the Yuan dynasty bore the Mandate of Heaven, following the Song dynasty, the dynasty was established by Kublai Khan, yet he placed his grandfather Genghis Khan on the imperial records as the official founder of the dynasty as Taizu. In addition to Emperor of China, Kublai Khan also claimed the title of Great Khan, supreme over the other khanates, the Chagatai, the Golden Horde. As such, the Yuan was also referred to as the Empire of the Great Khan. However, while the claim of supremacy by the Yuan emperors was at times recognized by the khans, their subservience was nominal. In 1271, Kublai Khan imposed the name Great Yuan, establishing the Yuan dynasty, dà Yuán is from the clause 大哉乾元 in the Commentaries on the Classic of Changes section regarding Qián. The counterpart in Mongolian language was Dai Ön Ulus, also rendered as Ikh Yuan Üls or Yekhe Yuan Ulus, in Mongolian, Dai Ön is often used in conjunction with the Yeke Mongghul Ulus, resulting in Dai Ön Yeke Mongghul Ulus, meaning Great Mongol State. Nevertheless, both terms can refer to the khanate within the Mongol Empire directly ruled by Great Khans before the actual establishment of the Yuan dynasty by Kublai Khan in 1271. Genghis Khan united the Mongol and Turkic tribes of the steppes and he and his successors expanded the Mongol empire across Asia. Under the reign of Genghis third son, Ögedei Khan, the Mongols destroyed the weakened Jin dynasty in 1234, Ögedei offered his nephew Kublai a position in Xingzhou, Hebei. Kublai was unable to read Chinese but had several Han Chinese teachers attached to him since his early years by his mother Sorghaghtani and he sought the counsel of Chinese Buddhist and Confucian advisers. Möngke Khan succeeded Ögedeis son, Güyük, as Great Khan in 1251 and he granted his brother Kublai control over Mongol held territories in China. Kublai built schools for Confucian scholars, issued paper money, revived Chinese rituals and he adopted as his capital city Kaiping in Inner Mongolia, later renamed Shangdu. Many Han Chinese and Khitan defected to the Mongols to fight against the Jin, two Han Chinese leaders, Shi Tianze, Liu Heima, and the Khitan Xiao Zhala defected and commanded the 3 Tumens in the Mongol army. Liu Heima and Shi Tianze served Ogödei Khan, Liu Heima and Shi Tianxiang led armies against Western Xia for the Mongols
31.
Odoric of Pordenone
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Odoric of Pordenone, OFM, also known as Odorico Mattiussi or Mattiuzzi, was an Italian late-medieval Franciscan friar and missionary explorer. His account of his visit to China was an important source for the account of John Mandeville, many of the incredible reports in Mandeville have proven to be garbled versions of Odorics eyewitness descriptions. Odoric was born at Villanova, a hamlet now belonging to the town of Pordenone in Friuli and he came from the Italian family of the Mattiussi, one of the families in charge of defending the town of Pordenone in the name of Ottokar II, King of Bohemia. This later gave rise to the rumours that the family was of Bohemian origin. According to the ecclesiastical biographers, in years he took the vows of the Franciscan order and joined their convent at Udine. In 1296 Odoric went as a missionary to the Balkans, friar Odoric was dispatched to the East in April 1318. Starting from Padua, he went to Constantinople via Venice and then crossed the Black Sea to Trebizond, from there he traveled and preached in Armenia, Media, and Persia. In all these countries the Franciscans had founded mission centers, from Sultanieh he proceeded by Kashan and Yazd, and turning thence followed a somewhat indirect route by Persepolis and the Shiraz and Baghdad regions, to the Persian Gulf. With another friar, James of Ireland, as his companion, he sailed from Ormus to India, landing at Thane, at this city St Thomas of Tolentino and his three Franciscan companions had recently been martyred for blaspheming Muhammad before the local qadi during a domestic violence case. Their remains had been gathered by Jordan of Severac, a Dominican who had them a short time before. He interred them at the church in Supera, near Vasai, Odoric relates that he disinterred these relics and carried them with him on his further travels. From India, Odoric sailed in a junk to Sumatra, visiting ports on the northern coast of that island. Thence, he visited Java, Borneo, Champa, and Guangzhou, from Guangzhou, he travelled overland to the great port of Quanzhou where there were two houses of his order. From Fuzhou Odoric struck across the mountains into Zhejiang and visited Hangzhou and it was at the time one of the great cities of the world and Odoric —like Marco Polo, Marignolli, and Ibn Batuta—gives details of its splendors. Passing northward by Nanjing and crossing the Yangzi, Odoric embarked on the Grand Canal and he remained there for three years, probably from 1324 to 1327. He was attached, no doubt, to one of the churches founded by the Franciscan Archbishop John of Monte Corvino and he also visited Yangzhou where Katarina Vilionis tombstone was found. On one of his trips, his ship was capsized by a typhoon but they landed safely in Bolinao, Pangasinan. He is said to have held a Mass there, in around 1324 and that would have pre-dated the Mass celebrated in 1521 by Ferdinand Magellan, which is generally regarded as the first Mass in the Philippines, by some 197 years
32.
Ming dynasty
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The Ming dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China – then known as the Empire of the Great Ming – for 276 years following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming, described by some as one of the greatest eras of orderly government, although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng, regimes loyal to the Ming throne – collectively called the Southern Ming – survived until 1683. He rewarded his supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. One, Zheng He, led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia, the rise of new emperors and new factions diminished such extravagances, the capture of the Zhengtong Emperor during the 1449 Tumu Crisis ended them completely. The imperial navy was allowed to fall into disrepair while forced labor constructed the Liaodong palisade, haijin laws intended to protect the coasts from Japanese pirates instead turned many into smugglers and pirates themselves. The growth of Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch trade created new demand for Chinese products and produced an influx of Japanese. This abundance of specie remonetized the Ming economy, whose money had suffered repeated hyperinflation and was no longer trusted. While traditional Confucians opposed such a prominent role for commerce and the newly rich it created, combined with crop failure, floods, and epidemic, the dynasty collapsed before the rebel leader Li Zicheng, who was defeated by the Manchu-led Eight Banner armies who founded the Qing dynasty. The Mongol-led Yuan dynasty ruled before the establishment of the Ming dynasty, consequently, agriculture and the economy were in shambles, and rebellion broke out among the hundreds of thousands of peasants called upon to work on repairing the dykes of the Yellow River. A number of Han Chinese groups revolted, including the Red Turbans in 1351, the Red Turbans were affiliated with the White Lotus, a Buddhist secret society. Zhu Yuanzhang was a peasant and Buddhist monk who joined the Red Turbans in 1352. In 1356, Zhus rebel force captured the city of Nanjing, with the Yuan dynasty crumbling, competing rebel groups began fighting for control of the country and thus the right to establish a new dynasty. In 1363, Zhu Yuanzhang eliminated his archrival and leader of the rebel Han faction, Chen Youliang, in the Battle of Lake Poyang, arguably the largest naval battle in history. Known for its ambitious use of ships, Zhus force of 200,000 Ming sailors were able to defeat a Han rebel force over triple their size, claimed to be 650. The victory destroyed the last opposing rebel faction, leaving Zhu Yuanzhang in uncontested control of the bountiful Yangtze River Valley, Zhu Yuanzhang took Hongwu, or Vastly Martial, as his era name. Hongwu made an effort to rebuild state infrastructure. He built a 48 km long wall around Nanjing, as well as new palaces, Hongwu organized a military system known as the weisuo, which was similar to the fubing system of the Tang dynasty. With a growing suspicion of his ministers and subjects, Hongwu established the Jinyiwei, some 100,000 people were executed in a series of purges during his rule
33.
Ibn Battuta
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He is known for his extensive travels, accounts of which were published in his Travels. Over a period of thirty years, Ibn Battuta visited most of the known Islamic world as well as many non-Muslim lands and his journeys included trips to North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Africa, Middle East, India, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China. He claimed descent from a Berber tribe known as the Lawata, as a young man he would have studied at a Sunni Maliki madhhab, the dominant form of education in North Africa at that time. Maliki Muslims requested Ibn Battuta serve as their religious judge as he was from an area where it was practiced. In June 1325, at the age of twenty-one, Ibn Battuta set off from his hometown on a hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca and he would not see Morocco again for twenty-four years. So I braced my resolution to quit my dear ones, female and male and my parents being yet in the bonds of life, it weighed sorely upon me to part from them, and both they and I were afflicted with sorrow at this separation. He travelled to Mecca overland, following the North African coast across the sultanates of Abd al-Wadid and Hafsid, the route took him through Tlemcen, Béjaïa, and then Tunis, where he stayed for two months. For safety, Ibn Battuta usually joined a caravan to reduce the risk of being robbed and he took a bride in the town of Sfax, the first in a series of marriages that would feature in his travels. In the early spring of 1326, after a journey of over 3,500 km, Ibn Battuta arrived at the port of Alexandria and he met two ascetic pious men in Alexandria. One was Sheikh Burhanuddin who is supposed to have foretold the destiny of Ibn Battuta as a world traveller saying It seems to me that you are fond of foreign travel and you will visit my brother Fariduddin in India, Rukonuddin in Sind and Burhanuddin in China. Another pious man Sheikh Murshidi interpreted the meaning of a dream of Ibn Battuta that he was meant to be a world traveller and he spent several weeks visiting sites in the area, and then headed inland to Cairo, the capital of the Mamluk Sultanate and an important city. After spending about a month in Cairo, he embarked on the first of many detours within the safety of Mamluk territory. Of the three routes to Mecca, Ibn Battuta chose the least-travelled, which involved a journey up the Nile valley. Upon approaching the town, however, a local rebellion forced him to turn back, Ibn Battuta returned to Cairo and took a second side trip, this time to Mamluk-controlled Damascus. During his first trip he had encountered a man who prophesied that he would only reach Mecca by travelling through Syria. Without this help many travellers would be robbed and murdered, after spending the Muslim month of Ramadan in Damascus, he joined a caravan travelling the 1,300 km south to Medina, site of the tomb of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. After four days in the town, he journeyed on to Mecca, rather than returning home, Ibn Battuta instead decided to continue on, choosing as his next destination the Ilkhanate, a Mongol Khanate, to the northeast. On 17 November 1326, following a month spent in Mecca, the group headed north to Medina and then, travelling at night, turned northeast across the Najd plateau to Najaf, on a journey that lasted about two weeks
34.
Yangtze
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The Yangtze River, known in China as the Cháng Jiāng or the Yángzǐ Jiāng, is the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world. The river is the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country and it drains one-fifth of the land area of the Peoples Republic of China and its river basin is home to one-third of the countrys population. The Yangtze is the sixth-largest river by volume in the world. The Yangtze River plays a role in the history, culture. The prosperous Yangtze River Delta generates as much as 20% of the PRCs GDP, for thousands of years, the river has been used for water, irrigation, sanitation, transportation, industry, boundary-marking and war. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is the largest hydro-electric power station in the world, in recent years, the river has suffered from industrial pollution, agricultural run-off, siltation, and loss of wetland and lakes, which exacerbates seasonal flooding. Some sections of the river are now protected as nature reserves, a stretch of the upstream Yangtze flowing through deep gorges in western Yunnan is part of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In mid-2014 the Chinese government announced it was building a transport network, comprising railways, roads and airports. Because the source of the Yangtze was not ascertained until modern times, Yangtze was actually the name of Chang Jiang for the lower part from Nanjing to the river mouth at Shanghai. In modern Chinese, Yangtze is still used to refer to the part of Chang Jiang from Nanjing to the river mouth. Yangtze never stands for the whole Chang Jiang, Chang Jiang is the modern Chinese name for the lower 2,884 km of the Yangtze from its confluence with the Min River at Yibin in Sichuan Province to the river mouth at Shanghai. Chang Jiang literally means the Long River, in Old Chinese, this stretch of the Yangtze was simply called Jiang/Kiang 江, a character of phono-semantic compound origin, combining the water radical 氵 with the homophone 工. Krong was probably a word in the Austroasiatic language of local peoples such as the Yue, similar to *krong in Proto-Vietnamese and krung in Mon, all meaning river, it is related to modern Vietnamese sông and Khmer kôngkea. By the Han Dynasty, Jiang had come to any river in Chinese. The epithet 長, means long, was first formally applied to the river during the Six Dynasties period, various sections of Chang Jiang have local names. From Yibin to Yichang, the river through Sichuan and Chongqing Municipality is also known as the Chuan Jiang or Sichuan River, in the Hubei Province, the river is also called the Jing Jiang or the Jing River after Jingzhou. In Anhui Province, the takes on the local name Wan Jiang after the shorthand name for Anhui. And Yangzi Jiang t 揚子江s 扬子江, p Yángzǐjiāng) or the Yangzi River, the name likely comes from an ancient ferry crossing called Yangzi or Yangzijin
35.
Span (unit)
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A span is the distance measured by a human hand, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger. In ancient times, a span was considered to be half a cubit, sometimes the distinction is made between the great span and little span. Ancient Greek texts show that the span was used as a measure in ancient Greece since at least archaic period. See also, English unit 1 span =9 inches =0.2286 m In Arabic and it is used in Modern Standard Arabic and classical Arabic, as well as in modern-day dialects. In Slavic languages, the analogue of the span is various words derived from Proto-Slavic *pędь, in various Slavic languages it is the distance from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger or index finger. For example, Slovenian velika ped = great span, mala ped = little span, Russian piad =4 vershoks =17.8 cm, see Obsolete Russian weights and measures. In Swahili, the equivalent of the span is the shubiri or shibiri while the little span is the morita or futuri. The term arasz, used by itself without a modifier, is understood as referring to the large arasz. In Hindi-Urdu and other languages of Northern India and Pakistan, the span is used as an informal measure. In Malay, it is called jengkal, in Nepal, where this method of measurement is still used in informal context, a span is called Bhitta. In Tamil, it is called saaN and its commonly used as traditional and informal measure. In Mongolia, the span is called as tuu, depending on the use of index or middle finger and the placement of the thumb, the span is named differently as tuu and mukhar tuu etc. The old Portuguese customary unit analogue to the span was the palmo de craveira or simply palmo,1 palmo de craveira =8 polegadas = 1/5 varas =0.22 m Anthropic units Hand List of unusual units of measurement Units of measure Lyle V. Jones. In, Robert L. Thorndike, Educational Measurement, 2nd ed. Washington, DC, American Council on Education, pp. 335–355
36.
Yellow River
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The Yellow River or Huang He is the second-longest river in Asia, following the Yangtze River, and the sixth-longest river system in the world at the estimated length of 5,464 km. Originating in the Bayan Har Mountains in Qinghai province of western China, it flows through nine provinces, the Yellow River basin has an east–west extent of about 1,900 kilometers and a north–south extent of about 1,100 km. Its total basin area is about 742,443 square kilometers and its basin was the birthplace of ancient Chinese civilization, and it was the most prosperous region in early Chinese history. Early Chinese literature including the Yu Gong or Tribute of Yu dating to the Warring States period refers to the Yellow River as simply 河, the first appearance of the name 黃河 is in the Book of Han written during the Eastern Han dynasty about the Western Han dynasty. The adjective yellow describes the color of the muddy water in the lower course of the river. One of its older Mongolian names was the Black River, because the river runs clear before it enters the Loess Plateau, in Mongolia itself, it is simply called the Šar Mörön. In Qinghai, the rivers Tibetan name is River of the Peacock above sea level they are the two largest plateau freshwater lakes nationwide, flowing east at the eastern edge of the Amne Machin Mountains, the Yellow River enters Maqu County in Gansu. Here, the river skirts through the peat bog known as the Zoigê Wetlands. Flowing now along the edge of Amne Machin, the river reenters Qinghai. The valley section stretches from Longyang Gorge in Qinghai to Qingtong Gorge in Gansu, steep cliffs line both sides of the river. The water bed is narrow and the drop is large, so the flow in this section is extremely turbulent. There are 20 gorges in this section, the most famous of these being the Longyang, Jishi, Liujia, Bapan, the flow conditions in this section makes it the best location for hydroelectric plants. The Yellow River exits Qinghai for the second and final time in these gorges, downstream from the Yanguo Gorge, the provincial capital of Lanzhou is built upon the Yellow Rivers banks. The Yellow River flows northeasterly out of Gansu and into Ningxia before the Qingtong Gorge, after emerging from the Qingtong Gorge, the river comes into a section of vast alluvial plains, the Yinchuan Plain and Hetao Plain. In this section, the regions along the river are mostly deserts and grasslands, the Hetao Plain has a length of 900 km and width of 30 to 50 km. It is historically the most important irrigation plain along the Yellow River, the Ordos Loop formed by an enormous twist of the Yellow River, beginning at Zhongning County in Ningxia and ending with a drastic eastward turn at its confluence with the Wei at Tongguan in Shaanxi. However, the division for the middle reaches of the river run from Hekou in Togtoh County, Inner Mongolia, to Zhengzhou. The middle reaches are 1,206 km long, with an area of 344,000 square kilometers,45. 7% of the total, with a total elevation drop of 890 m
37.
Grand Canal (China)
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The Grand Canal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the longest canal or artificial river in the world and a famous tourist destination. Starting at Beijing, it passes through Tianjin and the provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the city of Hangzhou, linking the Yellow River and Yangtze River. The oldest parts of the date back to the 5th century BC. The total length of the Grand Canal is 1,776 km and its greatest height is reached in the mountains of Shandong, at a summit of 42 m. The canal has been admired by many throughout history including Japanese monk Ennin, Persian historian Rashid al-Din, Korean official Choe Bu, historically, periodic flooding of the adjacent Yellow River threatened the safety and functioning of the canal. During wartime the high dikes of the Yellow River were sometimes deliberately broken in order to flood advancing enemy troops and this caused disaster and prolonged economic hardships. Despite temporary periods of desolation and disuse, the Grand Canal furthered an indigenous and it has allowed faster trading and has improved Chinas economy. The southern portion remains in constant heavy use to the present day, in the late Spring and Autumn period, King Fuchai of Wu, ruler of the State of Wu, ventured north to conquer the neighboring State of Qi. He ordered a canal be constructed for trading purposes, as well as a means to ship ample supplies north in case his forces should engage the northern states of Song and this canal became known as the Han Gou. Han Gou is known as the second oldest section of the later Grand Canal since the Hong Gou most likely preceded it and it linked the Yellow River near Kaifeng to the Si and Bian rivers and became the model for the shape of the Grand Canal in the north. The exact date of the Hong Gous construction is uncertain, it is first mentioned by the diplomat Su Qin in 330 BC when discussing state boundaries. The historian Sima Qian dated it much earlier than the 4th century BC, attributing it to the work of Yu the Great and its main role throughout its history was the transport of grain to the capital. By the year 600, there were major build ups of silt on the bottom of the Hong Gou canal, obstructing river barges whose drafts were too deep for its waters. The chief engineer of the Sui dynasty, Yuwen Kai, advised the dredging of a new canal that would run parallel to the existing canal, diverging from it at Chenliu. The new canal was to pass not Xuzhou but Suzhou, to connecting with the Si River. With the recorded labor of five men and women under the supervision of Ma Shumou. The Grand Canal was fully completed under the second Sui emperor, from the years 604 to 609, first by linking Luoyang to the Yangzhou, then expanding it to Hangzhou and this allowed the southern area to provide grain to the northern province, particularly to troops stationed there. Running alongside and parallel to the canal was an imperial roadway, the government also planted an enormous line of trees
38.
Zhenjiang
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Zhenjiang, formerly romanized as Chenkiang, is a prefecture-level city in Jiangsu Province, China. It lies on the bank of the Yangtze River near its intersection with the Grand Canal. It is opposite Yangzhou and between Nanjing and Changzhou, Zhenjiang was formerly the provincial capital of Jiangsu and remains as an important transportation hub. The town is best known in China and abroad for its fragrant black vinegar, zhènjiāng is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese name 鎮江 or 镇江, based on the names pronunciation in the Mandarin dialect. The name means Suppressing or Guarding the River and refers to the army garrisons placed in the city to protect Nanjing. The Postal Map used Chenkiang and it was known as Chen-chiang in the Wade-Giles system, other romanizations include Chin-keang-foo, Chen-kiang-fu, and Chinkiang. Former names include Jingjiang and Jingkou, Zhenjiang was the seat of feudal domains from the 8th century BC onwards, under the names Yi, Zhufang, and Guyang. After it was captured by the First Emperor of the Qin in 221 BC, a Chinese legend holds that the sites fengshui was so advantageous that the First Emperor ordered 3000 prisoners to dig a tunnel through one of Zhenjiangs hills to dissipate its qi. It became a seat during the middle of the 3rd century BC. The Sui took the city in AD581 and made it an important garrison on the lower Yangtze, in 595, it was made a commandery seat. Its importance grew with the construction of the Grand Canal, after which it served as the chief collection, the city flourished from the 10th to 13th centuries, when it produced fine silks, satins, and silverware for the Song emperors. The 11th-century scientist and statesman Shen Kuo composed his 1088 Dream Pool Essays during his retirement in an estate on the outskirts of the city. It was taken by the Mongolians during their 1275 campaign against the Song capital at Hangzhou, under the Yuan, some Nestorian Christians were reported living in the city. The city fell to Xu Da on 17 March 1356, under the Qing, Zhenjiang was a city of half a million surrounded by a circuit of brick city walls up to 35 feet high. It was captured by the British on 21 July 1842 during the First Opium War and after a fierce resistance, a decade later, massive floods of the Yellow River altered its course north of Shandong and closed the northern path of the Grand Canal. Soon after, the town was sacked by the Taiping rebels in 1853 and it was recaptured by the Qing in 1858 and opened as a treaty port in 1861. The population was estimated at 168,000 in 1904, the southern part of the Grand Canal was obstructed in the early 20th century, although by that point the city was connected by rail to Shanghai and Nanjing. From 1928 to 1949, while Nanjing served as the capital of the Republic of China, when the Communists won the Chinese Civil War and relocated the capital to Beijing, Nanjing resumed its role as Jiangsus capital
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Jiangsu
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Jiangsu, formerly romanized as Kiangsu, is an eastern-central coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China. It is one of the provinces in manufacturing electronics and apparel items. Jiangsu is the third smallest, but the fifth most populous, Jiangsu has the second-highest GDP of Chinese provinces, after Guangdong. Jiangsu borders Shandong in the north, Anhui to the west, Jiangsu has a coastline of over 1,000 kilometres along the Yellow Sea, and the Yangtze River passes through the southern part of the province. Since the Sui and Tang dynasties, Jiangsu has been an economic and commercial center. Cities such as Yangzhou, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou and Shanghai are all major Chinese economic hubs, since the initiation of economic reforms in 1990, Jiangsu has become a focal point for economic development. It is widely regarded as Chinas most developed province measured by its Human Development Index, Jiangsu is home to many of the worlds leading exporters of electronic equipment, chemicals and textiles. It has also been Chinas largest recipient of foreign investment since 2006. Its 2014 nominal GDP was more than 1 trillion US dollars and its name is a compound of the first elements of the names of the two cities of Jiangning and Suzhou. The abbreviation for this province is 苏, the character of its name. The state of Wu was subjugated in 473 BC by the state of Yue, Yue was in turn subjugated by the powerful state of Chu from the west in 333 BC. Eventually the state of Qin swept away all the other states, during the Three Kingdoms period, southern Jiangsu became the base of the Eastern Wu whose capital, Jiankang, is modern Nanjing. When nomadic invasions overran northern China in the 4th century, the court of the Jin Dynasty moved to Jiankang. Cities in southern and central Jiangsu swelled with the influx of migrants from the north, Jiankang remained as the capital for four successive Southern Dynasties and became the largest commercial and cultural center in China. The Tang Dynasty relied on southern Jiangsu for annual deliveries of grain and it was during the Song Dynasty, which saw the development of a wealthy mercantile class and emergent market economy in China, that south Jiangsu emerged as a center of trade. From then onwards, south Jiangsu, especially cities like Suzhou or Yangzhou, would be synonymous with opulence. Today south Jiangsu remains one of the richest parts of China, the Mongols took control of China in the thirteenth century. The Ming Dynasty, which was established in 1368 after driving out the Mongols who had occupied China, following a coup by Zhu Di, however, the capital was moved to Beijing, far to the north
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Sogdia
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Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemenid Empire, eighteenth in the list on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great. In the Avesta, Sogdiana is listed as the second best land that the supreme deity Ahura Mazda had created and it comes second, after Airyanem Vaejah, homeland of the Aryans, in the Zoroastrian book of Vendidad, indicating the importance of this region from ancient times. Sogdiana was conquered by the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great in 328 BC and later formed part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, the Sogdian states, although never politically united, were centred on the main city of Samarkand. Sogdiana lay north of Bactria, east of Khwarezm, and southeast of Kangju between the Oxus and the Jaxartes, embracing the valley of the Zeravshan. Sogdian territory corresponds to the provinces of Samarkand and Bokhara in modern Uzbekistan as well as the Sughd province of modern Tajikistan. During the High Middle Ages, Sogdian cities included sites stretching towards Issyk Kul such as that at the site of Suyab. Sogdian, an Eastern Iranian language, is no longer a spoken language and it was widely spoken in Central Asia as a lingua franca and even served as one of the Turkic Khaganates court languages for writing documents. Sogdians also lived in Imperial China and rose to prominence in the military. Sogdian merchants and diplomats traveled as far west as the Byzantine Empire and they played an important part as middlemen in the trade route of the Silk Road. The Sogdian conversion to Islam was virtually complete by the end of the Samanid Empire in 999, coinciding with the decline of the Sogdian language, as it was largely supplanted by Persian. The restored Scythian name is *Skuda, which among the Pontic or Royal Scythians became *Skula, according to Szemerényi, Sogdiana was named from the Skuda form. This large-scale migration included Eastern Iranian speaking peoples such as the Sogdians, Achaemenid ruler Cyrus the Great conquered Sogdiana while campaigning in Central Asia in 546–539 BC, a fact mentioned by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus in his Histories. Darius I introduced the Aramaic writing system and coin currency to Central Asia, in addition to incorporating Sogdians into his army as regular soldiers. A contingent of Sogdian soldiers fought in the army of Xerxes I during his ultimately failed invasion of Greece in 480 BC. A Persian inscription from Susa claims that the palace there was adorned with lapis lazuli, given the absence of any named satraps for Sogdiana in historical records, modern scholarship has concluded that Sogdiana was governed from the satrapy of nearby Bactria. The satraps were often relatives of the ruling Persian kings, especially sons who were not designated as the heir apparent, Sogdiana likely remained under Persian control until roughly 400 BC, during the reign of Artaxerxes II. Rebellious states of the Persian Empire took advantage of the weak Artaxerxes II, persias massive loss of Central Asian territory is widely attributed to the rulers lack of control. However, unlike Egypt, which was recaptured by the Persian Empire
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