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Pavia is taken by the Hungarians, who set fire to 44 churches.

Toltec settlements in Mexico.

The Dubliners control the Kingdom of York

With the collapse of the Tang Dynasty in China, Vietnam regained independence after 12 centuries.

A Chinese encyclopedia is cited by Borges: it classifies animals as: belonging to the Emperor, stuffed, domesticated, suckling pigs, mermaids, fabulous, stray dogs, included in this classification, who are agitated like mad, innumerable, drawn with a very fine brush of camel hair, etc., no longer

Modena. The Huns arrive in the city and find the gates open. Suspicious, they do not sack it. Legend once again attributes the credit to Saint Geminiano.

Nonantola. The Hungarians sack the abbey and massacre the monks. Then they head towards Modena.

The library of Caliph Abd Rahman III in Cordoba, has 400,000 volumes

Muslims even reach as far as Switzerland!

Edward reconquers much of Danelwa (the Danish part of England)

Modena governed by Countess Matilda of Canossa and by the lords of Reggio, Parma, Mantua, Ferrara, Tuscany at various times

Existence of an independent Italian Kingdom.

The Kazakhs, an ancient people of Mongolian origin, converted to Islam. They were nomads and four centuries later, in 1300, they arrived and settled in what is now Kazakhstan, led by a grandson of Genghis Khan.

Russia, the principality of Novgorod is born thanks to Prince Rurik, who unifies the Norman and Swedish fortresses

Abu Allah Mohammed ibn Jabir al-Battani determines that the distance between the Earth and the Sun varies throughout the year.

The Normans sack Nantes

Muslims arrive in Bari

Muslims arrive in Naples

Baghdad. Islamic civilization was sufficiently advanced in the disciplines necessary to develop advanced encryption and decryption techniques: mathematics, statistics, and linguistics. To develop knowledge (“ilm”). In 815, Caliph al-Mamun established the Bait al-Hikmah (the House of Wisdom) in Baghdad, a library and translation center, with

Pope Leo III makes Charlemagne (King of the Franks) Emperor and crowns him in Rome. The Holy Roman Empire is born.

Indochina, rise of the Khmer kingdom of Angkor

A young Japanese monk, Saicho, reforms the Buddhist cult by founding the Tendai cult according to which all human beings have the lotus of the Buddha within them.

The Arabic translator al-Hajjaj translates Euclid’s Elements, a version received from the Byzantine Emperor by Caliph al-Mansur and worked on by Hypatia and her father Theon in the 5th century. The Arabic translation will thus pass it down to subsequent generations.

The Shiite Abbasids shift the center of power from Syria to Baghdad.

Bologna was a free municipality or under imperial or papal protection or that of Countess Matilda of Canossa

Donation of Pepin. After the victory over the Lombards, Pepin donated the Exarchate of Ravenna, the Pentapolis, and the Duchy of Rome to Pope Stephen II, the nucleus of the future Papal States.

The Lombard army deployed in defense of Northern Italy in the Susa Valley, was defeated by the Franks of Pepin who had made a pact with Pope Stephen III: the descent into Lombard Italy alongside the Church in exchange for papal anointing.

Legend has it that Astolfo, king of the Lombards, used to hunt with his faithful falcon through dense forests and humid marshes. One day he released his falcon in pursuit of his prey, but soon the animal disappeared into the thick woods. He searched desperately

Charles Martel defeats the Arabs again in battle at the pond of Berre

Charles Martel retakes Avignon from the Arabs

The Franks under Charles Martel halt the Islamic advance in Europe (the Great Land as they called it), Poitiers, Loire, southern France; commander Abd Al-Rahman is killed

The Arabs annihilate Odo’s forces near Bordeaux: the Arab forces consist of 380,000 infantry and 16,000 cavalry

First Arab defeat in Europe: their commander, As-Sanh ibn Malik, is killed in Toulouse.

Charles Martel, founder of the Carolingian dynasty, completes the unification of the Frankish kingdom

Damascus. Caliph al-Walid ibn Abd el-Malek founded the bimaristan, the first authentic hospital.

The Islamic Empire conquers North Africa

Tantra, a mystical form of Buddhism produced by the convergence of Buddhism and Hinduism, originated in India, and soon spread to Tibet.

Toledo, Spain. One of the last Visigoth councils opens. The kingdom’s Jews are accused of treason, their property is confiscated, their Jewish worship is banned, and they are dispersed throughout the country and handed over as slaves to whomever the king chooses to favor.

Documented in the Nuremberg Chronicle, the transit of the comet that would later be named Halley’s Comet centuries later. This transit is also documented in China, Japan, and Korea.

(Failed) siege of Constantinople by the Arabs, supported by the caliphs of Damascus

Arab armies attack Constantinople for the first time and besiege it for five years

Ali, professed “the beloved of Allah” by Shiite Muslims, rules the Arabs

The Shia Ali, Ali’s supporters, managed to have him appointed caliph until 661, when he was assassinated. Ali’s son was killed by the new caliph’s soldiers in 680 in Karbala.

The Islamic Empire completes the conquest of Arabia, Mesopotamia, Persia

Buddhism arrives in Tibet

Japan, Taikwa era, from Taiho, a text in which the political system of the imperial bureaucratic state is codified, which is imposed to the detriment of the noble clans

Othman is the third caliph, he is assassinated in 656

The victorious Caliph Omar arrives at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt and orders the destruction of all volumes contrary to the Quran as such, and all those in conformity with the Quran, as superfluous.

The Arabs, having conquered Persia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, invaded Christian Egypt and then spread into the Christian Maghreb: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco.

The Arabs occupy Jerusalem.

The Arabs invade Christian Syria and Christian Palestine

A Persian Caliph is the first to benefit from the invention of the Windmill, which will arrive in Europe several centuries later

Edict of Rothari. The first body of the Langobarda is born, a powerful body of laws covering civil law matters that will form the basis of urban customs for centuries. It is one of the elements that will legitimize the governance of cities and thus

The father of Islam dies. In Medina, Muhammad dies in the arms of Aisha, his third wife and favorite. In 610, the prophet had had a vision in which God commanded him to become a prophet of the “true religion.” Muhammad considered himself the last

The Islamic tradition of praying facing Jerusalem changes to facing Mecca. This direction is called the qibla—in Arabic: قِبْلَة, meaning “direction.”

Smallpox epidemics in Europe

Persian invasion of Arabia. The Christian kingdom in southern Arabia, founded by Abraham in the twentieth century before, is also obliterated after its occupation by the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia.

End of construction of the Via Emilia. End of construction of the Via Emilia.

China. The throne is occupied by the Eastern Wei Dynasty. Gao Yang, an unscrupulous careerist, seizes power and ties Yuan Huangtou, son of Emperor Yuan Lang, to a large kite and launches it from a tower so he can spy on the enemy’s moves from

First documented outbreak of bubonic plague in Europe.

Second cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland, with consequences in Europe (the first was in 536).

Justinian (Byzantine Emperor) takes Ravenna

Artemius and Isidorus finish the Hagia Sophia (Greek for Heavenly Wisdom) in Constantinople: it is the largest cathedral in the world, first Christian (under the Byzantine Empire) and then Muslim (under the Ottoman Empire); it cost the equivalent of 1.5 billion US dollars in 2000

Cassiodorus has in his library 2000 – 3000 works

The belief spread, later made official by the Catholic Church in 1950, that the body of the Virgin Mary ascended to heaven after her death.

Buddhism arrives in Japan

Persia, the ruler Khosrau I brings the Sassanid kingdom to maximum power

From Montecassino, the work of Saint Benedict of Nursia spread. He is the true founder of Western monasticism. It is a miracle of moderation and balance, manual labor, intellectual labor, and spiritual activity. Benedictine monasticism enjoyed immense success in the West from the 6th to

The Antioch earthquake on the coast between Türkiye and Syria kills 300,000 people.

Southern Arabia. The Jewish king Yusuf As’ar Yath’ar (also known as Nuwas and Masruq) ascends the throne. He launches a wave of persecution against the Christians of the city of Najran.

The cult of Isis is officially banned, and all churches dedicated to her are demolished or converted to the cult of the Virgin Mary.

The Ostrogoths, under the leadership of Theodoric, conquer Italy. Theodoric settles in Ravenna, where he rules for thirty years.

The Mediterranean ceased to be a Roman sea. And it ceased to be a busy transit route for goods, at least until the arrival of the Muslims more than a century later.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, no concrete structures were built anywhere in the world for over a millennium. Concrete was one of the Romans’ key military and technological innovations, and the art was jealously guarded. The Pantheon in Rome remains a testament to

Rome becomes a fiefdom of Odoacer, king of the Scirii.

During the retreat of the Roman Empire from Britain, the legend of Merlin, King Arthur (Arthorius) and the Sarmatian warriors (coming from the north-western shores of the Black Sea) of the Round Table including Lancelot and Tristan, alongside the Picts (like Guinevere and Merlin), against

Saint Patrick (born 385) dies. He provides the spirit for Irish monasticism. Patrick, kidnapped by pirates at a young age and sold into slavery in Ireland, converts to Christianity. The Irish spirit has nothing of Benedictine moderation. Favored by the rigors of the North, it

Petronius Maximus, Avitus, Majorian, Libius Severus, Anthemius, Olybrius, Glycerius, Julius Nepos, Romulus Augustulus succeed one another as Roman Emperors, but they are only nominally so as the barbarian generals rage in the empire.

Vortigen invites the Saxons to settle in England

India. The gold coins of Kumaragupta I depict Shiva with his wife Parvati, and Vishnu with his four arms. This is the moment when Hinduism, like Christianity and Buddhism, crystallized into its visual language.