Myanmar in the Fifteenth Century

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Aung-Thwin
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Classical State ◽  
Historical Pattern ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First Time

When the kingdom of Pagan—representing the “classical state” and “golden age” of Myanmar—declined politically by the early fourteenth century, Upper Myanmar reconstituted itself into three smaller centers of power, each controlled by a minister of the old court, while Lower Myanmar, finally freed from Upper Myanmar’s hegemony, began the process of state formation for the first time. This transitional situation continued for the next half century until two new kingdoms emerged. In Upper Myanmar, it was the First Ava Dynasty and Kingdom in 1364 and in Lower Myanmar, the First Pegu Dynasty and Kingdom in 1349. BoThattained their pinnacles by the fifteenth century, and both had declined before the first half of the sixteenth century was over. That period of nearly 200 years is the only gap left in the mainstream historiography of Myanmar, which this book seeks to fill, by reconstructing the origins, development, and decline of each kingdom separately, and then examining the impact of that history on their relationship. The study shows that whereas in-land agrarian Ava continued the classical tradition of Pagan, maritime commercial Pegu was an entirely new kingdom, the first in Lower Myanmar. The situation generated a symbiotic and dualistic geo-political “upstream-downstream” relationship between the two kingdoms that became, thereafter, a recurring historical pattern until today, currently represented by in-land Naypyidaw and “coastal” Yangon.

A tale of two kingdoms: Ava and Pegu in the fifteenth century

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Aung-Thwin
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Two Kingdoms

Over a half century after the great ‘classical’ kingdom of Pagan that produced the ‘golden age’ of Myanmar had declined in the first decade of the fourteenth century, the kingdoms of Ava and Pegu appeared. Thereafter, for the next century and a half, both dominated the land. While Ava was an ‘upstream’ agrarian kingdom ruling mostly Upper Myanmar, Pegu was a ‘downstream’ commercial polity with hegemony over Lower Myanmar. However, and contrary to convention that the history of fifteenth-century Myanmar was an ethnic struggle between two irreconcilable Burmese and Mon populations, their relationship should be characterised more as a dualism of different geo-political and economic factors instead. Indeed, the history of that ‘upstream–downstream’ relationship between Ava and Pegu established lasting patterns that became, thereafter, part of the fabric of Myanmar's history until today.

“What in the World Have You Done To Me, My Lover?” Sex, Servitude, and Politics among the Pre-Conquest Nahuas as seen in the Cantares Mexicanos

2006 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla Townsend
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
First Time ◽  
Warrior Women

The year 13-Reed [1479]. It was at this time that the people of Ame-cameca and the Chalcas Tlalmanalcas came to sing for the first time in Mexico. At that time they performed the song of the women of Chalco, the Chalca Cihuacuicatl. They came to sing for the lord Axayacatzin.The song and the dance were begun in the patio of the palace while Axayacatl was still inside in the house of his women. But in the beginning the song was poorly performed. A noble of Tlalmanalco was playing the music very clumsily, and making the great drum sound in a lazy offbeat way until finally in desperation he leaned down over it, not knowing what else to do.There, however, close to the place of the drums, was a man called Quecholcohuatzin, noble from Amecameca, a great singer and musician as well. When he saw that all was being lost and that the song and the dance were being ruined, he quickly placed himself next to the drum section. He picked up a drum and through his effort he gave new strength to the dance so that it would not be ruined. Thus Quecholcohuatzin made the people sing and dance. . . . Axayacatl who was still inside the palace, when he heard how marvelously Quecholcohuatzin played the music and made the people dance, was surprised, and his heart filled with excitement. He quickly arose and left the house of his women and joined in the dance. As Axayacatl approached the place of the dance his feet began to follow the music and he was overcome with joy as he heard the song and so he too began to dance and spin round and round.When the dance was over, the lord Axayacatl spoke, saying, “Fools, you have brought this fumbler before me, who played and directed the song. Don’t let him do it again.” The people from Chalco answered him, saying, “It is as you wish, supreme lord.” And because Axayacatl had given this command, all the nobles of Chalco became terrified. They stood there looking at each other, and it is said that truly they were very frightened.. . . But the lord Axayacatl was well pleased [with Quecholcohuatzin] and continued to take delight in the “Song of the Women of Chalco,” the Chalca Cihuacuicatl. So it was that once again he had the Chalcas, all of the nobles, return, and he asked them to give him the song and he also asked all those from Amecameca, because the song was theirs, it belonged to the tlailotlaque, the men who had returned. The song was their property, the “Song of the Warrior Women of Chalco.” Chimalpahin, Seventh Relation Ms. Mexicain 74, Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris Folios 174-176The indigenous historian Chimalpahin seemed quite certain that events on a certain day in 1479 had unfolded as he described them, though he wrote over a century later and saw it all through the refracting lens of the intervening Spanish conquest. Posterity has been the more inclined to believe him since there exists a song amongst those collected in the sixteenth century under the auspices of the Franciscans entitled “The Song of the Women of Chalco” (Chalca cihuacuicatl) in which the singer addresses Axayacatl as the conqueror of Chalco and as her own lord and master. But what can we in the twenty-first century make of these two sources? We might pursue a number of interpretive avenues. In this article I will ask specifically what we actually know about the fifteenth-century performance event, and what, if anything, we can glean from the song concerning the lives of the Nahua women in that nearly untranslatable category whom we know in English as “concubines.”

A Neglected Eucharistic Controversy: The Afterlife of John Wyclif's Eucharistic Thought in Bohemia in the Early Fifteenth Century

2015 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcela K. Perett
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Real Presence ◽  
The Subject ◽  
John Wyclif ◽  
Full Century

The renewed interest in John Wyclif (d. 1384) has brought this late medieval figure back into the spotlight of historians, giving rise to numerous studies evaluating his thought and its implications in the context of late fourteenth century England. However, it is not possible fully to appreciate Wyclif's importance in late medieval European culture without understanding the legacy of his ideas on the continent. According to the accepted narrative, John Wyclif's thought was mediated to the continent through the scholarly contacts between the universities in Oxford and in Prague, and re-emerged in the Latin writings of Jan Hus. This article argues that John Wyclif's thought, especially his critique of the church's doctrine of transubstantiation, found a larger audience among the rural clerics and laity in Bohemia, whom it reached through Peter Payne, who simplified and disseminated the works of the Oxford master. Wyclif's critique of transubstantiation sparked a nationwide debate about the nature of the Eucharist, generating numerous treatises, both in Latin and in the vernacular, on the subject of Christ's presence in the sacrament of the mass. This debate anticipated, a full century earlier, the famous debate between Luther and Zwingli and the Eucharistic debates of the sixteenth century Reformation more generally. The proliferation of vernacular Eucharistic tractates in Bohemia shows that Wyclif's critique of transubstantiation could be answered in a number of different ways that included both real presence (however defined) and figurative theologies—a fact, which, in turn, explains the doctrinal diversity among the Lollards in England.

New Light on Secular Polyphony at the Court of Holland in the Early Fifteenth Century: The Amsterdam Fragments

1992 ◽  
Vol 117 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob C. Wegman
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Regional Government ◽  
Common Language ◽  
Middle Dutch ◽  
First Time

Around 1400, the northern Netherlands were little more than a loose collection of quarrelling principalities, unified to some degree by their common language, Middle Dutch. Formally this unruly area was part of the Holy Roman Empire, but the German emperor's political weakness laid it wide open to the territorial ambitions of the Burgundian dukes. Under their rule, the Netherlands saw centralized regional government for the first time in their history. But it was not until the sixteenth century, when their Spanish Habsburg successors were increasingly regarded as foreign oppressors, that anything like a unified sovereign Dutch state came within sight.

The Layman's Complaint and the Friar's Answer

1945 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Lee Utley
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
G 28

The two poems which I shall here transcribe and discuss have been often noticed but never printed. They appear as additions in a fifteenth century hand to a version of the late fourteenth century treatise Poor Caitiff, preserved in MS. St. John's College, Cambridge, G. 28 (195), itself of the fifteenth century. Besides our two poems, which appear on the front fly leaves, the margins contain numerous scribbles in one or more sixteenth century hands. The manuscript possesses marks of ownership by one John Graunge, who also owned another fifteenth century collection containing such Latin pieces as Expositio Symboli, Peter of Blois's De Amicitia Christiana, Speculum St. Eadmundi, and Decretum Abbreviatum, now preserved in the same library. The donor of our manuscript was Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who gave it to the College in 1635.

De broer van de koning met de dood bedreigd: een 'exemplum iustitiae' in de vijftiende- en zestiende-eeuwse Nederlandse kunst

1994 ◽  
Vol 108 (4) ◽  
pp. 157-170
Author(s):  
Hugo Van Der Velden
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Stained Glass ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
History Of ◽  
Town Halls ◽  
Written Sources

AbstractA South Netherlandish panel in the collection of the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, painted around 1475-85, can be identified as one of the few surviving fifteenth-century justice pictures. Bruyn succeeded in tracing the painting's enigmatic iconography to a mediaeval 'exemplum', The King's Brother Threatened with Death, in which elements from The Sword of Damocles and from the story of the trumpet of death in the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat are combined into a single history. In the Gesta Romanorum, under the heading 'De timore extremi iudicii', the tale is told of a wise and righteous king who threatens to have his frivolous brother executed as a means of demonstrating his own state of mind: the thought of the Last Judgement makes it impossible for him to abandon himself to the pleasures of earthly life. In written sources this 'exemplum' is often associated with 'righteousness', becoming more closely interwoven with the practice of secular justice as time passed. In the fourteenth century, for example, it featured in a moralizing discourse on good and righteous government (the Ludus Scaccorum) and in the fifteenth century as a model of god-fearing conduct - even in a code of law (the Wetboek van Den Briel). This development corresponds closely with the literary history of other judgement scenes, such as the Judgement of Cambyses. The cited literary sources stress that judges should be filled with 'Timor Dei' as exemplified by the story of the king and his brother. The tenor of the 'exemplum' is a reminder that the secular judge will eventually have to answer for his actions to the Supreme Judge, an idea which was conveyed in town halls by representations of the Last Jugement. In view of the written tradition it is quite likely that the panel in Sarasota and two other representations of The King's Brother Threatment with Death - a drawing attributed to Lucas van Leyden and a stained-glass window - served as (designs for) a judgement picture. This interpretation is substantiated by sixteenth-century pictorial sources. In both a South German drawing and a print by Theodoor de Bry the story of the king's brother is combined with a number of familiar 'exempla iustitiae'.

scholarly journals Treasures of the Elite of the Bulgharian Ulus of the Gol­den Horde

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 520-546
Author(s):  
Konstantin A. Rudenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Archaeological Materials ◽  
The Republic ◽  
First Time ◽  
Gold Coins ◽  
The Village ◽  
The City ◽  
Made In

Research objectives: To analyze the materials of the most famous hoards of the Golden Horde era found on the territory of the Bulgharian ulus on the basis of a comprehensive analysis. To identify the coincidence of jewelry that they contained. To determine the similarities and differences with other finds from this territory, as well as to identify the possible place of their manufacture and their connection with archaeological sites. Research materials: Preserved jewelry from the Karasham and Juketau hoards. The former was found in 1950 near the village of Karasham in the Zelenodolsk district of the Republic of Tatarstan. The latter was found in 1924 on the outskirts of the city of Chistopol in the Chistopol district of Tatarstan, next to the medieval settlement – the remnants of the Bulgharian city of Juketau which existed from the tenth to early fifteenth centuries. In addition to jewelry, both hoards contained silver and gold coins which made it possible to determine the time when these hoards were buried. The hoard near the village of Karasham was deposited at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The Juketau hoard was deposited in the 1350–70s. Both hoards are not fully preserved. The author carefully studied jewelry from the hoards that are now stored in the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan, as well as in the State Hermitage. Items from other hoards of this time found in the territory of Tatarstan, as well as published materials from private collections, are also involved in the study. Results and novelty of the research: The author investigated, for the first time ever, the surviving part of the Karasham hoard, including jewelry that was not considered in the studies of other scholars. A comparative analysis of the jewelry was carried out. To find out the distribution of such jewelry, a search was made for analogies and similar jewelry that was found in other hoards as well as among the archaeological materials from settlements of the Golden Horde era. It was found that the most significant part of the Karasham hoard’s jewelry was made in the jewelry workshops of the city of Bolghar, and partly by the jewelers from other craft centers in the Golden Horde. It should be noted that jewelry was made in both gold and silver in Bolghar. The most popular products were bracelets with images of the lion’s muzzle on the ends of objects, as well as bracelets with stylized images made using niello. Such bracelets were found both in the hoard from Karasham and from Juketau. The existence of jewelry workshops in Bolghar is also confirmed by archaeological excavations. In the second half of twentieth and at the beginning of the twenty-first centuries, archaeologists found several jewelry workshops in the central part of the city dated to the fourteenth century. Crucibles, jewelry tools, and more than hundred foundry molds were discovered here. The author assumes that a famous jeweler from Bolghar named Shagidulla worked here at the beginning of fourteenth century. It was also found that the hoard from Karasham was most likely collected by several generations of the same family. In contrast, the hoard from Juketau was a personal treasure.

scholarly journals Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD: Part I

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 42-65
Author(s):  
Mike Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Century Science

Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD is a three-part series, which provides an account of all known individual Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics in the late medieval era and details their temporalities, occupations, familial associations, and broader networks. The ultimate goal of the series is the full contextualisation of all available historical records relating to Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics alongside the genealogical record that can be extracted by twenty-first century science – that being the science of Y-DNA. The Papal Registers, in particular, record numerous occurrences of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics, predominantly in the dioceses of Cill Dalua (Killaloe) and Osraí (Ossory), from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. Yet, no small intrigue surrounds their emergence. Part I of Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD examines the context surrounding the earliest appointments of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics, which is in neither Cill Dalua nor Osraí but the diocese of Luimneach (Limerick). Once that context is understood, a pattern of associations emerges. A ‘coincidental’ twenty-first century surname match from the Fitzpatrick Y-DNA project leads to a review of the relationship between the FitzMaurice of Ciarraí (Kerry) clerics and Jordan Purcell, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne (1429-1472). The ‘coincidence’ then leads to an examination of a close Y-DNA match between men of the surnames Purcell and Hennessey. That match, coupled with the understanding that Nicholas Ó hAonghusa (O’Hennessey), elected Bishop of Lismore and Waterford (1480-1483) but with opposition, is considered a member of Purcell’s household, transforms the ‘coincidence’ into a curiosity. Part I morphs into a conversation, likely uncomfortable for some, relating to clerical concubinage, illegitimacy, and the ‘lubricity’ of the prioress and her nuns at the Augustinian nunnery of St Catherine's O’Conyll. The nunnery was located at Mainistir na gCailleach Dubh (Monasternagalliaghduff), which lay just a stone’s throw from where Bishop Jordan Purcell and Matthew Mac Giolla Phádraig, the first Mac Giolla Phádraig cleric recorded in the Papal Registers, emerged. Part I makes no judgments and draws no firm conclusions but prepares the reader for Part II by ending with some questions. Do the Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics of Osraí, who rose to prominence in the late-fifteenth century, have their origins in Deasmhumhain (Desmond)? Could the paternal lineages of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics be, at least from the mid-fourteenth century, with the house of the Geraldine FitzMaurice clerics of Ciarraí? And, could some of the modern-day descendants of the Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics be those Costigans, FitzGeralds, and Fitzpatricks who are found under haplotype R-A1488?

scholarly journals The Finds of Golden Horde Coins in India and China

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-554
Author(s):  
Aleksandr V. Pachkalov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Peak Activity ◽  
Single Specimen ◽  
Lower Volga Region ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Lower Volga ◽  
Eastern Turkestan ◽  
First Time ◽  
India And China

Research objectives: The study of all known Golden Horde coin finds in India and China. Research materials: All the known coin finds of the Golden Horde in India and China in the context of published coin finds (the research of Ch.J. Rodgers, M.A. Stein, and others). Results and novelty of the research: The author, for the first time ever, summarized the information about Golden Horde coin finds from these two countries. All Golden Horde coins from China and a portion of Golden Horde coins from India (Indian museum) were minted in Khwarazm. There is numismatic catalogue of Islamic coins from the Calcutta Museum where it is possible to find information about Golden Horde coins from the collection of the museum. Any information about finds of these coins is absent in this publication. However, it is most probable that these coins were found in India because the numismatic collections of such local museums were created practically only from local finds. The Golden Horde coins from the Calcutta Museum collection are mainly silver dirhams of the fourteenth century from Khwarazm, but there are also several coins from Lower Volga region. Probably, the Golden Horde coins went to India and China via Khwarazm. The materials published in the article gives archaeological evidence about close trade routes between Khwarazm on one end and India and Eastern Turkestan on the other end. The peak activity on these trade routes is dated to the second half of fourteenth century (mainly the coins of Uzbek and Janibek Khan of the Golden Horde). At the end of fourteenth century, the most important cities of the Golden Horde were in decline or ceased to exist as a result of Timur’s campaigns against it. The main trade routes between East and West shifted towards the south and stopped passing through the territory of the Ulus of Jochi. Not a single specimen of the finds is dated to the fifteenth century.

Les Rois de Gao-Sané et les Almoravides

1991 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dierk Lange
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Impact

In recent years the impact of the Almoravid movement on the sahelian societies has been the object of some debate. Ancient Ghana seemed to be the most rewarding area of investigation, since al-Zuhrī (1154) and Ibn Khaldūn (end of the fourteenth century) suggested its ‘conquest’ by Almoravid forces. The evidence provided by these narrative sources has been disputed, but it could not be discarded.A new field of investigation was opened by the discovery in 1939 of a number of royal tombstones in Gao-Sané close to the old capital of the Gawgaw empire. The dates of the epitaphs extend from the early twelfth to the late thirteenth century. However, none of the Arabic names given to the rulers of Gao-Sané seemed to correspond to any of the names provided in the chronicles of Timbuktu, the T. al-Sūdān and the T. al-Fattāsh. A closer look at the epitaphs shows that the third ruler of Gao-Sané, called ‘Umar b. al-Khaṭṭāb and also Yāmā b. K.mā and who died in 1120, is in fact identical with Yama Kitsi mentioned in the chronicles. The available evidence suggests that by 1080 the local Berbers of Gao-Sané were able to seize power from the earlier Qanda/Kanta dynasty of Old Gao. This change of dynasty was certainly not the result of a military conquest, although it is likely that Almoravid propagandists contributed to arouse the religious fervour of the local Muslims in both Gao-Sané with its community of traders and Old Gao with its Islamic court members and dynastic factions. The clear message of the Gao epitaphs is that the new rulers of Gao-Sané, the Zāghē, tried to establish good relations with members of the former ruling clan resorting to a policy of intermarriage. By the middle of the thirteenth century the Zāghē rulers were so much integrated into the local Mandé society that they adopted the title Z.wā (Zā) which was originally the title of the Kanta rulers. Thus it would appear that in spite of the far-reaching dynastic effects resulting from the religious and political upheaval of the Almoravid period, there was no major incursion of Berber people into the kingdom of Gawgaw. Indeed, there are reasons to believe that the basic institutions of the original‘Mande’ society were destroyed only in the course of the fifteenth century, when Songhay warrior groups from the east under the leadership of the Sonni radically changed the ethnic set-up of the Middle Niger. In spite of these changes the Zarma, whose aristocracy descend from the Zā, preserve the tradition of their origin from Mali until the present day.

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