1048
Yellow River catastrophically shifts course again
Fourteen years after the first breach, the Yellow River burst its levees once more and carved an entirely new path to the sea, flooding vast tracts of the north China plain and displacing over a million people. The disaster devastated Song finances and provocation decades of political debate over whether to let the river run free or force it back into its old channel.
Omar Khayyam born at Nishapur
A tentmaker's son was born in the Khorasan city who would grow up to write quatrains about wine and transience, calculate the length of the solar year with startling accuracy, and solve cubic equations geometrically. His Rubaiyat would not reach the West for eight centuries, via Edward FitzGerald. FitzGerald's loose, lyrical translation became one of the most quoted poems in the English language.
Zirids of Ifriqiya break with Fatimids
The Berber ruler al-Mu'izz ibn Badis formally shifted his allegiance from the Shia Fatimids of Cairo back to the Sunni Abbasid caliph of Baghdad, a provocation that brought severe retaliation from Cairo in the form of releasing the Banu Hilal Arab tribes to invade North Africa. The ensuing devastation transformed the Maghreb's demographics permanently, replacing Berber farmers with Arab pastoralists across vast stretches of countryside.
Anawrahta receives Theravada scriptures from Mon kingdom
The Pagan king, newly converted to Theravada Buddhism, demanded a complete set of the Tipitaka from the Mon king Manuha of Thaton. When Manuha refused, Anawrahta began preparations for a military campaign to seize both the scriptures and the Mon kingdom's wealth. The resulting conquest would transform Pagan into the greatest Buddhist center in mainland Southeast Asia.