1103
Cistercian order begins rapid expansion
With Stephen Harding as abbot of Citeaux and a new constitutional Charter of Charity under discussion, the white monks began founding daughter houses at an accelerating pace. Within forty years the order would have three hundred monasteries across Latin Europe. Their insistence on manual labor and remote, undeveloped sites transformed swathes of wilderness into productive farmland, from the Yorkshire dales to the forests of Brandenburg.
Hoysala dynasty rises in the Deccan
Vishnuvardhana, the ambitious Hoysala prince, began asserting independence from the declining Western Chalukyas in the lush hill country of present-day Karnataka. His battlefield victories and his personal conversion from Jainism to Vaishnavism under the philosopher Ramanuja's influence would produce a kingdom celebrated for some of the most intricately carved stone temples anywhere in the Indian subcontinent.
Kanem Empire expands around Lake Chad
Under the Saifawa dynasty, the Kanem state east of Lake Chad extended its authority across the trans-Saharan trade routes connecting the Sahel to the markets of Tripoli and Fezzan. Its kings had recently embraced Islam, and the faith now traveled south with their caravans of salt, slaves, and ivory through grassland kingdoms that had never heard a muezzin's call.
Magnus Barefoot killed in Ulster
The Norwegian king who had ridden so many longships he earned his nickname from wearing Gaelic kilts was ambushed on an Irish shoreline while gathering provisions. His death ended a final flare of Viking imperial ambition in the Irish Sea. His three teenage sons divided Norway among themselves, inaugurating a generation of fractious co-rule that would keep Scandinavian fleets out of the British Isles for good.