1112
Bernard joins Citeaux
A Burgundian noble of twenty-two rode up to the struggling reformed monastery of Citeaux with thirty kinsmen in tow and asked to be admitted. Within three years the abbot sent him to found a daughter house at Clairvaux, and the Cistercian order began its explosive growth. Bernard's charisma was so intense that mothers reportedly hid their sons when he preached, for fear they would abandon everything and follow him into the cloister.
Kara-Khitai founded by Yelü Dashi
A Khitan prince fleeing the collapse of the Liao dynasty at the hands of the Jurchen led his followers west across the Central Asian steppe and established the Kara-Khitai - the Western Liao - between the Altai Mountains and Samarkand. This Buddhist-ruled empire governing Muslim subjects with surprising tolerance astonished Arab geographers, who called it a land where all faiths could worship freely.
Great Zimbabwe walls begin to rise
On the granite plateau between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers, Shona-speaking masons started dry-stacking the curved stone walls that would eventually grow into the largest stone complex in sub-Saharan Africa. Built without mortar, blueprint, or written plan, the great enclosures announced a cattle-rich kingdom linked by gold to the Swahili coast traders who carried its wealth across the Indian Ocean.
Ramanuja teaches Vishishtadvaita
The South Indian Vaishnava philosopher Ramanuja, working from the Srirangam temple on the Kaveri, refined his doctrine of qualified non-dualism as a counterweight to Shankara's stricter monism. His devotional theology would become one of the principal strands of Hindu philosophy. Ramanuja's insistence that the divine was accessible through love rather than knowledge alone opened the path for the great bhakti devotional movements that would sweep across India in later centuries.