1117
Jin dynasty captures the Liao Supreme Capital
Jurchen cavalry under Emperor Taizu stormed the Liao Supreme Capital at Shangjing, torching the palaces of the Khitan emperors who had dominated northern China and Mongolia for over two centuries. The Liao dynasty fractured beyond repair; its last emperor fled west into the steppe while the Jurchen warriors turned their restless ambitions southward toward the wealthy Song heartland beyond the Yellow River.
Verona earthquake
A violent shock along the Po Valley collapsed parts of Verona's Roman amphitheater, cracked the apse of Modena Cathedral still rising under Lanfranco's direction, and killed thousands across Lombardy. It was one of the worst Italian quakes of the medieval millennium. The destruction forced Veronese builders to reinforce the amphitheater's surviving arches with new masonry, blending Roman engineering with Romanesque techniques in a structure that still stands.
Al-Hariri completes the Maqamat
The Basran scholar al-Hariri finished his fifty picaresque assemblies - virtuoso rhymed-prose tales following a silver-tongued vagabond who outwits audiences across the breadth of the Islamic world. The Maqamat became the most frequently copied and lavishly illustrated literary manuscript in all of medieval Arabic literature, a dazzling display of linguistic acrobatics that translators have struggled to render in any other language ever since.
Cistercian reform of Fontevraud
Robert of Arbrissel's controversial double monastery of Fontevraud in the Loire valley, which housed both monks and nuns under an abbess's rule, received further papal approval. It would become the favored burial place of the Plantagenet kings of England. Eleanor of Aquitaine herself would retire there in old age and be buried beside her husband Henry II and her son Richard, their tombs topped with painted stone effigies.