1175
Muhammad of Ghor invades northern India
The Afghan sultan, brother of the ruler of Ghor, crossed the Indus with a small force of mailed horsemen and Turkic slave-soldiers and began probing the rajput kingdoms of the upper Ganges. Within two decades he would overturn the political order of northern India. His initial raids tested the defenses of Multan and Gujarat, revealing a fractured Hindu political landscape that offered no coordinated resistance to a determined invader.
Honen founds Pure Land Buddhism in Japan
A Tendai monk on Mount Hiei, after a crisis of confidence in his ability to achieve enlightenment, concluded that the only hope for ordinary people in a degenerate age was to chant the name of Amida Buddha. His Pure Land school would become the single most popular form of Japanese Buddhism.
Yoruba Ife at cultural peak
In the forest city of Ile-Ife, the Yoruba religious and artistic capital, craftsmen produced terracotta and bronze heads of royal figures whose naturalism would startle European collectors seven centuries later. The city's urbanism and metallurgy peaked in this half-century. The Ife bronzes, cast using the lost-wax technique with an alloy of copper and zinc, represent a sculptural tradition entirely independent of European or Asian influence.
Ancestral Pueblo move to Mesa Verde cliffs
Across the Four Corners region of the American Southwest, Puebloan communities began abandoning open-plan mesa-top settlements and reoccupying defensible alcoves in the cliffs. The shift reflected both climate stress and intensified raiding. The cliff palaces of Mesa Verde emerged in this century. Some of the largest alcoves sheltered entire communities, with multi-story masonry rooms, circular kivas, and storage granaries tucked beneath overhanging sandstone ledges.
Treaty of Windsor
Henry II and the Irish high-king Rory O'Connor signed a treaty recognizing Rory as overlord of the still-independent Irish kingdoms in exchange for tribute to the English crown. It gave Henry a legal fig leaf and Rory a reprieve; neither side honored it for long. The treaty's failure to establish a workable framework for Anglo-Irish relations set the pattern for centuries of contested sovereignty on the island.