1195
Great Zimbabwe builds its first stone walls
On the granite plateau south of the Zambezi, a Shona polity controlling gold trade to the East African coast began raising massive drystone walls at what would be called Great Zimbabwe. The dhaka enclosures, built without mortar, would grow to hold perhaps eighteen thousand people. The precision of the stonework, with its signature chevron patterns and rounded towers, represents an architectural achievement unique in sub-Saharan African history.
Battle of Alarcos
The Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur destroyed Alfonso VIII of Castile's army on the plain south of Toledo in a disaster that pushed the Reconquista backward by decades. Christian chroniclers compared it to Hattin. Toledo itself was briefly imperiled before the caliph turned south to besiege lesser castles. The defeat galvanized the Iberian Christian kingdoms into the alliance that would produce the decisive victory at Las Navas de Tolosa seventeen years later.
Isaac II Angelos deposed and blinded
The Byzantine emperor was seized by his elder brother Alexios, who had his eyes put out and took the throne as Alexios III. Years later, the blinded Isaac's son would flee west and invite a crusader army to reinstate his father. The consequences would be catastrophic for Byzantium. The Fourth Crusade, diverted to Constantinople on the pretext of restoring the rightful emperor, would instead sack the city and fragment the empire.
Henry VI occupies Sicilian treasury
After the death of the last Hauteville king of Sicily, the Hohenstaufen emperor finally secured the island kingdom by military force, loaded onto 150 mules the contents of the Palermo treasury, and carted it north to Germany. It paid for his German schemes and funded his crusade plans. The seizure of the Norman treasure made Henry VI the wealthiest ruler in Christendom and financed his dream of a hereditary universal monarchy.