1220
Mongols sack Samarkand
Samarkand's turquoise-domed skyline fell to Genghis Khan after a brief siege. Craftsmen were spared and deported east; the clerical class was massacred; the rest of the population was driven before the army as human shields. The Silk Road's jewel was half emptied. The city's famed paper mills, which had introduced Chinese papermaking to the Islamic world, fell silent amid the devastation.
Frederick II crowned Holy Roman Emperor
Honorius III placed the imperial crown on the polyglot Sicilian king who kept a court of Arab astronomers and Lombard falconers. Contemporaries called him stupor mundi, wonder of the world. His quarrels with the papacy would define the next three decades. Frederick spoke six languages and wrote a treatise on falconry so precise that modern ornithologists still consult it for its observations.
Aztec migration enters the Valley of Mexico
Nahua-speaking wanderers called the Mexica reached the freshwater lakes of the central Mexican plateau after generations of migration from the north. They were poor, quarrelsome, and unwelcome. A century and a half later their descendants would build Tenochtitlan. According to their own chronicles, the war god Huitzilopochtli guided them southward with the promise of an eagle perched on a cactus devouring a serpent.
Hoysala Belur temples finished
In the soft soapstone of southern Karnataka, craftsmen of the Hoysala dynasty completed the densely carved Chennakesava temple at Belur. Every inch of wall surface was covered with dancers, musicians, and mythological scenes in impossible detail, a miniaturist's cathedral in stone. The star-shaped platform on which the temple sits became the signature of Hoysala architecture, repeated at Halebidu and a dozen smaller shrines.
Snorri Sturluson travels to Norway
The Icelandic chieftain and author visited the court of young Haakon IV and spent years there, drinking mead and memorizing skaldic verse. He would return home to compose the Prose Edda, the single most important source for Norse mythology and poetic craft. Without Snorri's careful transcription of oral tradition, most of what we know about Odin, Thor, and Ragnarok would be lost.