1335
Abu Said dies; Ilkhanate disintegrates
The last great Ilkhan of Persia died without an heir at thirty. The Mongol state Hulagu had founded in 1256 fragmented into a dozen successor warlordships from Anatolia to Khorasan, each claiming scraps of the old empire's legitimacy. Persian commerce and learning suffered, but Persian culture would soon find new patrons in Timur's Samarkand.
Chimú Empire expands along the Peruvian coast
From their adobe capital of Chan Chan, the Chimú lords extended their empire northward along the Pacific littoral, conquering the Lambayeque and Jequetepeque valleys. Their hydraulic engineers dug irrigation canals across deserts to sustain agriculture in one of the earth's driest landscapes, and their goldsmiths produced work of breathtaking delicacy. Only the Inca would surpass them.
Congress of Visegrád sketches a Central Europe
Three kings - John of Bohemia, Casimir of Poland, and Charles Robert of Hungary - met in a Hungarian castle on the Danube and agreed to bypass Vienna's staple route, redirecting trade through Brno and Cracow. The deal launched a regional anti-Habsburg axis that lasted half a century and demonstrated that Central European states could cooperate against larger powers.
Inca expansion begins under Roca Inca
The early Sapa Inca extended Cusco's authority over neighboring valleys in the Andean highlands through a combination of alliance, intermarriage, and selective warfare. The empire that would eventually stretch from Ecuador to Chile was still a regional power, but its institutional innovations - mit'a labor, quipu accounting - were already taking shape.
Muzaffar Shah founds the Muzaffarid dynasty in Iran
As the Ilkhanate fractured after Abu Said's death, Mubariz al-Din Muhammad seized Isfahan and Fars, establishing a Persian dynasty that would patronize poets - most famously Hafiz of Shiraz, the supreme lyricist of the Persian language - and survive until Timur's armies swallowed it. The fragmentation of Iran into warring successor states had begun.