1402
Battle of Ankara
Timur's horse archers met Sultan Bayezid I on the Anatolian plateau and obliterated Ottoman power in an afternoon. Bayezid was captured alive and, legend says, carried in an iron cage until his death months later. The Ottoman state fractured into an eleven-year civil war that nearly erased it. The aftershocks rippled across three continents, granting Byzantium an unexpected reprieve and reshuffling power across the Balkans.
Yongle Emperor Seizes Nanjing
Zhu Di, Prince of Yan, broke through the southern capital's walls and his nephew the Jianwen Emperor vanished in a palace fire that may or may not have been real. The usurper ascended as Yongle, burned the loyalist scholars' families, and began planning a new capital far to the north.
Ottoman Interregnum Begins
With Bayezid caged and the sultanate in ruins, his four sons turned on one another across a shattered Anatolia. For eleven years brother hunted brother through pine forests and Balkan passes while Byzantium, briefly, exhaled. Mehmed I would eventually win by outliving his rivals. The interregnum proved the Ottoman state could survive catastrophic defeat, rooted in institutional depth and provincial loyalty.
Korean Kangnido World Map Drawn
Joseon cartographers assembled Chinese, Arab, and Korean geographical information into a single map depicting Eurasia from Japan to the Iberian Peninsula and showing Africa as an island. It was arguably the most geographically informed map on earth. No European cartographer of 1402 had comparable knowledge of the world beyond the Mediterranean.