1411
Peace of Thorn
The defeated Teutonic Order paid a crushing indemnity to Poland-Lithuania and retreated behind its remaining castles. Though the Knights would linger another century, their independence was finished. Prussia began its slow drift toward becoming something Polish, then German, then Polish again, a borderland cursed by its own strategic usefulness. The treaty began Poland-Lithuania's emergence as northeastern Europe's dominant power, a position held until the seventeenth century.
Ahmad Shah I Founds Ahmedabad
The Sultan of Gujarat established a magnificent new capital on the banks of the Sabarmati River in western India, naming it after himself. Ahmedabad rapidly became one of the subcontinent's largest and most cosmopolitan cities, its mosques blending Hindu carved lattice screens and Islamic geometric patterns into a hybrid architectural style found nowhere else. Its textile markets would draw traders from Aden to Southeast Asia for centuries to come.
Brunei Sultanate Established
Islam arrived on the northwest coast of Borneo through Chinese Muslim traders and Malay seafarers, and the first Sultan of Brunei established a maritime kingdom controlling trade in camphor, pepper, and precious forest products gathered from the island's interior. The sultanate's strategic position on the South China Sea made it a waystation between the spice islands of the Moluccas and the commercial ports of the Asian mainland.
Jalayirid Sultanate Collapses
The post-Ilkhanid dynasty ruling Mesopotamia and western Persia dissolved into territorial fragments. The Qara Qoyunlu Turkmen moved into the vacuum. The political geography of Iraq and western Iran entered a century of Turkmen confederation rule until the Safavids would reassemble it from Azerbaijan outward. The instability left Baghdad and Tabriz vulnerable to Turkmen warfare that persisted until the Safavid consolidation a century later.