A fire devastates much of Baghdad in…
973 CE
A fire devastates much of Baghdad in 973, killing some seventeen thousand people, many of them Jews.
This disaster contributes to the decline in Baghdad's Jewish population and its importance in the Jewish world.
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Emperor Otto, known as Otto the Great, has consolidated the German Reich by his suppression of rebellious vassals and his decisive victory over the Magyars, and provided his regime with a firm base by bringing the church tightly under his control.
His use of the church as a stabilizing influence has created a secure empire and stimulated a cultural renaissance.
In his appointment of abbots and bishops, he has bestowed the archbishoprics of Cologne and Mainz to his brothers Bruno and William respectively, rewarded churchmen lavishly, and exacted administrative and military service, thereby keeping the church out of the hands of the nobility.
Because Otto has personally appointed the bishops and abbots, these reforms strengthened his central authority, and the upper ranks of the German church function in some respect as an arm of the imperial bureaucracy.
Conflict over these powerful bishoprics between Otto's successors and the growing power of the Papacy during the Gregorian Reforms would eventually lead in the eleventh century to the Investiture Conflict and the undoing of central authority in Germany.
Having returned to Germany, the Emperor holds a great assembly of his court at Quedlinburg on March 23, 973.
After his death at Memleben on May 7, 973 he is buried next to his first wife Edith of Wessex in the Cathedral of Magdeburg, whose archbishopric he had established in 968.
His eighteen-year-old son by Adelaide of Italy, Otto the Red, succeeds him without challenge to become Roman Emperor Otto II.
Jawhar had ruled Egypt until 972 as viceroy, when he had fallen from favor.
Just to the north of the city of al-Fustat, the old administrative center of Muslim Egypt, the Fatimids have built the new city of Cairo, and in it a new cathedral mosque and seminary, called al-Azhar, after Fatimah az-Zahra' (the Resplendent), the ancestress of the dynasty.
Cairo has been built as the royal enclosure for the Fatimid caliphs, while the actual economic and administrative capital remains in nearby Fustat. (After Fustat’s destruction in 1168/1169 to prevent its capture by the Crusaders, the administrative capital of Egypt will move to Cairo, where it has remained ever since. Now the sixteenth most populous metropolitan area in the world, it is also the most populous metropolitan area in Africa.)
Al-Mu'izz enters Cairo in 972 or 973, transferring the center of Fatimid power to Egypt.
A ship carrying twenty Muslim adventurers from Andalusia had anchored in the Gulf of St. Tropez in Provence in about 889.
Muslims have raided surrounding their base, an ancient village named Fraxinetum, reaching as far as Piedmont in Northern Italy and effectively controlling the Alpine passes between France and Italy.
They had established an outpost at modern St. Moritz in southern Switzerland.
The Saracens have been making inroads into Provence for several decades, building several fortresses, the greatest of which is at Fraxinetum, the castle of La Garde-Freinet.
They raid and pillage from these bases, capturing goods and people to be sold in distant Moslem ports.
The Provençals had opposed them strongly at first but soon settled down to a more passive resistance.
John of Gorze, a Lorraine-born monk, diplomat, administrator, and monastic reformer had been sent in 956 as an ambassador for Emperor Otto to the Caliph Abd-ar-Rahman III of Córdoba for two years, the purpose of this mission being to stop the attacks made from Fraxinet.
The Saracens, however, capture Maïeul, Abbot of Cluny, early in 973 and demand a ransom.
The abbot is much venerated by his monks and his ransom is quickly obtained.
The monks respond, however, once their abbot is released, by stirring up a fury in Provence against the Saracen menace.
The peasantry and the nobles, united in their antipathy towards the Saracens, together implore their ruler, Count William, to act against them.
William, equally disturbed by the treatment of the abbot, raises the feudal host and takes the offensive, his army consisting not only of men from Provence, but also the lower Dauphiné and Nice, lent by the counts of the High Alps and the viscounts of Marseille and Fos.
The Saracens, going out to meet the Provençals in the Alps, are defeated in a series of five battles at Embrun, Gap, Riez, Ampus, and Cabasse.
Thoroughly beaten back, the Saracens assemble in an open plain not far from Fraxinet called Tourtour.
The sixth and final battle of the war is staged here.
William defeats the Saracens in the field and chases them back to Fraxinet, where they hole up while the Provençals rest.
On the death of Pope John XIII in September 972, the majority of the electors who adhered to the imperial faction had chosen Benedict to be his successor.
He is not consecrated until January 973, due to the need to gain the approval of the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I.
Installed as pope under the protection of Otto I, Benedict is seen as a puppet of the emperor by the local Roman aristocracy, who resent the emperor’s dominance in Roman civil and ecclesiastical affairs.
When Gisulf is deposed and removed from office in 973 by Pandulf's cousin, Landulf of Conza, in alliance with Marinus II of Naples and Manso of Amalfi, Pandulf restores Gisulf as his vassal.
Al-Mu'izz, after transferring the Fatimid capital to Egypt, leaves behind in North Africa as surrogate his lieutenant general Yusuf Buluggin I ibn Ziri, naming him governor of al-Qayraw'n and any other territory his Sanhajah Berber tribesmen might reclaim from their enemies, the Zenata tribesmen.
(The original North African dominion becomes a province called al-Maghrib, or “the West”.)
The Fatimids have taken the treasury and fleet with them to Egypt, so the first priority of the Zirid government is to consolidate their rule.
However, the loss of the fleet means loss of control over the Kalbids in Sicily.
Lothian, lying between the southern shore of the Firth of Forth and the Lammermuir Hills, had in the seventh century become the northern part of the Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria.
Sometime in the reign of king Idulb (954-62), the Scots had captured the fortress called oppidum Eden, i.e., almost certainly Edinburgh.
It was the first Scottish foothold in Lothian.
Completing their conquest of Scotland, the Scots annex Lothian in 973.
Notable in Scotland for being the only part of the nation to have been mainly Anglo-Saxon throughout the history of the Kingdom of Scotland, Lothian was described by Adam of Dryburgh as "The land of the English in the Kingdom of the Scots".
Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, officially crowns Edgar, the younger son of King Edmund, king of the English at Bath in 973, although he has held the throne since 959.
The imperial ceremony has been planned not as the initiation, but as the culmination of Edgar’s reign (a move that must have taken a great deal of preliminary diplomacy), stressing the close bonds between church and king, …
…Edgar’s symbolic coronation is an important step; other kings of Britain come and give their allegiance to Edgar shortly afterwards at Chester.
Six kings in Britain, including the kings of Scotland and of Strathclyde, pledge their faith that they will be the king's liege-men on sea and land.
The Later Zhou Dynasty had been the last of the Five Dynasties that had controlled northern China after the fall of the Tang Dynasty in 907.
Zhao Kuangyin, later known as Emperor Taizu, had usurped the throne with the support of military commanders, initiating the Song Dynasty.
Upon taking the throne in 960, his first goal had been the reunification of China after half a century of political division.
This included the conquests of Nanping, Wu-Yue, Southern Han, Later Shu, and Southern Tang in the south as well as the Northern Han and the Sixteen Prefectures in the north.
During the first couple decades of rule, relations between the Song and the Liao dynasty, a Khitan empire in northern China that rules over the regions of Manchuria, Mongolia, and parts of northern China proper, have been relatively peaceful, the two outstanding issues of the Northern Han—the remnant of the Later Han Dynasty that had been toppled in 950—and Sixteen Prefectures—a disputed region in northern China stretching from present-day Beijing westward to Datong—notwithstanding.
The two begin exchanging embassies on New Years Day, 974.
However, this peace is an illusion as the Song state is more concerned with consolidating the south.
With capable military officers, the Song military has become the dominant force in China.
Techniques of warfare such as defending supply lines across floating pontoon bridges have led to success in battle; such is the case in the Song assault against the Southern Tang state while crossing the Yangtze River in 974.