The emperor returns to Hungary in the…

Leadership in Burma, after a period of domination by the Tibetan Pyu tribes, has passed to the Bamar, or Burmese, whose king Anawratha unites the region in 1044.

Anawratha establishes his capital at Pagan and accepts Theravada Buddhism.

The Burmese chronicles claim the Burmans founded the fortified city of Pagan (Bagan) in 849 but the oldest radiocarbon dated evidence at Pagan (old walls) points to 980 CE while the main walls point to circa 1020 CE, just twenty-four years earlier than the beginning of the reign of Anawrahta, the founder of Pagan Empire.

In any case, the Burmans had overtaken the leadership of the Pyu realm by the late tenth century, and go on to found the Pagan Empire in the middle of the eleventh century, unifying the Irrawaddy valley and its periphery for the first time.

Nonetheless, the Pyu have left an indelible mark on Pagan whose Burman rulers will incorporate the histories and legends of the Pyu as their own.

The Burman kings of Pagan will claim descent from the kings of Sri Ksetra and Tagaung as far back as 850 BCE—a claim dismissed by most modern scholars.

Pyu settlements will emain in Upper Burma for the next three centuries but the Pyu will be gradually absorbed and assimilated into the expanding Pagan Empire.

The Pyu language will exist until the late twelfth century but by the thirteenth century, the Pyu will have assumed the Burman ethnicity and disappear into history.

In the beginning of his reign, Anawrahta's principality is a small area—barely two hundred miles north to south and about eighty miles from east to west, comprising roughly the present districts of Mandalay, Meiktila, Myingyan, Kyaukse, Yamethin, Magwe, Sagaing and Katha east of the Irrawaddy, and the riverine portions of Minbu and Pakkoku.

To the north lies the Bai Kingdom of Dali, to the east are the still largely uninhibited Shan Hills, to the south and the west the Pyus, and farther south still, the Mons.

Intermittent warfare between Champa and Dai Viet continues until 1044, when Viet ruler Ly Thai Tong leads a naval attack on the Chams during a period of civil strife.

A catastrophic battle results in the death of the Cham King Sa Dau and the sack of Vijaya by the Dai Viet.

The invaders capture elephants and musicians and even the Cham queen Mi E, who preserves her honor by throwing herself into the waves as her captors attempts to transport her to their country.

Thirty thousand Chams are killed.

The reign of the 'Uqaylid Mu'tamid al-Dawla Qirwash, who had assumed control of the emirate of Mosul after many years of bitter family feuding, is troubled by the threat of Oghuz tribesmen invading his dominions from western Iran and southern Iraq, forcing him into defensive alliances with the Mazyadids, another Muslim Arab dynasty in al-Hillah, central Iraq.

The Oghuz even manage to occupy and sack Mosul in 1044, although Qirwash is able to expel them with the support of the Mazyadids.

The Emirate of Sicily has begun to fragment as intra-dynastic quarrels take place between the Muslim regime.

In 1044, under emir Hasan al-Samsam, the island fragments into four qadits, or small fiefdoms: the qadit of Trapani, …

…Marsala, …

…Mazara and …

…Sciacca; …

…that of Girgenti, …

…Castrogiovanni and …

…Castronuovo; …