Trajan begins a second campaign: invading Dacia…

Emperor He, the son of Emperor Zhang, had ascended the Chinese throne at the age of nine in 88; he would reign for seventeen years.

It is during his reign that the Eastern Han begins its decline.

Strife between consort clans and eunuchs had begun when the Empress Dowager Dou (Emperor He's adoptive mother) made her own family members important government officials.

Her family was corrupt and intolerant of dissension.

Emperor He had been able to remedy the situation in 92 by removing the empress dowager's brothers with the aid of the eunuch Zheng Zhong and his brother Liu Qing,the Prince of Qinghe.

This in turn had created a precedent for eunuchs to be involved in important affairs of state, a trend that would continue to escalate for the next century and contribute to the fall of the Han dynasty.

Further, while Qiang revolts, spurred by Han officials who were corrupt, oppressive, or both, had begun during Emperor Zhang's reign, they have begun to create major problems for the Han during Emperor He's reign and would last until the reign of Emperor Ling.

Emperor He himself appears to be a largely kind and gentle man who, however, lacks his father's and grandfather Emperor Ming's acumen for governance and for judgment of character.

Although Emperor He's reign arguably initiated Han's long decline, notable scientific progresses are made during this period including the invention of paper by the eunuch Cai Lun in 105.

At the emperor’s death in 106, Liu Sheng, the elder of his surviving sons, is still young (his actual age is unrecorded) and believed to be constantly ill; the younger, Liu Long, is only one hundred days old.

Both are welcomed back to the palace, and Empress Deng creates Liu Long crown prince, believing that he would be healthier, and he is that evening proclaimed Emperor Shang, but dies later in 106.

Empress Dowager Deng, apprehensive that Liu Sheng might resent her for not making him emperor first, now refuses to make him emperor, and instead creates Prince Qing's twelve-year-old son Liu Hu as Emperor An.

She will rule remain as regent until her death in 121.

Prince Long had been born in autumn 105 to Emperor He and a concubine whose identity is unknown.

Because Emperor He has, during his reign, frequently lost sons due to illnesses in childhood, according to the superstitions of the time, both Prince Long and his older brother Prince Sheng had been given to foster parents outside the palace to nurture.

When Emperor He dies early 106, his wife, Empress Deng Sui, retrieves the young princes back to the palace.

Prince Sheng is older but regarded as frequently ill and unfit for the throne, for Empress Deng first creates the infant Prince Long crown prince.

The same night, he is proclaimed emperor.

Empress Deng became empress dowager.

After Emperor Shang’s brother, Prince Sheng, is created the Prince of Pingyuan.

Concerned that Emperor Shang might not live long, Empress Dowager Deng also keeps Liu Hu, the twelve-year old cousin of Emperor Shang, in the capital Luoyang as insurance against the infant emperor's death.

(Prince Hu is the son of Prince Qing of Qinghe, who was once a crown prince under Emperor He's father Emperor Zhang but had been deposed due to machinations of Emperor Zhang's wife, Empress Dou.

Therefore, he is viewed by some as the rightful heir.)

As Emperor Shang is an infant, actual and formal power are in Empress Deng's hands.

Her brother Deng Zhi becomes the most powerful official in the imperial government.

She issues a general pardon, which benefits the people who had had rights stripped from them for associating with the family of Empress Dou.

Late in 106, Emperor Shang dies.

The officials have by this time realized that Prince Sheng, his older brother, is not as ill as originally thought, and want to make him emperor.

However, Empress Dowager Deng is concerned that he might bear a grudge at not being made emperor before his brother, and therefore insists on making Emperor Shang's cousin Prince Hu emperor instead, and he takes the throne as Emperor An.

Empress Dowager Deng remains as the regent.

Emperor Shang, having died as a toddler, is not given a separate tomb, as is customary for emperors.

Rather, in order to avoid unnecessary expenses, he is buried in the same tomb complex as his father Emperor He.

The Romans reorganize Dacia as a Roman province and build another capital at a distance of forty kilometers from the old Sarmizegetuza, naming it Colonia Ulpia Traiana Dacica Augusta Sarmizegetuza.

The province includes the modern Romanian regions of Transylvania, Banat and Oltenia, and temporarily Muntenia and southern Moldova, but not the nearby regions of Moesia.

A large part of the population has been either exterminated or fled to regions north of the Carpathians.

As a consequence of this depopulation, Roman colonists are brought in to cultivate the land and work the gold mines alongside the remaining Dacians.

Besides the Roman troops, these are mainly first- or second-generation Roman colonists from Noricum or Pannonia, later to be supplemented with colonists from other provinces: South Thracians (from the provinces of Moesia or Thrace) and settlers from the Roman provinces of Asia Minor.

Roman influence is broadened by the construction of important roads; …

…Tsierna (Orsova) is established as a colony.

Buddhism had long since splintered into different schools by the time of the Fourth Buddhist councils.

The Theravada tradition had had a Fourth Buddhist Council in 29 BCE in Tambapanni, i.e.

Sri Lanka, under the patronage of King Vattagamani.

It is said to have been devoted to committing the entire Pali Canon to writing, which had previously been preserved by memory.

Another Fourth Buddhist Council is held in the Sarvastivada tradition, said to have been convened by the Kushan emperor Kanishka, around 100 CE at Jalandhar or in Kashmir.

The Fourth Council of Kashmir is not recognized as authoritative in Theravada; reports of this council can be found scriptures which were kept in the Mahayana tradition.

It is said that Kanishka gathered five hundred Bhikkhus in Kashmir, headed by Vasumitra, to systematize the Sarvastivadin Adhidharma texts, which were translated form earlier Prakrit vernacular languages (such as Gandhari in Kharosthi script) into the classical language of Sanskrit.

It is said that during the council three hundred thousand verses and over nine million statements were compiled, a process which took twelve years to complete.

Although the Sarvastivada are no longer extant as an independent school, its traditions would be inherited by the Mahayana tradition.

The late Monseigneur Professor Etienne Lamotte, an eminent Buddhologist, held that Kanishka's Council was fictitious.

However, David Snellgrove, another eminent Buddhologist, considers the Theravada account of the Third Council and the Sarvastivada account of the Fourth Council "equally tendentious," illustrating the uncertain veracity of much of these histories.

The first century CE had seen another incursion of the Sakas of Central Asia into India, where they had formed the dynasty of the Western Kshatrapas.

During the reign of the Western Satrap Nahapana, the Satavahanas, who rule in the Deccan, had lost a considerable territory to the satraps, including eastern Malwa, Southern Gujarat, and Northern Konkan, from Broach to Sopara and the Nasik and Poona districts.

Eventually the Satavahana king Gautamiputra Sātakarni, an ardent supporter of Hinduism who reigned from 78, defeated the Western Satrap ruler Nahapana, restoring the prestige of his dynasty by reconquering a large part of the former dominions of the Sātavāhanas.

His son and successor, Vasisthiputra Sri Pulamavi, who rules from 106, is the first Sātavāhana king to issue the portrait-type coinage, in a style derived from the Western Satraps.

The Nabataeans, as allies of the Romans, had continued to flourish throughout the first century.

Their power extends far into Arabia along the Red Sea to Yemen, and Petra remains a cosmopolitan marketplace, though its commerce has been diminished by the rise of the Eastern trade-route from Myoshormus to Coptos on the Nile.

Under the Pax Romana, the Nabataeans have lost their warlike and nomadic habits and become a sober, acquisitive, orderly people, wholly intent on trade and agriculture.

They might have long been a bulwark between Rome and the wild hordes of the desert but after the death in 106 of their king, Rabbel II, who had ruled since 70, the Third Cyrenaica legion moves north from Egypt into Petra while …

…the Sixth Ferrata, a Syrian garrison unit, moves south to occupy Bostra, present Busra ash-Sham in Syria.

The casual conquest of Nabataea by Trajan in March 106 is meant to consolidate control of the area before he acts on his designs for territory across the Tigris and eventually into Mesopotamia proper.

Trajan thus absorbs Nabataea into the Roman Empire as the province of Palestina Tertia.

Bosra is renamed Nova Trajana Bostra, and is the residence of the legio III Cyrenaica and capital of the Roman province Arabia Petraea.

The city will flourish and become a major metropolis at the juncture of several trade routes, including the Roman road to the Red Sea.

Al Karak, built on a triangular plateau south of present Amman, Jordan, has been inhabited since at least the Iron Age, and had been an important city for the Moabites (who called it Qir of Moab).

In the Bible it is called Qer Harreseth, and is identified as having been subject to the Assyrian empire; in 2 Kings 16:9 and Amos 1:5, 9:7, it is mentioned as the place whither the Syrians went before they settled in the regions north of Palestine, and to which Tiglath-pileser sent the prisoners after the conquest of Damascus.

Al Karak during the late Hellenistic Period became an important town known as Kharkha.

It had evidently fallen eventually under the power of the Nabateans, as the Romans in 106 conquer it from them.

The eunuch Zheng Zhong had served as the director of imperial gardens during the time of Empress Dowager Dou's regency over Emperor He, and had been among the eunuchs who had not endeared himself to Empress Dowager Dou's clan.

In 92, Emperor He, apparently dissatisfied with his suppression by the Dou clan, had plotted a coup d'etat with his brother Liu Qing the Prince of Qinghe, and Zheng.

They had been successful in carrying out the overthrow of the Dous, and as a reward, Emperor He had promoted Zheng to the post of the empress' palace's head of household.

Zheng had accepted the post but declined most of the monetary rewards that Emperor He gave him, a fact that made Emperor He even more impressed with him.

Emperor He often consulted with him on major affairs of state, and this started a precedent of eunuchs becoming involved in imperial governance.

In 102, breaking past precedent, Emperor He had created Zheng the Marquess of Chaoxiang, making him the first Eastern Han Dynasty eunuch to be created a marquess.

The first Han Dynasty eunuch with true power in government, Zheng has continued to be powerful after Emperor He's death, during the regency of Empress Deng Sui over Emperor Shang and Emperor An.

For his support, she adds three hundred households to his march in 107.

He dies later in the year.