Articles about rulers & dynasties across every continent and era, oldest first.
Trapped for seven days at Baideng, Emperor Gaozu of Han escaped through the chanyu's consort; Han then sent a princess and yearly silk, wine and food.
· 200 BCMarshall's 1918 Guide to Taxila describes three cities in one valley, Bhir Mound, Sirkap and Sirsukh, each dated by walls, coin finds and dig layers.
· 170 BCSent by Emperor Wu to find the Yuezhi, Zhang Qian was held by the Xiongnu for over ten years; of more than 100 men, two came home 13 years later.
· 138 BCFor defending the general Li Ling, Sima Qian was condemned; his letter to Ren An explains why he chose to live and finish the 130 chapters of the Shiji.
· 99 BCCleopatra VII came from a dynasty of Macedonian origin, yet Plutarch says she spoke many languages. Horace called her a monster; how she died, no one knew.
· 30 BCA Bactrian stone unearthed in 1993 in Baghlan gives Kanishka's year one, four generations of Kushan kings, a switch from Greek and four Gangetic cities.
· AD 127Shapur I took Valerian prisoner near Edessa in AD 260 and recorded it in a trilingual inscription and rock reliefs in Fars. Rome told it differently.
· AD 260Palmyra taxed the caravans carrying Gulf and Indian goods across the desert to Rome. That wealth let Odaenathus and Zenobia rule the Roman East until AD 272.
· AD 270Aksum, in northern Ethiopia, struck gold, silver and bronze coins from the third century AD and raised granite grave markers more than 23 meters tall.
· AD 350Priscus's fragment 8, in J. B. Bury's translation, follows the East Roman embassy of 449 to Attila, a Greek merchant turned Hun and a banquet in wood.
· AD 449The Culavamsa says Kassapa fled to Sihagiri, walled it and built a lion staircase. The Central Cultural Fund dates his reign 477 to 495.
· AD 477The Nika riot of 532 burned Constantinople's Great Church. Justinian's Hagia Sophia rose by 537, Procopius described it, and its dome fell in 558.
· AD 537Two histories record Emperor Yang's canal orders of 605 to 610. For the Yongji Canal of 608 one counts over a million workers, the other over five million.
· AD 605In 1939 Basil Brown excavated a 27-meter ship burial at Sutton Hoo for Edith Pretty; an inquest gave the find to her, who gave it to the British Museum.
· AD 625Four accounts of Christmas Day 800 disagree on who planned it. Einhard wrote Charlemagne would have stayed away; the court annals recorded an acclamation.
· AD 800Rajendra I's inscriptions list the ports his ships took, from Srivijaya to Kadaram, but give no reason for the war. Historians read the gap differently.
· 1025Angkor Wat was built in the reign of Suryavarman II (anointed 1113). A Chinese envoy of 1296 called it only the tomb of Lu Ban; later books credited Rome.
· 1113A minaret collapsed at Bukhara around 1121-22 and destroyed two-thirds of a new mosque. Arslan Khan Mohammad's replacement, 48 meters high, rose in 1127.
· 1127The Archaeological Survey of India dates the Qutb Minar to 1199; a metallurgist traces its courtyard iron pillar to Udayagiri, centuries earlier.
· 1199Nan Madol is 92 to 100 islets of stacked basalt columns on a reef off Pohnpei. Coral from its first chief's tomb dates the monuments to AD 1180 to 1200.
· 1200David Burley calls the Haʻamonga ʻa Maui trilithon at Heketa the most impressive commemorative site on Tongatapu, its uprights tied to the 11th Tuʻi Tonga's two sons.
· 1200Three or four horses per rider, a decimal army the Khitans and Jurchens already used, relay stations a day apart and Chinese siege technicians.
· 1206In 1218 the governor of Otrar killed 450 merchants Genghis Khan had sent to trade; the shah then executed a Mongol envoy, and the Mongols invaded in 1219.
· 1218Minhaj's Tabaqat-i Nasiri records Iltutmish naming his daughter Raziyya heir over his sons. She ruled Delhi 1236-1240 and died near Kaithal in 1240.
· 1236
