Power and soul

The 1100’s witnessed the expression of complementary trends: While some–intent upon satisfying their hunger for worldly power–took up arms, others turned inward in examination of the human soul.

Foreign advances

Several conflicts that began in the 1000’s have flared and smoldered during the past hundred years. Turkish peoples continued their advance into India and Anatolia. The Khitans of Manchuria overran northern China and founded the Jin dynasty there, leaving only southern China under Song control. European crusaders mounted two major expeditions to Palestine, but Arab Muslims dislodged them from territories they had captured in the late 1000’s and early 1100’s.

Philosophy blooms

But in the midst of these armed engagements, the 1100’s has been an age of philosophy. The Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi blended Confucian themes of correct moral behavior and Buddhist ideas about the meaning of suffering and death into a new school of thought called neo-Confucianism. The Indian philosopher Ramanuja taught that devotion to the Hindu god Vishnu would lead to personal salvation. In his efforts to formulate a rational understanding of the world, the Spanish Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd drew on the works of Aristotle, recently translated into Arabic. Peter Abelard and other Western European thinkers, influenced by the methods of classical Greece, shone the light of logic and reason onto philosophical and theological matters.