Dashed left edge = started before this timeline ·
Dashed right edge = still ongoing
Events in the 1290s 7
1230 – 1290Martín CodaxGalician-Portuguese troubadourMartín Codax was a Galician-Portuguese troubadour whose seven surviving cantigas de amigo are among the most celebrated examples of medieval Iberian lyric poetry.
1275 – 1292Marco Polo visits ChinaAt the court of Kublai Khan — East meets WestVenetian merchant Marco Polo traveled to China around 1275 and spent approximately 17 years in the service of Kublai Khan, traveling extensively across the empire. His account, The Travels of Marco Polo (c.1300), described China's cities, technologies and wealth with astonishment — paper money, coal, vast cities, efficient postal systems. Though initially disbelieved, his account inspired Christopher Columbus and shaped European imagination of the East for centuries.
1290 – 1355Johannes de MurisFrench music theorist and mathematicianJohannes de Muris was a leading music theorist of the Ars Nova period whose mathematical approach to rhythm helped define 14th-century musical notation.
1291 – 1361Philippe de VitryFrench composer and music theoristPhilippe de Vitry was a French composer, poet and bishop whose treatise Ars Nova gave its name to the 14th-century musical style. He was a leading intellectual and musical figure of his era.
1299 – 1326Osman I founds the dynastyOsman I (c.1258-1326) declares independence from the declining Seljuk Sultanate of Rum around 1299, establishing the Ottoman beylik in northwestern Anatolia near Bursa. A gifted leader who attracts ghazi warriors, nomadic Turks and dispossessed peasants, he raids Byzantine territory systematically, capturing Bursa shortly before his death (1326). His name gives the dynasty -- Osmanli in Turkish, Ottoman in European languages. He marries the daughter of a local religious leader, intertwining the dynasty with Islamic legitimacy from its foundation.
1299 – 1922The Ottoman Empire (1299–1922)The Ottoman Empire endured for 623 years -- from Osman I's declaration of independence from the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum in 1299 to the abolition of the sultanate by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on 1 November 1922. At its height under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) it controlled three continents: southeastern Europe from Hungary to the Aegean, Anatolia and the Middle East from Mesopotamia to Yemen, and North Africa from Egypt to Algeria. It was the successor to Byzantium, the inheritor of Rome's eastern legacy, the protector of the Islamic holy cities and the dominant power of the Mediterranean world for three centuries. Its capital Constantinople -- renamed Istanbul -- became again the greatest city between Vienna and Beijing.
1299 – 1453The Rise (1299–1453)The Ottoman rise spans 154 years from Osman I's founding of the dynasty to Mehmed II's conquest of Constantinople. Beginning as one of many small Turkish principalities (beylik) in northwestern Anatolia, the Ottomans expand systematically through military skill, pragmatic administration and the powerful ideology of ghazi (holy warrior) frontier culture. They cross into Europe in 1354, establish their capital at Adrianople (Edirne) in 1369, defeat a Christian coalition at Kosovo (1389) and Nicopolis (1396), survive Timur's devastating intervention (1402) and recover to take Constantinople on 29 May 1453 -- transforming a regional principality into a world empire.