Thinkers Timeline

Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese writer and lady of the imperial court. She is the author of The Tale of Genji, often called the world's first novel. She was born around the year 973 in Heian-kyō, the capital of Japan (modern Kyoto). Her real name is unknown. 'Murasaki' was probably a nickname taken from a character in her novel. 'Shikibu' refers to her father's position at the Bureau of Ceremonies. She came from a lesser branch of the powerful Fujiwara family. Her father was a scholar of Chinese. He recognised her talent and taught her things normally taught only to boys, including Chinese classical literature. This education would later shape her writing in important ways. She married a much older distant cousin, Fujiwara no Nobutaka, around her mid to late twenties. They had a daughter. Her husband died of an epidemic in 1001, only two years after the marriage. Murasaki was now a young widow with a young child. She probably began writing The Tale of Genji in the years just after her husband's death. Around 1005, her writing had attracted the attention of the powerful Fujiwara no Michinaga. He brought her to court as a lady-in-waiting to Empress Shōshi, the young wife of Emperor Ichijō. Murasaki served at court for years, kept a diary, wrote poems, and continued her novel. The exact year of her death is uncertain. Most scholars accept around 1014, when she would have been about 41. Some think she may have lived later, perhaps until 1025.

Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207-1273), known throughout the Islamic world as Mawlana (our master) and in the West by the short name Rumi, was a Persian Sufi poet, theologian, and teacher whose work remains among the most widely read religious poetry in world literature. He was born in Balkh (in present-day Afghanistan), then part of the Khwarezmian Empire, into a family of religious scholars. His father Baha al-Din Walad was a respected teacher and preacher. The family fled westward before the Mongol invasions, travelling through Baghdad, Mecca, Damascus, and finally settling in Konya in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum (in present-day Turkey) — the origin of the name by which he became known. Rumi received thorough training in Islamic law, theology, and the Persian poetic and philosophical tradition. By his thirties he was a respected scholar and teacher with his own students and a conventional scholarly career. In 1244 he met a wandering dervish named Shams al-Din of Tabriz. The encounter transformed him. For nearly three years the two were inseparable, engaged in intense spiritual conversation. When Shams disappeared — either killed by Rumi's jealous disciples or simply leaving — Rumi responded not with a return to conventional scholarship but with an outpouring of poetry. The Diwan-i Shams-i Tabrizi, a collection of over forty thousand verses of lyrical poetry dedicated to his lost friend, and the Masnavi-i Ma'navi, a six-book epic of some twenty-five thousand couplets often called the Persian Qur'an, are the main works of his later life. He also wrote prose works and letters. The Sufi order later founded by his followers — the Mevlevi, famous for the whirling dance that became a form of prayer — spread across the Ottoman world. He died in Konya in 1273 and was buried there; his tomb at the Green Mausoleum remains one of the most visited religious sites in the Islamic world. UNESCO declared 2007, his eight-hundredth birth anniversary, an international year of Rumi.

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was an Italian poet, writer, and political thinker. He was born in Florence, one of the most important cities in medieval Italy, into a family of modest nobility. He fell deeply in love as a young man with a woman named Beatrice, who died young and became the central figure of his poetic imagination. He was active in Florentine politics and held several public offices. In 1301, when a rival political faction took power in Florence, Dante was accused of political offences, sentenced to death if he returned, and exiled from his city forever. He never went back. He spent the rest of his life wandering from city to city in northern Italy, writing, and composing the work for which he is remembered above all others: the Commedia, known in English as the Divine Comedy. This long narrative poem, written in Italian rather than the Latin used by educated writers of the time, describes a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. It was immediately recognised as a masterpiece and has remained one of the most admired works in world literature for seven hundred years.

Ibn Battuta was a Moroccan traveller, scholar, and writer. He travelled more widely than almost anyone else in the medieval world. Over about 30 years, he visited most of the Muslim world and far beyond, covering an estimated 120,000 kilometres. His travel book is one of the great works of medieval literature. He was born in 1304 in Tangier, on the northern coast of Morocco. His full name was Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Battuta. He came from a family of Muslim judges who followed the Maliki school of Islamic law. He was educated as a religious scholar. In 1325, aged 21, he left home to make the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. He travelled across North Africa to Egypt, then up through Palestine and Syria, and on to Mecca. He completed the pilgrimage. Then he kept going. Curiosity and ambition kept him moving for the next 24 years. He travelled across Iraq, Persia, East Africa, Anatolia, Central Asia, India, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bengal, and possibly China. He served as a judge in several places, including in the Indian sultanate of Delhi, where he worked for the powerful Sultan Muhammad ibn Tughluq. In 1349 he returned home to Morocco. After more shorter trips to Spain and across the Sahara to Mali, he settled down. The Sultan of Morocco asked him to dictate the story of his travels to a court scholar named Ibn Juzayy. The book was finished around 1355. Ibn Battuta lived another 13 or 14 years and died around 1369. His grave is in Tangier.

Christine de Pizan was a medieval Italian-French writer. She is widely considered the first woman in Europe to make her living as a professional author. She was born in 1364 in Venice. Her father, Tommaso da Pizzano, was a doctor and astrologer. When she was four, the family moved to Paris because her father had been invited to serve as court astrologer to King Charles V of France. Christine grew up in the French royal court. Her father supported her education, which was unusual for a girl at the time. She read Latin, history, philosophy, and poetry. She had access to the king's library, one of the best in Europe. At fifteen she married Étienne du Castel, a court notary. By all accounts the marriage was happy. They had three children. In 1389, her husband died of the plague. Christine was 25. Her father had also died the year before. She suddenly had to support her three children, her widowed mother, and a niece. She had no inheritance and no easy way to earn money. Most widows in her position would have remarried or entered a convent. Christine chose neither. She decided to write for a living. She found patrons among the French royal dukes. She wrote poems, biographies, advice books, political works, and history. By her death around 1430, she had produced over forty works. Her best-known book, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), is one of the earliest defences of women in European literature. She is buried in the convent of Poissy, where she spent her final years writing in support of Joan of Arc.

Niccolò Machiavelli was an Italian writer, diplomat, and political thinker. He was born in 1469 in Florence, then a powerful Italian city-state. His family was middle-ranking and not rich, but his father had a good library. Machiavelli was educated in Latin, history, and the classical writers of ancient Rome. In 1498, at the age of 29, he became a senior official of the Florentine Republic. For the next fourteen years he served as a diplomat and adviser. He travelled across Italy and Europe on missions, meeting popes, kings, and warlords. He watched up close how power actually worked. He saw cruelty, betrayal, and luck shaping politics far more than virtue or law. In 1512 the Republic fell. The Medici family, who had ruled Florence before, returned to power. Machiavelli lost his job. He was suspected of plotting against the Medici, arrested, and tortured. Released and sent into rural exile, he spent his days farming and his evenings writing. In 1513 he wrote The Prince, a short, sharp book of advice for rulers. He hoped it would win him a job back in Florence. It did not. He also wrote a longer work, the Discourses on Livy, a study of Roman republican history, plus comedies, histories, and military essays. He died in 1527, just before the Republic briefly returned. The Prince was published five years after his death. It became one of the most controversial and influential books in the history of political thought.

Mirabai was a sixteenth-century Indian poet and saint. She is one of the most loved figures in the bhakti movement, a Hindu devotional tradition that swept across India for many centuries. She was born around 1498 in Kudki, a village in present-day Rajasthan in north-west India. Her family, the Rathore Rajputs, were a royal warrior clan. Her mother died when she was young. According to tradition, Mirabai was given a small image of the god Krishna by a holy man during her childhood. She held on to it, and her devotion to Krishna grew. She came to see him as her divine husband. In 1516, when she was about 18, she was married to Bhoj Raj, the crown prince of the neighbouring Mewar kingdom. He was wounded in battle and died in 1521. Mirabai refused to commit sati, the practice of a widow burning herself on her husband's funeral pyre, which was expected of Rajput princesses. This refusal began a long conflict with her in-laws. Legends say her in-laws made several attempts to kill her: poison disguised as nectar, a snake in a basket of flowers, a bed of nails. Each time, she survived. Whether these stories are literal history or symbols of her spiritual protection, they show that she lived under real threat. She eventually left palace life. She wandered to Vrindavan, Krishna's mythical home, and to Dwarka in Gujarat. She sang her songs in temples and public places. She is believed to have died around 1547. Hundreds of devotional songs are attributed to her, though most were probably composed later in her tradition.