1060s

This is a list of events occurring in the 1060s, ordered by year.

1060

• May – The Norman leader Robert Guiscard conquers Taranto.
• May 23 – Philip is crowned King of the Franks at age 7.
• October – The Byzantine army defeats the Normans and enters Taranto.
• December 6 – Béla I the Champion is crowned King of Hungary.
• Upon the death of Emund the Old, he is succeeded by his son-in-law Stenkil as King of Sweden.
• The compilation of the New Book of Tang is completed under a team of scholars led by Ouyang Xiu.
• Chinese poet, calligrapher, and official Cai Xiang publishes his Cha Lu (Record of Tea).
• Anselm enters the Benedictine Bec Abbey in Normandy as a novice.
• Spanish Jew Benjamin of Tudela reports that Constantinople has merchant communities from Babylon, Canaan, Egypt, Hungary, Persia, Russia, Sennar, and Spain as well as 2,000 Jews (approximate date).

1061

By place

Europe

• January – Robert de Grantmesnil, his nephew Berengar, half-sister Judith (future wife of Roger I of Sicily), and eleven monks of Saint-Evroul-sur-Ouche are banished from Normandy and head to the Mezzogiorno.
• October 1 – Pope Alexander II succeeds Pope Nicholas II as the 156th pope.
• The Normans conquer Messina in Sicily.
• Erection of the Speyer Cathedral in Speyer, Germany, begins.
• Vratislav II becomes duke of Bohemia.
• Most of West Frisia (later part of the county of Holland) is conquered by imperial German armies and given to the Bishop of Utrecht.
• Estonians destroy the Russian fortification of Yuryev in Tartu and carry out raids in the Pskov region in Russia.

Africa

• Yusuf ben Tashfin succeeds to the throne of Morocco, following the Almoravid conquest.

1062

By place

Africa

• Marrakech is founded by the Almoravid dynasty.^[1]
• The Almoravids overrun Morocco and establish a kingdom stretching from Spain to Senegal.
• The Banu Khurasan, vassal of the Hammadid dynasty, begin to rule the north of Ifriqiya.^[2]

Europe

• Affligem Abbey, of the Order of St. Benedict, is founded in Affligem, Belgium.

1063

By area

Europe

• Successful Pisan naval assault upon Muslim-ruled Palermo led by Giovanni Orlandi to support the ambitions of Roger of Hauteville.^[3]
• May 8 – The allied Muslim and Christian troops of the king of Castile and the emir of Zaragoza, maybe led by El Cid, defeat the Aragonese army at the battle of Graus. The king of Aragon, Ramiro I, is killed, his son succeeds him.^[4]
• Battle of Cerami in Sicily: Roger leads a small group of invading Normans to defeat a much larger force of occupying Arab Muslims, aided by a vision of Saint George.^[5]
• The River Thames in England is frozen for 14 weeks.

By topic

Architecture

• The Pizhi Pagoda of Lingyan Temple, Shandong, China is completed, standing at a height of 54 m (177 ft) tall.
• The construction of present building of St Mark's Basilica is begun.

Religion

• Anselm, later to become Archbishop of Canterbury, becomes prior at the Abbey of Bec.
• The Bishopric of Olomouc is founded.

1064

By area

Americas

• Sunset Crater Volcano (present-day Arizona) first erupts.

Asia

• The Seljuk Turks storm Anatolia, taking Caesarea and Ani, marking the beginning of Turkish incursions into Anatolia.

Europe

• June 9 – Coimbra is taken by King Ferdinand of Castile.
• European warriors go to Spain to participate to the siege of Barbastro. This expedition is sanctioned by the Pope and is now regarded as an early form of Crusade.^[6]
• Harold Godwinson is shipwrecked at Ponthieu, Normandy and taken captive by Count Guy.
• Construction of the Duomo at Pisa in Tuscany begins.

1065

• December 28 – Westminster Abbey is consecrated in England.
• The kingdoms of Galicia and Portugal become independent under the rule of Garcia.
• Sima Guang, high chancellor of the Chinese Song Dynasty, heads a team of scholars in initiating the compilation of an enormous written universal history of China, known as the Zizhi Tongjian.

1066

By area

• Norman conquest of England:
  • January 4 – Edward the Confessor of York dies. The Witenagemot proclaims Harold Godwinson King of England.
  • January 6 – Harold II is crowned King of England, probably in the new Westminster Abbey.
  • January (approx.) – Harold marries Ealdgyth, daughter of Earl Ælfgar, and widow of Welsh ruler Gruffydd ap Llywelyn.
  • March 20 – Halley's Comet reaches perihelion. Its appearance is subsequently recorded in the Bayeux Tapestry.
  • September 20 – Battle of Fulford: Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, defeats the northern English earls Edwin and Morcar.
  • September 25 – Battle of Stamford Bridge: King Harold Godwinson of England defeats the Vikings under Harald Hardrada and Harold's brother, who became his partner, Tostig Godwinson.
  • September 28 – Duke William of Normandy lands in England at Pevensey.
  • October 14 – Battle of Hastings, fought between King Harold II of England and Duke William of Normandy: Harold is killed and William is victorious. In England this is the traditional end of the Dark Ages, generally known by scholars as the Early Middle Ages.
  • December 25 – Duke William of Normandy is crowned King William I of England in Westminster Abbey.
• December 30 – Granada massacre: A Muslim mob storms the royal palace in Granada, crucifies Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacres most of the Jewish population of the city.
• The Republic of Genoa, jealous of the recent successes of its former allies, launches a naval assault on the Republic of Pisa.^[7]
• Magnus II Haraldsson is crowned King of Norway.
• Upon the death of Stenkil, King of Sweden, two rivals named Eric battle for power in Sweden, both claiming the throne, until the next year.
• Hedeby is destroyed by a Slavic army and permanently abandoned.
• Tain becomes the first town in the Kingdom of Scotland to be chartered as a royal burgh.

1067

• On the death of her husband Constantine X, Eudocia Macrembolitissa becomes regent of the Byzantine Empire.
• The Seljuk Turks take Caesarea in Cappadocia.
• Construction begins on the Tower of London.
• Olav III and Magnus II become joint Kings of Norway.
• The two pretenders to the Swedish throne, Eric and Eric, are both killed during the struggle for power in Sweden. Halsten, son of king Stenkil, who died the year before, becomes the new king of the country.
• The Trencavel family takes over in Carcassonne.
• The Wartburg castle, according to legend, is built in Thuringia.
• Winchester Castle is built.
• Minsk and Orsha are first mentioned in the chronicles.
• Shenzong of Song starts to rule.
• Namgyeong is split from Yangju, Goryeo.
• The poet Wang Anshi campaigns against corruption in China.

1068

• January 1 – Eudocia Macrembolitissa marries the general Romanus Diogenes, who becomes Byzantine Emperor.
• Emperor Go-Sanjō ascends to the throne of Japan.
• William the Conqueror takes Exeter after a brief siege.

1069

• Harrying of the North: King William of England (William the Conqueror) reacts to rebellions made by his Anglo-Saxon subjects against him. He rides through the north of England with his army and burns houses, crops, cattle and land from York to Durham, which results in the deaths of over 100,000 people, mainly from starvation and winter cold.
• William the Conqueror founds the Norman Selby Abbey.
• Al-Mu'tamid ibn Abbad succeeds his father on the throne of the taifa of Seville.
• Emperor Shenzong of Song appoints Wang Anshi as his chief counsellor.
• Wang Anshi, chancellor of the Chinese Song dynasty, implements the New Policies, which include financial reforms, raising the salaries of officials to reduce corruption, institution of the baojia system, etc.
• Start of Nam tiến, the southward expansion of the territory of Vietnam.^[8]
• Magnus II of Norway dies and Olaf III becomes sole King of Norway.
• The Seljuq Turks fail to capture Iconium, following a Byzantine counter-attack launched from Syria.

Significant people

• William the Conqueror
• Harold Godwinson
• Harald Hardrada
• Edward the Confessor
• Edgar the Ætheling
• Tostig Godwinson

Births

Deaths

References