From Cave Paintings to the Internet A Chronological and Thematic Database on the History of Information and Media 1000 to 1100 Timeline

Gerbert d'Aurillac, scholar, teacher, tutor and counsellor to Otto III, and Pope Sylvester II (or Silvester II) from 999 till his death in 1002, is considered influential in introducing Arabic knowledge of arithmetic, mathematics, and astronomy to Europe, reintroducing the abacus and armillary sphere which had been lost to Europe since the end of the Greco-Roman era.

"According to William of Malmesbury (c.1080 – c.1143), Gerbert stole the idea of the computing device of the abacus from a Spanish Arab. The abacus that Gerbert reintroduced into Europe had its length divided into 27 parts with 9 number symbols (this would exclude zero, which was represented by an empty column) and 1,000 characters in all, crafted out of animal horn by a shieldmaker of Rheims. According to his pupil Richer, Gerbert could perform speedy calculations with his abacus that were extremely difficult for people in his day to think through in using only Roman numerals. Due to Gerbert's reintroduction, the abacus became widely used in Europe once again during the 11th century" (Wikipedia article on Pope Sylvester II, accessed 11-24-2008).

A Haggadah found in the Cairo Genizah and preserved in the Annenberg Research Institute for Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Pennsylvania  (Halper 211) "is considered the oldest surviving Haggadah" (Malachi Beit-Arie, "How Hebrew Manuscripts are Made",  Gold (ed.) A Sign and a Witness. 2000 Years of Hebrew Books and Illuminated Manuscripts [1988] 36).

However, another Haggadah from the Cairo Genizah preserved at the Jewish Theological Seminary may be from roughly the same date:

"Among the manuscript treasures housed in The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary is a rare haggadah codex, JTS MS 9560. This early manuscript is one of the few surviving examplars of the ancient Palestinian seder rite. That rite disappeared as a result of the dislocations caused by the Crusades, and it was not rediscovered until the manuscript fragments of the Cairo Genizah came to light at the end of the nineteenth century. MS 9560 was probably deposited in that genizah hundreds of years ago.

"Unlike most of the manuscript fragments found in the Cairo Genizah, this haggadah is almost complete. Based on the writing style, it can be dated to the tenth or the first half of the eleventh century. That makes it one of the earliest Hebrew manuscripts written on paper, and quite possibly the oldest surviving haggadah. With its unskilled writing style and idiosyncratic spelling and linguistic usage, the text bears witness to a layman's home ritual. Therefore, MS 9560 is significant for a number of areas of Jewish research." 

(http://www.jtsa.edu/Library/News_and_Publications/Between_the_Lines/BTL_121.x, accessed 12-06-2208).

"There is little doubt that both playing cards and dominoes originated in China and that both games were influenced by certain forms of divination and the drawing of lots and possibly by paper money. There are certain indications that the development of playing cards took place at about the same time as the transition from manuscript rolls to paged books. As the advent of printing made it more convenient to produce and use books in the form of pages, so was it easier to produce cards. These 'sheet-dice,' as they were called, began to appear according to Ou-yang Hsiu (1007-72) before the end of the Tang dynasty, and if this is true, they were one of the earliest forms of block printing in China, as they were in the West" (Carter, Invention of Printing in China 2nd ed [1955] 184).

The oldest surviving illustrated manuscript written in Arabic on any subject is a manuscript on paper of Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi's Treatise on the Fixed Stars preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford [Ms. Marsh 144. p. 165].

"The pictures show the configurations of the stars in the forty-eight constellations recognized by Ptolemy, but the figures are dressed in Oriental rather than classical Greek garb. Al-Sufi wrote in his text that although he knew of another illustrated astronomical treatise, he copied his illsutrations directly from images engraved on a celestial globe, indicating that he was not working in a manuscript tradition. According to the eleventh-century scholar al-Biruni, al-Sufi explained that he had laid a very thin piece of paper over a celestial globe and fitted it carefully over the surface of the sphere. He then traced the outlines of the constellations and the locations of individual stars on the paper. Al-Biruni later commented that this procedure 'is an [adequate] approximation when the figures are small but it is far [from adequate] if they are large.' The Oxford manuscript of al-Sufi's text was copied from the author's original by his son" (Bloom, Paper Before Print. The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World [2001]  143-44 and figure 51).

The Leningrad Codex, probably written in Cairo, is the earliest extant complete text of the Bible in Hebrew. It has been preserved in St. Petersburg since the mid-19th century, and is now housed in the Russian National Library.

Under house arrest in Cairo, Egypt, Iraqi Muslim scientist Ibn al-Haytham (Latinized as Alhacen or Alhazen) writes The Book of Optics (Arabic: Kitab al-Manazir‎; Latin: De Aspectibus or Opticae Thesaurus: Alhazeni Arabis,)  a seven-volume treatise on optics, physics, mathematics, anatomy and psychology.

"The book had an important influence on the development of optics, as it laid the foundations for modern physical optics after drastically transforming the way in which light and vision had been understood, and on science in general with its introduction of the experimental scientific method. Ibn al-Haytham has been called the "father of modern optics", the 'pioneer of the modern scientific method,' and the founder of experimental physics, and for these reasons he has been described as the 'first scientist.'

"The Book of Optics has been ranked alongside Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica as one of the most influential books in the history of physics, as it is widely considered to have initiated a revolution in the fields of optics and visual perception. It established experimentation as the norm of proof in optics, and gave optics a physico-mathematical conception at a much earlier date than the other mathematical disciplines of astronomy and mechanics.

"The Book of Optics also contains the earliest discussions and descriptions of the psychology of visual perception and optical illusions, as well as experimental psychology, and the first accurate descriptions of the camera obscura, a precursor to the modern camera. In medicine and ophthalmology, the book also made important advances in eye surgery, as it correctly explained the process of sight for the first time" (Wikipedia article on Book of Optics, accessed 04-23-2009).

Translated into Latin by an unknown scholar at the end of the 12th century or the beginning of the 13th, Alhazen's Book of Optics enjoyed great reputation and circulated by manuscript copying to the few who could understand it during the Middle Ages. It was first edited for print publication by Friedrich Risner and issued in Basel by Episcopus in 1572.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1027.

Ibn al-Haitham, known in the west as Alhazen, builds the first camera obscura or pinhole camera—significant in the history of optics, photography, and the history of art.

In his Book of Optics Ibnal-Haitham used the term “Al-Bayt al-Muthlim", translated in English as dark room. "In the experiment he undertook, in order to establish that light travels in time and with speed, he says: 'If the hole was covered with a curtain and the curtain was taken off, the light traveling from the hole to the opposite wall will consume time.' He reiterated the same experience when he established that light travels in straight lines. A revealing experiment introduced the camera obscura in studies of the half-moon shape of the sun's image during eclipses which he observed on the wall opposite a small hole made in the window shutters. In his famous essay 'On the form of the Eclipse' (Maqalah-fi-Surat-al-Kosuf) he commented on his observation 'The image of the sun at the time of the eclipse, unless it is total, demonstrates that when its light passes through a narrow, round hole and is cast on a plane opposite to the hole it takes on the form of a moon-sickle'.

"In his experiment of the sun light he extended his observation of the penetration of light through the pinhole to conclude that when the sun light reaches and penetrates the hole it makes a conic shape at the points meeting at the pinhole, forming later another conic shape reverse to the first one on the opposite wall in the dark room. This happens when sun light diverges from point “ﺍ” until it reaches an aperture and is projected through it onto a screen at the luminous spot. Since the distance between the aperture and the screen is insignificant in comparison to the distance between the aperture and the sun, the divergence of sunlight after going through the aperture should be insignificant. In other words, should be about equal to. However, it is observed to be much greater when the paths of the rays which form the extremities of are retraced in the reverse direction, it is found that they meet at a point outside the aperture and then diverge again toward the sun as illustrated in figure 1. This an early accurate description of the Camera Obscura phenomenon."

"In 13th-century England Roger Bacon described the use of a camera obscura for the safe observation of solar eclipses. Its potential as a drawing aid may have been familiar to artists by as early as the 15th century; Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519 AD) described camera obscura in Codex Atlanticus. . . .

"The Dutch Masters, such as Johannes Vermeer, who were hired as painters in the 17th century, were known for their magnificent attention to detail. It has been widely speculated that they made use of such a camera, but the extent of their use by artists at this period remains a matter of considerable controversy, recently revived by the Hockney-Falco thesis. The term "camera obscura" was first used by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler in 1604.

"Early models were large; comprising either a whole darkened room or a tent (as employed by Johannes Kepler). By the 18th century, following developments by Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, more easily portable models became available. These were extensively used by amateur artists while on their travels, but they were also employed by professionals, including Paul Sandby, Canaletto and Joshua Reynolds, whose camera (disguised as a book) is now in the Science Museum (London). Such cameras were later adapted by Louis Daguerre and William Fox Talbot for creating the first photographs" (Wikipedia article on Camera obscura, accessed 04-24-2009).

A spectacular book-shaped reliquary preserved at the Cleveland Museum of Art has been attributed to the circle of the master manuscript illuminator, known as the Master of the Registrum Gregorii, who was active at Reichenau in the late 10th century. The metalwork reliquary incorporates an ivory plaque set within a frame of gilt silver, gems, and pearls on a core of wood. It measures 31.6cm x 24.4cm x 7.5cm. Images are available from the Cleveland Museum of Art at this link.

Royal patron of the arts, Tamin ibn al Mu'izz ibn Badis, writes the 'Umbdat alk-kuttab wa 'uddat dhawi al-albab (Book of the Staff of the Scribes and Implements of the Discerning with a Description of the Line, the Pens, Soot Inks, Liq, Gall Inks, Dyeing, and Details of Bookbinding).

This Arabic manuscript, partly written by Ibn Badis, and preserved in Cairo, is a the primary source for information on writing, illuminating, and binding Arabic manuscripts of this period, as well as a resource on the history of chemistry. The portion of the manuscript describing bookbinding is incomplete, lacking details on the techniques of decoration.

The text was translated by Martin Levey as "Mediaeval Arabic Bookmaking and its Relation to Early Chemistry and Pharmacology" and published in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, Vol. 52 (1962) 5-79. Because of the incompleteness of the bookbinding section of ibn Badis's manuscript Levey added an appendix to this work, containing his translation of Abu'l-Abbas Ahmed ibn Muhammed al Sufyani's Sinaat tasfir alkutub wa-hill aldhahab (Art of Bookbinding and Gilding) written in 1619.

Pollard, Early Bookbinding Manuals (1984) no. 2.  See also Bosch, Carswell, Petherbridge, Islamic Bindings & Bookmaking. A Catalogue of an Exhibition, The Oriental Institute, The University of Chicago (1981). The earliest bindings illustrated and described in this exhibition dated from the 13th to 15th centuries.

The oldest Scottish book remaining in Scotland is an eleventh century illuminated version of the Psalms of King David preserved in the Center for Research Collections at Edinburgh University Library. The Celtic Psalter, with Celtish and Pictish illuminations, was exhibited at the library for the first time in its recorded history in December 2009.

"The origin of the psalter is a mystery but experts believe it was probably produced by monks in Iona, who were also associated with the making of the Book of Kells. It is thought that the book was written for someone of major importance, with one possibility being St Margaret, who was Queen of Scotland around the time it was produced.  

"The 144-page medieval Psalter includes Pictish designs of colourful dragons, beasts and monsters, with images on almost every page" (http://medievalnews.blogspot.com/2009/12/celtic-psalter-scotlands-oldest-book.html, accessed 12-10-2009).

The earliest codex preserving ancient Greek music theory is Heidelbergensis Palatinus gr. 281. It was probably written in Seleucia in Mesopotamia, by the scribe, Nikolaos Kalligraphos, and completed on January 14, 1040. The manuscript is preserved at Heidelberg University Library.

"The scribe's colophon states that 'this book was assembled from many works among the private papers of Romanus, judge at Seleucia and my master. All you who read it, pray for him.' The codex was conceived as a complete book; there are no blank leaves or sides. It preserves [Michael] Psellus' complete Syntagma together with the preliminary Logices, and this is followed by his Opiniones de anima, a short excert from Leontinius on the hypostatases, chapter 38 from Photius Quaestiones ad Amphilochium, and ten short theological treatises by Theodore Abucara, an author represented in Arethas' collection of books. It is surely no coindicence that this codex preserves these particular works, which point back to libraries of the ninth century, as well as the work of Psellus. After Theodor Abucara, the codex includes the koine hormasia and an accompanying canon; three sections from Theon of Smyna's treatise, here titled Μομσικομ κανονοξ κατατομη, or 'Division of the Musical Canon'; a short explanation of the musical ratios and genera, part of which corresponds to section 103 of the so-called Bellermann's Anonymous, and a series of excepts from Bacchius' treatise. . . "(Mathiesen, "Hermes of Clio? The Transmission of Ancient Greek Music Theory", Palisca, Baker, Hanning [eds.] Musical Humanism and its Legacy. Essays in Honor of Claude V. Palisca [1992] 9-10).

The Chinese alchemist Pi Sheng invents moveable type made of an amalgam of clay and glue hardened by baking.

Pi Sheng composed texts by placing the types side by side on an iron plate coated with a mixture of resin, wax, and paper ash.

Because the Chinese alphabet is primarily pictographic and ideographic rather than alphabetic, moveable type did not advance in China at this time.

The earliest surviving book written in the Americas is the Dresden Codex, a Mayan codex written by the Yucatecan Maya in Chichén Itza, Yucatan, Mexico. It is the most complete of the four remaining codices written in the Americas before the Spanish conquest.

The codex was made from Amatl paper ("kopó", fig-bark that has been flattened and covered with a lime paste), doubled in folds in an accordion-like form of folding-screen texts. The bark paper was coated with fine stucco or gesso and is eight inches high by eleven feet long.

The Dresden Codex was written by eight different scribes. Each had a particular writing style, glyphs and subject matter. On its 74 pages it incorporates  "images painted with extraordinary clarity using very fine brushes. The basic colors used from vegetable dyes for the codex were red, black and the so-called Mayan blue."

"The Dresden Codex contains astronomical tables of outstanding accuracy. Contained in the codex are almanacs, astronomical and astrological tables, and religious references.The specific god references have to do with a 260 day ritual count divided up in several ways.The Dresden Codex contains predictions for agriculture favorable timing. It has information on rainy seasons, floods, illness and medicine. It also seems to show conjunctions of constellations, planets and the Moon. It is most famous for its Venus table." (quotations from the Wikipedia article Dresden Codex, accessed 11-30-2008).

The history of the survival of the manuscript is only partly known. It is believed that in 1519 it was sent by the conquistador Hernán Cortés as a tribute toHoly Roman Emperor Charles V, who was also King Charles I of Spain. Charles had appointed Cortés governor and captain general of the newly conquered Mexican territory. In 1739 Johann Christian Götze, Director of the Royal Library at Dresden, purchased the codex from a private owner in Vienna. Götze gave it to the Royal Library in Dresden in 1744.

During the bombing of Dresden in World War II, and the resulting fire storms, the Dresden Codex was heavily water damaged. Twelve pages of the codex were harmed and other parts of the codex were destroyed. However, the codex was meticulously restored after this damage. It is preserved in the Buchmuseum of the Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden.

"By CE 800 the use of parchment and vellum had replaced papyrus in many areas, though its use in Egypt continued until it was replaced by more inexpensive paper introduced by Arabs. The reasons for this switch include the significantly higher durability of the hide-derived materials, particularly in moist climates, and the fact that they can be manufactured anywhere. The latest certain dates for the use of papyrus are 1057 for a papal decree (typically conservative, all papal "bulls" were on papyrus until 1022), under Pope Victor II, and 1087 for an Arabic document. Papyrus was used as late as the 1100s in the Byzantine Empire, but there are no surviving examples. Although its uses had transferred to parchment, papyrus therefore just overlapped with the use of paper in Europe, which began in the 11th century" (Wikipedia article on Papyrus, accessed 01-03-2010)

William the Conqueror,  lands unopposed in England on September 28.

The Norman Conquest of England ocurred with the defeat of the Saxon King Harald's forces at the Battle of Hastings on October 14.

The sacking of Cairo results in destruction of its 200,000 volume palace library.

Harris, History of Libraries in the Western World, 4th ed. [1999] 80.

Defeat of the Byzantine Empire in the battle with Seljuk Turkish forces at Manzikert, and the capture of Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes, demonstrated to European Christians that Byzantine forces were not capable of protecting Eastern Christianity. This eventually led to the Crusades.

The Bayeux Tapestry, an embroidery roughly 70 meters long, is produced in England, possibly in Canterbury, commemorating events leading up to and after the Battle of Hastings.

"The tapestry has text in Latin describing what is happening in the scenes. This work of art includes 623 humans, 202 horses, 41 ships, 2000 Latin words and 8 different colors of yarn."

"The tapestry was most likely first put on display in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, built by Bishop Odo in 1077. Then, no mention of it is found for the next 300 years. Then, it was mentioned in 1750 when it was referred to in a book by the name of Palaeographia Britannicus. Soon afterward, the people of Bayeux, who were fighting for the Republic, needed cloth to cover their wagons. As such, the tapestry was removed from the cathedral and used to cover an ammunition wagon. A lawyer saved the tapestry by replacing it with another cloth. In 1803 Napoleon seized it and transported it to Paris. Napoleon wanted to use the tapestry as inspiration for his planned attack on England. When this plan was cancelled, the tapestry was returned to Bayeux. The townspeople wound the tapestry up and stored it like a scroll. The tapestry spent World War II wound up in the Louvre. Now it is stored in a museum in a dark room with special lighting to avoid damaging it."

William the Conqueror, and less well known as William the Bastard, commissions the Domesday Book. It records the first English census.

The first draft was completed in August 1086 and contained records for 13,418 settlements in the English counties south of the rivers Ribble and Tees (the border with Scotland at the time). William commissioned the book to assess the extent of the land and owned in England at the time, and the extent of the taxes he could raise. The information collected was recorded in two huge books, in the space of around a year. William died in 1087 before the Domeday Book was completed. It is preserved in London's Public Record Office in Kew.

It was called the Domesday Book because:

"It was written by an observer of the survey that 'there was no single hide nor a yard of land, nor indeed one ox nor one cow nor one pig which was left out.' The grand and comprehensive scale on which the Domesday survey took place, and the irreversible nature of the information collected led people to compare it to the Last Judgement, or 'Doomsday', described in the Bible, when the deeds of Christians written in the Book of Life were to be placed before God for judgement. This name was not adopted until the late 12th Century."

Chinese scholar of the Song Dynasty Shen Kua writes Dream Pool Essays, containing the earliest description of the principle of the compass—magnetizing a needle by rubbing its tip with lodestone, hanging the magnetic needle with one single strain of silk with a bit of wax attached to the center of the needle.

Shen Kua pointed out that the needle prepared this way sometimes points south, sometimes points north.

Lambert of St. Omer, also known as Lambert of St. Bertin, compiles the Liber Floridus, a kind of encyclopedia of Biblical, chronological, astronomical, geographical, cartographic, theological, philosophical and natural history compiled from 192 different works.

"In this treatise Lambert compiled a chronicle or history that reaches to the year 1119; it contains various maps, including a mappamundi, which originally like the text, has a date at least earlier than 1125, and has survived in three forms: in the manuscripts of Ghent, Wolfenbüttel, and Paris. In spite of a clearly expressed intention of supplying a complete world map, the oldest copy, the Ghent manuscript, only includes Europe, two Macrobian-zone sketches and a T-O design. This particular manuscript copy seems to have been written by Lambert himself, certainly not later than 1125, and contains some remarkable peculiarities with regards to Europe. The Wolfenbüttel and Paris copies, dating from about 1150, are simply different copies from the same original, which was doubtless of Lambert's own draftsmanship (although in a monograph entitled Die Weltkarte des Martianus Capella, R. Uhden has pointed out that the world map contained in the Wolfenbüttel copy carries a legend ascribing the original to Martianus Capella. The correctness of the ascription is further verified by the identity of various other legends on the map with passages in the Satyricon or De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii . . . by Martianus Capella). These maps, which are based upon Capella's design, contain an equatorial ocean but are quite different than the Macrobian zone-maps (Slide #201). The ecliptic is usually shown, with the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the generalization of the coastlines is rounded in nature. Most of these maps are characteristically oriented to the East (although some show a northern orientation), and have a large amount of text in the southern continent. The climatic zones may or may not be explicitly shown. Regularly shaped islands are usually found in the ocean surrounding the northern continent.

"While containing a less detailed Europe, both the Wolfenbüttel and Paris manuscripts possess a complete mappamundi, together with a special and interesting addition. Nowhere else in medieval cartography do we find greater prominence assigned to the unknown southern continent - the Australian land of the fabled Antipodes (termed Antichthon by the ancients). On the Paris manuscript, where this land occupies half of the circle of the earth, a long inscription defines this 'region of the south' in terms not unlike those used on the St. Sever - Beatus map (Slide #207D)" (http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/EMwebpages/217mono.html, accessed 12-26-2008)

After Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos sent his ambassador in March 1095 to call for help with defending his empire against the Muslim Seljuk Turks, Pope Urban II, at the Council of Clermont held in November of the same year, delivered a sermon that was characterized as  "the most effective single speech in European history." He summoned the attending nobility and the people to wrestle the Holy Land from the hands of the Seljuk Turks.

This led to the First Crusade. Crusader armies marched on Jerusalem, sacking several cities on their way. In 1099 they took Jerusalem and massacred the population. As a result of the First Crusade, several small Crusader states were created, notably the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Though the date of the founding of the University of Oxford is unknown, there is evidence of teaching there at this date.