Born Then786–1000
Life during the Abbasid prosperity (Islamic Golden Age)
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
Under the early Abbasid caliphs, Baghdad grew into one of the largest cities in the world. Paper, new crops such as cotton, rice and sugar, and long-distance trade spread across the caliphate, and scholars translated and extended Greek, Persian and Indian learning. Its gains went mostly to towns and to those who could read.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from our model, estimated from the sources.
Around the same time
- Indian Ocean slave trade 700–1799
- Abbasid prosperity (Islamic Golden Age) 786–1000
- Viking raids 793–1066
- Classic Maya collapse 800–950
- Norse settlement of Iceland 874–930
- Song dynasty commercial revolution 960–1270
- Chola expansion 985–1070
- Polynesian settlement of Hawaii 1000–1200