Our world history has been written with blood that a civilization conquered others. Human mankind has always tried hard to expand their authority for religion, economy, politics, even honor. Most of the conquests were done regionally. However, some of them happened wider. Although the conquests were done locally, they influenced globally and even changed the world history. Some of the influences even remain until now.
After the imperialism when the western countries colonized the world, most of us have believed that western world is the super power and they had done more in the history than other civilizations did. We have heard about the great conquerors from the western such as Hitler, Napoleon, and Hernando Cortez. If we try to look back to the era before the colonialism or even before the renaissance, we will see how the world history was also played by the eastern civilizations. To prove it we’re going to see the top five of the greatest conquerors from the ancient time.
What we see as China today was actually several small states before they were united by Qin. He conquered the Zhou territory and the rest of China. Qin Shihuangdi was a powerful emperor whose empire was never wiped out and lasted for 2000 years. He centralized the control of China and standardized law, economy, and writing system. He even imposed censorship to the opposition ideas. In order to defend his empire from the north nomads, Qin also ordered the big project of the Great Wall of China. It still stands today as a monument to Qin’s ambition and to peasants who carried out their emperor’s will (M. Farah & A. Karls, 1999). China is a big united country and has been holding the important roles in the world history. The united China was a great work of Qin Shihuangdi by 221 B.C. rewarding Qin the fifth of the greatest conquerors.
United China’s flourishing civilization was a great part of the world history. However, the conquest Qin did didn’t influence global change of the world directly. The fourth of the greatest conquerors comes to a Turkey sultan, Mehmed II, the conquest of whom immediately influenced the movement of the world history. This young sultan conquered the superpower civilization at that time, the Byzantine Empire. The people of the Constantinople were to watch from Hagia Sophia the troops of the Ottoman dragging warships on wheeled platform up and over the hills of Pera and down into the Golden Horn to bypass the huge iron chain barred in the mouth of Golden Horn. The huge cannons attack eventually led Constantinople to the fall (Hagia Sophia, 1989). The fall of this important city on May 29, 1453, closed the way to Asia for the western. It forced Europeans to find other routes through water to get to Asia just like what were done by Vasco da Gamma and Columbus who then found the new land of America. This finally led to the colonization by the western over the world.
What was done by Sultan Mehmed II really influenced the change of the world history. However, the area the sultan conquered will look very small compared to what was done by a Mongol king, Genghis Khan, our third conqueror in this list. Having united scattered clans of Mongol under one government, a Mongol leader, Temujin, was rewarded a new name of Genghis Khan or ‘Universal Ruler’. He then set out to create a large empire with military campaigns over the world. Followed by the most skilled fighting force in the world at the time (Farah & Karls, 1999), the khan conquered Turks and China by A.D 1211. After his death, his successors continued the conquest to Middle East and Europe. The Conquest to Middle East and the destruction of Baghdad represented a major set back to Islamic civilization.
Maybe Genghis Khan and his Mongol successors had conquered the largest area of the earth. His name was so famous today but there was a name of a conqueror which had inspired the world since the ancient time. He was Alexander the Great. He succeeded his murdered father when he was only 20. He was highly respected by his soldiers for his courage and military skill and extremely well educated, for his father had him tutored by Aristotle (Farah & Karls, 1999). He set out to challenge the Persian control over the Ionian cities and ended up with an empire that for the first time linked western and central Asia (G. Leick, 1999). Next, he captured Egypt where he founded port of Alexandria in the Nile delta by 332 B.C. Before his death Alexander had controlled over Greek, Asia Minor, Egypt, Palestine, Persia, and India. This achievement belongs to legend as much as to history (C. Brinton, 1984). Alexander the Great, the emperor of Macedonia, deserves of the second place in this list.
Finally we come to the greatest conqueror ever in the world civilization history, the Prophet Muhammad SAW. He was born in Mecca around A.D 570. During his teens, Muhammad SAW worked as an honest caravan leader on a trade route in Arabian Peninsula. In A.D 610, he experienced a revelation calling him to be an apostle of God and then he began to preach in Mecca. The opposition to Islam forced him to depart to Yathrib where he then got more followers. Yathrib accepted him as a God’s prophet and their ruler. He was skilled political as well as religious leader (Farah & Karls, 1999). He was successful in both (Michael Hart, 1978). In Yathrib (Madinah), Muhammad laid the foundation of an Islamic State. After several wars between Mecca and Yathrib, eventually the Mecca invaded the Prophet city. Muslim won the battle and in A.D 630, Muhammad SAW entered Mecca as a conqueror. The Mecca citizens then accepted Islam. Two years later in A.D 632 when Muhammad SAW died, most of Arabians had become Muslims.
Under his successors, like Umar ibn Khattab, Syria, Palestine, Persia, and Egypt were conquered almost simultaneously in the further years. In A.D 698 the Muslims took over North Africa after attacking Italy and conquered the native barber tribes in the Central Africa who had resisted Romans so far. In 711, under the command of Tariq, they invaded Spain across the straits of Gibraltar, ‘The Rock of Tariq’. By 725, Muslims expansion was stopped by France in Tours, meanwhile Islam had been spreading from Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Persia, to the Indus River and the west frontiers of China. These conquests on the first century of Islam were virtually final. Only the Mediterranean Islands and Spain were re-conquered by Christians (C. Brighton). The Islam it self then was spreading even to the south East Asia.
Arabian united by the Prophet is not as large as China united by Qin. The Prophet didn’t conquer the land as wide as what Genghis Khan did. His name as a conqueror might not be as legendary as Alexander the Great. However, there’s no doubt that Muhammad SAW had influenced the most to the world civilization history. What had been conquered by Alexander and Genghis Khan didn’t last forever as the area of Greek and Mongol is not wider than that before they were born. Most of what Muhammad SAW and his successors conquered still survives till now and maybe the more important left, Muhammad’s teaching of Islam, will last forever. The Prophet Muhammad SAW had changed the world civilization history and influenced the life of his followers.
We have seen the top five of the greatest conquerors in the history of the ancient world. Four of them come from the eastern and in the top rank seats an Arabian which at the time was considered as the uncivilized compared to the neighbors such as Byzantine Roman and Persian. It shows us that the eastern which is reputed as the third world by the western had ever played the important role in the world civilization history. Every civilization, not only Europeans, is able to change the world. In this modern era, we may resist physics conquest to other countries; however, we still can conquer the world in economy, politics, culture, and science.
Farah. M, Karls. A, (1999), World History: The Human Experiences,
Leick, G, (1999) Who’s Who in the Ancient Near East,
Mc Graw Hills
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar