1058

1051 1052 1053 1054 1055 1056 1057 1058 1059 1060

political events

Scotland's Lulach (the Simple) dies March 17 at age 28 (approximate) by the hand of his late father's assassin Malcolm Canmore, king of Cumbria, who makes himself king of Scotland; the new monarch is crowned at Scone Abbey, Perthshire, April 25 and will reign until his death in 1093 as Malcolm III MacDuncan.

William of Normandy defeats Godfrey of Anjou in August at the Battle of Varaville in Normandy.

Poland's grand duke Casimir I dies November 28 at age 43, having regained much of Poland's lost territory with help from the late Heinrich III and restored Christianity. Casimir is succeeded after an 18-year reign by his 19-year-old son, who will rule until 1079 as Boleslav II (the Bold).

Zirid forces take Algeciras, ending the Hammudid dynasty that has ruled since 1013.

Córdoba's vizier Ibn ar-Raqa is assassinated by the sovereign ar-Rashid's jealous son Abd al-Malik, who instead of being punished is given virtually all the powers of a caliph, but ar-Rashid and al-Malik alienate the city-state's people (see 1069).

Arab and Shiite forces financed by the Fatimid caliphate at Cairo enter Baghdad under the command of Basasiri, who imprisons the Abbasid caliph Al-Qaim and has prayers recited in the name of Egypt's caliph Abu al-Mustansir, who by some accounts is more interested in music and pleasure than in politics (see 1056). Egypt's Fatimid vizier al Yazuri is executed for alleged treason after an 8-year reign in which his country received wheat from the late Byzantine emperor Constantine IX Monomachus to relieve a famine; he has amassed a huge personal fortune, the Baghdad expedition has been ruinously expensive, Sicily and parts of northern Africa have broken away from the caliphate, the Seljuk Turks have begun to seize Fatimid territory in Syria, and the vizier may have been made a scapegoat, but his successors will prove far less able (see 1062; Baghdad, 1060).

religion

Pope Stephen IX (or X) dies at Florence March 29 at age 57 (approximate) after an 8-month reign in which he has convoked a Roman synod to denounce simony. A cousin of the late Pope Leo IX, he has centralized Vatican reform, enforced clerical celibacy, worked to stop the Norman advance in southern Italy, and tried to negotiate an end to the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches. Rome's Tusculani family engineers the installation of Giovanni Mincio as antipope in April and he will reign until early next year as Benedict X, but a true pope is elected in early December and will reign until 1061 as Nicholas II.

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