Our political world map reveals the world in 800 CE, visualizing a period of growing regional powers and expanding networks of exchange. This map highlights the rise of major Islamic states and other of the world’s major states at the time, including:
- The Abbasid Caliphate and Byzantine Empire in Southwest Asia and the Mediterranean
- The Tang Dynasty in China
- The Carolingian Empire in Western Europe
- The Ghana Empire in West Africa
- Srivijaya in Southeast Asia
How to Use This Map
Students can use the map to locate these societies and consider how geography shaped their development and interactions. Students can explore both the expansion of centralized states into new regions in the Americas, Sub-Saharan Africa, and central Asia, as well as the fragmentation of earlier large empires into smaller political units in other areas.
800 CE political map, by OER Project, CC BY 4.0.