History of gunpowder in the context of "Islamic world contributions to Medieval Europe"

The Four Great Inventions are inventions from imperial China that are celebrated in Chinese culture for their historical significance and as symbols of ancient China's advanced science and technology. They are the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing.

These four inventions had a profound impact on the development of civilization throughout the world. However, some modern Chinese scholars have opined that other Chinese inventions were perhaps more sophisticated and had a greater impact on Chinese civilization – the Four Great Inventions serve merely to highlight the technological interaction between East and West.

The architecture of the United Kingdom, or British architecture, consists of a combination of architectural styles, dating as far back to Roman architecture, to the present day 21st century contemporary. England has seen the most influential developments, though Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have each fostered unique styles and played leading roles in the international history of architecture. Although there are prehistoric and classical structures in the United Kingdom, British architectural history effectively begins with the first Anglo-Saxon Christian churches, built soon after Augustine of Canterbury arrived in Great Britain in 597. Norman architecture was built on a vast scale throughout Great Britain and Ireland from the 11th century onwards in the form of castles and churches to help impose Norman authority upon their dominions. English Gothic architecture, which flourished between 1180 until around 1520, was initially imported from France, but quickly developed its own unique qualities.

Throughout the United Kingdom, secular medieval architecture has left a legacy of large stone castles, with a concentration being found lining both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border, dating from the Wars of Scottish Independence of the 14th century. The invention of gunpowder and cannons made castles redundant, and the English Renaissance that followed facilitated development of new artistic styles for domestic architecture: Tudor style, English Baroque, Queen Anne Style, and Palladian. Georgian, Scots Baronial and Neoclassical architecture advanced after the Scottish Enlightenment, and since the 1930s various modernist forms appeared, though traditionalist resistance movements continue with support from Charles, Prince of Wales.

Major military efforts were taken by Kublai Khan of the Yuan dynasty in 1274 and 1281 to conquer the Japanese archipelago after the submission of the Korean kingdom of Goryeo to vassaldom. Ultimately a failure, the invasion attempts are of macro-historical importance because they set a limit on Mongol expansion and rank as nation-defining events in the history of Japan. The invasions are referred to in many works of fiction and are the origin of the word kamikaze (神風 "divine wind"), first used to describe the typhoons that destroyed the Mongol invasion fleets in the 13th century. The term was later adopted in the 20th century to describe Japanese pilots who deliberately crashed their aircraft into enemy warships during the last years of World War II.

The invasions were one of the earliest cases of gunpowder warfare outside of China. One of the most notable technological innovations during the war was the use of explosive, hand-thrown bombs.

"Gunpowder empires", or "Islamic gunpowder empires", is a term coined by the American historians Marshall G. S. Hodgson and William H. McNeill to describe three early modern Muslim empires: the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Empire and the Mughal Empire, which flourished between the mid-16th and early 18th centuries.

McNeill focused on the history of gunpowder use across multiple civilizations in East Asia, Europe, and India in his 1993 work The Age of Gunpowder Empires. The gunpowder empires conquered vast amounts of territory with the use and deployment of newly invented firearms, especially cannon and small arms; together they stretched from Central Europe and North Africa in the west to Bengal and Arakan in the east. In the case of Europe, the introduction of gunpowder weapons also prompted changes such as the rise of centralised monarchical states. As a result, the three empires were among the most stable of the early modern period, leading to commercial expansion, cultural patronage, and the consolidation of political and legal institutions.

The fire lance (simplified Chinese: 火枪; traditional Chinese: 火槍; pinyin: huǒqiāng; lit. 'fire spear') was a gunpowder weapon used by lighting it on fire, and is the ancestor of modern firearms. It first appeared in 10th–12th century China and was used to great effect during the Jin-Song Wars. It began as a small pyrotechnic device attached to a polearm weapon, used to gain a shock advantage at the start of a melee. As gunpowder improved, the explosive discharge was increased, and debris or pellets added, giving it some of the effects of a combination modern flamethrower and shotgun, but with a very short range (about 3 meters or 10 feet), and only one shot (although some were designed for two shots). By the late 13th century, fire lance barrels had transitioned to metal material to better withstand the explosive blast, and the lance-point was discarded in favor of relying solely on the gunpowder blast. These became the first hand cannons.

A war elephant is an elephant that is trained and guided by humans for combat purposes. Historically, the war elephant's main use was to charge the enemy, break their ranks, and instill terror and fear. Elephantry is a term for specific military units using elephant-mounted troops.

War elephants played a critical role in several key battles in antiquity, especially in ancient India. While seeing limited and periodic use in Ancient China, they became a permanent fixture in armies of historical kingdoms in Southeast Asia. They were also used in ancient Persia and in the Mediterranean world within armies of Macedon, Hellenistic Greek states, the Roman Republic and later Empire, and Ancient Carthage in North Africa. In some regions they maintained a firm presence on the battlefield throughout the Medieval era. However, their use declined with the spread of firearms and other gunpowder weaponry in early modern warfare. After this, war elephants became restricted to non-combat engineering and labour roles, as well as being used for minor ceremonial uses.

The Song dynasty (Chinese: 宋朝; 960–1279 CE) witnessed many substantial scientific and technological advances in Chinese history. Some of these advances and innovations were the products of talented statesmen and scholar-officials drafted by the government through imperial examinations. Shen Kuo (1031–1095), author of the Dream Pool Essays, is a prime example, an inventor and pioneering figure who introduced many new advances in Chinese astronomy and mathematics, establishing the concept of true north in the first known experiments with the magnetic compass. However, commoner craftsmen such as Bi Sheng (972–1051), the inventor of movable type printing (in a form predating the printing press of Johannes Gutenberg), were also heavily involved in technical innovations.

The ingenuity of advanced mechanical engineering had a long tradition in China. The Song engineer Su Song, who constructed a hydraulically-powered astronomical clocktower, admitted that he and his contemporaries were building upon the achievements of the ancients such as Zhang Heng (78–139), an astronomer, inventor, and early master of mechanical gears whose armillary sphere was automatically rotated by a waterwheel and clepsydra timer. The application of movable type printing advanced the already widespread use of woodblock printing to educate and amuse Confucian students and the masses. The application of new weapons employing the use of gunpowder enabled the Song to ward off its militant enemies—the Liao, Western Xia, and Jin with weapons such as cannons—until its collapse to the Mongol forces of Kublai Khan in the late 13th century.