The aspiration to rule 'the four corners of the universe' has been the hallmark of imperial ideologies worldwide since the beginning of history.
Ancient Egypt The Egyptian King was believed to rule 'all under the sun.' On
Abydos Stelae,
Thutmose I claimed: "I made the boundaries of Egypt as far as the sun encircles."
The Story of Sinuke tells that the King has "subdued all that the sun encircles."
The Hymn of Victory of
Thutmose III and the
Stelae of Amenophis II proclaimed that no one makes a boundary with the King and there is "no boundary for him towards all lands united, towards all lands together." Thutmose III was also acknowledged: "None presents himself before thy majesty. The circuit of the Great Circle [Ocean] is included in thy grasp."
Mesopotamia The prestigious title of
King of the Universe appeared in
Ancient Mesopotamia, being used by powerful monarchs claiming world domination, starting with the Akkadian king
Sargon (2334–2284 BC). It was used in a succession of later empires claiming symbolical descent from Sargon's
Akkadian Empire. During the
early dynastic period in Mesopotamia (c. 2900–2350 BC), the rulers of the region's city-states (such as
Ur,
Uruk,
Lagash,
Umma, and
Kish) would often launch invasions into regions and cities far from their own, generally with negligible consequences for themselves, in order to establish temporary and small empires to either gain or keep a superior position relative to the other city-states. Eventually this quest to be more prestigious and powerful than the other
city-states resulted in a general ambition for universal rule. Since
Mesopotamia was equated to correspond to the entire world and
Sumerian cities had been built far and wide (cities the like of
Susa,
Mari and
Assur were located near the perceived corners of the world) it seemed possible to reach the edges of the world (at this time thought to be the lower sea, the
Persian gulf, and the upper sea, the
Mediterranean). The title
šar kiššatim was perhaps most prominently used by the kings of the
Neo-Assyrian Empire, more than a thousand years after the fall of the Akkadian Empire.
Persia Achaemenid imperial ideology had created
the largest empire up until that time, but it was still only a fraction of the land and people of the Earth.|247x247pxAfter taking
Babylon and defeating the
Neo-Babylonian Empire,
Cyrus the Great proclaimed himself "
King of Babylon,
King of Sumer and Akkad,
King of the Four Corners of the World" in the famous
Cyrus Cylinder, an inscription deposited in the foundations of the
Esagila temple dedicated to the chief
Babylonian god,
Marduk. Cyrus the Great's dominions composed the largest empire the world had seen to that point, spanning from the
Mediterranean Sea and
Hellespont in the west to the
Indus River in the east.
Iranian philosophy,
literature and
religion played dominant roles in world events for the next millennium, with the Cyrus Cylinder considered the oldest-known declaration of
human rights. Before Cyrus and his army crossed the river
Araxes to fight the Armenians, he installed his son,
Cambyses II, as king in case he should not return from battle. However, once Cyrus had crossed the river, he had a vision in which
Darius had wings atop his shoulders and stood upon the confines of Europe and Asia (the known world). When Cyrus awoke from the dream, he interpreted it as signaling a great danger to the future security of the empire, as it meant that Darius would one day rule the whole world. However, his son Cambyses was the heir to the throne, not Darius, causing Cyrus to wonder if Darius was forming treasonable and ambitious designs. This led Cyrus to order Hystaspes to go back to
Persis and watch over his son strictly, until Cyrus himself returned. In many
cuneiform inscriptions, like the
Behistun Inscription, Darius the Great presents himself as a devout believer of
Ahura Mazda, perhaps even convinced that he had a
divine right to rule over the world, believing that because he lived
righteously by
Asha, Ahura Mazda supported him as a
virtuous monarch and appointed him to rule the
Achaemenid Empire and their global projection, while believing through his
dualist beliefs that each rebellion in his empire was the work of
Druj, the enemy of
Asha.
Sasanian imperial ideology In the
Sasanian Empire, the use of the mythological
Kayanian title of
kay, first used by
Yazdegerd II and reaching its zenith under
Peroz I, stemmed from a shift in the political perspective of the Sasanian Empire. Originally disposed towards the west against their rivals from the
Byzantine Empire, this now changed to the east against the
Hephthalites. The war against the
Hunnic tribes (
Iranian Huns) may have awakened the mythical rivalry existing between the Iranian Kayanian rulers (
mythical kings of the legendary
Avestan dynasty) and their
Turanian enemies, which is demonstrated in the
Younger Avesta. The Sasanian
Shahanshah may have believed themselves the heirs of the
Fereydun and
Iraj (reinforced because they were
Ahura Mazda's worshippers), and so possibly considered both the Byzantine domains in the west and the eastern domains of the Hephthalites as belonging to Iran, and therefore have been symbolically asserting their rights over these lands of both
hemispheres of Earth by assuming the title
kay. This is based on the legend of the Iranian hero-king
Fereydun (Frēdōn in Middle Persian), who divided his kingdom between his three sons: his eldest son
Salm received the empire of the west, '
Rûm' (more generally meaning the
Roman Empire, the
Greco-Roman world, or just 'the West'); the second eldest
Tur received the empire of the east, being
Turān (all the lands north and east of the
Amu Darya, as far as
China); and the youngest,
Iraj, received the heartland of the empire,
Iran. and a legend persists that after he completed his military conquest of the known
ancient world, he "wept because he had no more worlds to conquer", as he was unaware of China farther to the east and had no way to know about civilizations in the Americas. Derivative characters of Alexander the Great, such as
Sa'b Dhu Marathid in the south Arabian tradition, were also presented as world conquerors. After the collapse of the
Macedonian Empire, the
Seleucid Empire appeared with claims to world rule in their imperial ideology, as
Antiochus I Soter claimed the ancient Mesopotamian title
King of the Universe. However, it didn't reflect realistic Seleucid imperial ambitions at this point after the peace treaty of
Seleucus I Nicator with the
Mauryans had set a limit to eastern expansion, and Antiochus ceding the lands west of
Thrace to the
Antigonids. In a
Jain legend, Yasasvati Devi, the most senior queen of
Rishabhanatha (the first Jain
tirthankara), saw four
auspicious dreams one night. She saw the sun and the moon,
Mount Meru, the lake with swans, the Earth and the ocean. Rishabhanatha explained to her that these dreams meant that a
chakravartin ruler will be born to them who will conquer the whole world. Then, Bharata, a
Kshatriya from the
Ikshvaku dynasty, was born to them on the ninth day of the dark half of the month of
Chaitra. The Hindu text Skanda Purana (chapter 37) has it that "Rishabhanatha was the son of Nabhiraja, and Rishabha had a son named Bharata, and after the name of this Bharata, this country is known as Bharata-varsha." After completing his world-conquest, he is said to have proceeded to his capital Ayodhyapuri with a huge army and the divine chakra-ratna'' (a spinning, disk-like super weapon with serrated edges). According to legend, King
Vikramaditya's Empire spread across the
Middle East and
East Asia (even reaching modern Indonesia), with Vikramaditya a great
Hindu world emperor (or
Chakravarti). This probably inspired the imperial pretensions of
Chandragupta II and
Skandagupta, as the term
Vikramaditya is also used as a title by several
Hindu monarchs. According to
P. N. Oak and
Stephen Knapp, king Vikrama’s empire extended up to
Europe and the whole of
Jambudvip (
Indian subcontinent). But, according to most historical texts, his empire was located in present-day northern India and Pakistan, implying that the historic Vikramaditya only ruled
Bharat as far as the
River Indus, as per
Bhavishya Purana. There is no epigraphic evidence to suggest that his rule extended to Europe,
Arabia,
Central Asia or
Southeast Asia. (Sources of contemporaneous empires, like the
Parthians,
Kushans,
Chinese,
Romans and
Sassanids, don't mention an empire ruling from Arabia to Indonesia.) That part of his rule is considered to be legend, as
Indic religious conceptions of the
Indian subcontinent as being 'the world' (with the term
Jambudvīpa used broadly in the same way), and how that translates into folk memories. The
Mahabharata or
Somadeva's
Kathasaritsagara has pretensions of world domination, as performing some
mystic ritual and
virtues would be a signal of becoming emperor of the whole world, just as
Dharma has
universal jurisdiction over all the cosmos. In this epic there was a time when Emperor
Yudhishthira ruled over 'the world': as from Śuciratha will come the son named Vṛṣṭimān, and his son, Suṣeṇa, will be the emperor of the entire world. There are signs in
Bāṇabhaṭṭa that an emperor named
Harsha shall arise, who will rule over all the continents like
Harishchandra, who will conquer the world like
Mandhatri. But 'the world', in the time of
Ramayana in the 12th century BCE and
Mahabharata in the 5th century BCE, was only India. Some pan-Indian empires, like the
Maurya Empire, were seeking domination first of the ancient world known to Indians in the
Akhand Bharat, and then through
conflict with the
Seleucid Empire.
Ashoka the Great was a devout
Buddhist and wanted to establish it as a world religion. Also, the first references to a
Chakravala Chakravartin (an emperor who rules over all four of the continents) appears in monuments from the time of the early Maurya Empire, in the 4th to 3rd century BCE, in reference to
Chandragupta Maurya and his grandson Ashoka.
Mughal imperial ideology standing on a globe, by
Mir Hashim. The
Mughal Empire’s ideology of world domination was a complex, evolving framework that blended Central Asian
Timurid traditions, Perso-Islamic concepts of sacred kingship, and pragmatic adaptation to the diverse cultural landscape of
South Asia. Rather than just territorial expansion, this ideology was expressed through the creation of a "millennial sovereignty" that positioned the Mughal emperor as a divine, saintly figure overseeing a "universal peace" (sulh-i kul) across the globe, with India as the epicenter of their world empire. Beginning with
Akbar in 1556, the Mughals adopted a "millennial" perspective, coinciding with the first
Islamic millennium (1000 AH). They positioned their rulers as the
Sahib Qiran (Lord of Conjunction) and the
insan-i kamil (Perfect Man) of
Sufi metaphysics, transcending mere political power to command spiritual loyalty, perceinving the Mughal Kings as a "ray of light" emanating from
Allah, reinforcing his authority as both secular leader and spiritual guide, divinely inspired, with a spiritual charisma that drew on Islamic, Persian, and
Hindu traditions. Later, the fourth
Mughal emperor styled himself
Jahangir, meaning "world conqueror", and her wife
Mehr-un-Nissa being awarded with the title of Nur Jahan ('Light of the World'), serving as a way to defy the
Ottoman Caliphate and present themselves as the true leaders of all the
Islamic world, in which Mughal artists painted the emperor atop the world, often holding a globe or standing on a map, explicitly signifying his role as a supreme, world-controlling monarch. Also the Mughals considered their kingship inspired in the goal of reaching the
Sulh-i Kul (Universal Peace), religious harmony and equal treatment of all religious sects (both Hindu and
Muslim, and even
Christians in India), being the emperor a saintly guardian who transcended sectarian differences and had a destiny to achieve this goal to all the
World.
China In the
Sinosphere, one of the consequences of the
Mandate of Heaven in
Imperial China was the claim of the
Emperor of China as
Son of Heaven who ruled
tianxia (meaning 'all under heaven', closely associated with
civilization and order in classical Chinese philosophy), which in English can be translated as 'ruler of the whole world', being equivalent to the concept of a
universal monarch. The title was interpreted literally only in China and Japan, whose monarchs were referred to as
demigods,
deities, or 'living gods', chosen by
the gods and goddesses of heaven. The theory behind this derives from
Confucian bureaucracy: the Chinese emperor acted as the
autocrat of
tianxia and held a mandate to rule over everyone else in the world, as long as he served the people well. If the quality of rule became questionable because of repeated natural disasters such as flood or famine, or for other reasons, then rebellion was justified. This important concept legitimized the dynastic cycle, or change of dynasties. The center of this world-view was not exclusionary in nature, and outer groups, such as
ethnic minorities and foreigners who accepted the mandate of the Chinese Emperor (through annexation or living in
tributary states), were themselves received and included into
tianxia. The concept's 'inclusion of all' and implied acceptance of the world's diversity, emphasizing harmonious reciprocal dependence and rule by virtue as a means to lasting peace. Although in practice there would be areas of the known world which were not under the control of the Chinese monarch ('
barbarians'), in Chinese political theory the rulers of those areas derived their power from the Chinese monarch (
Sinocentrism). This principle was exemplified with the
goal of
Qin Shi Huang to "unify all under Heaven", which was, in fact, representative of his desire to control and expand Chinese territory to act as an actual geographic entity. At this time there existed many feudal states that had shared cultural and economic interests, so the concept of a great nation centered on the
Yellow River Plain (the known world) gradually expanded and the equivalence of
tianxia with the Chinese nation evolved due to the feudal practice of
conferring land. For the emperors of the central kingdom of China, the world can be roughly divided into two broad and simple categories: civilization and non-civilization, which means the people who have accepted the emperor's supremacy, the Heavenly virtue and its principle, and the people who have not accepted it. The emperors recognized their country as the only true civilization in all respects, starting with their geography and including all the known world in a
Celestial Empire. China's neighbors were obliged to pay their respects to the 'excellent' Chinese emperors within these boundaries on a regular basis. It is argued that this was the most important element of the East Asian order, which was implicit in the term 'Celestial Empire' in the past. In the 7th century, during the
Tang dynasty, some northern tribes of
Turkic origin, having been made vassal (as a consequence of the
Tang campaign against the Eastern Turks), referred to
Emperor Taizong of Tang as the '
Khan of Heaven'. The Chinese emperor exercised power over the surrounding dynasty in the name of a Celestial Empire.
Ancient Japanese,
Korean and
Vietnamese kings were
subjects of the Chinese emperor. The idea of the absolute authority of the Chinese emperor and the extension of
tianxia by the assimilation of vassal states began to fade with the
Opium Wars, as China was made to refer to Great Britain as a 'sovereign nation', equal to itself, and to establish
a foreign affairs bureau and accommodate the concept of
Westphalian sovereignty in its international affairs in the period of
New Imperialism.
Caliphate Classical Arab theology The theme of world domination is absent in the earliest Islamic sources,
Quran or the
hadith. Most warlike passages in Quran appear in defensive context. The motif of world domination appears almost a century after Muhammad during the
early Muslim conquests. Then Islamic thought divided the world into
Dar al-Islam coterminous with the
Caliphate and the rest of the world called
Dar al-Harb (lit. region of war). The latter world has not yet been subjugated and its inhabitants have remained outside the Islamic frontier. Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb were considered in a state of war because the ultimate objective of the Caliphate was world conquest. Imperial and expansionist, the Caliphate strived to subjugate other peoples by the means of
jihad. This became the chief preoccupation of the contemporary Islamic jurists, such as
Al-Shaybani. The jurists elaborated jihad for the conquest of Dar al-Harb. Originally Quranic defensive war, jihad evolved into offensive
holy war to be waged until the Caliphate attains world domination and converts all mankind into Islam. In theory, jihad was a temporary means to attain these ends. With worldwide Dar al-Islam, jihad would lose its raison d'être and pass out of existence. But Dar al-Harb proved to be more permanent and vaster than envisaged by the jurists. The wave of Islamic expansion stopped short of world domination and the Caliphate had to accommodate itself with other nations on grounds other than jihad.
Ottoman imperial ideology The
Ottoman Empire had claims of world domination through the
Ottoman Caliphate.
Süleyman the Magnificent's Venetian Helmet was an elaborate headpiece designed to project the sultan's power in the context of
Ottoman–Habsburg rivalry. The four floors of the Crown also represent
Suleiman's goal of world conquest by reigning in the north, south, east and west, as well pipping the
Pope's famous
triple crown. Suleiman's rival,
Charles V, was crowned
Holy Roman Emperor by Pope
Clement VII, who wore the triple crown.
Mongol Empire Genghis Khan believed that it was his destiny to conquer the world for his god,
Tengri, in a mission to bring the rest of the world under one sword. This was based on his
shamanic beliefs of the Great Blue Sky that spans the world (deriving his mandate for a world empire from this universal divinity) and had heavily inspiration from
Chinese political concepts of universal and centralised power. The core belief was that Heaven had granted Genghis Khan and his descendants authority over all lands and peoples. Therefore, resistance to Mongol rule was viewed as a violation of divine will, justifying severe punishment. He came close to bringing the entirety of
Eurasia under the
Mongol Empire and the shamanic umbrella, often described as a "heavenly mission" to establish a single and unified empire, seeing himself as executor of heaven's plan to bring order to a fragmented world until becoming "one world, one ruler,". Born
Temujin, he adopted the name 'Genghis Khan', which means 'universal ruler'. This led to his sons and grandsons taking up the challenge of world conquest, being such right inherent to the
Borjigin dynasty (descendants of Genghis Khan), reinforced through diplomatic messages often demanding unconditional submission from foreign leaders.
Medieval and Early Modern Europe Habsburg Empire During the
Pax Hispanica, the
Spanish Habsburgs developed an ideology of world domination, which was particularly prominent during the 16th and 17th centuries under
Charles V and
Philip II. It wasn't merely a desire for territorial expansion of their
Empire, but a deeply religious and political mission as a
Successor of the Roman Empire and "
light of Trent", which was very relevant among the political intelectuality of the
School of Salamanca at the
Spanish Golden Age. It was grounded in the concept of the
Monarchia universalis, and a Providential sense of mission to expand
Catholicism in the
Colonization era, and also defend it during the crisis of the
European wars of religion and the
Ottoman wars in Europe (which were perceived an extension of the
Reconquista, based in the
Crusading movement), which lead to Spanish painters to ussually portray their Monarchs standing on a
Globe, reflecting the Spanish main goal to create a unified, worldwide
Christian empire or
Universitas Christiana. Later such imperial ideology was continued by the
Austrian Habsburgs under the motto
Austrie est imperare orbi universo in the reign of
Charles VI and his succesors, although without the
Colonialist aspects and phocusing on re-affirm the
Holy Roman Emperor (with its capital in the
Archduchy of Austria) supremacy as
High king around the world. == Modern theory ==