WHAT HAPPENED IN 1048

By place

Asia

• September 10 or September 18 – Battle of Kapetrou: Seljuks defeat a force of Byzantines and Georgians.
  

Europe

• Failed Byzantine attempt to reconquer Malta.
• Last Viking raid on the Kingdom of England; unsuccessful raiders flee to Flanders.[1]
• King Edward the Confessor of England goes to war against Flanders, blockading the English Channel with a fleet based at Sandwich, Kent.[1]
• Approximate date – The city of Oslo is founded by King Harald Hardrada of Norway.
  

By topic

Religion

• July 16 – Pope Benedict IX is driven from Rome by German troops, ending his third and final pontificate.
• July 17 – Pope Damasus II succeeds Benedict IX as the 151st pope.
  

Births

• May 18 – Omar Khayyám, Persian poet, astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher (d. 1123)

Omar Khayyam was one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. He was acknowledged as the author of the most important treatise on algebra before modern times. This is reflected in his Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra giving a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle. His significance as a philosopher and teacher, and his few remaining philosophical works, has not received the same attention as his scientific and poetic writings.

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• May 25 – Emperor Shenzong of China (d. 1085)
• June 16 – Sheikh Ahmad-e Jami, Persian Sufi and S973)ufi writer
• Alexius I Comnenus, Byzantine Emperor (d. 1118)
  

Deaths

• August 9 – Pope Damasus II
• December 13 – Al-Biruni, Persian mathematician