• Arabs: Semitic-speaking people of southwest Asia
  • The region was inhabited by Bedouin Arabs and the ruling members were called sheikh and members were selected from a council of members called the majlis
  • Ka’aba in Mecca: black meteorite and is the most sacred site of Islamic faith
  • Muhammad: born to a merchant family in Mecca, orphaned by six
  • Married a rich widow, Khadija and meditated in the hills
  • Fled to Medina “city of the Prophet
  • When he fled, marks the first day of the Islamic calendar: Hegria
  • Qu’ran (“recitation”), the holy scripture of Islam: guidelines by which followers of Allah were to live.
  • Muslims are practitioners of Islam and “people of the book”
  • Muslims community known as umma
  • Islam: monotheistic and Allah is god
  • Muhammad is a prophet and a man
  • Five Pillars of Islam: shahada (declaration of faith), salah (prayer), zalah (charity), saum (fasting during Ramadan), and Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca)
  • Shari’a was the law and drawn from existing legal regulations (Hadith: collection of sayings of the Prophet)
  • After Muhammad’s death, Abu Bakr becomes caliph (successor) and considered religious leader (imam)
  • Jihad: religious struggle, war
  • Shi’ites and Sunni: schism that broke Islam into two groups
  • Shi’ites hold Muhammad’s son-in-law Ali was the rightful heir to the empire
  • Sunnis don not believe that Ali and his hereditary line are the chosen successors
  • Rather that leaders of the empire should be drawn from a broad base of people
  • Abbasids built a new capital city in Baghdad
  • Paper was introduced from China, Crops from India and Southeast Asia such as rice, sorghum, cotton, glass, wine, indigo dye
  • Seljuk Turks changed the title of a ruler to Sultan “holder of power”
  • Islamic culture: Greek works were translated and placed in “house of wisdom” in Baghdad,
  • math and linguistics text from India, paper from China
  • algebra and observatory
  • Sufism: revision of Islam. One’s own personal relation with Allah
  • During the Byzantine Empire under the Reign of Justinian: Theodra (prostitute) played a crucial role with Justinian
  • Belisarius (general) restored the imperial Mediterranean world
  • Codification of Lawwas divided into parts body of civil law, corpus, digest, institutes and novels
  • The codification until 1453 was the basis of imperial law in Byzantine Empire
  • Building projects: hippodrome, palace complex, Hagia Sophia
  • Iconoclasm: religious movement against the use of icons and important in the emergence of Protestant Reformation.
  • Church outlawed use of icons; bishop and emperor excommunicated themselves (1054)
  • Crusade: Byzantine people ask help from Roman Catholic.
  • Constantinople fall
  • Women in Islam: Men are appointed guardians over women.
  • The Qu’ran says to treat women equally

Rapid expansion of the Arabs:

  • channeling of the energy of the new converts to Islam, an ongoing conflict between the Persians and Byzantines made the expansion easier, a prolonged drought on the Arab peninsula, and an attempt on the part of the ruling elite in Mecca to expand the trade routes.

Allof the following contributed to the disintegration of the Muslim Empire under the Abbasids

  • Lack of spiritual authority that weakened the caliphate in competition with its rivals, the increase in wealth from trade also brought financial corruption, disputes over succession created internal destruction, many non-Arab peoples were recruited into the military
  • The term al-Andulas relates to what center of Islamic civilization?
  • Spain

Trade goods with the area from which those goods originated.

  • Spain - leather goods, olives and wine, East Africa - gold and ivory, China - silk and porcelain, South Asia - cotton and wheat

Who wrote a medical encyclopedia that became a basic European textbook?

  • Ibn Sina

What battle did the Byzantine Empire lose Syria and Palestine to the Muslims in 636?

  • Yarmuk
  • The Byzantine Empire:
  • Christian state, heir to Roman empire, Greek states, major influence on Russia

Under the Macedonian dynasty, the Byzantine Empire regained much of its former territory and was capably administered through a strong civil service.

  • The Macedonians provided solid leadership for the empire

The Abbasids allowed non-Arab Muslims to hold civilian offices.

  • Early African religious belief varied from place to place
  • Pantheism: belief in single creator god from whom all things came
  • Lineage group: belief in an afterlife was closely connected to the importance of ancestors to the clan
  • These ancestral souls would no be extinguished as long as the lineage group continued to perform rituals and these rituals would benefit the people as the ancestor had the power to influence their lives
  • The Berber people where nomadic people who lived in the mountains. The Arabs of North Africa were people who settled and had a strong faith in Islam.
  • Arabs bond with North Africa (Maghrep “the west”) – Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya = BEBER
  • Ghana = gold trade, Iron Age farmers
  • Controlled gold trade with West Africa and were “peaceful”
  • Mali = gold trade
  • Warlike, conquered small community. They were worry-free about Arabs for they had money $$$ (gold, salt, etc.)
  • Mansa Musa: pilgrimage to Mecca, carried gold with him
  • Stateless societies: no set boundaries, no laws, no structure
  • VICTIM HISTORY: history of people who are abused
  • Bantu Migration: help to make easier to spread language, knowledge, goods

  • The Khyber Pass was a section of the Silk Road that passed through the mountains northwest of India.
  • It was between Asia and Europe, everyone who went on the Silk Road went through the Khyber Pass.
  • Silk road to Indus River (current Afghanistan)
  • Buddhist trades used the Silk Road as away to Spread Buddhism by Buddhist writings (ideas of the printing press)
  • Theravada considered Buddhism, a way of life, not a Salvationist creed. Mahayana promoted the view that Nirvana could be achieved through devotion and not just through painstaking attention to one’s behavior.
  • Mahayana spilt because they felt Theravada teachings were too demanding or too strict for ordinary people to follow and therefore favored the wealthy.
  • Mahayana was popular in northern India.
  • Theravada was popular in Lanka and across the Bay of Bengal in Southeast Asia.
  • Buddhism ran counter to traditional Hindu belief.
  • Because it rejected class structure, it appealed to many of the groups who lacked acceptance.
  • It undermined the strong social bonds of the Indian caste system.
  • Also the transformation of Brahmanism into a revised faith known as Hinduism.
  • The Delhi sultanate (new form of Muslim Power) failed to take advantage of the disarray of its rivals as they posed a threat by the Mongols.
  • Tamerlane was the ruler of a Mongol khanate based in Samarkand to the north of the Pamir Mountains.
  • He was able to bring the entire region east of the Caspian Sea under this authority, conquering Baghdad, Mesopotamia, northern India, ad as far as Bosporus.
  • Southeast Asia was never unified as the civilizations where separated by dense forest and between China and India
  • Important mainland state: Kingdom of Angkor (Stone, walled city)
  • People known as Khmer and the Angkor Wat is the temple
  • The Mongols caused them to fall
  • India influenced the early Southeast Asian societies as kings were believed to possess special godlike qualities like the Dravidian kingdoms of southern India.
  • They had a Brahmin class as well as a social class system as the Indians did.
  • India supplied them with writing system and a form of entertainment called wayang kulit (shadow play)
  • Women in Southeast Asian cultures women worked along side men, they had a high literacy rate than men, and women could work as bodyguards.
  • The most common religious backgrounds in Southeast Asia were Hindu and Buddhist ideas
  • they provided an enhancing the prestige and power of the wealth during the first millennium
  • Animism = spirit worship
  • Spirits lived in mountains, rivers, streams and these geographical features were considered sacred
  • Syncretism = blending/integration of religious systems
  • What brought wealth to the Kushan kingdom?
  • Trade along the Silk Road
  • Who was the greatest of the Kushan rulers?
  • Kanishka
  • The giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan, recently destroyed by the Taliban, were located at the former Buddhist center at Bamiyan
  • Who founded the Gupta dynasty?
  • Chandragupta