Terms : Hide Images
| 4976348809 | American Web | A term used to describe the network of trade that linked parts of the pre-Columbian Americas; although less intense and complete than the Afro-Eurasian trade networks, this web nonetheless provided a means of exchange for luxury goods and ideas over large areas. | 0 | |
| 4976348810 | Black Death | The name given to the massive epidemic that swept Eurasia in the fourteenth century C.E.; it may have been bubonic plague, anthrax, or a collection of epidemic diseases. | 1 | |
| 4976348811 | Borobudur | Mountainous ten-level Buddhist monument with an elaborate carving program, probably built in the ninth century C.E. by the Sailendras rulers of central Java; it is an outstanding example of cultural exchange and syncretism. | 2 | |
| 4976348812 | Bubonic Plague | A highly fatal disease transmitted by fleas; it devastated the Mediterranean world between 534 and 750 C.E. and again in the period 1346-1350 C.E. | 3 | |
| 4976348813 | Ghana, Mali, Songhay | A series of important states that developed in western and central Sudan in the period 500-1600 C.E. in response to the economic opportunities of trans-Saharan trade (especially control of gold production). | 4 | |
| 4976348815 | Ibn Battuta | A famous Muslim traveler who visited much of the Islamic world in the fourteenth century and wrote a major account of what he saw. | 5 | |
| 4976348816 | Indian Ocean trading network | The world's largest sea-based system of communication and exchange before 1500 C.E., commerce stretched from southern China to eastern Africa and included not only the exchange of luxury and bulk goods but also the exchange of ideas and crops. | 6 | |
| 4976348817 | Malaysians | Speakers of Austronesian languages from what is now Indonesia who became major traders in Southeast Asia and Madagascar. | 7 | |
| 4976348818 | Monsoons | Alternating wind currents that blew eastward across the Indian Ocean in the summer and westward in the winter, facilitating trade. | 8 | |
| 4976348821 | Sand Roads | A term used to describe the routes of the trans-Sahara trade in Africa. | 9 | |
| 4976348822 | Silk Roads | Land-based trade routes that linked Eurasia. | 10 | |
| 4976348823 | Srivijaya | A Malay kingdom that dominated the Straits of Malacca between 670 and 1025 C.E.; noted for its creation of a native/Indian hybrid culture. | 11 | |
| 4976348824 | Sudan | From the Arabic term for "land of black people," a large region of West Africa that became part of a major exchange circuit. | 12 | |
| 4976348825 | Swahili Civilization | An East African civilization that emerged in the eighth century C.E. from a blending of Bantu, Islamic, and other Indian Ocean trade elements. | 13 | |
| 4976348827 | Trans-Saharan slave trade | A fairly small-scale trade that developed in the twelfth century C.E., exporting West African slaves captured in raids across the Sahara for sale mostly as household servants in Islamic North Africa; the difficulty of travel across the desert limited the scope of this trade. | 14 | |
| 4976348828 | Venice | An Italian city that by 1000 C.E. emerged as a major center of Mediterranean trade. | 15 | |
| 4976348829 | Bushido | The "way of the warrior," referring to the military virtues of the Japanese samurai, including bravery, loyalty, and an emphasis on death over surrender. | 16 | |
| 4976348830 | Chinese Buddhism | China's only large-scale cultural borrowing before the twentieth century; entered China from India in the first and second centuries C.E. but only became popular in 300-800 C.E. through a series of cultural accommodations. At first supported by the state, suffered persecution during the ninth century but continued to play a role in Chinese society. | 17 | |
| 4976348831 | Foot binding | Chinese practice of tightly wrapping girls' feet to keep them small, begun in the Tang dynasty; an emphasis on small size and delicacy was central to views of female beauty. | 18 | |
| 4976348832 | Heian | Japan's second capital city (now known as Kyoto), modeled on the Chinese capital of Chang'an; also used to describe the period of Japanese history from 794 to 1192 C.E. | 19 | |
| 4976348834 | Kami | Sacred spirits of Japan, whether ancestors or natural phenomena; their worship much later came to be called Shinto. | 20 | |
| 4976348839 | Neo-Confucianism | A philosophy that emerged in Song-dynasty China; it revived Confucian thinking while adding in Buddhist and Daoist elements. | 21 | |
| 4976348840 | Samurai | Members of Japan's warrior class, which developed as political power became increasingly decentralized. | 22 | |
| 4976348841 | Silla Dynasty | The first ruling dynasty to bring a measure of political unity to the Korean peninsula (688-900 C.E.). | 23 | |
| 4976348842 | Song dynasty economic revolution | A major economic quickening that took place in China from (960-1279 C.E.); marked by rapid population growth, urbanization, economic specialization, the development of an immense network of internal waterways, and a great increase in industrial production and innovation. | 24 | |
| 4976348843 | Sui Dynasty | Ruling dynasty of China (581-618 C.E.) that effectively reunited the country after several centuries of political fragmentation and began the Grand Canal. | 25 | |
| 4976348844 | Tang Dynasty | Ruling dynasty of China from 618 to 907 C.E.; noted for its openness to foreign cultural influences. | 26 | |
| 4976348845 | Tribute System | Chinese method of dealing with foreign lands and peoples that assumed the subordination of all non-Chinese authorities and required the payment of tribute—produce of value from their countries— to the Chinese emperor (although the Chinese gifts given in return were often much more valuable). | 27 | |
| 4976348846 | Trung Sisters | Two Vietnamese sisters who launched a major revolt against the Chinese presence in Vietnam in 39 C.E.; the rebellion was crushed and the sisters committed suicide, but they remained symbols of Vietnamese resistance to China for centuries. | 28 | |
| 4976348847 | Uighurs | Turkic empire of the steppes; flourished in eighth century C.E. | 29 | |
| 4976348848 | Xiongnu | Major nomadic confederacy that was established ca. 200 B.C.E. and eventually reached from Manchuria to Central Asia. | 30 | |
| 4976348850 | Aristotle and classical Greek learning | Some works of this Greek philosopher had always been known in Western Europe, but beginning in the eleventh century, medieval thought was increasingly shaped by a great recovery of his works and a fascination with other Greek authors; this infusion of Greek rationalism into Europe's universities shaped intellectual development for several centuries. | 31 | |
| 4976348851 | Byzantine Empire | Term used by modern historians to refer to the surviving eastern Roman Empire during the medieval centuries; named after the ancient Greek city Byzantium, on the site of which the Roman emperor Constantine founded a new capital, Constantinople, in 330 C.E. | 32 | |
| 4976348852 | Caesaropapism | A political-religious system in which the secular ruler is also head of the religious establishment, as in the Byzantine Empire. | 33 | |
| 4976348853 | Charlemagne | Ruler of the Carolingian Empire (r. 768-814) who staged an imperial revival in Western Europe. | 34 | |
| 4976348854 | Eastern Orthodox | Branch of Christianity that developed in the eastern part of the Roman Empire and gradually separated, mostly on matters of practice, from the branch of Christianity dominant in Western Europe; noted for the subordination of the Church to political authorities, a married clergy, the use of leavened bread in the Eucharist, and insistence on church councils as the ultimate authority in Christian belief and practice. | 35 | |
| 4976348855 | Roman Catholic Christianity | Western European branch of Christianity that gradually defined itself as separate from Eastern Orthodoxy, with a major break in 1054 C.E. that has still not been healed; "Roman Catholic" was not commonly used until after the Protestant Reformation, but the term is just since, by the eleventh century, Western Christendom defined itself in centralized terms, with the bishop of Rome (the pope) as the ultimate authority in matters of doctrine. | 36 | |
| 4976348856 | Constantinople | New capital for the eastern half of the Roman Empire, established by Emperor Constantine in 330 C.E. on the site of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium; this highly defensible and economically important site helped assure the city's cultural and strategic importance for many centuries | 37 | |
| 4976348857 | Crusades | Modern term meaning "ventures of the cross," used to describe the "holy wars" waged by Western Christendom from 1095 until the end of the Middle Ages and beyond; could only be declared by the pope and were marked by participants swearing a vow and receiving an indulgence in return. | 38 | |
| 4976348858 | Cyril and Methodius | Ninth-century Byzantine missionaries to the Slavs whose development of Cyrillic script made it possible to write Slavic languages. Brought Christianity to Russia. | 39 | |
| 4976348859 | Cyrillic | Alphabet based on Greek letters that was developed by two Byzantine missionaries, Cyril and Methodius, to write Slavic languages. | 40 | |
| 4976348860 | Greek Fire | Form of liquid fire that could be sprayed at the enemy; invented by the Byzantines and very important in their efforts to halt the Arab advance into Byzantine territory. | 41 | |
| 4976348861 | Guild | An association formed by people pursuing the same line of work that regulates their professions and also provides a social and religious network for members. | 42 | |
| 4976348862 | Holy Roman Empire | Term invented in the twelfth century to describe the Germany-based empire founded by Otto I in 962 C.E. | 43 | |
| 4976348863 | The West as a hybrid civilization | The distinctive path of Western Europe in the centuries following the fall of the western Roman Empire, leading to a society that included elements of ancient Rome, the practices of Germanic invaders who formed new states, Christianity, and elements of pre-Roman culture that still survived. | 44 | |
| 4976348864 | Iconoclasm | The destruction of holy images; a term most often used to describe the Byzantine state policy of image destruction from 726 to 843. | 45 | |
| 4976348865 | Indulgence | A remission of the penalty (penance) for confessed sin that could be granted only by a pope, at first to Crusaders and later for a variety of reasons. | 46 | |
| 4976348866 | Justinian | Byzantine emperor (r. 527-565 C.E.), noted for his short-lived reconquest of much of the former western Roman Empire and for his codification of Roman law. | 47 | |
| 4976348867 | Kievan Rus | State that emerged in the ninth century C.E.; a culturally diverse region that included Vikings as well as Finnic and Baltic peoples. The conversion of Vladimir, the grand prince of Kiev, to Orthodox Christianity in 988 had long-term implications for Russia. | 48 | |
| 4976348869 | Otto I | King of Germany (r. 936-973) who built a consolidated German-northern Italian state and was crowned emperor in 962, creating what became known in time as the "Holy Roman Empire." | 49 | |
| 4976348870 | System of competing states | The distinctive organization of Western European political life that developed after the fall of the western Roman Empire in the fifth century C.E. in which the existence of many small, independent states encouraged military and economic competition. | 50 | |
| 4976348871 | Vikings | Scandinavian raiders who had an impact on much of Western Europe in the late eighth to eleventh centuries; their more peaceful cousins also Christendom founded colonies, including Newfoundland, Greenland, and Iceland. | 51 | |
| 4976348872 | Vladimir, Prince of Kiev | Grand prince of Kiev (r. 978-1015 C.E.) whose conversion to Orthodox Christianity led to the incorporation of Russia into the sphere of Eastern Orthodoxy. | 52 | |
| 4976348873 | Abbasid Caliphate | Dynasty of caliphs who ruled an increasingly fragmented Islamic state from 750 to 1258, eventually becoming little more than figureheads. | 53 | |
| 4976348874 | al-Andalus | Arabic name for Spain (literally "the land of the Vandals"), most of which was conquered by Arab and Berber forces in the early eighth century C.E. | 54 | |
| 4976348875 | Anatolia | Ancient name of Asia Minor, part of the Byzantine Empire that was gradually overrun by the Turks and that now is the Republic of Turkey. | 55 | |
| 4976348876 | Battle of Talas River | Arab victory over the Chinese in 751 C.E. that checked Chinese expansion to the west and enabled the conversion of Central Asia to Islam. | 56 | |
| 4976348877 | Bedouins | Nomadic Arabs | 57 | |
| 4976348878 | Dhimmis | "Protected subjects" under Islamic rule, non-Muslims who were allowed to practice their faith as "people of the book" in return for their paying special taxes. | 58 | |
| 4976348879 | Hadiths | Traditions passed on about the sayings or actions of Muhammad and his immediate followers; hadiths rank second only to the Quran as a source of Islamic law. | 59 | |
| 4976348880 | Hajj | The pilgrimage to Mecca enjoined on every Muslim who is able to make the journey; one of the Five Pillars of Islam. | 60 | |
| 4976348881 | Hijra | The "flight" of Muhammad and his original seventy followers from Mecca to Yathrib (later Medina) in 622 C.E.; the journey marks the starting point of the Islamic calendar. | 61 | |
| 4976348882 | House of Wisdom | An academic center for research and translation of foreign texts that was established in Baghdad in 830 C.E. by the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun. | 62 | |
| 4976348883 | Ibn Battuta | Fourteenth-century Arab traveler (1304-1368) who wrote about his extensive journeys throughout the Islamic world. | 63 | |
| 4976348885 | Imams | In Shia Islam, leaders with high religious authority; the twelve imams of early Shia Islam were Muhammad's nephew Ali and his descendants. | 64 | |
| 4976348886 | Jihad | Arabic for "struggle," this term describes both the spiritual striving of each Muslim toward a godly life and armed struggle against the forces of unbelief and evil. | 65 | |
| 4976348887 | Jizya | Special tax paid by dhimmis in Muslim-ruled territory in return for freedom to practice their own religion. | 66 | |
| 4976348888 | Kaaba | Great stone shrine in Mecca that was a major pilgrimage center for worshippers of many different deities before it was reconsecrated to monotheistic use by Muhammad. | 67 | |
| 4976348890 | Mecca | Key pilgrimage center in Arabia that became the birthplace of Islam. | 68 | |
| 4976348893 | Muslim | Literally, "one who submits"; the name was adopted by Muhammad and his followers to describe their submission to God. | 69 | |
| 4976348894 | Pillars of Islam | The five core practices required of Muslims: a profession of faith, regular prayer, charitable giving, fasting during Ramadan, and a pilgrimage to Mecca (if financially and physically possible). | 70 | |
| 4976348895 | Marco Polo | The most famous European traveler of the Middle Ages (1254-1324), whose travel account of his time in China was widely popular in Europe. | 71 | |
| 4976348896 | Rightly Guided Caliphs | The first four rulers of the Islamic world (632-661) after the death of Muhammad. | 72 | |
| 4976348897 | Quran | The most holy text of Islam, recording the revelations given to the prophet Muhammad. | 73 | |
| 4976348898 | Sharia | Islamic law, dealing with all matters of both secular and religious life. | 74 | |
| 4976348900 | Sikhism | A significant syncretic religion that evolved in India, blending elements of Islam and Hinduism; founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1539). | 75 | |
| 4976348901 | Sufis | Islamic mystics, many of whom were important missionaries of Islam in conquered lands and who were revered as saints. | 76 | |
| 4976348902 | Sultanate of Delhi | Major Turkic Muslim state established in northern India in 1206. | 77 | |
| 4976348903 | Timbuktu | Great city of West Africa, noted as a center of Islamic scholarship in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. | 78 | |
| 4976348904 | Ulama | Islamic religious scholars. | 79 | |
| 4976348905 | Umayyad Caliphate | Family of caliphs who ruled the Islamic world from 661 to 750 C.E. | 80 | |
| 4976348906 | Umma | The community of all believers in Islam. | 81 | |
| 4976348907 | Black Death | Name later given to the massive plague pandemic that swept through Eurasia beginning in 1331; it is usually regarded as an outbreak of bubonic plague. | 82 | |
| 4976348908 | Chinggis Khan | Title meaning "universal ruler" that was given to the Mongol leader Temujin in 1206 after he united the Mongols. | 83 | |
| 4976348909 | Fictive Kinship | Common form of tribal bonding in nomadic societies in which allies are designated and treated as blood relatives. | 84 | |
| 4976348911 | Khulilai Khan | Grandson of Chinggis Khan who ruled China from 1271 to 1294. | 85 | |
| 4976348912 | Khanate of the Golden Horde | Name given to Russia by the Mongols after they conquered it and incorporated it into the Mongol Empire in the mid-thirteenth century | 86 | |
| 4976348914 | Mongol World War | Term used to describe half a century of military campaigns, massive killing, and empire building pursued by Chinggis Khan and his successors in Eurasia after 1209. | 87 | |
| 4976348915 | Pastoralism | Way of life in which people depend on the herding of domesticated animals for their food. | 88 | |
| 4976348916 | Temujin | Birth name of the Mongol leader better known as Chinggis Khan (1162-1227). | 89 | |
| 4976348917 | Turks | Speakers from Central Asia, originally nomads, who spread westward into the Near East and into India; they created a series of nomadic empires between 552 and 965 C.E. but had a more lasting impact on world history when they became dominant in the Islamic heartland and founded a series of states and empires there. | 90 | |
| 4976348918 | Yuan Dynasty | Mongol dynasty that ruled China from 1271 to 1368; its name means "great beginnings." | 91 | |
| 4976348919 | Aztec Empire | Major state that developed in what is now Mexico in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; dominated by the seminomadic Mexica, who had migrated into the region from northern Mexico. | 92 | |
| 4976348920 | Benin | Territorial state that emerged by the fifteenth century in the region that is now southern Nigeria; ruled by a warrior king who consolidated his state through widespread conquest. | 93 | |
| 4976348922 | Christopher Columbus | Genoese mariner (1451-1506) commissioned by Spain to search for a new trading route to Asia; in 1492 he found America instead. | 94 | |
| 4976348923 | Firestick farming | A manipulation of their environment by the Paleolithic peoples of Australia that involved controlled burns to clear underbrush | 95 | |
| 4976348924 | Fulbe | West Africa's largest pastoral society, whose members gradually adopted Islam and took on a religious leadership role that led to the creation of a number of new states. | 96 | |
| 4976348925 | Vasco da Gama | Portuguese explorer (ca. 1460-1524) whose 1497-1498 voyage was the first European venture to reach India by circling the tip of South Africa. | 97 | |
| 4976348927 | Hundred Years' War | Major conflict between France and England (1337-1453) over rival claims to territory in France; the two states' need to finance the war helped encourage their administrative development. | 98 | |
| 4976348929 | Inca Empire | The Western Hemisphere's largest imperial state in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries; built by a relatively small community of Quechua-speaking people (the Inca), the empire stretched some 2,500 miles along the Andes Mountains, which run nearly the entire length of the west coast of South America, and contained perhaps 10 million subjects. | 99 | |
| 4976348930 | Iroquois League of Five Nations | Confederation of five Iroquois peoples in what is now New York State; the loose alliance was based on the Great Law of Peace, an agreement to settle disputes peacefully through a council of clan leaders. | 100 | |
| 4976348931 | Malacca | Muslim port city that came to prominence on the waterway between Sumatra and Malaya in the fifteenth century C.E.; it was the springboard for the spread of a syncretic form of Islam throughout the region. | 101 | |
| 4976348932 | Mexica | Seminomadic people of northern Mexico who by 1325 had established themselves on a small island in Lake Texcoco, where they built their capital city, Tenochtitlán; they were the central architects of the Aztec Empire. | 102 | |
| 4976348933 | Ming Dynasty | Chinese dynasty (1368-1644) that succeeded the Yuan dynasty of the Mongols; noted for its return to traditional Chinese ways and restoration of the land after the destructiveness of the Mongols. | 103 | |
| 4976348934 | Mughal Empire | One of the most successful empires of India, a state founded by an Islamized Turkic group that invaded India in 1526; their rule was noted for their efforts to create partnerships between Hindus and Muslims. | 104 | |
| 4976348935 | Ottoman Empire | Major Islamic state centered on Anatolia that came to include the Balkans, the Near East, and much of North Africa. | 105 | |
| 4976348936 | Paleolithic persistence | The continuance of gathering and hunting societies in substantial areas of the world despite millennia of agricultural advance. | 106 | |
| 4976348938 | Renaissance, European | A "rebirth" of classical learning that is most often associated with the cultural blossoming of Italy in the period 1350-1500 and that included not just a rediscovery of Greek learning but also major developments in art, as well as growing secularism in society. | 107 | |
| 4976348939 | Safavid Empire | Major Turkic empire of Persia founded in the early sixteenth century, notable for it efforts to convert its populace to Shia Islam. | 108 | |
| 4976348940 | Songhay Empire | Major Islamic state of West Africa that formed in the second half of the fifteenth century. | 109 | |
| 4976348941 | Tenochtitlán | The metropolitan capital of the Aztec Empire, with a population of 150,000-200,000 people. | 110 | |
| 4976348942 | Timbuktu | Great city of West Africa, noted in the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries as a center of Islamic scholarship. | 111 | |
| 4976348943 | Timur | Turkic warrior (1336-1405), also known as Tamerlane, whose efforts to restore the Mongol Empire devastated much of Persia, Russia, and India. | 112 | |
| 4976348945 | Yongle | Chinese emperor (r. 1402-1422) during the Ming dynasty who was a key figure in the restoration of China to greatness and who commissioned an enormous fleet to spread awareness of Chinese superiority to much of Asia and eastern Africa. | 113 | |
| 4976348946 | Zheng He | Great Chinese admiral (1371-1433) who commanded a fleet of more than 300 ships in a series of voyages of contact and exploration that began in 1405. | 114 |
