AP World History: East African City-States and Islamic Intellectual Traditions

Flashcards covering the emergence and political organization of East African coastal city-states, along with the intellectual and religious developments of the Islamic world as illustrated by the autobiography of Abu Ali ibn Sina.

According to historian Terry H. Elkiss, which ancient Southern Arabian state traded extensively along the East African coast by the eighth century B.C.E.?

The ancient Southern Arabian state of Ausan.

What raw materials were discovered and traded by early merchants along the East African coast?

Spices, tortoise shell, coconut oil, ivory, and later, gold and slaves.

Around what time period did the first important commercial city-states emerge along the East African coast?

Almost 1000 C.E.

In early East African states, who advised the kings or sultans?

Councils of princes, elders, and members of the ruling household.

What did the coexistence of centralized rulers and councils of elders in African states circa 1200–1450 best demonstrate?

The influence of indigenous African political practices.

Where did Abu Ali ibn Sina's father move to govern an estate for a Persian ruler?

Bukhara in Central Asia.

From whom did Ibn Sina learn Indian calculation as a youth in Bukhara?

From a vegetable seller who used Indian calculation.

The cultural and mathematical influences in Bukhara, such as Indian calculation, were most directly a legacy of which historical development?

Interactions between Muslims and Hindus following the spread of Islam into northern India.

Which classical Greek thinkers and texts did Ibn Sina study under the instruction of an Arab scholar?

He studied Aristotle, the geometrician Euclid, and the Greek astronomical and mathematical treatise called the Almagest.

Why were Muslim intellectuals such as Ibn Sina interested in studying classical Greek philosophical and scientific texts?

The use of observation and logic in studying the natural world was part of a Muslim intellectual tradition.

How did the translations and works of Muslim scholars like Ibn Sina become influential in Europe before 1450?

Most directly as a result of cultural exchanges between Christians and Muslims in the Mediterranean region.

The religious differences between Ibn Sina (a Sunni) and his father (influenced by Shi'a propaganda) most directly reflect the legacy of which historical conflict?

A dispute over who was the rightful caliph.