AP World History Unit 1 Vocabulary

Flashcards for AP World History Unit 1 review.

State (in AP World History)

A territory that is politically organized under a single government.

Song Dynasty

The dynasty in charge of China from 960-1279, who emphasized Confucianism to maintain and justify its rule.

Neo-Confucianism

A revival of Confucianism during the Song Dynasty that sought to rid Confucian thought of the influence of Buddhism.

Filial Piety

An idea that emphasized the necessity and virtue of children obeying and honoring their parents, grandparents, and even their deceased ancestors.

Foot Binding

A practice in elite circles where young girls had their toes bent under their feet and bound with cloth until they broke, and it was a status symbol among the elites.

Bureaucracy

A government entity arranged in a hierarchical fashion that carries out the will of the emperor.

Civil Service Examination

An examination heavily based on Confucian classes that eligible men had to take and pass in order to get a job in the bureaucracy.

Four Noble Truths

The center of the teachings of Buddhism. they are: life is suffering, we suffer because we crave, and we cease suffering when we cease craving.

Theravada Buddhism

A branch of Buddhism mainly practiced in Sri Lanka that confined the practice of Buddhism to monks in monasteries doing their best to get all enlightened all by their lonely selves.

Mahayana Buddhism

A branch of Buddhism mainly practiced in East Asia which encouraged a broader participation in Buddhist practices.

Commercialization (of the Song economy)

Manufacturers and artisans in China began to produce more goods than they consumed, and then they sold those excess goods in markets in China and then across Eurasia.

Champa Rice

A particular strand of rice that matured early, resisted drought, and could be harvested multiple times a year that was introduced to China from the Champa Kingdom.

Dar al-Islam

The house of Islam, refers to all the places in the world where Islamic faith was the organizing principle of civilizations during this time.

Abbasid Caliphate

An empire whose center of power was located in Baghdad that was ethnically Arab.

Seljuk Empire

An empire established in the evelenth century in Central Asia by Turkic orastoralists who were known as the Seljuks.

Sharia Law

A legal code based on the Quran that the new Turkic empires established as the organizing principle of their legal systems.

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi

A Muslim scholar who made significant advances in mathematics and even invented trigonometry.

House of Wisdom

A library with a metric buttload of scholarly works established under the Abbasid Empire during what became known as the Golden Age of Islam.

Sufis

A new sect of Islam which emphasized mystical experience and was far more open to adapting itself to local beliefs.

Bhakti Movement

It began in the Southern part of India as an innovation on traditional polytheistic Hinduism, and devotion to one of the Hindu gods was emphasized.

Delhi Sultanate

A sultanate that helped Islam became the second most important and influential religion in the South Asia region.

Rajput Kingdom

A collection of rival and warring Hindu kingdoms that had existed before Muslim rule in Northern India.

Vijayanagara Empire

A Hindu kingdom that rose up in the South during this time as a counterpoint to Muslim rule in the North and was established in 1336.

Majapahit Kingdom

A Buddhist kingdom which was based in Java from 1293-1520, and it was one of the powerful states in Southeast Asia.

Khmer Empire

A land based empire which existed in Southeast Asia and was founded as a Hindu kingdom, but at some point the leadership converted to Buddhism.

Angkor Wat

A magnificent Hindu temple from the Khmer Empire that had many Buddhist elements added to the structure without removing the Hindu elements after the conversion to Buddhism.

Aztec Empire

An empire that was founded in 1345 by the Mexica people, who established one of the largest cities in The Americas called Tenochtitlan.

Inca Empire

An empire that was born in the early fourteen hundreds that stretched nearly across the entire Andean Mountain Range.

Mit'a System

A system that the Incas followed which required all people under their rule to provide labor on state projects like large state farms or mining or military service or state construction projects or whatever.

Mississippian Culture

The first large scale civilization in North America, and it grew up around the Mississippi River Valley.

Swahili Civilization

A series of cities organized around commerce and trading along the East African coast.

Hausa Kingdoms

A series of city states who were organized and grouped powerful through trade of he Trans Saharan trade, and they spoke a common language and shared a common culture among themselves.

Great Zimbabwe

An African state whose capital city was built sometime between 1100 and 1450.

Kingdom of Ethiopia

A state that grew and flourished because of trade, especially with other states around the Mediterranean and the Arabian Peninsula, and its religion was Christianity.

Eastern Orthodox Christianity

The version of Christianity who's half of what was left of the once Roman Empire was represented by the Byzantine Empire.

Kievan Rus

A new state that emerged that would carry the Eastern Orthodox Christianity belief system forward.

Roman Catholic Church

The version of Christianity that dominated in Western Europe.

Feudalism

A system whereby powerful lords and kings gained allegiance from lesser lords and kings.

Manorialism

A system in which society and economics were organized according to the a huge piece of land owned by a lord, which was then rented out to peasants who worked the land.

Serfs

Working peasants who were bound to the land of those powerful landowners and they lived there and they worked there in exchange for the lord's protection.