Chapter 3, Strayer, Ways of the World with Sources for the AP® Modern Course Since 1300 C.E., 5E

Silk Roads

Land-based trade routes that linked many regions of Eurasia. They were named after the most famous product traded along these routes.

Dunhuang

A major commercial city on the Silk Road trading network and a center of Buddhist learning and art. Located in western China.

Temujin/Chinggis Khan

Birth name of the Mongol leader better known as Chinggis Khan (1162–1227), or “universal ruler,” a name he acquired after unifying the Mongols.

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.

Khubilai Khan

Grandson of Chinggis Khan who ruled China from 1271 to 1294.

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.

Black Death

A massive pandemic that swept through Eurasia in the early fourteenth century, spreading along the trade routes within and beyond the Mongol Empire and reaching the Middle East and Western Europe by 1347. Associated with a massive loss of life.

Sea Roads

The world’s largest sea-based system of communication and exchange before 1500 c.e. Centered on India, it stretched from southern China to eastern Africa.

Great Zimbabwe

A powerful state in the southern African interior that apparently emerged from the growing trade in gold to the East African coast; flourished between 1250 and 1350 c.e.

Melaka

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.

Zheng He

Great Chinese admiral who commanded a huge fleet of ships in a series of voyages in the Indian Ocean that began in 1405. Intended to enroll distant peoples and states in the Chinese tribute system, those voyages ended abruptly in 1433 and led to no lasting Chinese imperial presence in the region.

Sand Roads

A term used to describe the routes of the trans-Saharan trade, which linked interior West Africa to the Mediterranean and North African world.

Arabian camel

Introduced to North Africa and the Sahara in the early centuries of the Common Era, this animal made trans-Saharan commerce possible by 300 to 400 c.e

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.

Crusades

A term used to describe the “holy wars” waged by Western Christendom, especially against the forces of Islam in the eastern Mediterranean from 1095 to 1291 and on the Iberian Peninsula into the fifteenth century. Further _____ were also conducted in non-Christian regions of Eastern Europe from about 1150 on. _____ could be declared only by the pope; participants swore a vow and received in return an indulgence removing the penalty for confessed sins.

American web

A term used to describe the network of trade that linked parts of the pre-Columbian Americas; although less densely woven than the Afro-Eurasian trade networks, this web nonetheless provided a means of exchange for luxury goods and ideas over large areas.

Chaco Phenomenon

Name given to a major process of settlement and societal organization that occurred in the period 860–1130 c.e. among the peoples of Chaco Canyon, in what is now northwestern New Mexico; the society formed is notable for its settlement in large pueblos and for the building of hundreds of miles of roads, the purpose of which is not known.

pochteca

Professional merchants among the Aztecs who undertook large-scale trading expeditions in the fifteenth century c.e.