Strayer, Ways of the World with Sources for the AP® Modern Course, 4E - Chapter 3

Silk Roads

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

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.

Srivijaya

A Malay kingdom that dominated the critical choke point in Indian Ocean trade at the Straits of Malacca between 670 and 1025 c.e. Like other places in Southeast Asia, Srivijaya absorbed various cultural influences from India. (pron. SREE-vih-juh-yuh)

Angkor Wat

The largest religious structure in the premodern world, this temple was built by the powerful Angkor kingdom (located in modern Cambodia) in the twelfth century c.e. to express a Hindu understanding of the cosmos centered on a mythical Mount Meru, the home of the gods in Hindu tradition. It was later used by Buddhists as well.

Swahili civilization

An East African civilization that emerged in the eighth century c.e. as a set of commercial city-states linked into the Indian Ocean trading network. Combining African Bantu and Islamic cultural patterns, these competing city-states accumulated goods from the interior and exchanged them for the products of distant civilizations.

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.

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. (pron. JUHNG-huh)

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.

West African civilization

A series of important states that developed in the region stretching from the Atlantic coast to Lake Chad in the period 500 to 1600 c.e. Developed in response to the economic opportunities of trans-Saharan trade (especially control of gold production), it included the states of Ghana, Mali, Songhay, and Kanem, as well as numerous towns and cities.

Ghana

An early and prominent state within West African civilization. With a reputation for great riches, Ghana flourished between 750 and 1076 and was later absorbed into the larger Kingdom of Mali.

Mali

A prominent state within West African civilization; it was established in 1235 c.e. and flourished for several centuries. Mali monopolized the import of horses and metals as part of the trans-Saharan trade; it was a largescale producer of gold; and its most famous ruler, Mansa Musa, led a large group of Muslims on the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324–1325.

trans-Saharan slave trade

A fairly small-scale commerce in enslaved people that flourished especially from 1100 to 1400, exporting West African slaves across the Sahara for sale in Islamic North Africa.

Timbuktu

A major commercial city of West African civilization and a noted center of Islamic scholarship and education by the sixteenth century.

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.

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. (pron. pohch-TEH-cah)