Unit 1: The Global Tapestry - Key Terms

Flashcards on key vocabulary terms from Unit 1 of a history lecture, covering the period of c. 1200 to c. 1450.

Confucianism

An ethical belief system, not a religion, that formed the intellectual core of Chinese thought for over 2,000 years, based on the teachings of Confucius.

Mandate of Heaven

A concept central to the Chinese view of government, dating back to the Zhou Dynasty, used by dynasties for 3,000 years to legitimize their rule, seeing the ruler as the "Son of Heaven."

Merit-based civil service system

A systematized manner through which Chinese dynasties selected educated and competent bureaucrats to staff their massive government, with candidates studying the Confucian classics and undergoing rigorous testing.

Scholar-gentry

The class of people in China who successfully made it through the selection process of the merit-based civil service system, using their government positions to often enrich themselves and their families.

Song Dynasty

A Chinese dynasty from 960-1279 that was considered a "golden age" due to its fully developed economy, technological advancements and cosmopolitan nature, but weakened due to bureaucracy and distrust of the military.

Neo-Confucianism

A syncretic belief system designed to promote and reinvigorate Confucianism by adopting some concepts and features of Buddhism and Daoism, following a backlash against Buddhism during the Tang Dynasty.

Filial piety

Respect for family obligations, a key tenet of Confucianism that goes hand-in-hand with ancestor veneration, demanding that children respect their parents and grandparents.

Confucian attitudes toward women

Women were accorded honor and power as mothers and mothers-in-law within their own families, but Confucians thought it natural and proper for women to be subservient to men at all levels of society

China's tributary system

A formal set of practices whereby embassies from non-Chinese states would travel to the Chinese imperial court and acknowledge Chinese superiority in a Chinese-centered world order.

Branches of Buddhism

Theravada, Mahayana, and Tibetan Buddhism are the three main branches.

The economy of Song China

The Song Dynasty had a flourishing merchant class, the world’s first fully monetized economy, with paper money, silver coins and forms of credit, and foreign trade.

Fast-ripening rice (aka “champa rice”)

A drought-resistant variety of rice capable of producing two crops in a single growing season, introduced to China from Vietnam, leading to an agricultural surplus to sustain urbanization.

Expansion of the Grand Canal

The manmade waterway linking the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers north and south, expanded during the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties, facilitating transportation and communication.

Song steel and iron production

Increased greatly during the Song Dynasty, as Chinese craftsmen discovered they could use coke instead of coal to fire their high-temperature furnaces and produce superior grades of metal.

Song textiles and porcelain for export

Song textiles and porcelain were luxury items that signified a refined, elegant lifestyle.

Dar al-Islam

"The house of Islam," a term referring to the Muslim world, or all the lands under Islamic rule.

Hajj

The fifth pillar of Islam, requiring all Muslims – if physically and financially able – to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lives

Seljuk Empire

A Turkic empire that took control of the Abbasid capital of Baghdad, with the Seljuk sultan as the true source of power in the Abbasid Caliphate.

Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt

A sultanate ruled by Mamluks (slave warriors) in Egypt independent of Abbasid control, which stopped the Mongols from advancing further after they destroyed Baghdad.

Delhi Sultanate

A sultanate established in the early 13th century by successors to Mahmud of Ghazni, conquering northern India and placing it under Islamic rule with its capital in Delhi.

Sufis

Mystics who were effective missionaries for Islam because they had a reputation for leading ascetic, holy lives devoted to kindness, tolerance and devotion to Allah above mastery of doctrine.

Muslim advances in mathematics

Arab and Persian scholars adopted "Hindi" numerals, which were passed to Europeans, and made advances in algebra, trigonometry, and geometry.

Muslim advances in literature

Arabic was the language of religion, theology, philosophy and law, but Persian was the principal language of literature, poetry, history and political reflection during the Abbasid Caliphate

Muslim advances in medicine

Scholars drew upon and synthesized medical knowledge from Greece, Syria and India to produce a vast body of advanced medical and pharmacological knowledge and ran the world’s first and best hospitals in Baghdad.

Muslim preservation of Greek philosophy

Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs encouraged scholars to collect and translate scientific and philosophical texts, written by ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle.

House of Wisdom

The most prominent of the Islamic research institutions, built by Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad and Staffed by scholars charged with translating Greek, Syrian, Sanskrit and Persian works into Arabic.

Scholarly and cultural transfers resulting from the Crusades

Europe was introduced to numerous scholarly and cultural insights and innovations transferred to them by Muslims, including knowledge of how to manufacture paper including knowledge of many new foods and spices

Bhakti movement

A South Asian cult of love and devotion that ultimately sought to erase the distinction between Hinduism and Islam

Buddhist monasticism

Buddhist monasteries followed the spread of Buddhism to lands from Central Asia to East and Southeast Asia

Srivijaya Empire

A maritime and commercial empire in Southeast Asia that flourished between the 7th and the 13th centuries in what is now Indonesia, basing its power on control of international sea trade flowing through the Strait of Malacca.

Rajput kingdoms

Hindu kingdoms in central and northern India, and what is now eastern Pakistan, and were the biggest obstacles to complete Muslim dominance over northern and central India.

Khmer Empire

Powerful state in Southeast Asia from 802 to 1431, covering what is now Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and southern Vietnam, and promoted mostly Hinduism, but also Buddhism, and were great builders of monumental temples.

Angkor Wat

A temple complex that is the world’s largest religious monument, built in Cambodia for the Khmer Empire.

Maya city-states

From about 300 to 900 CE, city-states were the fundamental political organization of this civilization occupying a region in southern Mexico that included the Yucatan Peninsula, and more southern lands

Aztec Empire

The Mexica, aka the Aztecs, came to central Mexico in the mid-1200s and established an empire of perhaps 12 million people with its capital at Tenochtitlan.

Inca Empire

The Incas settled in the region around Lake Titicaca, which straddles the border between Peru and Bolivia, in the mid-13th century and went on to establish a large, centralized empire of perhaps 11.5 million people spanning some 2,500 miles along the western coast of South America and the Andes Mountains.

Chaco

Between 860 and 1130, eight large towns were built by the agricultural people known as Anasazi in Chaco Canyon, located in what is now northwestern New Mexico, encompassing 25,000 square miles and a regional population of perhaps 15,000.

Cahokia

Maize, beans and squash were key to the emergence of an urbanized Mississippian culture along the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys.

Great Zimbabwe

A powerful state in southeastern Africa, near the Swahili Coast city-state of Sofala, at its peak between 1250 and 1350.

Ethiopia

A state in the East Africa highlands southwest from the mouth of the Red Sea.

Hausa kingdoms

In what is now northern Nigeria, a series of city-state kingdoms arose deriving wealth from their relative proximity to trans-Saharan trade routes, and exports of cotton textiles and leather goods

Social role of the Catholic Church

Like Buddhist monasteries in Asian lands and charitable religious foundations in Muslim lands, Christian monasteries provided a variety of social services that enabled them to build close relations with local communities

Political role of the Catholic Church

Medieval Europe was highly decentralized, governed essentially by local warlords … so the increasing wealth and landholdings of the Catholic Church meant it assumed a political role within this vacuum of power.

Consequences of the Crusades

Europe was reintroduced to Greco-Roman culture, there was an increasing demand in Europe for Eastern goods, there was growing intolerance among Christians and Muslims for religious diversity … and persistent animosity between the two faiths

Al-Andalus

The primary site of Islamic encounter with Christian Europe occurred in Spain, called al-Andalus by Muslims, which was conquered by Arab and Berber forces from North Africa in the early 8th century during Islam’s first wave of expansion.

Feudalism

A loosely organized system of rule that emerged in the fragmented, decentralized lands of Europe following the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire in 476.

Manorial system

Essentially the economic component of feudalism, a medieval manor was a self-sufficient community that usually included the lord’s manor house, a village church, workshops, a water-powered mill for grinding grain, fields for growing grain and vegetables, pastures for animals, and woodlands for lumber

Serfdom

A system of coerced labor in medieval Europe in which tenant farmers were bound to a hereditary plot of land and to the will of their landlord