This Chinese innovation, nicknamed "flying cash," was the world's first paper money.
What is paper money? — MC TIP: Certificates instead of coin = commercial innovation.
100
This leader united the Mongol tribes in 1206 and launched the conquests.
Who is Genghis Khan? — MC TIP: Not Kublai, who came two generations later and ruled China.
100
Indian Ocean sailors scheduled entire voyages around these predictable seasonal winds.
What are the monsoons? — MC TIP: The winds didn't change. Understanding them did.
100
Gold moved north across the Sahara. This preservative, mined in the desert, moved south.
What is salt? — MC TIP: Two-way arrows across the Sahara = gold one way, salt the other.
100
This pandemic rode Mongol-secured trade routes west and killed roughly a third of Europe.
What is the Black Death? — MC TIP: The best example of an UNINTENDED consequence of connectivity.
200
These roadside inns, spaced about a day's journey apart, gave caravans food, water, and shelter.
What are caravanserai? — MC TIP: This is what made long-distance overland trade practical.
200
The Mongol state that ruled China was known by this dynastic name.
What is the Yuan Dynasty? — MC TIP: Four khanates: Yuan (China), Golden Horde (Russia), Ilkhanate (Persia), Chagatai.
200
This triangular sail let a ship make progress at an angle into the wind instead of only running with it.
What is the lateen sail? — MC TIP: If the stimulus is maritime, it's the sail, not the camel saddle.
200
Crossing the Sahara meant traveling in these large organized groups for safety and survival.
What are caravans? — MC TIP: Organization is a technology too. Caravans plus camel saddles made the desert crossable.
200
This Venetian's account of Kublai Khan's court astonished European readers.
Who is Marco Polo? — MC TIP: Compare to Ibn Battuta: one crosses cultures, the other moves inside one.
300
This document let a merchant deposit money in one city and collect the same value in another, without hauling coin across a desert.
What is a bill of exchange? — MC TIP: Credit and banking are half of Topic 2.1.
300
The Mongol khanate that ruled over Russia carried this colorful name.
What is the Golden Horde? — MC TIP: Russian princes paying tribute to distant overlords points here.
300
Kilwa, Mombasa, and Sofala are examples of these wealthy East African commercial centers.
What are the Swahili city-states? — MC TIP: Middlemen, not producers. The language itself is evidence of the contact.
300
This West African empire controlled the gold-and-salt trade after Ghana declined.
What is Mali? — MC TIP: Ghana, then Mali, then Songhai. Songhai is mostly Unit 3.
300
This Moroccan scholar spent nearly thirty years traveling the Islamic world and wrote down everything he saw.
Who is Ibn Battuta? — MC TIP: He travels WITHIN Dar al-Islam. His welcome everywhere is the evidence.
400
This piece of equipment let traders load far more weight onto their animals and cross deserts efficiently.
What is the camel saddle? — MC TIP: Camel saddle = desert. Lateen sail = ocean.
400
Historians use this Latin phrase for the era of Mongol-enforced stability that made Eurasian travel dramatically safer.
What is the Pax Mongolica? — MC TIP: Conquest was violent AND the peace increased trade. Both are true.
400
This Ming admiral commanded seven enormous treasure-fleet voyages across the Indian Ocean in the early 1400s.
Who is Zheng He? — MC TIP: He showed power and collected tribute. He was NOT seeking routes to conquer.
400
This Mali ruler's 1324 hajj put so much gold into Cairo that he crashed its value for years.
Who is Mansa Musa? — MC TIP: He shows Mali's wealth AND Islam spreading through elite conversion.
400
This fast-ripening rice spread from Vietnam into China and set off a population explosion.
What is Champa rice? — MC TIP: New crop, two harvests, more people, bigger cities. Classic cause-and-effect chain.
500
Song China's output of this metal was so enormous that historians describe the era as a proto-industrial revolution centuries before Britain's.
What is iron (or steel)? — MC TIP: Trade demand made producers scale up. The comparison to Britain is the giveaway that this is about industrial-scale output.
500
The Mongols carried this body of medical knowledge westward into Europe, a specific CED illustrative example.
What is Greco-Islamic medical knowledge? — MC TIP: Mongols moved things. They didn't invent them.
500
This inland southern African kingdom grew rich funneling gold out to the Swahili coast, and its massive mortarless stone enclosures still stand today.
What is Great Zimbabwe? — MC TIP: Coastal ports were middlemen, but the gold came from the interior. Know who supplied whom.
500
Mansa Musa's gold funded this mosque and madrasa in Timbuktu, which drew scholars from across Dar al-Islam and held one of the largest book collections in Africa.
What is Sankore? — MC TIP: Trade wealth buys scholarship. This is the concrete evidence that Timbuktu was a learning center, not just a market.
500
Buddhism blended with Daoist ideas in China to produce this school, the standard example of syncretism.
What is Chan (Zen) Buddhism? — MC TIP: Syncretism means blended, not replaced.