SONG AND DANCE
HOUSE OF ISLAM
SOUTH BY SOUTHEAST
THE AMERICAS
AFRICA & EUROPE
100
Dynasty that ruled China from 960 to 1279.
What is the Song? — MC TIP: Song = before the Mongols. Yuan is the Mongol dynasty that follows.
100
Term for the entire Islamic world, the house of Islam.
What is Dar al-Islam? — MC TIP: Shared religion, law, and scholarly language across political borders.
100
Rigid hereditary social ranking that organized South Asian society.
What is the caste system? — MC TIP: It survives Muslim rule. Continuity questions love this.
100
Aztec capital built on an island in Lake Texcoco.
What is Tenochtitlan? — MC TIP: Free point. Just do not confuse it with Cuzco, the Inca capital.
100
West African empire that controlled the gold and salt trade after Ghana declined.
What is Mali? — MC TIP: Ghana, then Mali, then Songhai. Songhai is mostly Unit 3.
200
Merit-based test system that staffed the Song bureaucracy with trained officials.
What is the civil service examination? — MC TIP: It made officials loyal to the state instead of to noble families.
200
Mystical branch of Islam whose missionaries adapted to local customs and spread the faith widely.
What is Sufism? — MC TIP: They adapted instead of demanding total change. That is why conversion worked.
200
Muslim state that ruled northern India beginning in 1206.
What is the Delhi Sultanate? — MC TIP: Muslim rulers over a Hindu majority. That tension drives the whole unit.
200
Aztec floating garden plots that let farmers grow crops on the lake.
What are chinampas? — MC TIP: Environmental adaptation. Pairs with Inca terracing on compare questions.
200
Mali ruler whose 1324 hajj put so much gold into Cairo that he crashed its value.
Who is Mansa Musa? — MC TIP: He shows Mali's wealth AND Islam spreading through elite conversion.
300
Fast-ripening rice from Vietnam that set off a Song population boom.
What is Champa rice? — MC TIP: New crop, two harvests, more people, bigger cities. Classic cause-and-effect chain.
300
Egyptian slave-soldier dynasty that halted the Mongol advance at Ain Jalut in 1260.
What are the Mamluks? — MC TIP: The Mongols were not unbeatable. Ain Jalut and Japan are the two stopping points.
300
Hindu devotional movement stressing personal love of a god over ritual and priestly authority.
What is the Bhakti movement? — MC TIP: It downplayed caste and gender barriers, which is why it spread.
300
Mississippian urban center near modern St. Louis, the largest city north of Mexico.
What is Cahokia? — MC TIP: North America had cities too. A question implying otherwise is wrong.
300
European system of land granted in exchange for military service.
What is feudalism? — MC TIP: Decentralized. Europe in 1200 is the opposite of centralized Song China.
400
Revived Chinese philosophy that blended Confucian ethics with Buddhist and Daoist ideas.
What is Neo-Confucianism? — MC TIP: It reinforced filial piety and rigid gender hierarchy. Expect it on social-structure questions.
400
Muslim scholar whose commentaries on Aristotle reached medieval European universities.
Who is Ibn Rushd (Averroes)? — MC TIP: Knowledge flows east to west in this era, not the reverse.
400
Sea-based Buddhist empire on Sumatra that grew rich taxing ships through the Strait of Malacca.
What is Srivijaya? — MC TIP: Chokepoint wealth. Same pattern as Malacca and the Swahili coast.
400
Inca labor tax under which subjects owed a set amount of work to the state.
What is the mit'a system? — MC TIP: Labor instead of money. The Spanish later reused the name for forced mine labor.
400
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 Swahili language is the evidence of that contact.
500
Korea, Japan, and Vietnam sent envoys and gifts to the Chinese court in exchange for trade rights under this arrangement.
What is the tributary system? — MC TIP: China projected power without conquering. That distinction gets tested.
500
Baghdad's great library and translation center, where Greek and Indian texts were preserved and expanded before the Mongols destroyed it in 1258.
What is the House of Wisdom? — MC TIP: Its loss is the standard evidence for Abbasid decline as an intellectual center.
500
Sea-based Hindu-Buddhist empire centered on Java that rose as Srivijaya declined.
What is Majapahit? — MC TIP: Srivijaya then Majapahit. Know the order and that both were maritime, not land, powers.
500
The Inca ran a 2,500-mile empire with no writing system, keeping records instead on this knotted-cord device.
What is the quipu? — MC TIP: Administration without writing. A choice claiming the Inca were disorganized is the trap.
500
Many Central African societies had no centralized king and were organized instead by these kinship groups.
What are kin-based networks? — MC TIP: Stateless does not mean disorganized. A choice calling them primitive or chaotic is wrong.
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