GUNPOWDER
RUNNING AN EMPIRE
FAITH & POWER
MEET THE RULERS
ART & LEGITIMACY
100
Collective name for empires built on cannon and firearms technology.
What are the gunpowder empires? — MC TIP: Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal, and Qing. Guns let central rulers crush regional lords.
100
Ottoman practice of taking Christian boys from the Balkans for state and military service.
What is the devshirme? — MC TIP: It is the recruiting system. The Janissaries are the product of it.
100
Tax levied on non-Muslims living under Islamic rule.
What is the jizya? — MC TIP: Whether a ruler charges it or drops it tells you his whole religious policy.
100
Dynasty that replaced the Ming and ruled China from 1644.
What is the Qing? — MC TIP: The Qing were Manchu, not ethnically Chinese. That matters on rule questions.
100
Marble tomb Shah Jahan built for his wife at Agra.
What is the Taj Mahal? — MC TIP: Monumental architecture is a legitimacy tool, not just decoration.
200
Shia Muslim empire that ruled Persia.
What is the Safavid Empire? — MC TIP: Shia Safavids versus Sunni Ottomans. That split drives their constant warfare.
200
Palace outside Paris where Louis XIV kept the nobility close and dependent.
What is Versailles? — MC TIP: Nobles at court are nobles not raising armies at home.
200
Mughal ruler who abolished the jizya and welcomed Hindus into his administration.
Who is Akbar? — MC TIP: Tolerance as a governing strategy, not just personal belief.
200
Ottoman sultan who captured Constantinople in 1453.
Who is Mehmed II? — MC TIP: 1453 also ends the Byzantine Empire and pushes Europe toward sea routes.
200
Safavid capital rebuilt around a vast public square and called “half the world.”
What is Isfahan? — MC TIP: A capital designed to be seen is a capital designed to persuade.
300
Elite Ottoman infantry corps formed from Christian boys taken as children and trained for the sultan.
What are the Janissaries? — MC TIP: No family or land ties, so loyalty ran only to the sultan.
300
Mughal system of ranked officials paid through assignments of land revenue.
What is the mansabdar system? — MC TIP: Rank plus revenue. The zamindars were the local tax collectors beneath them.
300
Mughal ruler who reimposed the jizya and triggered widespread rebellion.
Who is Aurangzeb? — MC TIP: Akbar and Aurangzeb are the built-in compare question of this unit.
300
Russian ruler who expanded east into Siberia and broke the power of the old nobility.
Who is Ivan IV (the Terrible)? — MC TIP: Russia expands overland while Western Europe expands overseas. Good compare point.
300
Dramatic, emotional religious art style the Catholic Church promoted during the Counter-Reformation.
What is Baroque? — MC TIP: Art as propaganda against Protestantism. Same logic as Mughal and Safavid building.
400
1514 battle where Ottoman artillery shattered the Safavid cavalry and fixed the border between them.
What is the Battle of Chaldiran? — MC TIP: Guns beat cavalry. This is the moment that proves it in Southwest Asia.
400
Ottoman system granting cavalry officers the right to collect taxes from land in exchange for service.
What is the timar system? — MC TIP: Land revenue instead of salary. Compare it directly to the Mughal mansabdars.
400
Religion founded in the Punjab that blended Hindu and Muslim ideas and rejected caste.
What is Sikhism? — MC TIP: The textbook example of syncretism in Unit 3.
400
Safavid shah who moved the capital to Isfahan and rebuilt it as a showcase of imperial power.
Who is Shah Abbas I? — MC TIP: He also built a slave-soldier corps copied from the Ottoman model.
400
Chief Ottoman architect whose mosques defined the skyline of Istanbul.
Who is Sinan? — MC TIP: If the stimulus is an Ottoman mosque, this is the name behind it.
500
This descendant of Timur used field artillery to win at Panipat in 1526 and founded the Mughal Empire.
Who is Babur? — MC TIP: Babur founds, Akbar consolidates, Aurangzeb overextends. Know the sequence.
500
Peter the Great taxed the beards of this Russian noble class as part of forcing westernization.
Who are the boyars? — MC TIP: The beard tax is a symbol: the state overriding traditional elite privilege.
500
Branch of Shia Islam that the Safavids imposed as the state religion to define Persia against the Ottomans.
What is Twelver Shi'ism? — MC TIP: Religion used as a border. Conversion here was a political act.
500
Qing emperor whose 61-year reign pushed Chinese control deep into Central Asia.
Who is Kangxi? — MC TIP: Qing expansion is land-based, the mirror image of European maritime empires.
500
By claiming this title, the Ottoman sultan presented himself as successor to Muhammad and protector of Sunni Islam.
What is caliph? — MC TIP: Religious authority stacked on top of political authority. The strongest legitimacy claim in the unit.
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