Pre-Islamic Arabia
Clue: These two major empires were fighting one another around 600 CE while also suffering from plague.
Answer: The Byzantine Empire and the Persian/Sasanian Empire.
Clue: According to the study guide, Muhammad was approximately this age when he received his first revelation from the Angel Gabriel.
Answer: 40 years old.
Clue: This was the title used for the political leader of the Islamic community after Muhammad.
Kalif or Caliph.
Clue: This city became a major world center of learning during the Abbasid Caliphate.
Answer: Baghdad.
Clue: Ibn Battuta was born in this North African country.
Answer: Morocco.
Clue: Before the rise of Islam, Arabian society was primarily organized around loyalty to this group.
Tribe/Kin
Clue: These revelations received by Muhammad over 23 years were eventually compiled into Islam's main holy text.
The Quran
Clue: After Muhammad's death, this faction believed that Ali should become the main political leader of Islam.
Answer: The Shia.
Clue: The Abbasid period is described in the study guide as this.
The Islamic Golden Age
Clue: Ibn Battuta originally left home intending to make this pilgrimage.
Answer: The Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca.
Clue: This Arabian city served as both an important trade hub and a religious center because it contained the Kaaba.
Answer: Mecca.
Clue:
The Quran contains 114 chapters, but another collection of sources records accounts of Muhammad's life and actions. What are these sources called?
Answer: Hadiths
Clue: This faction believed Muhammad's father-in-law Abu Bakr should become the political leader of Islam.
Answer: The Sunni.
Clue: Name one type of institution that appeared during the Abbasid period.
Possible Answers:
Why did Ibn Battuta Hajj when he was 24 years old?
He was still young and had a job as a jurist. He had both the physical and economic means to make the pilgrimage.
Arabia was not a unified nation around 600 CE. Instead, different groups frequently fought over water and resources.
What geographic characteristic of Arabia helps explain why these conflicts were particularly important?
Answer: Arabia was largely desert, making water and other resources especially important.
Clue: Name three of the Five Pillars of Islam.
Clue: At the Battle of Yarmuk, the forces of the caliphs defeated the Byzantines and took control of this region.
Answer: Syria.
Clue: Islamic scholars during the Abbasid period translated Greek, Persian, and Indian texts that the West had believed were lost.
Answer: Aristotle, Plato, or Plotinus.
Clue: By the 1300s AD, the Islamic world was no longer politically unified. However, a traveler like Ibn Battuta could travel enormous distances across different Muslim-ruled states and still find familiar institutions and opportunities.
What term does the study guide use for this inter-connected muslism world?
Dar-Al-Islam.
Clue:
Around 600 CE, the Byzantine and Persian empires were weakened by their wars with each other and by plague.
According to the study guide, what effect did this weakness have on Arabia?
Answer: It lowered Byzantine and Persian influence in the Arabian region, creating an environment in which Islam could emerge and later expand.
This is the name of the city Muhammad and his followers took refuge in when they were fighting pre-Islamic tribes.
Medina.
Clue: Explain how the early Islamic state was able to expand beyond Arabia.
Your answer should identify at least two of the three methods by which Islam spread.
Answer:
Conquest, treaties, and religious conversion.
The Abbasid period is described as a major change from the earlier period of Islamic expansion.
What was the major change in focus, and what is one of the THREE examples of activities that became more important?
The focus shifted away from conquest and toward building and developing Islamic civilization.
Examples include:
BONUS: Clue: Why was monotheism not an entirely foreign idea to the people of Arabia before Muhammad?
Answer: Judaism and Christianity were already present in Arabia.