The Americas
This practice, seen by the Aztecs as a repayment to the gods for their sacrifice in creating the world, also served as a dramatic political display of imperial power.
What is human sacrifice?
This vast desert was crossed by the network of trading routes that connected West African kingdoms to North Africa.
What is the Sahara Desert?
This was the name for the decentralized political system of exchanges of land for loyalty that characterized medieval Europe.
What is feudalism?
He was the title taken by Temujin in 1206 after uniting the Mongol clans.
Who is Genghis Khan?
This triangular sail, used by Arab and Indian sailors, was highly effective at catching winds from different directions.
What is a lateen sail?
He was the final prophet of Islam, whose first wife was a successful merchant.
Who is Muhammad?
This Buddhist kingdom, based on Java, controlled sea routes and had 98 tributaries at its height.
What was the Majapahit Kingdom?
This dynasty, ruling from 960 to 1279, was a leading example of diversity and innovation, known for its imperial bureaucracy and meritocracy.
What is the Song Dynasty?
This North American civilization, known for building enormous earthen mounds like Cahokia, emerged in the Mississippi River Valley around the 700s or 800s.
What is the Mississippian culture?
This was the primary form of social and political organization for many early Sub-Saharan African communities, governed by family relationships.
What are kin-based networks?
In the feudal system, these agricultural workers were tied to the land and owed labor and crops to their lord.
Who were serfs?
This Mongol army, led by Batu, conquered Russia and parts of Eastern Europe.
What was the Golden Horde?
These inns, located about 100 miles apart on the Silk Roads, provided rest and water for travelers and their animals.
What are caravanserais?
This Sultanate, established by enslaved Turkic soldiers in Egypt, prospered from the cotton and sugar trade until European sea routes bypassed it.
What is the Mamluk Sultanate?
This Hindu movement, beginning in the 12th century, emphasized emotional attachment to a deity and was open to women and people of low status.
What was the Bhakti Movement?
This painful practice, common among Song aristocratic families, involved tightly wrapping girls' feet to restrict their movement and signify social status.
What is foot binding?
The Aztecs expanded agricultural land in their swampy capital by building these floating gardens.
What are chinampas?
This language, a blend of Bantu and Arabic, developed in East Africa as a result of the Indian Ocean trade.
What is Swahili?
This 116-year series of conflicts between England and France helped foster national identity and saw the use of longbows and gunpowder.
What was the Hundred Years' War?
This term, meaning "Mongol Peace," describes the period of stabilized trade and security across Eurasia in the 13th and 14th centuries.
What is the Pax Mongolica?
This Chinese system allowed merchants to deposit paper money in one location and withdraw it in another.
What is Flying cash?
This renowned center of learning in Baghdad was a hub where scholars gathered to translate and build upon Greek, Indian, and Chinese knowledge.
What was the House of Wisdom?
This rigid social hierarchy in South Asia was so powerful that it absorbed Muslim migrants, assigning them a place based on this.
What is the caste system (or their occupation)?
This term describes the set of economic changes in Song China where people in rural areas made more goods than they could sell, often through home-based production.
What is proto-industrialization?
This Andean practice, a form of mandatory public service for men, was used by the Inca for labor and construction instead of a tribute system.
What is the mit'a system?
In the 12th century, the rulers of this Christian kingdom expressed their power by having 11 of these structures carved entirely from rock.
What are (monolithic) churches?
This 11th-12th century controversy was a power struggle between the papacy and secular rulers over who had the authority to appoint bishops.
What was the Lay Investiture Controversy?
The Mongols are credited with helping to transmit this disease, via trade routes from China to the rest of Eurasia.
What is the black Death or the Bubonic Plague?
Unlike the Atlantic slave trade, enslaved people in this trade network were more likely to work as household servants, sailors, or soldiers and had certain rights, such as the right to marry.
What was the Indian Ocean slave trade?
While their testimony in court was worth half that of a man's, women in Islamic societies had this right, which gave them more economic independence than many of their European counterparts.
What is the right to inherit and own property?
This new language, official in Pakistan today, developed by melding the grammatical patterns of Hindi with Arabic and Persian vocabulary.
What is Urdu?
This vast organization of appointed officials, a feature of Chinese government since the Qin dynasty, carried out the empire's policies.
What is the imperial bureaucracy?
Unlike the Aztecs who demanded tribute, this empire used a labor tax system and recorded numerical data on a system of knotted strings called the quipu.
Who were the Inca?
While male griots advised kings on political matters, a griotte's counsel at events like weddings was directed specifically towards these members of society.
Who are women?
This inheritance practice, which granted the entire estate to the eldest son, contributed to the Crusades by creating a class of landless younger sons.
What is primogeniture?
This was the primary reason the Golden Horde chose to rule the Russian princes through this type of system, rather than settling in the forests themselves.
What is indirect rule?
This Chinese financial instrument, a document that legally promised payment of a set amount on a set date, became a cornerstone of European banking houses after the model of another Chinese system.
What is a bill of exchange?
A major cause of the Abbasid Caliphate's decline was the slow decay of this city's infrastructure, as trade routes shifted north and its canals fell into disrepair.
What is the city of Baghdad?
The Srivijaya Empire, a Hindu kingdom based on Sumatra, prospered not by producing goods, but by charging these for ships traveling between India and China. along this strait.
What are fees or tolls along the Malacca Strait?
This syncretic system, combining rational thought with Daoist and Buddhist ideas, evolved in China between 770 and 840 and emphasized ethics.
What is Neo-Confucianism?
Many historians argue that a shared feature linking Mayan and Aztec religion to the earlier Olmec civilization was this specific deity.
What is the feathered snake-god?
Environmental stress from this specific practice, combined with its economic reliance on taxing this valuable resource, led to the abandonment of its iconic stone capital in the late 1400s.
What is overgrazing (damaging the environment) and gold (trade/taxation)?
This economic and political motive was a key reason the Venetian merchants diverted the Fourth Crusade to sack the Christian city of Constantinople in 1204.
What was trade competition (or to eliminate a trade rival)?
While known for destruction, Mongol success relied on this specific, two-part administrative practice upon capturing a city: one for the elite who resisted, and one for individuals possessing these specific, non-martial skills.
What was killing the aristocrats and recruiting/enslaving the skilled artisans and literate scribes?
This specific social phenomenon, resulting from merchants waiting months for monsoon winds, was the primary vector for the initial introduction of Islam to southern Asia, preceding both official missionaries and conquest.
What is the establishment of diasporic communities (through intermarriage)?
This specific condition, which prevented the institution of hereditary slavery from developing in many Islamic societies, was the prohibition against enslaving these specific groups of people.
Who are other Muslims or "People of the Book" (monotheists like Jews and Christians)?
The Delhi Sultanate imposed this specific tax on all non-Muslim subjects, a common feature of Islamic rule that contributed to local resentment.
What is the jizya?
In this country, a powerful landed aristocracy prevented the full implementation of a key Chinese political practice by ensuring its civil service exam was not open to peasants, blocking true social mobility.
What is Korea?