East Asia
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This dynasty (960–1279) presided over a golden age of Chinese history, marked by population growth, technological innovation, and a flourishing urban culture. It expanded the bureaucracy through civil service exams based on Confucian learning.
What is the Song Dynasty?
Located in Baghdad, this intellectual hub gathered scholars from across Afro-Eurasia. They translated Greek, Indian, and Persian works, advancing fields like medicine, astronomy, and mathematics.
What is the House of Wisdom?
Despite new religious influences, this native faith remained strong in India, shaping caste hierarchies, rituals, and temples. Its endurance shows the persistence of cultural traditions.
What is Hinduism?
This Mesoamerican empire created chinampas - artificial floating gardens - to maximize agriculture near their capital, Tenochtitlán, sustaining a growing population.
Who were the Aztecs?
This West African kingdom gained wealth by taxing trade in gold and salt across the Sahara. Its capital, Timbuktu, became a center of learning.
What is Mali?
Brought from Vietnam, this new crop was drought-resistant and ripened quickly, allowing two harvests per year. It boosted food supply, leading to population surges and the growth of Chinese cities.
What is Champa rice?
Once the center of Islamic power, this empire weakened due to invasions and internal strife. It officially collapsed after the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258, shattering its political unity.
What is the Abbasid Caliphate?
Dominating maritime trade in Southeast Asia, this empire prospered by controlling the Strait of Malacca, collecting tolls and spreading Hindu-Buddhist culture.
What is the Srivijaya Empire?
Centered in the Andes, this empire, centralized it's power and developed an extensive road system across mountains and deserts. They recorded data with knotted strings called quipus.
Who were the Inca?
This Malian ruler’s extravagant 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca displayed immense wealth. His spending disrupted economies along his route and boosted Mali’s global reputation.
Who is Mansa Musa?
This ethical and philosophical system reinforced social hierarchies, patriarchy, and loyalty to authority. It emphasized filial piety, education, and moral conduct, becoming the backbone of Song political and family life.
What is Confucianism?
These sea-based trade routes linked East Africa, Arabia, India, and Southeast Asia. Monsoon winds made them predictable, carrying spices, textiles, and Islam across the Indian Ocean.
What are the Indian Ocean trade routes?
This Indo-Islamic empire ruled much of northern India. It left legacies of Indo-Islamic art, blending Persian, Turkic, and Indian culture, though it never fully replaced Hindu traditions.
What is the Delhi Sultanate?
Instead of paying taxes in money, Incan families contributed labor to public works projects, like roads and terraces, in this mandatory public labor service system.
What is the mit’a system?
Inland from the Swahili Coast, this southern African kingdom thrived on gold trade and built massive stone structures, including the Great Enclosure.
What is Great Zimbabwe?
To support expanding trade, the Song pioneered the use of this currency, which reduced the need for carrying heavy coins and helped stimulate commercial growth across markets.
What is paper money?
Founded in 1206, this Islamic state ruled parts of northern India. It brought new architecture, Persian culture, and Islamic governance, while encountering resistance from Hindu traditions.
What is the Delhi Sultanate?
This kingdom in modern-day Cambodia built Angkor Wat, one of the largest religious monuments in the world, showcasing Hindu influence and later adapted for Buddhism.
What is the Khmer Empire?
High in the mesas and canyons of the American Southwest, this culture built multi-storied stone dwellings into cliffsides. Their society relied on maize agriculture, complex irrigation, and extensive trade networks that linked them to Mesoamerica before their decline around 1300 due to drought and migration.
Who were the Chaco or Mesa Verde people)?
In medieval Europe, this decentralized system tied peasants to nobles, with land exchanged for military service. It structured politics, economics, and society.
What is feudalism?
Confucian scholar Zhu Xi wrote in the 12th century:
“The ruler is the father and mother of the people… If he rules well, the people will love him. If he rules badly, the people will fear him.”
This quote reflects which long-standing Chinese political philosophy that continued under the Song Dynasty, and how did it shape governance?
What is the Mandate of Heaven - which justified rulers’ authority based on moral conduct, continuing the tradition from earlier dynasties into the Song Dynasty.
The 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun wrote:
“The Arabs are incapable of carrying on political organization, unless they adopt religious law.”
This perspective shows both continuity and change in Islamic governance after the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate. Explain one way in which political authority in Dar al-Islam relied on religion during 1200–1450.
(NOTE: This is a loose translation from Khaldun's work, The Muqaddimah)
What is the use of law and religion to legitimize political authority - such as through Sharia Law, caliphal titles, integration of ulama, or religious patronage - especially in successor states like the Delhi Sultanate, Mamluk Sultanate, or Mali.
Other Acceptable Responses:
The use of Sharia (Islamic law) as the foundation of governance, seen in the Delhi Sultanate and other successor states, continuing the tradition of the caliphate while adapting to regional contexts.
Legitimacy of Rulers: The use of the caliphate or sultan titles tied to Islam to legitimize rulers’ political authority, as seen in Muslim dynasties across North Africa and South Asia.
From an inscription at Angkor Wat (early 13th century):
“The king who has made this temple is equal to the gods… his power shines across the earth.”
This inscription shows how rulers legitimized authority. Identify one way kings in South or Southeast Asia blended political and religious traditions between 1200–1450.
What is the fusion of Hindu or Buddhist divine kingship with local political authority, as in the Khmer Empire’s Angkor Wat, which blended religion and politics to legitimize rulers?
NOTE: This comes from the Khmer inscription at Angkor Wat (early 13th century). Many inscriptions (in Sanskrit and Khmer) describe kings as divine and godlike; this paraphrases common dedicatory language recorded in temple reliefs and stelae.
A Spanish observer described the Aztecs:
“They made war in order to capture men, not to kill them, so that they might sacrifice them to the sun.”
What does this account reveal about Aztec politics and religion, and how did it differ from Incan governance in the Andes?
What is the integration of religion and state power, where military conquest fed religious sacrifice in the Aztec Empire, in contrast to the Inca, who used the mit’a system of labor service to sustain political authority.
From Pope Urban II’s speech at Clermont (1095):
All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.
This statement launched the Crusades. Explain how political and religious authority in Europe during 1200–1450 reflected continuity in governance, and how it compared to African states like Mali.
What is the fusion of religious and political authority, seen in Europe where the Catholic Church sanctioned warfare and shaped governance, and in Mali where rulers like Mansa Musa legitimized authority through Islam, pilgrimage, and religious patronage?
Acceptable responses:
Sanctioned Warfare by the Church
Church/Religion as Political Power
Religious Pilgrimage as Political Tool
Fusion of Spiritual and Secular Authority
Continuity of Religious Patronage