East Asia
Islamic Civilization
Eastern Europe
Western Europe
Wildcard!
100

This Chinese dynasty (960–1279) rose to power after the Tang dynasty. At its height, it ushered in a "Golden Age" in agricultural and industrial production, making China the richest and most populated country on the planet.

Song Dynasty

100

By 1200, this powerful Islamic caliphate was in steep decline after enjoying a brief Golden Age presiding over a flourishing and prosperous Islamic civilization. Its grip on what had been the vast Arab Empire was slipping.

The Abbasid caliphate

100

The surviving eastern Roman Empire and one of the centers of Christendom during the medieval centuries, this powerful and centralized European empire survived until its conquest by Muslim forces in 1453

Byzantine Empire

100

Western European branch of Christianity that gradually defined itself as separate from Eastern Orthodoxy. By the eleventh century, this was centered on the pope as the ultimate authority in matters of doctrine. The Church struggled to remain independent of established political authorities.

Western Christendom

100

This east Asian country's position as an island gave it a unique ability to selectively borrow aspects of Chinese culture without getting overtaken by it.

Japan

200

This Chinese invention, which came about during the ninth century, contains a mix of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. Ultimately this innovation revolutionized global military affairs and changed world history forever

Gunpowder

200

This Islamic empire, which sacked Constantinople and emerged as one of the most powerful states in world history, was founded by Turkic-speaking pastoralists who had migrated into Anatolia (present-day Turkey)

The Ottoman Empire

200

A culturally diverse civilization that emerged around the city of Kiev in the ninth century C.E. and adopted Christianity in the tenth, thus linking this emerging Russian state to the world of Eastern Orthodoxy

Kievan Rus

200

A highly fragmented and decentralized society in which power was held by the landowning warrior elite. In this highly competitive system, lessor lords and knights swore allegiance to greater lords or kings and thus became their vassals, frequently receiving lands and plunder in return for military service. 

Feudalism

200

This species of rice, which was native to Vietnam, was brought back to China and fueled tremendous population growth under the Song.

Champa rice

300

This practice, common among China's elites, consisted of wrapping young girls' feet until they broke, symbolizing the tightening patriarchy in Song China.

footbinding

300

This was the tax paid by non-Muslims in Muslim controlled areas

jizya

300

Branch of Christianity that developed in the eastern part of the Roman Empire and gradually separated, mostly on matters of practice, from the branch of Christianity dominant in Western Europe; noted for the subordination of the Church to political authorities, a married clergy, the use of leavened bread in the Eucharist, and a sharp rejection of the authority of Roman pope

Eastern Orthodox Christianity

300

A term used to describe the “holy wars” waged by Western Christendom, especially against the forces of Islam in the eastern Mediterranean from 1095 to 1291 and on the Iberian Peninsula into the fifteenth century. Further Crusades were also conducted in non-Christian regions of Eastern Europe from about 1150 on. 

Crusades

300

a massive pandemic that swept through Eurasia in the early 14th century, spreading along the trade routes within and beyond the Mongol Empire and reaching the Middle East and Europe by 1347. 

The Black Death

400

This ancient Chinese political philosophy held that the ruler would be supported by divine forces if they acted with moral responsibility towards their subjects.

Mandate of Heaven

400

Muslim kingdom that occupied much of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain) from 711 C.E. until the collapse of the Spanish Umayyad dynasty in the early 11th century.

Al-Andalus

400

The capital of the eastern half of the Roman Empire; its highly defensible and economically important position helped ensure the city’s cultural importance for many centuries - until it was sacked by the Ottoman Turks in 1453

Constantinople

400

an association of craftsmen or merchants formed for mutual aid and protection and for the furtherance of their professional interests. Guilds flourished in Europe between the 11th and 16th centuries and formed an important part of the economic and social fabric in that era.

guild

400

Method of agricultural organization introduced in Europe in the Middle Ages and representing a decisive advance in production techniques. In the old system, half the land was sown to crop and half was left fallow (unused) each season; in this new system, however, only a third of the land lay fallow (unused); this system provided two harvests instead of one, and helped enable Europeans to catch up to the 'superior' civilizations of Islam and China. 

Three-field system

500

phrase that captures the Chinese sense of being “the center of the world, infinitely superior to the “barbarian” peoples beyond its borders.

The Middle Kingdom

500

Ruler of the West African empire of Mali. He left a realm notable for its extent and riches—he built the Great Mosque at Timbuktu—but he is best remembered for the splendor of his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324

Mansa Musa

500

The condition in medieval Europe in which a tenant farmer was bound to a hereditary plot of land and to the will of his landlord.  This was the essential feature differentiating serfs from slaves who were bought and sold without reference to a plot of land.

serfdom

500

A “rebirth” of classical learning that is most often associated with the cultural blossoming of Italy in the period 1350–1500 and that included not just a     rediscovery of Greek and Roman learning but also major developments in art, as well as growing secularism in society. It spread to Northern     Europe after 1400.

The Renaissance

500

In Islamic history, this is the term for the ruler of the Muslim community

Caliph