Asia
The Chinese philosophy that focuses on social order, duty, and morality within human institutions like the family and state.
What is Confucianism?
A polytheistic religion rooted in the many beliefs, practices, sects, rituals, and philosophies of India.
What is Hinduism?
A highly fragmented and decentralized society in which power was held by the landowning warrior elite over the working peasant class of Serfs.
What is Feudalism?
A commerce that exported enslaved West Africans across the Sahara for sale in Islamic North Africa.
What is the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade?
The prophet and founder of Islam, whose religious revelations became the Quran.
Who is Muhammad?
The Chinese philosophy that emphasizes living in harmony with the natural way of the universe, and generally views human society as artificial and constraining.
What is Daoism?
The Indian prince whose exposure to human suffering led him to develop a path to Enlightenment that became the basis for the emerging religious tradition of Buddhism.
Who is Siddhartha Guatama?
A revival of classical learning associated with the cultural blossoming of Italy that included a rediscovery of Greek and Roman texts, major developments in art, and growing secularism in society.
What is the European Renaissance?
A major commercial city of West African civilization and a noted center of Islamic scholarship and education by the sixteenth century.
What is Timbuktu?
The division of Islam that believes the religion should be based on the descendants of Muhammad.
What is Shia Islam?
The Chinese Dynasty where the country experienced a "Golden Age," characterized by Neo-Confucianism, an explosion of scholarship, and an agricultural revolution that made China rich and populated.
What is the Song Dynasty?
The early form of Buddhism, according to which the Buddha was a wise teacher but not divine, emphasizes practices rather than beliefs.
What is Theravada Buddhism?
One of the main centers of Christendom during the medieval centuries, a continuation of the Eastern Roman Empire, lasted until its capital, Constantinople, was conquered by Muslim forces in 1453.
What is the Byzantine Empire (Byzantium)?
A series of important states that developed in response to the economic opportunities of trans-Saharan trade, especially control of gold production.
What is West African Civilization?
The Turkic Islamic Empire centered on Anatolia, which conquered major cities like Constantinople, Mecca, and Medina, and lasted until 1922.
What is the Ottoman Empire?
A system where non-Chinese authorities gave products of value from their countries to China in return for trading rights and valuable gifts.
The popular adaptation of Buddhism, which gives a much greater role to supernatural beings and to compassion.
What is Mahayana Buddism?
The formal split of Christianity into two major branches: the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the East, caused by centuries of cultural, political, and theological friction.
What is the Great Schism of 1054?
An East African civilization that emerged as a set of commercial city-states linked to the Indian Ocean trading network, combined African Bantu and Islamic cultural patterns.
What is Swahili Civilization?
An Arab dynasty of caliphs (successors to the Prophet) who governed much of the Islamic world from its capital in Baghdad.
What is the Abbasid Caliphate?
The "way of the warrior," referring to the martial values of the Japanese samurai, including bravery, loyalty, and an emphasis on death over surrender.
What is Bushido?
Meaning "worship", this Hindu movement involved the intense adoration of and identification with a particular deity through songs, prayers, and rituals.
What is the Bhakti Movement?
The branch of Christianity that is noted for the subordination of the Church to political authorities, whereas in the other, the Pope is seen as the ultimate authority.
What is Eastern Orthodox Christianity?
A prominent state within West African civilization that monopolized the import of horses and metals as a part of the trans-Saharan trade was a large-scale producer of gold, and was once ruled by Mansa Musa.
What is Mali?
An understanding of the Islamic faith, whose followers pursued an interior life, seeking to tame the ego and achieve spiritual union with Allah, with practices of music and dance.
What is Sufism?