Islam
This is the Arabic word for fasting, practiced during the month of Ramadan.
Sawm
This board game, invented in India, is considered one of the oldest strategy games still played today.
Chess
This mountain range, home to K2, runs through northern Pakistan and is one of the highest in the world.
Karakoram Range
This ancient trade network connected China to the Mediterranean.
Silk Road
This landlocked country in Central Asia is the world's largest landlocked country by area.
Kazakhstan
This is the name of the Prophet's migration from Mecca to Medina, marking the start of the Islamic calendar.
Hijra
This is the only mammal capable of sustained, powered flight.
Bat
This river, one of the longest in Asia, is considered the lifeline of Pakistan and gives the country its agricultural backbone.
Indus River
This system bound peasants to land owned by lords in exchange for protection in medieval Europe.
Feudalism
This African country contains more pyramids than Egypt, due to the ancient Kushite civilization.
Sudan
This concept in Islamic theology refers to God's absolute oneness and is considered the central doctrine of the faith.
Tawhid
This economic principle states that as you consume more of a good, the satisfaction gained from each additional unit decreases.
Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility
This Pakistani scientist, known as the "Father of the Islamic Bomb," led the country's nuclear weapons program and later admitted to proliferating nuclear technology to other nations.
A.Q. Khan
This Cold War strategy held that a nuclear attack by one side would result in the complete destruction of both sides.
MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)
This narrow body of water separates Europe from Africa and connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.
Strait of Gibraltar
This term refers to independent legal reasoning used by Islamic scholars to address questions not explicitly covered in the Quran or Hadith.
Ijtihad
This is the name of the invisible boundary around a black hole beyond which nothing — not even light — can escape.
Event Horizon
This ancient trade city in Sindh served as a major commercial hub connecting Central Asia to the Indian subcontinent along the Silk Road and shares its name with a modern Pakistani city.
Multan
These 19th-century wars between Britain and China were fought largely over the trade of an illegal drug.
Opium Wars
This narrow body of water separates Europe from Africa and connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.
Strait of Gibraltar
This Islamic golden age scholar wrote The Canon of Medicine, a medical encyclopedia used in universities for centuries.
Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
This is the name of the cognitive bias where people overestimate their own competence in areas where they have little knowledge.
Dunning-Kruger Effect
This Mughal emperor, whose reign is considered the golden age of the empire, built the Shalimar Gardens in Lahore and presided over a court that included legendary figures like Dara Shikoh.
Shah Jahan
This 1648 set of treaties ended the Thirty Years' War and established the modern concept of state sovereignty.
Peace of Westphalia
This phenomenon occurs when warm Pacific Ocean temperatures disrupt normal weather patterns globally.
El Niño