Book 1, Chapter 4, Set 9 Flashcards
Describe the origins of the Seljuk Turks and their conquest of the caliphate based in Baghdad. (page 206)
Turkish tribes made early contact with the Islamic world through trade, warfare, and missionaries. They were also used as slave warriors by the Abbasid caliphate – the Islamic caliphate based in Baghdad. This led to the conversion of the Turks to Islam. In the 10th century, the caliphate began to fragment until it controlled only the provinces around it. At the end of the 10th century, the remains of the caliphate were conquered by Turkish tribes from Central Asia. The Seljuk family who led the tribes took power as “sultans” (from the Turkish word for “authority”), restoring political authority to the caliphate, while exercising real power themselves through puppet caliphs. Although the Seljuks took over the existing system of government, their power was inherently unstable because it relied heavily on its nomadic warriors, who clashed frequently with settled peoples.
Describe the rise of the Seljuks in Anatolia and the following disintegration in the same region. (page 206)
In 1071, the Seljuks defeated the Byzantine emperor in eastern Anatolia, and Byzantine rule was replaced by that of the Rum Seljuks, who were a branch of the Seljuk dynasty. This, and the fact that Anatolia was well-suited to the way of life practiced by the Turks, led to an influx of semi-nomadic tribes. However, the Mongols invaded from Central Asia and by 1258 had conquere most of Anatolia, Iran, and Iraq, replacing the Seljuks with the Ilkhanid dynasty. The Turks in Anatolia were forced to move westward into areas previously ruled by the Byzantines. The Ilkhanid dynasty’s grip over Anatolia was never strong, and the peninsula soon began to disintegrate into multiple tribes and principalities.
Describe the origins of the Ottoman Empire. (page 206)
After the disintegration of Anatolia under the Ilkhanid dynasty, one of the tribes was led by a man named Osman, after whom the Ottoman Empire is named. This group was strategically located in an area controlling the approach to Constantinople from the east. From here, the Ottomans managed to take over many Byzantine cities in Anatolia, which brought them more wealth and resources. The Ottomans annexed land along the Dardanelles, which allowed them to control the crossing to Europe.
Describe the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. (pages 206 and 207)
In the mid-14th century, the Ottomans aided the Byzantine emperor John VI Kantakouzenos in a civil war. In return, they were rewarded with their first lands in Europe on the Gallipoli peninsula. At the same time, the Ottomans expanded their lands in central and western Anatolia. After this, they spread into Europe, moving through eastern Thrace and across the Balkans. They probably encountered artillery for the first time during this European expansion, which was later adopted into the Ottoman military in later wars with Hungary. Artillery was necessary for the later Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. Attacks by a neighboring principality in Anatolia in 1397 force the Ottomans to conquer most of eastern Anatolia. This made them neighbors with the Mongol warlord Timur, whose empire encompassed parts of Central Asia, southern Russia, Iran, and Azerbaijan. In 1402, Timur invaded Anatolia, capturing Bayezid, the Ottoman leader, and plundered Anatolia for a year. The remaining small portion of Anatolian territory, and Ottoman lands in Europe, were split between sons of Bayezid. Civil war ensued for two generations until Murad II eventually triumphed. Murad would spend most of his life fighting to restore the lands the Ottomans had lost to Timur and securing his borders. He abdicated in 1444 in favor of his 12-year-old son, but was recalled by his viziers when the king of Hungary attacked the empire. At Murad’s death in 1451, the Ottoman Empire dominated western and northern Anatolia and a large part of the Balkans. Murad was succeeded by one of the Ottoman Empire most capable leaders, Mehmed II. After securing his borders, he laid siege to the city of Constantinople in 1453. Just 50 years after a civil war, the Ottomans had captured a wealthy imperial city and brought down the remains of the Byzantine Empire.
Describe the political structure of the Maya. (page 210)
Unlike the Aztecs and Incas, the Maya never formed an empire, nor did they have a single leader or dominant capital city. They were a loose federation of city-states bound by a common language, culture, and religion. The priest-rulers maintained power through their education and contacts with the gods. The Maya would make great achievements in mathematics, astronomy, architecture, fine arts, engineering, and writing.
Describe the culture and religion of the Maya. (page 210)
The Maya had a pantheon of gods, and their religious practices were based on an interpretation of the cycles of nature. These gods were rarely discrete entities but instead combined a wide variety of forms and ideas. They could be both young and old, take both human and animal forms, and often had a counterpart of the opposite sex. The supreme deity of the Maya was Itzam Na, who was represented iconically as an old man; he was the inventor of writing and the patron of learning and the sciences. His wife, IxChel, was goddess of the old moon, as well as of weaving, medicine, and childbirth. Religious rituals were performed to satisfy the gods and ensure order in the world. Ceremonies usually began with fasting and abstinence, followed by offerings of food, ornaments, and dancing, and an occasional human sacrifice. During ceremonies the priests might impersonate the gods or use hallucinogens to enhance their divinations. Finally, there was feasting and drunkenness.
Describe the change in Maya civilization after about 800 CE. (page 210)
Around 800 CE, some lowland Maya city states went into decline, and had all but collapsed by 900 CE. Some possible reasons include natural causes, such as disease or climate change or soil exhaustion, war, or loss of control by the priest-aristocracy, but no theory can be known for certain. After 900 CE, all the main Maya centers were in the northern part of the Yucatan. One, Chichen Itza, was founded in the second half of the 8th century by a confederation of groups drawn from the Maya lowlands and the Itza people, whose origins are unknown. The city appears to have experimented with new rituals and forms of shared government. It was thriving in the 9th and 10th centuries, but collapsed after 1050 CE. The architecture of Chichen Itza is strikingly similar to that of Tula, the capital of the Toltecs 40 miles to the north of Mexico City, which flourished around the same time. It is unclear which city influenced the other, but there must have been extensive cultural and trade links across central and southern parts of Mexico at this time.
Describe the geographical location of the Aztecs and the location and advantages of the location of their capital. (page 210)
The Aztecs – or Mexica, as they called themselves – were the most powerful people in the Valley of Mexico during the 15th and 16th centuries. Their capital, Teochtitlan (now Mexico City), was founded in the 14th century on an island in Lake Texcoco. The marshes that surround this lake were managed expertly by the Aztecs. They not only built dams to trap the fresh water flows from the surrounding rivers that flowed into the lake, but they also grew a variety of crops on the “chinampas”, or fertile artificial islands created in the shallow lake.
Describe Aztec culture and religion. (page 210 to 212)
Aztec society was class-based, with nobility at the top and slaves at the bottom. Education seems to have been universal for both girls and boys. A boy’s education included training to fight in wars because the Aztecs had a proud warrior tradition. By 1520, they had an empire that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific. Like the Maya, the Aztecs had a large number of gods, related to the creation of the cosmos, to the sun, and to fertility, death, and war. The two main temples on the pyramid in Teochtitlan were dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, and Tlaloc, the god of rain and water. Another important god was Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god of wind, creativity, and fertility. Although the Aztecs had a rich culture with particular respect for poetry and song, they are remembered more for their human sacrifices. They believed that if the gods were not satisfied with their sacrifices, the sun would not continue to move across the sky. Their rites took many different forms. One performed for the fire god, Huehueteotl, involved captives being anesthetized and then thrown into a fire. Before they died, the victims were dragged up by priests with hooks who would remove the victims’ hearts as offerings. In contrast, honoring Tezcatlipoca required choosing the most handsome and brave prisoner of war to represent the god. After a year of being pampered, the victim’s last year was spent with four “goddesses” to see to his every whim. The prisoner-god was then sacrificed.
Describe the expansion and government of the Inca. (page 212)
In South America, the Incas used both conquest and peaceful assimilation to expand their empire, until it was the largest in pre-Columbian America. Expansion was remarkably rapid, only starting in the reign of Pachacuti, which began around 1438. He and his son, Tupac Inca, created a huge federal system consisting of four provinces, each overseen by an Inca governor. Each conquest was followed by the construction of a new road, often paved, to link the new province to the capital at Cuzco and the rest of the Empire. The Incas had no horses, nor had they invented the wheel. Instead, messages were carried by relays of runners, with llamas used as pack animals. Their superior organization allowed them to absorb many existing states, the largest being Chimor on the coast of northern Peru, home to the influential Chimu culture. By Tupac Inca’s death, Inca rule reached north to Quito in Ecuador.
Briefly describe the Inca religious beliefs and practices. (page 212)
Like other American cultures, the Incas built temples to their many gods. The sun god, Inti, was the most important. Their worship included divination, and human and animal sacrifice. Human sacrifice was rare, and seemed to involved children taken from villages throughout the empire.
Describe the Inca culture and architecture. (page 212)
Elaborate architecture is one of the most important contributions of the Inca civilization. The complex stone temples used a mortarless construction process that had been developed between 300 BCE and 300 CE by the Pucara peoples in lands to the south of Cuzco, around Lake Titicaca. Each stone was carved to slot exactly into the one below it. Final adjustments were made by lowering the rock onto the one below, raising it again, and chipping away any sections on the lower rock where marks in the dust indicated that the fit was not perfect. This attention to detail meant that the buildings were extremely stable.
What were Inca “Quipu”? (page 212)
Quipu were collections of knotted colored threads used to record information. Spun from llama and alpaca hair, there might be just a few threads in a quipu, or hundreds or even thousands. The system was based on the number 10. “Quipucamayocs” – accountants in Inca society – would use the quipu to perform simple mathematics, calculate taxes, and keep records of labor or livestock. They were also used for censuses and for tax accounting, and to track events and time. Inca historians would relay their history to the conquistadors through the quipu, though it is unknown whether the strings simply noted the dates or contained the histories themselves.
Describe the Mississippian culture that arose around 800 CE. (pages 212 and 213)
Although not geographically close to the Mesoamerican civilizations of the Maya and the Aztecs, the Mississippians had many things in common with their cultures, most notably the construction of monumental pyramids. Developed from 800 CE in the Mississippi River valley, it spread to much of central, eastern and southeastern North America. The Mississippian peoples lived in a highly structured society with close ties to the land: their staple food was corn.
Describe the settlement of Cahokia and its decline. (pages 212 and 213)
Cahokia was one of several settlements of the Mississippian culture. It was inhabited from the 7th to 14th centuries and at its peak had 30,000 inhabitants. Flat-topped mounds were made on top of which houses, burial buildings, and temples were constructed. More than 120 mounds were built, and several were repeatedly enlarged. It is thought that Cahokia went into a gradual decline around 1200, and was completely abandoned by 1400. The inhabitants left no written records, and the city’s original name is unknown – “Cahokia” refers to a nearby Illiniwek clan that was present in the area when French settlers arrived in the 17th century.
