Ch 9 Vocab

Question 1

Quran (pron. kuh-RAHN)

Answer 1

Also transliterated as Qur’án and Koran, this is the most holy text of Islam, recording the revelations given to the prophet Muhammad.

Question 2

Pillars of Islam

Answer 2

The five core practices required of Muslims: a profession of faith, regular prayer, charitable giving, fasting during Ramadan, and a pilgrimage to Mecca (if financially and physically possible).

Question 3

hijra (pron. HIJ-ruh)

Answer 3

The “flight” of Muhammad and his original seventy followers from Mecca to Yathrib (later Medina) in 622 C.E.; the journey marks the starting point of the Islamic calendar.

Question 4

sharia (pron. sha-REE-ah)

Answer 4

Islamic law, dealing with all matters of both secular and religious life.

Question 5

jizya (pron. jeez-YAH)

Answer 5

Special tax paid by dhimmis in Muslim-ruled territory in return for freedom to practice their own religion.

Question 6

Umayyad caliphate (pron. oo-MY-ad)

Answer 6

Family of caliphs who ruled the Islamic world from 661 to 750 C.E.

Question 7

Abbasid caliphate (pron. ah-BASS-id)

Answer 7

Dynasty of caliphs who ruled an increasingly fragmented Islamic state from 750 to 1258, eventually becoming little more than figureheads.

Question 8

ulama (pron. oo-leh-MAH)

Answer 8

Islamic religious scholars.

Question 9

Sufism

Answer 9

An understanding of the Islamic faith that saw the worldly success of Islamic civilization as a distraction and deviation from the purer spirituality of Muhammad’s time. Sufis represented Islam’s mystical dimension, in that they sought a direct and personal experience of the Divine. Through renunciation of the material world, meditation on the words of the Quran, chanting the names of God, the use of music and dance, the veneration of Muhammad and various “saints,” Sufis pursued an interior life, seeking to tame the ego and achieve spiritual union with Allah.

Question 10

Mullah Nasruddin

Answer 10

A man of some learning, a cleric or leader of a village mosque. He has long been an imaginary folk character within the world of Islam and amongst Sufis, gently expressing a skeptical attitude toward the rational mind, sanctimonious posturing, human vanity, and the ego.

Question 11

al-Ghazali (pron. al-gha-ZAHL-ee)

Answer 11

Great Muslim theologian, legal scholar, and Sufi mystic (1058-1111) who was credited with incorporating Sufism into mainstream Islamic thought.

Question 12

Sikhism (pron. SEEK-ism)

Answer 12

A significant syncretic religion that evolved in India, blending elements of Islam and Hinduism; founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1539).

Question 13

Ibn Battuta (pron. IB-uhn ba-TOO-tuh)

Answer 13

Fourteenth-century Arab traveler (1304-1368) who wrote about his extensive journeys throughout the Islamic world.

Question 14

Timbuktu (pron. tim-buk-TOO)

Answer 14

Great city of West Africa, noted as a center of Islamic scholarship in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.

Question 15

Al-Andalus (pron. al-AND-ah-loos)

Answer 15

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Question 16

Mansa Musa (pron. MAN-sa MOO-sa)

Answer 16

Muslim King of Mali (ca. 1280-ca. 1337) who famously undertook a pilgrimage from his West African homeland to the holy city of Mecca.

Question 17

madrassas (pron. MAH-dras-ahs)

Answer 17

Muslim King of Mali (ca. 1280-ca. 1337) who famously undertook a pilgrimage from his West African homeland to the holy city of Mecca.

Question 18

House of Wisdom

Answer 18

An academic center for research and translation of foreign texts that was established in Baghdad in 830 C.E. by the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun.

Question 19

Ibn Sina (pron. IB-uhn SEE-nah)

Answer 19

One of the greatest polymaths of the Islamic world (980-1037), a Persian who wrote prolifically on scientific (especially medical) and philosophical issues; he is often known as “Avicenna,” the Latinized form of his name.