StudySpace: Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, 2 e.

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1. Religions, Empires, and Agricultural Revolutions
1. Islam's origins show that intersection of religion and empire were not the same
1. Islam flips the pattern set by Christianity and Buddhism
1. Empire was the main vehicle for the growth of both Christianity and Buddhism
2. In contrast, Islam was a religion that created empires
1. For Muslims the reason for establishing an imperial system was to secure, defend and spread their religion
2. Islam created its empire from scratch
2. The Tang dynasty in China withstood the universalizing claims of religion
1. China contrasts with Afro-Eurasian empires because it maintained its commitments to past traditions and customs
3. The Muslim world experience an agricultural revolution
1. Islam may have been crucial in that transformation
2. Farmers in the early Muslim empire became agricultural innovators of crops and farming techniques
3. Improved agriculture led to rapid population growth, rising standard of living, and urbanization
4. India replaced Mesopotamia as the source of a wide range of new crops
1. Most cultigens in Afro-Eurasia had origins in Southeast Asia via India
2. Southeast Asia provided rice, taro, citrus, and most likely coconut palm trees, sugarcane, bananas, plantains, and mangoes
3. Crops spread quickly and easily to East Asia and became Chinese diet staples
4. Movement westward was not rapid
5. Only after the Muslim conquest of Sindh did western territories experience the crop revolution
6. Merchants, scholars, and landed gentry exploited the new agriculture of India
7. Agricultural crops were diffused from India to Spain
1. Increased agricultural output
2. Employed a more productive workforce
3. Could feed larger urban communities
4. Offer consumers more diversified healthier diet
8. Population growth accelerated until the Black Death interrupted it in the fourteenth century
5. Agricultural transformation also swept through East Asia
1. Rice was critical
2. By eleventh century, Chinese farmers most proficient wet-field rice cultivators
3. Champa rice most widely grown
1. Introduced from central Vietnam
2. Drought resistant
3. Low gluten content
4. Ripened faster than older strains
6. New lands were opened up due to the agricultural changes
1. Helped feed expanding population in South
2. Migration south possible became of new agricultural technologies
1. Irrigation technique
2. Expansion of the road and water transportation system
3. Created a expanding and moving rice frontier
7. Europe was the exception to these agricultural breakthroughs
1. Most new crops were not suited to Europe's colder climate
2. Northern Europe in early stages of clearing forests
3. Europeans used tools such as axe and steel plow, and harnessed horse
4. Agrarian innovation lagged behind in Europe
8. Islam and the agricultural changes reinforced each other and led to major social, political, and economic changes
1. Agrarian revolution
2. The resurgence of empires in the wake of Roman and Han collapse
3. Appearance of Islam
9. Islam united the territories between two other universal religions-Christianity and Buddhism.
10. Islam laid the basis for a new set of divisions that drove worlds apart as internal and external conflicts arose
2. The Origins and Spread of Islam
1. A Vision, A Text
1. Muhammad born in Mecca around 570 C.E.
2. In the year 610, Muhammad had a vision that commanded him to recite phrases that became Sura 96 of the Quran
3. He enjoined his followers to practice certain things:
1. Act righteously
2. Set aside false deities
3. Submit to one and only true God
4. Care for the less fortunate
4. Muhammad's most insistent message was the oneness of God
5. The Quran was compiled into a single authoritative version sometime around 650 C.E.
6. Arab historians believe the Quran to be the very word of God
1. Quran text meant to inscribe the tenets of the faith
2. United a people
3. Convey a set of stable messages to other cultures
4. Expanded frontiers of the new faith
7. Muhammad saw himself as the last of the long line of prophets in the tradition of Hebrew prophets and Jesus, the Christian messiah
2. The Move to Medina, 622
1. Muslims date the beginning of Muslim calendar to 622 C.E.
2. Muhammad escaped persecution that year and moved to Medina
3. Medina became the birthplace of a new faith-Islam, which means "submission"
1. A new collectivity called Muslims (those who submit)
4. Adherents broadcast their new faith and their new mission
1. First to Mecca
2. Second to inhabitants of Arabia
3. To the larger world of Asia, Africa, and Europe
3. Conquests, 632-661
1. Mohammad died in 632
2. The prophet's inspiration and early leaders kept the faith going
1. Four successors known as the "rightly guided caliphs"
2. Most important of the caliphs was Muhammad's nephew Ali
3. Successors decided to implement the prophet's plan to send Arab-Muslim armies into Syria and Iraq
4. Muslim soldiers embarked on military conquest that they referred to as jihad
1. Jihad meant struggle, either military or personal daily struggles
5. Within 15 years Muslim armies controlled Syria, Egypt, and Iraq
4. An Empires of Arabs, 661-750
1. When Ali was killed in 661, new men known as Umayyads took over
2. Moved the core of Islam away from Arabia
1. Introduced principle of hereditary monarchy (Caliphate) to resolve leadership disputes
3. Rule from Damascus until overthrown by Abbasids in 750
5. Five Pillars of Islam in place as core practices and beliefs
1. Belief in one God and the role of Muhammad as Messenger
2. Ritual prayer
3. Fasting
4. Pilgrimage
5. Alms to the poor
6. In early days, conversion to Islam was simple
1. New faith did not call on adherents to abandon entire former way of life
2. Major conversion incentive was reduced jizra tax
3. Islam did make many demands on its believers
7. Political limits to how much Islam could integrate others' beliefs
1. Did not allow non-Arabic speakers to convert to Islam as a way to rise to high political office
1. Overthrow of the Umayyad rule ended that prohibition
2. By middle of eighth century, probably fewer than 10 percent of people in the Islamic empire were Muslim
8. The Abbasid Revolution
1. Umayyad dynasty spread Islam beyond Arabia and integrated more people, resulting in resistance to authority
1. In Kurasan, Muslims resented discrimination at the hands of Arab peoples
2. Coalition emerged led by the Abbasi family, which claimed descent from the Prophet's family
2. The coalition amassed a military force and defeated Umayyad rule in 750
1. The Abbasid victory shifted the center of the caliphate to Iraq
3. Conversion to Islam rested on proselytizers and appeal of the new faith to converts
1. Abbasids more aggressively opened Islam to Persian people
2. Encouraged Islamic world to embrace Hellenistic ways
3. Islam in the Assasid period was truly cosmopolitan and merged various people's contribution into a rich, unified culture
9. Rallying Points: The Caliphate
1. Abbasid rulers retained the caliphate; caliph was a political and spiritual head of the Islamic community
2. Muhammad's successors did not inherit his prophetic powers nor did they exercise authority over religious doctrines
1. Religious authority reserved to special scholars called ulama
3. Abbasid style more centralized and based on absolute authority modeled on the Byzantine rulers
4. As the empire grew, harder to maintain control; regional governors and countercaliphates took control in some areas
1. Multi-centered Islamic world
2. Political center shifted, but religious center remained in Mecca
10. Rallying Points: The Army
1. Integration relied on the use of force
2. Non-Arab groups formed the military core as with the Romans
1. Brought new populations into the empire
2. Gained political authority
3. Turkish elements entered the Islamic empire
4. As Islam spread it became more multicultural while building a common culture
11. Rallying Points: Islamic Law (the Sharia) and Technology
1. During the Abbasid period Islamic law (sharia) took shape
1. Sharia law covers all aspects of practical as well as spiritual life
1. Legal principles for marriage contracts, trade regulations
2. Religious prayer, pilgrimage rites, and ritual fasting
2. Needed to interpret legal questions that the Quran did not address
1. Most influential legal scholar was eighth century Iraqi, al-Shafi'I
1. Wanted to make law entirely Islamic, based on the Prophet's sayings as written in the hadith
3. Early legal scholars placed the ulama at the heard of Islam
1. Ulama became lawmakers, not princes and kings
4. Emergence of the ulama opened sharp divisions with Islam between secular and religious spheres
12. Rallying Points: Gender in Early Islam
1. Pre-Islamic Arabia was one of the last regions that had not experienced the triumph of patriarchy
1. Men still married into women's tribes and moved to wives' locations in tribal communities
2. Women engaged in a variety of occupations and could amass wealth
3. Mohammad's evolving relations to women reflect larger trends in the influence of patriarchy that made its way to Arabia
1. As a young man he married an older woman and took no other wives until she died
2. In crucial battles between Mecca and Medina, Muhammad allowed women to fight at his side
3. Later in life, he took younger wives and insisted on veiling
2. By the time Islam spread to Southwest Asia and North Africa, strict gender rules existed
1. Women were deeply subordinated to men
1. Men could divorce freely; women could not
2. Men could take four wives and concubines; women could not practice polygamy
3. Elite women were veiled and lived secluded from male society
3. Quran did offer women some protections
1. Men required to treat each wife with respect
2. Women could inherit property, although only half of what a man received
3. Infanticide was prohibited
4. Marriage dowries paid directly to the bride, not to her guardian
4. Legal system reinforced status of men over women but gave magistrates powers to oversee the definition of male honor and proper behavior
13. The Blossoming of Abbasid Culture
1. Arts flourished and left imprint on society
1. Arabic superseded Greek and became the language of the educated classes
2. Arabic scholarship made many important contributions to the world of learning by preserving Greek and Roman thought
3. Extensive borrowing exemplified the most substantial effort by one culture to assimilate learning of other peoples
4. To house the scholarly works, Abbasids founded massive and magnificent libraries
14. Islam in a Wider World
1. As Islam spread it became more decentralized
2. Proselytizing Islam brought more peoples under the teachings of the Quran
1. Growing diversity proved problematic; no single political structure could hold the widespread provinces
1. Secular power in Islam was deeply divided and remains so today
3. Spain
1. One Muslim state that became a rival to the Abbasids was headed by Abd al Rahmann III, al-Nasir
1. Iberia's Muslim kingdom arose during the Abbasid revolution of 750 when defeated the Umayyad family fled to Spain
2. Facilitated amicable relations with Muslims, Christians, and Jews
3. Expanded and beautified the capital at Córdoba
2. Competition between rival rulers spurred creativity in the arts
1. Wanted to build cities, mosques that rivaled those in the old Islamic cities such as Baghdad
15. A Central Asian Galaxy of Talent
1. At eastern end of the Islamic world, near the Oxus River in Central Asia, a cultural flowering took place
1. Barmaki family from Balkh turned from Buddhism to Islam
2. Others from Central Asia made notable contributions to science and mathematics.
1. Al-Khwarizmi modified Indian digits into Arabic numerals, wrote the first book of algebra
16. Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa
1. Islam crossed the Sahara and entered Africa carried by traders and scholars, not soldiers
1. Movement depended on camels that could make the long-distance trek
2. Trade joined West and North Africa and generated wealth, which created the great centralized political kingdoms in West Africa
1. Ghana was the terminus of the North African trading routes
3. Seafaring Muslim traders carried Islam into East Africa, as Islam became a dominant mercantile force in the Indian Ocean
1. Early East African trade communities were a mixture of African and Arab populations
1. Exported ivory and possibly slaves
2. African Bantu language absorbed Arab words and eventually became Swahili
17. Opposition within Islam, Shiism, and the Rise of the Fatimids
1. Islam's fast rise generated internal tensions from the beginning
1. Powerful religious movement created shared reverence for Quran and single god but not much else
2. Divisions were apparent from the Prophet's time and grew deeper as Islam expanded to other areas
3. When the Prophet died, the fissure became wider, especially over secession issues
2. Early opposition originated with the Kharijites from Arabia
1. Kharijites believed the successor should only be someone who resembled Muhammad himself.
2. This belief found appeal among those people who felt deprived of power
1. Appealed to the highland Berber people of North Africa and inhabitants of lower Iraq
3. Shiism became Islam's most powerful dissident force and created a permanent divide within Islam
1. Appealed to groups whom the Umayyads and Abbasids had excluded from power
2. Did not seize power until the tenth century
3. In 909, a Shiite religious and military leader, Abu Abdallah, overthrew the Sunni ruler in North Africa
1. Began the Fatimid regime, which became a rival regime to the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad
2. Rival capital called al-Qahira (Cairo)
4. Fatimid regime remained in power until the end of the twelfth century
3. The Tang State
1. The rise of the Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-907) empires in China paralleled Islam's meteoric rise out of Arabia
1. Again Afro-Eurasia had two centers of power: Islam and China
2. Not the same as Rome and Han China because now the two worlds were more interconnected with trade, conversion, and regular political contacts
3. Shared common borders
2. China's state was formed differently than in Afro-Eurasia, where religion dominated
1. China's religious history and political histories were separate and not parallel
2. Underneath a single dynastic and imperial culture lay a plurality of religions and sects
3. China a model for balancing forces of integration and diversity
3. Tang promoted a cosmopolitan culture that absorbed many new elements arising from afar
1. Ideas came from the West, including India, Bactria, and Constantinople
2. Ideas also came from East
1. Early societies and states in Korea and Japan emerged in the shadow of China
1. Daoism and Buddhism spread to Korea and Japan
2. Chinese statecraft, based on Confucian classics, was seen as best model by Korean and Japanese scholars
3. Despite the rise of China's empire, its impact on Korea and Japan was limited
1. Each maintained cultural autonomy
4. Chinese Territorial Expansion under the Sui and Tang Dynasties
1. New set of rulers (Sui and Tang) step in to fill void left by Han
2. Argued for big imperial system and found broad support
3. Both dynasties expanded boundaries
4. Hero of the imperial day was Uang Jian
1. Served as an official of the militarily strong Northern Zhou dynasty
5. Father and Son emperors expanded the state into Korea, Vietnam, Manchuria, Tibet, and Central Asia
1. Expansion efforts were financially and militarily disastrous and fatally weakened the dynasty
2. Change in course of Yellow River caused flooding, which led to popular revolts
3. General Li Yaun marched on Chang'an and took the throne.
6. In 618, Li Yuan established the Tang dynasty
1. Expanded bureaucracy and tightened control over individual governors
5. The Army and Imperial Campaigning
1. An expanding Tang state required a large, professionally trained army
1. Aristocratic cavalry and peasant soldiers
2. In the North, army relied on pastoral nomadic soldiers
1. Uighurs, Turkish-speaking steppe peoples
2. Most deadly forces in the Tang Empire
3. Military forged the first westward expansion into parts of Tibet
2. Moved to conquer east and central Asia.
1. At the height of the empire, Tang armies controlled more than 4 million square miles and 80 million people.
2. Surpassed the peak of Han Empire and greater than Islamic rule in the eighth and ninth centuries
3. China in 750 C.E. was the most powerful, most advanced, and best administered empire in the world
4. The rivalry for Afro-Eurasian supremacy brought the worlds together, but not peaceably
1. Muslim forces drove the Tang from Turkestan in 751 C.E.
2. Tang forced to retreat from Central Asia and mainland Southeast Asia
3. Several factors eventually led to the downfall of the Tang
1. Misrule
2. Court intrigues
3. Economic exploitation
4. Popular rebellions
4. Northern invaders brought an end to the dynasty in 907 C.E.
5. With the downfall of the Tang, China fragmented into five northern dynasties and ten southern kingdoms
6. Organizing an Empire
1. Emulated the Han but introduced new institutions
2. Tang had to deal with the arrival of global religions
7. Confucian Administrators
1. Day-to-day operations relied on the civil service
2. Tang had to devise other formulas for integrating their remote territories and diverse ethnic and linguistic groups
1. Provided the political framework based on Confucian teachings, since did not have a universalizing faith like Islam
2. Knowledge of the details of Confucius and intricacies of Chinese language required for ruling classes
3. Skills were powerful in forging cultural and political solidarity
3. Common philosophy and written language served as surrogates for the universalistic religions
4. Tang state increased power through the world's first written civil service exam system
1. New civil service officials were selected from the pool of those who passed the examination
5. Tang used common texts, codes, and test to unify the governing classes
8. China's First Female Emperor
1. Women played influential roles in the court
2. Most played private roles but some had public roles
1. Empress Wu dominated Tang court in late seventh and early eighth centuries
2. First and only female ruler in Chinese history
1. Expanded military
2. Recruited her administrators from the civil service exam candidates to oppose her court enemies
3. Challenging beliefs that subordinated women, she elevated women's position
1. Ordered scholars to write biographies of famous women
2. Empowered mother's clan by giving relatives high political posts
3. Tried to establish a new Zhou dynasty
3. Her reign was benign and competent
1. Chinese Buddhism achieved its highest officially sponsored development in this period
4. Empress Wu enforced a new aristocracy of academic ability
1. Through civil service exams southern commoners took more prominent roles
2. Exam system also indirectly aided the poor because they saw value of education to rise into the ruling elite
9. Eunuchs
1. Abbasid and Tang rulers both defended themselves by surrounding themselves with loyal and well-compensated men
1. Caliphs in Baghdad chose young male slaves (usually Turks); castrated males known as eunuchs guarded the harem
2. Tang emperors relied on castrated males from lower classes
2. Eunuchs in China became fully integrated into the empire's institution and wielded a great deal of power
1. In 820, chief eunuch controlled the military
2. Eunuch bureaucracy mediated between the emperor and provincial governments
3. By late in the Tang dynasty, eunuchs held too much political power and became an unruly group that was partially responsible for the downfall of the Tang dynasty
10. An Economic Revolution
1. Political stability fueled remarkable economic achievement
1. The Sui had triggered economic progress by building canals throughout the country; Tang continued the effort
2. New waterways aided communication and transport
1. Rice was transported from the south to the north
2. Areas south of the Yangzi became the demographic center of Chinese empire
3. Chinese merchants took advantage of the Silk Road to trade with India and the Islamic world
4. With rebellions jeopardizing overland trade routes, the "silk road by sea" blossomed
5. The Tang capital of Chang'an became the riches and most populous city in the world.
1. Textiles, paper, and ceramics all became desired commodities in the West
11. Dealing with World Religions
1. The Confucian ideology was secular
2. Tang emperors tolerated a remarkable amount of religious diversity
12. Mahayana Buddhism
1. Buddhism thrived under Tang rule
2. When Buddhism was accepted as one of the "three ways" of learning with Daoism and Confucianism, the Tang embraced and supported it
1. Huge monasteries were built with imperial patronage
13. Anti-Buddhist Campaigns
1. Tang Empire contained nearly 50,000 monasteries and hundreds of thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns
1. Success of Buddhism threatened Confucian and Daoist leaders, who began to attack Buddhism
2. Secular rulers grew more and more concerned that religious loyalties would undermine political ones
1. Accused Buddhists of hurting kinship values and cardinal family relations
2. Claimed clergy were conspiring to destroy the state, the family, and the individual body
1. "Three Destructions" of Buddhism
2. Persecution of monastic orders began in the 840s
3. Emperor Wuzong closed more than 4,600 monasteries and destroyed 40,000 temples and shrines
2. Tang government brought the Buddhist monastic communities under its control, unlike in Latin Europe
1. Confucianism and Daoism part of Chinese bureaucracy; Buddhism lacked that power base
2. Buddhism became vulnerable when attacked by Emperor Wuzong
3. By emphasizing classical scholarship, ancient literature, and Confucians morality, Tang dynasty revered early Buddhist success
4. Overcoming the universalistic thrust of Buddhism resulted in persistent religious pluralism
5. Tang China was the one place that remained committed to a secular common culture
14. The Fall of Tang China
1. China's deteriorating economy led to peasant uprisings.
1. Some risings led by failed exam candidates
2. Revolts brought down dynasty and led to ten regional states
4. Early Korea and Japan
1. Early Korea
1. Chinese cultural influenced Korea as early as third century B.C.E.
2. During fourth century three independent states emerged on the Korean peninsula
1. Koguryo (north)
2. Paekche (southwest)
3. Silla (Southeast)
3. Silla's unification of Korea after 670 enabled the Koreans to establish a unified government modeled on the Tang Chinese imperial state
4. With Tang decline, Silla also began to fragment
5. Koryo reunited Korea and founded the Koryo dynasty
1. Enacted an unprecedented bureaucratic system
1. Used Tang dynasty-style civil service exam to chose capable official
6. Korea, like Tang China, was harassed continuously by northern tribes such as the Khitan people
2. Early Japan
1. Warlike group from Korea imposed military and social power on southern Japan
1. Known as the Tomb Culture
2. Unified Japan
3. Brought with them a belief in the power of female shamans
1. Shaman-queen, Himiko, sent envoy to China after Han fell
2. The complex aristocratic society under Tomb Culture paved way for Yamato Japanese state
1. Rise of Japanese state coincided with the Three Kingdoms era in Korea
3. The Yamato Emperor and the Origins of Japanese Sacred identity
1. Ancestor worship was native to Japan and was at center of emerging belief system
2. Originally Korean, the Soga kinship group became Japan's leading family
1. The Soga was sympathetic to the Buddhist religion
3. Imperial line justified itself by embracing a tradition that sacralized Japanese state and society
1. Adopted both Buddhism and Shinto
4. Emperor presented as the living embodiment of Japan and its people
1. Divine characteristics placed Yamato aristocratic families on top
4. Prince Shotoku and the Taika Political Reforms
1. Sogo looked to Japanese Prince Shotoku as the creator of all that was innovative in the Yamato state
1. Scribes claimed Shotoku, not Korean migrants, had introduced Buddhism
2. Japanese Buddhists saw Prince Shotoku as the founder of Buddhism in Japan as Christians looked to Constantine in the Roman Empire
2. Prince Shotoku sent embassaries to China during the Sui dynasty
1. Presented information about how to incorporate Chinese reforms in Japan
2. Looked to Tang as a model for statecraft
3. Japanese rulers tolerated and even promoted a mosaic of religions
4. Shotoku promoted Buddhism and Confucianism
1. Erected several Buddhist temples
1. Horyuji Temple is the oldest surviving wooden structure in the world
5. In 645 Nakatomi family came to power after eliminating the Soga
1. Used new power to enact the Taika reform edicts based on Confucian principles of government
6. The Yamato court adopted the Chinese notion of the Mandate of Heaven
1. Refused to enact the Chinese civil service exam system
5. Mahayana Buddhism and the Sanctity of the Japanese State
1. Religious influences migrated to Japan; added to spiritual pluralism was the uplifting of rulers
2. Nakatomi promoted Buddhism as the state religion of Japan
1. Did not reject the imperial family's support of native Shinto traditions
2. Association with Buddhism gave the Japanese extra status
3. Japanese emperor received more explicit worship as the sacred ruler
1. Japanese emperor was a supreme kami-a divine force in his own right
2. Shinto and Buddhism became symbiotically intertwined in the political and religious life of the Japanese
5. The Christian West, 600-1000
1. Charlemagne's Fledgling Empire
1. Ruled from 768-814
2. By 802 Charlemagne controlled much of western Europe
1. Empire had fewer than 15 million people
2. His armies were rarely larger than 5,000
3. Had a rudimentary tax system
3. His palace primitive in comparison with some of those of Islamic caliphs
4. Representatives of the warrior class that had come to dominate post-Roman western Europe
5. Franks engaged in trade, but trade was based on war
1. Frankish empire was financed by the massive sale of prisoners of war
1. Main victims were Slavic-speaking peoples from eastern Europe
6. In this inhospitable zone, Christianity sank down roots
2. Christianity for the North
1. Charlemagne's empire was in the borderlands
2. Based on expansion and Christian proselytizing
3. Christianity emerged in the new borderlands world much different from its Mediterranean origins
4. Christianity bridged the gap between the Mediterranean World and the new non-Roman world of the north
1. Christians felt their faith was the only true universal religion
2. Only 25 percent of Christians resided in western Europe; most lived in Byzantine Empire
3. Bishop Augustine of Hippo had put forth the outlines of that belief
1. City of God
2. Catholic church important for bringing people to religion
4. Several things led to Augustine's beliefs
1. Christianity's arrival in Northern Europe began a cultural revolution
2. Preliterate societies learned of a sacred text in Latin
3. Latin became a sacred language; books became vehicles of the holy
4. Bibles produced by monks and nuns
5. Monasticism was not well known in western Europe
1. Sent out missionaries
2. Believed that those with least in common with those with "normal lives" were best able to mediate between the believer and God
1. Preliterate warrior societies honored small groups of men and women who were different-unmarried, unfit for warfare, and intensely literate
6. By 800, few regions of northern Europe were without great monasteries
5. The papacy rose because the Catholic church and western Europe united to support a single and exclusive symbolic center
6. Popes owed position to two factors
1. The Arab conquest, which had removed competition
2. Desire for a new, more vibrant religion
3. The Age of the Vikings, 800-1000
1. The Vikings exploited the weaknesses of Charlemagne's regime
2. Viking motive simple: "to be on the warpath"
3. Successful because of technological advantage: their ships
1. Light and agile
2. Shallow draft
3. Rowed up the rivers of northern Europe
4. Could also travel on open waters, including the Atlantic
4. Plundered monasteries along rivers and in Ireland and Britain
5. Norwegian adventurers colonized Iceland and Greenland
6. Reached New World in 982
1. Carried out trade with Native Americans
7. Viking efforts in eastern Europe had lasting effects
8. Created new trade routes through Baltics-" The Highway of Slaves"
4. The Survival of the Christian Empire of the East
1. Several attempts were made to capture the eastern Christian empire in Constantinople
1. Greek fire very effective against Muslim fleets
2. Outlasting a series of military emergencies bolstered the morale of east Roman Christianity and led to its unexpected flowering in distant lands
1. Greek Christianity gained a spiritual empire that offset losses to the east Roman empire in Southwest Asia
3. By 1000, two Christianities existed
1. Confident "borderland" Catholicism of Western Europe
2. An ancient Greek Orthodoxy
3. Neither side really admired the other
4. Like Islam, the Christian world was divided though in two distinct regions: western and eastern Christianity
1. Differences not doctrinal, as with Shia and Sunni Islam
2. Christian differences were in heritage, customs, and levels of perceived "civilization"
5. Each dealt with the expansion of the Muslim world differently
6. Christianity expanded its geographic reach to new frontiers
1. Increasing religious homogeneity and common faith increased in western Christendom
6. Conclusion
1. Eurasian and north African societies witnessed a radical reordering of their political and cultural maps that encouraged migration
2. Commodities, technological innovations, ideas, travelers, merchants, adventurers, and scholars moved rapidly over great distances from one region to another
3. Despite all the circulation of people and ideas, a new set of political and cultural bounders emerged that divide the landmass as never before
1. Islam was the most important of the new universalistic religions
2. Challenged and slowed the spread of universalistic religion, Christianity
4. The Sui and Tang empires revived Confucianism as a basis for a new imperial order
5. Many ways to cope with the emergence and spread of universalizing religions across Eurasia and Africa
1. Common affiliation with empire
2. Sometimes faith followed empire, as in east Asia
3. Sometimes empire followed faith, as was the case with Islam
6. Each universal religion also saw internal debate over basic principles

 

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