Download THE SASANID EMPIRE, 224-651 Politics and Society Who were the

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Chapter 9 Reading Guide
The Sasanid Empire and the Rise of Islam
THE SASANID EMPIRE, 224-651
Politics and Society
Who were the main trading partners and rivals of the Sasanids?
How did the Arab pastoralists living in the desert between Syria and Mesopotamia benefit from the trade
between these empires?
What development became so important that it allowed wheeled vehicles to completely disappear from the
area?
Religion and Empire
What was the official state religion of the Sasanid Empire?
What was the official state religion of the Byzantine Empire?
Why did the Byzantines consider Armenian Christians (Nestorians) to be heretics?
What defined political allegiances during the Greco-Roman era? How does this change in the Byzantine and
Sasanid empires?
THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM
How did the Sasanids view the Arabs in the Arabian peninsula?
The Arabian Peninsula before Islam
What led to the emergence of desert caravan cities?
What 3 things contributed to Mecca becoming a pilgrimage site?
Muhammad in Mecca
What was Muhammad’s occupation before he began receiving revelations?
What did Muhammad’s revelations call on all people to do (doing so makes them Muslim)?
Why did Muhammad’s followers consider his revelation more perfect than the Bible?
The Formation of the Umma
Why did many Meccan leaders choose not to accept Muhammad as the sole agent of God?
What is the hijra?
What happened in 630?
What happened in 632?
What were Abu Bakr’s 2 immediate tasks as caliph?
What are the 5 pillars of Islam?
Explain the difference between Sunnis and Shi’ites. (There is a clearer explanation in the introduction to the
chapter.)
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CALIPHATE
The Islamic Conquests 634-711
What policy kept the armies together and ready for action and preserved life in the countryside virtually
unchanged?
What did the million or so Arabs who participated in the conquests constitute?
The Umayyad and Early Abbasid Caliphates, 661-850
Where was the Umayyad capital?
From whom did the Umayyad and previous caliphs adopt and adapt their administrative practices?
What were 3 complaints against the Umayyad government?
Where was the capital of the Abbasid dynasty?
What 3 things lead some to call the early Abbasid period as a “golden age”?
When did the gradual conversion to Islam of the conquered population accelerate?
Political Fragmentation, 850-1050
What were some of the issues of having a huge empire with which the Abbasid caliphs had to deal?
How did revolts change from the 8th to the 9th century?
What happened when the Abbasid government couldn’t pay the mamluks?
List 3 outlying areas that broke off from the Abbasid caliphate and established their own Muslim dynasties.
Assault from Within and Without
What group overshadowed both Arabs and Kurds after 1000?
Who established the first Turkish Muslim state based on nomadic power?
What gulf deepened as few Turks participated in urban cultural and religious life?
Who unified Egypt and Syria in 1171 and recaptured Jerusalem from Europeans in 1187?
What group destroyed what was left of the Abbasid Caliphate in 1258?
ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
Law and Dogma
What is Shari’a?
By the 11th century, what did most Islamic legal thought agree was the best model for society?
What was the problem with the hadith?
Converts and Cities
How did the early caliphs unintentionally encourage urbanization of the Muslim world?
List 2 reasons new converts to Islam often moved to Muslim cities?
Why was there great local variation in the way people practiced Islam?
What information did Muslim doctors and astronomers use to develop new skills and theories?
Islam, Women, and Slaves
From where did the practice of secluding women in their houses and veiling them in public originate?
List some of the rights of Muslim women.
What did Muslim men fear most about women?
What 2 women were seen as models for other Muslim women?
Who could not be enslaved?
What does this statement mean? “A hereditary slave society…did not develop.”
The Recentering of Islam
What was the madrasa?
What was the basic Sufi belief?
What 3 things helped establish a more regimented, though more organized and supportive Muslim society?