Chapter 8: Chinese government structure beginning with Sui Dynasty- be sure to know the
different departments of their bureaucracy (finance, personnel, etc.), the examination system, etc.
Note that many modern governments are set up essentially the same way!
Chapter 9: The Five Pillars of Islam- be sure to know what they are, and what the sometimes
sixth pillar is.
Chapter 10: Why did the Roman Empire collapse? Be sure to answer in terms of the course.
(Christianity was not the reason!) What happened to European life as a result of the collapse?
Be sure to understand the Diocletian split, too.
Chapter 10: What were the Crusades? Be sure to understand the basic information of what they
were, why they were called and what they were supposed to accomplish. Know how they
changed life in Europe at the time and what the continued effects are today.
China And The Rest of the World
600-1300
World History I
Chapter 8
Fall of the Han Dynasty
The Han dynasty fell around 220 CE and for more than 300 years after, no dynasty took its place. This 300 years allowed certain aristocratic families to rise to almost king status in their areas. Barbarians- the word the Chinese used to describe anyone not Chinese- began to push down from the northern areas. As a result, Chinese immigration into the South of China increased so much at by the year 1000, about 60% of the Chinese population lived in the southern reaches.
A silk painting of Han emperors
The Sui Dynasty
The SUI dynasty arose in 581 and lasted until 618- not long, but fairly long compared to other leaders during the 300 years prior. During the Sui dynasty, canals were built throughout the nation, linking China from within and uniting it. This is no small feat for such as huge area. The dynasty was overthrown though because it waged a futile war against Korea which bankrupted the states’ treasury and natural resources.
The Golden Age
The Sui dynasty was followed by the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties, both of where were long-lived. This era is considered to be the “golden age” of Chinese culture, when painting, porcelain and poetry reached their heights.
These dynasties created a bureaucracy that survived for about a thousand years. The government was split into 6 departments: finance, personnel, ceremonies or rites, army, justice and public works, which were all ruled over by a watchdog agency called the Censorate.
The departments were staffed by upper-class workers who had passed civil examinations, just as in the past. Most schools were created for the purpose of helping workers pass these exams.
A Tang dynasty porcelain horse
Population boom
During the Song dynasty especially, China had a huge population boom, going from about 50-60 million to 120 million in about 600 years. The adoption of a new, faster growing and more drought-resistant strain of Vietnamese rice was one of the reasons for the boom.
China during this time had more cities than any other country. The capital city of Hangzhou (at right) was so splendid that the renowned traveler Marco Polo wrote about it, calling it the “finest and noblest [city] in the world.”
Chinese invention
China was a massive producer of iron, making suits of armor, coins, bells for temples, tools, arrowheads and more. Coal was used to smelt the iron and to heat homes, where most people elsewhere were still relying on wood, which was growing more and more scarce even then.
China printed the world’s first books using woodblock printing (later, Jo
Worlds of Islam
World History I Chapter 9
Major World Religions
By 500 CE, the world already had a variety of established, monotheistic religions: Daoism and Confucianism originating in China, Hinduism and Buddhism originating in India, Judaism and Christianity, originating in the Middle East. Islam will become another great world religion by the middle 600s.
Bedouin Origins
Islam originated among the Bedouins of Arabia. The Bedouins were a nomadic people, who herded and traded camels and frequently made war on each other.
They were originally polytheistic, believing in a variety of gods, including ancestor worship and animism.
Their principle city was Mecca, which originally included shrines to more than 360 different deities, but which eventually became known as a pilgrimage site for worshippers of Allah.
Allah was the principle deity- and ultimately the ONLY deity- of the Muslims, just as Yahweh was the god of the Jews.
Muhammad
Some Jews had come to believe that Yahweh had put his son, Jesus, on earth, that Jesus was the prophet of the faith and ultimately died in sacrifice as a testament to his faith in God, as these believers, now called Christians, called their only deity.
For many Muslims, Allah had a prophet too, named Muhammad Ibn Abdullah.
Muhammad was born in Mecca, had a wife and children and engaged in trade until he began to have visions that he believed showed him to be Allah’s prophet.
He recorded these revelations into a book called the Quran, which is as sacred to Islam as the Holy Bible is to Christianity.
Muhammad
Some Jews had come to believe that Yahweh had put his son, Jesus, on earth, that Jesus was the prophet of the faith and ultimately died in sacrifice as a testament to his faith in God, as these believers, now called Christians, called their only deity.
For many Muslims, Allah had a prophet too, named Muhammad Ibn Abdullah. Muhammad was born in Mecca, had a wife and children and engaged in trade until he began to have visions that he believed showed him to be Allah’s prophet. He recorded these revelations into a book called the Quran, which is as sacred to Islam as the Holy Bible is to Christianity.
He recorded these revelations into a book called the Quran (below), which is as sacred to Islam as the Holy Bible is to Christianity.
The umma
The most important precept of Islam is that Allah is God, and Muhammad is his prophet.
The Quran taught that people needed to return to an earlier society where money was unimportant, people (including women) were treated more equally and class divisions did not exist.
Believer
The worlds of Christendom 600-1450
World History I Chapter 10
Changing Religions
Often when a religion rises in popularity in one area, it means another religion is falling out of favor in that area. For example, as Islam grew to be the majority religion in Arabia, Christians there found themselves becoming the minority, and a sometimes-persecuted one at that.
Within only a hundred years after Mohammad’s death, few Christians remained in Arabia and Christian cathedrals had been demolished.
Remains of a 900-year old church in Saudi Arabia
The Siege of Jerusalem, 638
In 638, Muslims took control of Jerusalem, a city that is sacred to both the Jewish and Christian religions.
In some cases, Christians were persecuted by the new rulers, their fields were burned, their churches destroyed, and the Christians themselves made to wear clothing that identified them as Christians.
In other areas they were tolerated, and in places such as Syria they could flourish, get jobs in the government, in education and even serve in the Syrian army.
“The Sack of Jerusalem by the Romans” by François Joseph Heim is licensed under CC0 1.0
The Ethiopian Exception
Churches in Africa, like the middle east, also were in the decline as Islam was on the rise there.
One interesting exception was Ethiopia, whose mountainous geography prevented Muslim invaders from taking over, and which remained Christian.
Ethiopian lore eventually connected their royal line with King Solomon, making the resulting line of kings descendants from Jesus.
In the 1100s, the Ethiopians built eleven or twelve churches in the ground (see at right), hewn from rock and invisible from a distance (no doubt to keep Muslim invaders from attempting an attack), which were all connected underground- quite an engineering feat even today.
“Carved Church” by JSpencerUNC is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
The Diocletian Split
In the 200s, Roman Emperor Diocletian, faced with a massive empire that had grown too large for one government to rule effectively, split the empire in half, with an eastern and western half.
This Diocletian Split not only split the empire, it split the Christian
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