Worlds Together Worlds Apart, 4th ed. Vol. 2
Chapter 10 – Becoming “The World”, 1000-1300
Global Storyline:
• Trade routes shift from land to sea, transforming coastal cities into global trading hubs and
elevating Afro-Eurasian trade to unpredicted levels
• Intensified trade, linguistic and religious combinations generate the foundation cultural
spheres that we recognize today (China, Islam, India, Europe).
• The rise of the Mongol Empire intermingles with the world’s foundational cultural spheres.
Foundational cultural spheres:
• The Islamic world
➢ Islam engages in a burst of expansion, prosperity and cultural diversification but
remains politically fractured.
➢ Arab merchants and Sufi mystics spread Islam over great distances and make it more
appealing to other cultures, helping to transform Islam into a foundational world.
➢ Islam travels across the Sahara desert, the powerful gold and slave supplying empire
of Mali arises in West Africa.
• China
➢ The Song dynasty reunites China after 3 centuries of fragmented ruler ship, reaching
into the past to reestablish a sense of “true” Chinese identity as the Han, through a
widespread print culture and blocking outsiders.
➢ Breakthroughs in iron metallurgy allow agricultural expansion to support 120 million
people hold Han commercial success.
➢ China goes through the world’s first manufacturing revolution: gunpowder, and
handicrafts are produced on large scale of widespread consumption.
• India
➢ India remains a mosaic under the shade of Hinduism despite cultural
interconnections and increasing prosperity.
➢ The invasion of Turkish Muslims leads to Delhi Sultanate, which rules over India for 3
centuries, strengthening cultural diversity and tolerance.
• Christian Europe
➢ Catholicism becomes a “mass” faith and helps to create a common European cultural
identity.
➢ An emphasis on religious education generates numerous universities and new
intellectual elite.
➢ Feudalism causes a fundamental reordering of the elite-peasant relationship, leading
to agricultural and commercial expansion.
, ➢ Europe’s growing confidence is manifest in the Crusades and Reconquista, an effort
to drive Islam out of Christian lands.
Chapter Outline:
• A globe of regional worlds
➢ People exchanged money and goods along trade routes and sea lanes connecting the
world's regions and lead the way for three themes:
❖ Trade traffic was shifting from land to sea.
❖ Contact and exchange strengthened the sense of difference between the world's
cultural spheres, China, India, Islam, and Europe.
❖ The rise of the Mongol Empire represented the peak in a history of relations and
tensions between 2 lifestyles, nomadic and settled people.
• Commercial Connections
➢ Revolutions at seas
❖ By the tenth century, sea routes had overshadowed land routes for trade
▪ Improved navigational support
▪ Improvement of shipbuilding
▪ Better mapmaking
▪ Breakthroughs in commercial laws and accounting practices
❖ Ships could carry much more cargo than people/animals could
❖ Needle compass (important to nautical revolution)
▪ Invented by Chinese
▪ The use of the device spread rapidly
▪ Allowed sailing during cloudy (and generally shit) weather
▪ Mapmaking became easier and more accurate
▪ Made all oceans easier to navigate
❖ Shipping became less dangerous
▪ Better boats were build, equipped with lateen sails or junks
▪ Ships were protected by political authorities
▪ Karim, armed navy to protect (commercial) ships
❖ Sea routes replaced land routes (land routes were dangerous, most of the time
longer, all major cities were located near water)
➢ Commercial Contacts
❖ Agricultural development changed the nature of trade and transportation
▪ Irrigation (the use of controlled amounts of water to plants) {άρδευση}
▪ Crop rotation
▪ New grain and grass crops
▪ Grew food in newer areas
▪ Changes produced excess that needed to be traded
❖ Ships made it profitable to ship huge supplies
➢ Global Commercial Hubs
❖ Long-distance trade created new commercial cities
❖ Meeting points between two centers became cosmopolitan
❖ Three places emerged as major harbors
▪ Cairo-Fustat (Cairo, Egypt)
▪ Quanzhou (South-Eastern China, across Taiwan)
▪ Quilon (South India, Kollam)
, ❖ The Egyptian port
▪ Cairo and Alexandria served as main maritime commercial centers with
links to the Indian Ocean
▪ Numerous Muslim and Jewish businesses (kin-based)
▪ Silk yarn and textiles were the most common traded supplies
o Zaytuni (satin) from Quanzhou
▪ The trade cities thrived because Islamic leaders created sophisticated
commercial institutions
▪ Karim protected fleets became postal transporters
▪ Islamic legal system helped create a promising trade environment
o Laws against usury (loan-sharking)
o Partnerships
❖ The port of Quanzhou
▪ It was the busiest trade city in China
▪ Became more centralized with the Office of Seafaring Affairs
o Taxed, registered, and examined cargo, sailors, and traders
o Hosted annual ritual to summon favorable winds
o Locals and foreigners desired protection from goddess Mazu
▪ Junks—main ship used in Asia
o Sailed to Java, through Strait of Malacca to Quilon on India’s
southwest coast
o Further west, transferred crew and cargo to the smaller Arabian
dhows
o Was seaworthy with waterproof sections for stability
▪ Quanzhou’s population diverse
o Foreign traders stayed there and ran successful businesses
o Was mixed (except for religious worship)
❖ The harbor of India
▪ Chola dynasty became a major power in South India
▪ Eventually, Muslim traders settled on southwest coast, and Quilon became
a major trade port
▪ Traders from China used Quilon as a midpoint to unload goods and pick up
passengers and artefacts/products from the West
▪ Sailors and traders observed the customs of the city
▪ Muslims were the largest foreign community in the port
▪ Animals (horses and elephants), spices, perfumes, and textiles
▪ Traders knew each other, and personal relationships were the main key to
businesses (12th century socializing)
• Sub-Saharan Africa Comes Together
➢ West Africa and the Mande-speaking people
❖ After 1000 ce, sub-Saharan Africa couldn’t escaped the effects of the outside world
❖ West Africa and the Mande-speaking people
▪ Mande-speaking people became the link within and beyond West Africa,
because of their expertise in trade and political organization
o Mande is part of the larger Niger-Congo languages
o Mande or Mandinka people’s home was and is the area between
the Senegal and Niger rivers (West coast of Middle Africa)
▪ By the 11th century, the Mande spread their cultural, commercial, and
political hegemony all over Africa.
, ▪ Mande and other groups developed centralized polities called sacred
kingships.
▪ Trading networks were already well-known with trading centers before
European explorers and traders arrived.
▪ Most powerful and profitable businesses were the ones that extended
across the Sahara desert.
o Most prized trade item was salt (mined in northern Sahel by the
city of Taghaza)
o Gold (mined in the Mande homeland)
o Slaves were traded to the settled Muslim societies of North Africa
and Egypt
➢ The empire of Mali (an African epic)
❖ Successor state to the kingdom of Ghana
▪ Had political influence over a vast area up to the 1400s.
▪ Malian Empire represented the victory of horse warriors
o Epic of Sundiata
▪ Horses became prestige objects of the savannah peoples
❖ Mali Empire was a prosperous commercial state by the 14th century
❖ Mali's most famous ruler was Mansa Musa (r. 1312–1332)
▪ Made an impressive journey to Mecca for his hajj, traveling through Cairo
▪ Impressed people in Cairo with his country's wealth
▪ West Africa became known for its valuable metal
❖ Mali Empire had two of the largest West African cities
▪ Jenne, an ancient northern commercial entrepôt
▪ City of Timbuktu founded around 1100 as a seasonal camp for nomads
o Two large mosques are still there
o Famous for its intellectual spirit because Muslim scholars gathered
there to debate beliefs of Islam
➢ East Africa and the Indian Ocean
❖ Eastern and southern African regions were connected into long-distance trading
systems
▪ Wind patterns made East Africa a logical end point for Indian Ocean trade
▪ Swahili peoples living along the coast of East Africa became active
negotiators with the people of the Arabian Peninsula, the Persian Gulf
territories, and India’s west coast
▪ Most valued trade item was gold
o Mined between Limpopo and Zambezi rivers (now Zimbabwe)
o Mined by Shona-speaking peoples
o Great Zimbabwe was a center of gold mining
❖ Meeting ground for trade was Madagascar
▪ Madagascar became one of the most intermixed and multicultural places in
the world.
➢ The Trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean Slave trade
❖ African slaves were valued as much as gold
▪ After Islam spread into Africa, sailing techniques improved through shared
technology
▪ The slave trade across the Sahara and Indian Ocean arose
❖ This slave system was not like the slavery found much later in America
, ▪ Quran attempted to reduce the harshness of slavery by demanding slave
owners to treat their slaves with kindness and generosity
▪ Quran praised freedom of slaves as an act of religious duty
▪ African slave trade flourished under Islam, and slaves had a variety of roles
in the slave-importing societies
o Slaves were forced into military duties
o Some were respected for their seafaring skills and ended up as
crew on Muslim trading dhows
o Women were mostly used as domestic servants
o Other enslaved women were forced to be mistresses of powerful
Muslim political figures and businessmen
o Enslaved people worked on plantations (especially in lower Iraq)
❖ In the 9th century slaves revolted on those plantations
▪ Slaves were valued for their work and as status symbols for owners
▪ These societies owned many slaves, but the economic forces and social
structures of the societies did not rely on mass ownership of human beings
(as it did in the early 19th century America)
• Islam in a Time of Political Fragmentation
Islam had the same burst of expansion, prosperity, and cultural variation that was to see in
the rest of the Afro-Eurasian world. The people of Islam remained politically fractured even
with their common religious beliefs. The dream of trying to unify and centralize the rule of an
Islamic state ended in 1258 when the Mongols reached Baghdad.
➢ Becoming the “Middle-East”
❖ Islam went through major changes (because of instability)
❖ Commercial networks carried the word of the Quran
❖ Sufism became Islam’s mystical movement
▪ It was because of the Sufi brotherhoods that Islam became a religion to the
people
▪ Sufi orders created massive reformation from Christianity
▪ The Mevlevi Sufi order is famed for the ceremonial dancing of its gyral
dervishes
❖ The world needed another “core” region centered, that is now called the Middle
East
▪ Trade was the main source of prosperity
➢ Afro-Eurasian merchants (the merchants of Egypt)
❖ Long-distance merchants most responsible for connecting Islamic worlds
❖ Merchants were diverse, just like their business
❖ Long-distance trade grew (because an advanced legal framework supported it)
▪ Trade community was self-policing because it needed to maintain its
reputation
▪ Customers and traders were sure that agreements would be honored
thanks to partnerships, letters of credit, knowledge of local trade customs
and currency
➢ Diversity and Uniformity in Islam
❖ Muslim rulers and clerics had to deal with large non-Muslim populations
▪ Muslim rulers granted non-Muslims religious toleration if they followed
Muslim political authority
▪ Non-Muslims had to pay a special toleration tax called the jizya
▪ Non-Muslims had to be respectful to Muslim rulers
, o They wore special clothing
o Get off their horses when passing important Muslim leaders
▪ Regulations shaped the dhimma system, which granted protection to
religious minorities
▪ Religious tolerance helped make Islamic cities a hospitable environments
for traders from around the world
❖ Islam was an expansionist faith
▪ Intense religious adaptation created religious borders.
▪ Also the spread of Islamic institutions that supported more commercial
exchanges
➢ Political integration and disintegration
❖ From 950 to 1050, it appeared that Shiism would be a vehicle for unifying the whole
of the Islamic world
▪ Fatimid Shiites in Egypt and North Africa
▪ Abbadis state in Baghdad fell under Shiite Buyid family
▪ Each created universities in Cairo and Baghdad, which ensured that Islam’s
two leading centers of higher learning were Shiite
❖ But divisions shattered Shiism as Sunni challenged Shiite power and established their
own strongholds
❖ Sunni believers were mainly Turks who had migrated from the grasslands
❖ By the 13th century, Islamic core had broken up into three distinctive regions
❖ Islam had fractured polities
➢ What is Islam
❖ Islam evolved from Muhammad’s original goal of creating a religion for Arab people
▪ Its influence spread across Eurasia and Africa
▪ Some worried about Islam’s true nature
▪ Diversity promoted cultural blossoming as was obvious in all fields of higher
learning
❖ The most influential and adaptable thinker was Ibn Rushd (1126–1198)
▪ Ibn Rushd believed that faith and reason could co-exist
▪ He believed that the proper forms of reasoning had to be trusted to the
educated class—the ulama
❖ By the 14th century, Islam had become the people’s faith, not a religion of the
minority
▪ The agents of conversion were mainly Sufi saints and Sufi brotherhoods and
not the ulama
▪ Sufism spoke of the religious beliefs and experiences of ordinary men and
women
• India as a Cultural Mosaic
Turks brought Islam to India, but it only added to the cultural mosaic.
➢ Rajas and Sultans
❖ India became a trading, migrating, and cultural crossing of Afro-Eurasian peoples (a
center for the political balance of the world).
❖ India had wealth, but it remained divided into the “rajas” groups.
❖ Rajas requested support for rule among the Brahmans, who used this opportunity to
spread their faith.
➢ Invasions and consolidations
❖ Turkish warlords entered India
▪ Mahmud of Gahzna (was one conqueror)
, ▪ He wanted to learn from the conquered in order to win prestige within
Islam and make his capital a great center of Islamic learning
❖ Wars took control until one by one the fractured kingdoms fell
❖ Land-bound Turkish Muslim regime of northern India was known as the Delhi
Sultanate (1206–1526)
▪ Its rulers strengthened the cultural diversity and tolerance that were part of
Indian society and culture
▪ The Delhi Sultanate was rich and powerful, which brought political merge
but did not apply cultural homogeneity
➢ What was India?
❖ The entry of Islam into India made more of a cultural mosaic
❖ The Turks worked together up to a point, they became Indians but kept their Islamic
beliefs.
❖ The sultans did not interfere with beliefs or culture and were pleased to collect the
jizya
❖ Islam flourished even if it did not make many new adaptations
▪ As rulers, sultans granted lands to Islamic scholars, the ulama, and Sufi
saints
❖ The Delhi sultans built strongholds to protect their conquests
▪ Curves of domes, arches on mosques, tombs, and palaces formed in the
shape of lotus flowers were uniquely South Asian
▪ Palaces and fortresses quickly evolved into prosperous cities
❖ Although strangers and locals lived in separate worlds, they mixed their cultures
❖ When Vedic Brahmanism evolved into Hinduism, it absorbed many principles and
practices from Buddhism
▪ With the Turk invasion 13th century, led Buddhist scholars to retreat to
Tibet and enhanced Buddhism there
▪ Buddhist followers in India turned into the Hindu population or converted
to Islam
• Song China: Insiders versus Outsiders
➢ China’s economic Progress
❖ China’s commercial revolution during this period had agricultural roots
▪ Agriculture benefited from new metalworking technology
▪ China’s farmers were able to employ new and stronger iron plows
❖ Manufacturing flourished
▪ By 1040, the first gunpowder recipes were being written down
▪ Song entrepreneurs invented an collection of incendiary devices
▪ Song artisans produced lighter, more durable, and more beautiful
porcelains
❖ The Song Chinese brought about the world’s first industrial revolution, producing
goods for consumption.
➢ Money and inflation
❖ The growth of trade transformed the role of money and its worldwide circulation
▪ Song government was making coins/ paper money
▪ Merchants began to mess with printed-paper certificates
❖ Government began to print notes to pay its bills that eventually got out of hand and
led to the destabilization of the Song regime
➢ New elites
, ❖ Commercial revolution allowed Song emperors to benefit civilian rule over military
values
▪ The Song undercut the powers of the hereditary aristocratic elites by
establishing a government by a central bureaucracy of scholar-officials
▪ They were chosen by a civil service exam
▪ Civil officials were now almost exclusively educated men who eventually
became ruling elite
➢ Negotiations with Neighbors
❖ As the Song flourished, nomads focused on their success
❖ Eventually nomadic armies such as those of the Khitan and Jurchen saw China as
object of conquest
❖ Song dynasts were weak because they had limited military power despite their
weapons
❖ China’s strength in manufacturing made economic diplomacy an option
▪ They paid tribute to groups on the periphery if they were defeated
▪ Treaties allowed the Song to continue to live in peace
❖ To keep up the payments and ensure peace, the Song government printed more
money, which led to instability and became eventually out of control
➢ What was China?
❖ Outsiders helped to define “Chinese” as the Han
▪ Authentic Chinese valued civilian policies, especially those connected with
education
▪ Being “Chinese” meant being literate—reading, writing, and living by codes
written in foundational texts
❖ The Chinese created the most advanced print culture
▪ Private publishing industry expanded, and printing houses appeared all over
China
• China’s Neighbors Adapt to Change
Under its Song rulers, China became the most populist and wealthiest regions. Its
population of more than 100 million in 1100 spread Chinese culture through trade
and migration.
➢ The rise of warriors in Japan
❖ The pattern of agents ruling in the name of the emperor was used many times in
Japanese history
▪ Began in Heian period (794–1185)
▪ New capital of Heian (today’s Kyoto)
❖ Intermarriage to the Heian imperial family helped the Fujiwara family fuse its power
▪ The Fujiwara nobles governed over a advanced Heian culture of flower and
tea ceremonies
❖ Political marriages allowed the Fujiwara to control the throne
▪ The rise of large private estates (called shoen) shifted the balance of power
to regional elites in the provinces
▪ By 1100, more than half of Japan’s rice land was controlled by large estates
❖ Heian aristocrats ruled through political covertness and artistic style
▪ Hated the military
▪ In the provinces, warriors attached to certain kinship groups that gathered
strength
▪ As initial samurai, they forced local warrior organizations
, ❖ Japan became home to multiple sources of power
▪ An aristocracy
▪ An imperial family
▪ Local warriors known as shoguns
❖ It was an alliance between local rulers and military commanders under the
Kamakura shoguns who served as military protectors and brought Japan stability
➢ Southeast Asia: A Maritime Mosaic (the tale of Genij)
❖ Southeast Asia, like India, became a crossroads of Afro-Eurasian influence
❖ The prosperity and cultural spirit of China and India spilled into Southeast Asia by
land and sea
▪ Thai, Vietnamese, and Burmese gradually fused as the largest population
groups in the mainland
❖ Each population group borrowed what they could use in their own culture from the
Chinese
❖ In the capital at Angkor, the Khmers created the most powerful and wealthy empire
in Southeast Asia
▪ Water tanks allowed the Khmers to flourish on the countryside
▪ Khmer kings used their military strength to expand kingdom (into Thai and
Burmese states)
❖ Because of its strategic location, Malaaca became the most international city in the
world. Sea trade brought people to the area for trade
• Christian Europe
➢ Western and Northern Europe
❖ When the Carolingian Empire collapsed, northern Europe was left open for the
Vikings to invade it.
▪ European peasants had no central authority to protect them
▪ Warlords with their weapons became the rulers of society
❖ European peasants were enslaved
▪ Each peasant was under the authority of a lord who controlled every detail
of his/her life
▪ Basis of a system known as “feudalism”
▪ Feudal lords watched over an agricultural breakthrough
❖ Western Europe’s population increased (and by 1300 almost half of Europe’s people
lived there.)
➢ Eastern Europe
❖ People emigrated to Eastern Europe to become farmers
❖ Feudalism in Eastern Europe was a marriage of convenience between migrating
peasants and local elites
▪ Eastern Europe offered the promise of freedom from unreasonable justice
and forced labor
➢ The Russian lands
❖ In Russian lands, Western settlers and knights met an Eastern brand of Christian
devotion
❖ Its cities were at the crossroads of overland trade and migration
▪ Kiev became one of the greatest cities of Europe
▪ Under Iaroslave the Wise, Kiev was rebuilt to become a small-scale
Constantinople on the Dnieper (Even had a miniature Hagia Sophia with a
great dome)
, ▪ The makeover city was political and religious because the ruler of Kiev cast
himself as the emperor of Constantinople
▪ He was now called the tsar/czar (from the name Caesar)
▪ Tsar remained the title of rulers in Russia
➢ What was Christian Europe?/ Christian Europe on the move
❖ Catholicism became a faith that altered the rise of Europe
❖ Local churches were built everywhere
▪ The clergy had an important (almost mandatory) role in the daily life of the
believers
▪ Marriage and divorce were now part of church business (and not a private
affair)
▪ After 1215, regular confession to a priest was an obligation of all Christians
▪ Franciscans instilled a new Europe-wide Catholicism based on embracing
poverty, care of the poor, and hospitals
❖ Universities and intellectuals
▪ Europe had its first class of intellectuals
▪ Formed universities (unions, first university was in Paris)
▪ Ability of the scholars to organize themselves gave them an advantage
(Arab contemporaries didn’t like this)
▪ Scholars tried to show that everything came together, and show that
Christianity was the only religion that fully met the desires of all rational
human beings
▪ Thomas Aquinas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas)
❖ The Europe of 1300 was more culturally unified than ever before
▪ Catholicism was more available and was spread more intensively
▪ Leading intellectuals praised Christian learning and thought
▪ Not a nice place for heretics (any other religion than Christian, ex. Jews)
❖ Traders and warriors
▪ Venice and Genoa became Great trading centers as trade from east and
west passed through those cities
▪ Powerful families commanded trading fleets and used their money to
influence transactions
❖ Crusaders
▪ Rome and Byzantium wanted to gain the upper hand in the search for
European religious command. An alliance was made to push back the
expanding borders of Islam
▪ During the 11th century, western Europeans launched 4 attacks against
Islam
o The First Crusade began in 1095, under a call from Pope Urban II
for warrior nobility to put their violence to good use
o Should combine their role as pilgrims and soldiers and free
Jerusalem from Muslim rule
o A new concept arose, that just wars and good in them exist
o Such wars could cancel sin
▪ In 1097, 60,000 men moved all the way from northwest Europe to
Jerusalem
o Four “crusades”
o It is not considered successful since few stayed behind to guard the
territories they had won
