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World History Volume 1, to 1500

Check Your Understanding Questions

World History Volume 1, to 1500Check Your Understanding Questions

Check Your Understanding Questions

1 .
What role did the cities of Mecca and Medina play in the formation of Islam?
2 .

Look at the following map (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license) and identify the Kingdom of Aksum, the Byzantine Empire, the Kingdom of Himyar, and the Sasanian Empire. For what reasons was Mecca not aggressively sought as a target of conquest by these neighboring states?

A map of southern Europe, northern Africa, and southwestern Asia is shown. The Adriatic Sea, Mediterranean Sea, the Aegean Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf), the Gulf of Oman, and the Arabian Sea are labeled. The tropic of Cancer is also labeled on the lines of latitude in the northern Arabian Sea. An almost triangular area of Egypt is highlighted orange and labeled “A” along with a strip of coastal land heading northeast from Egypt and encompassing all of Turkey. Below the orange there is a squarish tract of lang along the southern Red Sea heading inland highlighted green and labeled “B.” Across the Red Sea on the southeastern and southern coastline there is a square area of land highlighted purple and labeled “C.” The city of Mecca is labeled in the northwestern portion of this purple area and the city of Medina is labeled just northwest of this highlighted area. An area from the Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf) in the south heading up to the Caspian Sea in the north and almost to the Black Sea in the west is highlighted yellow and labeled “D.” An orange box is drawn around these highlighted areas.
3 .
How did monotheistic faiths spread through the Arabian Peninsula before the rise of Islam?
4 .
Discuss the factors that led to the success of the Arab-Islamic conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries.
5 .
What issues did the Muslim community have to consider in choosing Muhammad’s first successor?
6 .
Why did the earliest Arab-Islamic conquests first focus on the Arabian Peninsula?
7 .
What differences separated the two umbrella sects of Islam, the Sunni and the Shia, in the Abbasid period?
8 .
What features of Abbasid society helped make the Abbasid Translation Movement such a successful intellectual endeavor?
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