Key Terms
- arquebus
- an early gun that was large and difficult to maneuver
- devshirme
- the system of acquiring Christian boys from the Balkans to be enslaved, converted to Islam, and trained to serve the Ottoman sultan
- Forbidden City
- a walled complex of palaces, temples, and gardens built by the Ming dynasty emperors in the center of Beijing
- harem
- the private household of the Ottoman sultan
- humanism
- a movement born in fourteenth-century Italy that focused on the study of human beings, human nature, and human achievements rather than the study of God
- Janissaries
- the elite enslaved infantry corps of the Ottoman army
- Mamluk Sultanate
- a state in Egypt and the Levant administered and defended by educated, formerly enslaved men called mamluks
- Red Turbans
- a secret peasant society that rose up against Mongol rule during the Yuan dynasty
- Renaissance
- a period of intellectual and artistic rebirth inspired by the cultural achievements of ancient Greece and Rome
- timar
- a right granted to subjects of the Ottoman sultan to collect taxes in a given area