Historical Terms – XI

Islam – A Bridge Between Worlds.
KEY TERMS
Al-Mahdi: 3rd Abbasid caliph (775-785); failed to reconcile Shi’a moderates to his dynasty and to resolve the succession problem.
Harun al-Rashid: most famous of the Abbasid caliphs (786-809); renowned for sumptuous and costly living recounted in The Thousand and One Nights.
Buyids: Persian invaders of the 10th century; captured Baghdad; and as sultans, through Abbasid figureheads.
Seljuk Turks: nomadic invaders from central Asia; staunch Sunnis; ruled from the 11th century in the name of the Abbasids.
Crusades: invasions of western Christians into Muslim lands, especially Palestine; captured Jerusalem and established Christian kingdoms enduring until 1291.
Salah-ud-Din: (1137-1193); Muslim ruler of Egypt and Syria; reconquered most of the
crusader kingdoms.
Ibn Khaldun: Great Muslim historian; author of The Muqaddimah; sought to
uncover persisting patterns in Muslim dynastic history.
Rubiyat: epic of Omar Khayyam; seeks to find meaning in life and a path to union with the divine.
Shah-Nama: epic poem written by Firdawsi in the late 10th and early 11th centuries; recounts the history of Persia to the era of Islamic conquests.
Sa’di: a great poet of the Abbasid era.
Al-Razi: classified all matter as animal, vegetable, and mineral.
Al-Biruni: 11th-century scientist; calculated the specific weight of major minerals.
Ulama: Islamic religious scholars; pressed for a more conservative and restrictive theology; opposed to non-Islamic thinking.
Al-Ghazali: brilliant Islamic theologian; attempted to fuse Greek and Qur’anic traditions.
Sufis: Islamic mystics; spread Islam to many Afro-Asian regions.
Mongols: central Asian nomadic peoples; captured Baghdad in 1258 and killed the last Abbasid caliph.
Chinggis Khan: (1162-1227); Mongol ruler; defeated the Turkish Persian kingdoms.
Hulegu: grandson of Chinggis Khan; continued his work, taking Baghdad in 1258.
Mamluks: Rulers of Egypt, descended from Turkish slaves.
Muhammad ibn Qasim: Arab general who conquered Sind and made it part of the Umayyad Empire.
Arabic numerals: Indian numerical notation brought by the Arabs to the West.
Mahmud of Ghazni: ruler of an Afghan dynasty; invaded northern India during the 11th century.
Muhammad of Ghur: Persian ruler of a small Afghan kingdom; invaded and conquered much of northern India.
Qutb-ud-din Aibak: lieutenant of Muhammad of Ghur; established kingdom in India with the capital at Delhi.
Sati: Hindu ritual for burning widows with their deceased husbands.
Bhaktic cults: Hindu religious groups who stressed the importance of strong emotional bonds between devotees and the gods or goddesses—especially Shiva, Vishnu, and Kali.
Mir Bai: low-caste woman poet and song-writer in bhaktic cults.
Kabir: 15th-century Muslim mystic who played down the differences between Hinduism and Islam.
Shrivijaya: trading empire based on the Malacca straits; its Buddhist government resisted Muslim missionaries; when it fell, southeastern Asia was opened to Islam.
Malacca: flourishing trading city in Malaya; established a trading empire after the fall of
Shrivijaya.
Demak: most powerful of the trading states on the north Java coast; converted to Islam and served as a dissemination point to other regions.