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The Abbasids  defeated  the Umayyads  to claim the caliphate and leadership of the Muslim world in 750. The Abbasids  based  their  legitimacy  as rulers  on  their  descent from the prophet Muhammad’s extended  family, not  as with  some Shi’i directly  through the line of Ali and his sons. The Abbasids  attempted to reunify Muslims under  the  banner  of the  Prophet’s  family.  Many Abbasid  supporters came  from  Khurasan in  eastern Iran. Following the Arab conquest  of the Sassanid Empire,  a large number  of Arab  settlers  had  moved  into Khurasan and had integrated with the local population. Consequently, many  Abbasids  spoke  Persian  but  were of Arab ethnicity. THE NEW CAPITAL OF BAGHDAD The  first Abbasid  caliph,  Abu  al-Abbas  (r.  749–754),...

WARFARE   During 600–1450, military  technology  throughout Eurasia  retained  the principal  characteristics of earlier times. Iron and steel weapons  had long since replaced those made of bronze. In large empires such as those of China  and the Byzantine, Persian, and Islamic Empires, large-scale industrial production  of weapons  became  commonplace. Japan,  Damascus  in present-day Syria, and  Toledo  in Spain were famous centers for the production of swords.  Refinements and improvements were continuously  made to older inventions, such as poison  gas and smoke bombs.  The crossbow  was first manufactured in China in the fourth  century b.c.e.  and possibly in Greece about  the same time and then  disappeared in Europe.  It reappeared in western  Europe  in the 10th  century  (some scholars suggest, reintroduced through Central  ...

TRADE AND CULTURAL INTERACTIONS   From 600  to 1450,  many old patterns of trade  continued, others  were disrupted, while new ones developed  among  Europe,  Asia, and Africa. The Western  Hemisphere continued isolated  from the rest of the world.  The fall of the Western  Roman  Empire in the fifth century and subsequent centuries of barbarian invasions severely disrupted trade in western Europe and between western Europe and the rest of the world, although the Byzantine Empire continued to serve as go-between  for European  and Asian goods.  Eastern  Christian missionaries  from the Byzantine Empire converted  most Slavic peoples of eastern Europe from the Balkans to Ukraine and Russia to Orthodox Christianity and Greek cultural  traditions. In western  Europe,  Catholic  missionaries  converted  the Anglo-Saxons, Lombards, and  others  to the Ca...

THE AMERICAS   The peoples in North America lived in tribal groups, including the Hohokam, the Mogollon (Zuni), and  Anasazi  in the Southwest, the Algonquian and  Iroquoian in the East, and  the Hopewell  and Cahokia in the Mississippi  and  Ohio  Rivers region.  Very advanced  cultures  developed  in regions from modern  Mexico to southern America, including the Teotihuacán northwest of the Mexico Valley (ended c. 650), the Mayan  city-states in southern Mexico and Central  America, and in the highlands of Peru. In general, as the states became more advanced and expanded, they also became more hierarchic,  and greater social distinctions prevailed. In Mesoamerica and the Andes, the exceedingly elaborate social and  class distinctions were based  on birth,  lineage, and  occupation. A hereditary ruler and the nobility  topped  the class structure, followed  by a ...

SOCIAL AND CLASS RELATIONSHIPS   From  600  to 1450,  social and  class relationships varied  greatly  from  society to society around the world. Within each society, developments were dependent on local circumstances, wars, invasions, and migrations. Many invasions and group migrations  that occurred throughout Eurasia during this period greatly affected relationships between different peoples and social classes. While much information is available about  some societies, little is known  of others, especially those without written  languages.   In Europe  the invasions  and  chaos  that  contributed to the end of the Roman  Empire  continued through this period  as Germanic  tribes,  Magyars,  and Vikings raided,  conquered, and settled. Feudalism emerged because governments failed to provide the needed protection. Under feudalism, lords  provided ...

SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS   Between the seventh and mid-15th centuries, Christian and Muslim scholars of Europe and the Middle East preserved and studied the scientific and technological knowledge that they had inherited from ancient Greek, Roman,  and Hellenistic  civilizations.  They also made progress in many fields, including astronomy, mathematics, and human  physiology, that led to greater understanding of the natural world.  They thus laid the foundations for the Renaissance  to come. Life, culture,  and learning  were severely set back in Europe  when the Roman  Empire fell. Several centuries  would  elapse before the barbarian invasions subsided, allowing recovery to begin.   Education. Before about  1000,  monks dominated learning and education in monastic  and cathedral schools where boys from elite families were educated in the seven liberal arts derived from ancien...

Major Themes 600 c.e. to 1450 FOOD PRODUCTION   Unlike the significant advances in food production of the previous era, Europe,  Asia, and Africa witnessed no revolutionary advances  in agricultural technology  from 600 to 1450.  Nor were significant new crops introduced comparable to what occurred  after 1492 as a result of Europeans coming to the Americas. As during  earlier eras, forests continued to be cut down  and swamps  drained  and turned into grazing and agricultural land. More efficient methods  were developed to plant and harvest food, using iron implements.  Trade and migrating  peoples introduced food crops to new regions. Tea made from leaves of a bush grown in southern China became a popular drink throughout the land after the seventh century  because  of political  unity  and  better  transportation. From China,  tea drinking  and tea cultivation ...

WARFARE The main elements of war making  were basically the same in 3500  b.c.e.  as they were in 600 c.e., although the size of armies and the scope of wars increased  significantly over time. Techniques  and technologies  may have improved,  but  all wars involved the combatants in hand-to-hand struggle, usually with swords and spears, and long-distance fighting using bows and arrows,  in siege warfare, and in cavalry combats.  The following is a short list of some techniques and technologies of warfare that  showed advances over the period.   Cavalry. The horse came onto the battlefield pulling chariots as the Indo-Europeans moved out of their homeland in the crossroads of Europe and Central  Asia. It was a remarkable innovation. Sumer was known  to have used donkey-driven chariots  a bit earlier (3000  b.c.e.), but  the Indo-European Hittites  (1400 b.c.e.)  on horse chariots...

URBANIZATION   The founding of cities depends on several factors but none more important than an abundant supply of food and water.  For this reason, in the ancient world it was common  for cities to be located near rivers and coasts. Some examples of this principle at work are the cities of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia, the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers in China,  the Indus River in India, and the Nile River in Egypt. Other  factors can also explain the location  of cities. For example, Constantinople became a thriving  city without either good local farmland or freshwater because of its strategic location.  Aqueducts  and massive cisterns were built to bring in water from afar.   Important cities had to be defensible. Examples of ancient sites that could withstand invasion were the Phoenician  city of Tyre, situated  on an island; Corinth in Greece had an acropolis  on a high hill overlooking the har...

TRADE AND CULTURAL EXCHANGES   From the beginning  humans  have migrated  and mixed with one another. The first migration took place out of Africa to the Near  East some 100,000 years ago, when humans  spread  across Europe and  Asia. The ice ages provided  land  bridges  for travel  to parts  of Oceania  (60,000  b.c.e.)  and North America (14,000  b.c.e.). DNA tests indicate that every human  living in the far corners of the world  can be traced  back  to a common  ancestor  in Africa. This prehistoric  wanderlust continued after the beginning of civilization, enriching the civilization’s heritage. Archaeological records shows that  the “cradles  of civilization”  were not so isolated.   Even the most advanced  of empires had contacts with lands and peoples that they considered outsiders and inferiors.  For example,  Mesopotami...