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The Medieval World
Castles, Plague & Scholars
Feudal Europe, Byzantium and the Islamic Golden Age.
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Feudalism is best described as a system of what?
The Medieval World Beyond Europe
The same centuries Europe calls medieval produced the largest land empire in history and some of the wealthiest states on earth.
About this topic
The word medieval was invented to describe a gap between two periods of European history, and it fits nowhere else particularly well. Applied to the same centuries elsewhere, it covers Song China printing books with movable type four hundred years before Gutenberg, the Mali empire controlling the West African gold trade, and a Mongol army riding from Korea to Hungary inside two generations. Those worlds were connected, which is easy to forget. Ibn Battuta travelled from Morocco to China and back over roughly thirty years and found Muslim communities almost everywhere he went. Timbuktu ran a manuscript trade. Kievan Rus sat on the river route between the Baltic and Constantinople. Plague moved along the same roads that carried silk, silver and scholarship, which is why an outbreak in Central Asia reached both England and Egypt within a few years.
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The Medieval World Beyond Europe: all 10 questions and answers
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1Mansa Musa, whose pilgrimage to Mecca in the 1320s became famous, ruled which empire?
- A Kanem-Bornu
- B Mali Correct
- C Ghana
- D Songhai
Answer: B. Mali
Why: Its wealth rested on gold and on control of the trans-Saharan trade routes. Songhai later absorbed much of the same territory.
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2Which city on the Niger became a centre of Islamic scholarship with libraries of manuscripts?
- A Timbuktu Correct
- B Kano
- C Mombasa
- D Aksum
Answer: A. Timbuktu
Why: The Sankore mosque and its teachers drew students from across the region. Thousands of its manuscripts were hidden or evacuated during the unrest of 2012.
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3Which Moroccan traveller spent about thirty years journeying across Africa, Asia and Europe?
- A Ibn Khaldun
- B Al-Idrisi
- C Ibn Sina
- D Ibn Battuta Correct
Answer: D. Ibn Battuta
Why: He dictated an account of the journeys, the Rihla, after returning home. Ibn Khaldun, a near contemporary, is remembered instead for writing on how societies rise and fall.
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4Which empire founded in the early 1200s became the largest contiguous land empire in history?
- A The Khwarazmian Empire
- B The Jin dynasty
- C The Mongol Empire Correct
- D The Timurid Empire
Answer: C. The Mongol Empire
Why: It reached from Korea to Hungary within two generations of its founding. It later broke into four separate khanates.
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5Which Chinese dynasty saw the spread of printing, paper money and gunpowder weapons before falling to the Mongols?
- A The Qing
- B The Song Correct
- C The Tang
- D The Ming
Answer: B. The Song
Why: Movable type was described in China around 1040, four centuries before Gutenberg. The conquest of the south was completed in 1279.
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6The temple complex of Angkor Wat was built by which empire?
- A The Khmer Empire Correct
- B Srivijaya
- C Champa
- D The Pagan kingdom
Answer: A. The Khmer Empire
Why: It went up in the early twelfth century, first as a Hindu temple and later used as a Buddhist one. Angkor may have been the largest city anywhere before industrialisation.
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7Which state ruled much of northern India from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century?
- A The Vijayanagara Empire
- B The Chola Empire
- C The Maratha Confederacy
- D The Delhi Sultanate Correct
Answer: D. The Delhi Sultanate
Why: Five successive dynasties held it before Babur won at Panipat in 1526. Vijayanagara ruled much of the south during the same period.
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8The dry-stone enclosures of Great Zimbabwe were built by whom?
- A Merchants from Oman
- B Settlers from Egypt
- C The ancestors of the local Shona people Correct
- D Portuguese traders
Answer: C. The ancestors of the local Shona people
Why: The walls were laid without mortar and enclosed a royal centre that traded gold and ivory to the coast. Colonial-era claims that outsiders must have built it were discredited long ago.
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9The trading state of Kievan Rus grew up along which river route?
- A The Elbe
- B The Dnieper Correct
- C The Rhine
- D The Danube
Answer: B. The Dnieper
Why: The route linked the Baltic to Constantinople and the Black Sea. A second route along the Volga carried trade east towards the Caspian.
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10From 1192, real military power in Japan was held by whom?
- A The shogun Correct
- B The daimyo
- C The chief abbot of Kyoto
- D The council of merchants
Answer: A. The shogun
Why: Minamoto no Yoritomo established the first lasting shogunate at Kamakura, leaving the emperor as a largely ceremonial figure. The arrangement lasted, with interruptions, until 1868.
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