| A | B |
|---|
| Bedouins | nomadic people found in early Saudi Arabia |
| Muhammad | founder of the Islamic faith |
| Allah | Islamic name for God |
| caliph | name for the ruler of the Islamic empire; he was religious and political leader |
| theocracy | a government in which the political leaders are also the religious leaders |
| Quran (Koran) | the holy book of Islam |
| Hijrah | name for Muhammad's flight from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD |
| Haj | name for the Islamic pilgrimage |
| Mecca | the holy city of Islam; Muslims bow toward it when they pray |
| Sunni | sect of Islam that said the caliph shoud merely be a follower of Islam, not a direct descendant of Muhammad |
| Shi'a (Shiite) | sect of Islam that said the caliph should be descended from Muhammad; practice jihad |
| Sufi | a sect of Islam that preaches a life of poverty and sacrifice |
| Alms | one of the five pillars of Islam; giving charity to the poor |
| minaret | a Muslim prayer tower |
| muezzin | the person who calls fellow Muslims to prayer |
| Shariah | Muslim law |
| pork and alcohol | things that Muslims must not consume |
| "People of the Book" | what Muslims called Jews and Christians |
| tithe | a tax paid directly to the church; Muslims used it to help the poor |
| Umayyads | family that took control of Islamic religion after Muhammad died; moved the capital to Damascus |
| Al-Razi | famous Muslim doctor |
| Al-Khwarizmi | famous Muslim mathematician |
| House of Wisdom | famous Muslim center of learning in Baghdad |
| calligraphy | artistic form of writing used by Muslims |
| optics | the study of light and seeing |
| A Thousand and One Nights | a famous piece of Muslim literature |
| Byzantium | an empire that was the eastern part of the former Roman Empire |
| Justinian | famous Byzantine emperor who created an important legal code |
| Hagia Sophia | a beautiful church in Byzantium (Constantinople) |
| Ka'aba | a famous cube-shaped Islamic shrine in Mecca |
| patriarch | a bishop in the Eastern Orthodox Church |
| icons | religious symbols such as statues and crosses |
| iconoclasts | means "icon breakers" for those who opposed icons in the church |
| Cyrillic alphabet | writing system established by St. Cyril for the Slavs; used in Russia today |
| excommunicate | to be kicked out of the Roman Catholic church |
| bubonic plague | this may have had a hand in weakening Byzantium and bringing its downfall in the 1300s |
| Slavs | the people who lived in Eastern Europe, north of the Black Sea |
| Kiev | a famous trading city in Russia on the Dnieper River |
| Vikings | Norsemen; invaded early Russia and Eastern Europe |
| Ivan III | became the first Tsar of Russia |
| Mongols | invaded Russia in the 1200s and conquered it and united it |
| Genghis Khan | leader of the Mongols |
| boyars | name for the nobles who owned the land in Eastern Europe and early Russia |
| Seljuks | people from central Asia who invaded Anatolia (Turkey) in the 900s. |
| Crusades | holy wars called by the Pope in Rome to free the Holy Land from the Seljuk Turks |
| Shah | Persian word for "king" adopted by the Seljuk Turks |
| vizier | Persian name for prime minister |
| harem | the place in the Muslim household reserved only for the women |
| polygamy | the practice of having more than one wife; Muslims allow up to four wives |
| purdah | strict Muslim practice that requires women to cover their faces when in public |
| non-Muslims | this group was taxed at the highest rate in Muslim society |
| schism | a split, such as the split that created the Eastern Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholic Church |
| Justianian's Code | a legal system created in the Byzantine Empire that borrowed heavily from Roman law |
| algebra | a type of mathematics created by the Muslims |
| mosque | a Muslim temple |
| monotheism | a religion that believes in one God |
| Ramadan | the Muslim period of fasting held in the ninth month of their calendar |
| Greek | services in the Eastern Orthodox Church were conducted in this language |
| Latin | services in the Roman Catholic Church were conducted in this language |
| walls | Byzantium (Constantinople) was protected by these |
