| A | B |
|---|
| dynasty | A series of rulers from a single family. |
| Great Wall | Located in China; built to keep out "barbarians" from the north of China. |
| caravan | Caravan is a group of people traveling together, often on a trade expedition. Caravans were used mainly in desert areas and throughout China's Silk Road. |
| silk road | Trade rout that connected north central China with central Asia, persia, and the eastern Mediterranean regions. |
| tri-colored pottery | A pottery style unique to Tang dynasty China. |
| Chang’an | Capital city of the Tang Dynasty in China. |
| Dunhuang | City located at the eastern end of the silk road where the road splits around the Taklamakan desert |
| Jaipur observatory | (Jantar Mantar) a collection of architectural astronomical instruments, built by Maharaja (King) Jai Singh II at his then new capital of Jaipur between 1727 and 1734. |
| Sunni | The branch of Islam whose members acknowledge the first four caliphs as the rightful successors of Muhammad. |
| Shiite | The branch of Islam whose members acknowledge Ali and his descendants as the rightful successors of Muhammad. |
| Koran | The sacred text of Islam. |
| Mecca | Holiest site of the Islamic religion; located in Saudi Arabia. |
| corpus juris civilis | "Body of Civil Law"; legal reforms initiated by Justinian I of the Byzantine Empire between 529-534. |
| schism | A split; as in the split between the Roman Catholic and Byzantine Eastern Orthodox Churches |
| Pope | Leader of the Roman Catholic Church. |
| Patriarch | Leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church. |
| Kiev | City is Russia; heavily influenced by the Byzantine empire. |
| icons | A religious imaged used by eastern Christians. |
| mosaic | An art form made of of many small titles, utilized in ancient Greece and perfected during the Byzantine empire. |
| Umayaad Dynasty | A dynasty that ruled the Muslim Empire from A.D. 661-750 and later established a kingdom in al-Andalus (Spain). |
| Arabic | One of the languages of the Arabian peninsula; the Islamic Koran is written in Arabic. |
| Constantinople | Capital city of the Byzantine empire; located along the Bosporus strait. |
| Bosporus | A strategic waterway linking the Black Sea with the Agean Sea; passed by Constantinople. |
| Hagia Sophia | The Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople, built by order of the Byzantine emperor Justinian. |
| minaret | A tall slender tower of an Islamic mosque, from which the muezzin recites the call to prayer. |
| aqueduct | An artificial channel that is constructed to convey water from one location to another; built by the ancient Roman and Byzantine Empires. |
| Eastern Orthodox | Refers to the eastern branch of Christianity. |
| Roman Catholic | Refers to the western Christian church in Rome. |
| Justinian’s Reforms | Legal reforms; see corpus "juris civilis" or "Body of Civil Law." |
| Dome of the Rock | Holy site of Islam located in Jerusalem. |
| House of Wisdom | The House of Wisdom (Bait al-Hikma) was a library and translation institute in Abbassid-era Baghdad, Iraq. |
| Abbasid Dynasty | The third of the Islamic Caliphates of the Islamic Empire. |
| astrolabe | An Arabic medieval instrument invented to measure and predict the positions of the sun and major stars. |
| Algebra | An Arabic word for a system for computation using letters or other symbols to represent numbers, with rules for manipulating these symbols. |
| Sanskrit | An ancient language of India. |
| cyrillic alphabet | An alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet and used for writing Slavic languages; adopted by early Russia. |
| Chandra Gupta II | One of the most powerful emperors of the Gupta empire. |
| Empress Wu Zhao | Empress of Tang dynasty China from 690-705. |
| Confucius | Chinese philosopher who lived during the Waring States period. |
| Justinian I | Emperor of the Byzantine Empire 527-565. |
| Theodora | Empress of the Byzantine Empire 527-548; wife of Justinian I. |
| Constantine I | Emperor of the Romans 272-337; Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire is based on his name. |
| al Idrisi | Famous Islamic geographer who created a detailed map of the world in 1154. |
