| A | B |
|---|
| Muhammad | Arab prophet who founded Islam |
| Allah | Islamic name for God |
| Islam | Religion based on the belief in Allah |
| Muslim | Follower of Islam |
| Hijrah | Muhammad's move from Mecca to Medina in 622 |
| mosque | Islamic house of worship |
| Quran | Holy book of Islam |
| hajj | Pilgrimage to Mecca |
| shari'ah | Body of Islamic law |
| Kaaba | Holiest shrine in Islam |
| caliph | Highest political and religious leader in a Muslim government |
| Umayyads | Dynasty that ruled the Muslim Empire from 661-750 |
| Abbasids | Dynasty that ruled much of Muslim Empire from 750-1258 |
| al-Andalus | Muslim ruled area in what is now Spain |
| Fatimid | Member of a Muslim dynasty that traced its ancestry to Muhammad's daughter, Fatima |
| Shiites | Branch of Islam whose followers believe that only descendants of Ali can be caliphs; associated with the Abbasids |
| Sunnis | Branch of Islam who claim that only descendants of the Umayyads can be true caliphs |
| House of Wisdom | Center of learning established in Baghdad in the 800's |
| calligraphy | Art of beautiful handwriting |
| al-Khwarizmi | Wrote an algebra textbook |
| Bedouins | Nomadic people o Arabia, North Africa, or Syria |
| alms | Money for the poor |
| Seljuks | Turkish group that migrated into the Abbasid Empire and later established their own empire |
| vizier | prime minister in a Muslim kingdom |
| shah | Persian word for king |
| Nizam al-Mulk | Persian who served as vizier for the Seljuks |
| Crusades | Christian campaigns to recapture the Holy Land |
| sultan | political ruler in a Muslim country |
| sheikh | ruler of an Arab tribe |
| jihad | "struggle in the way of God"; the Arabic custom of raiding one's enemies |
| Abu Bakr | First successor to Muhammad |
| Ali | Last of the Five Rightful Caliphs |
| Saladin | Muslin ruler who took control of Fatimid Egypt; defeated Richard I in the 3rd Crusade |
| Mu'awiyah | founder of the Umayyad dynasty |
| Ibn Rushd | Muslim residing in Cordoba, Spain; wrote a commentary on virtually all of Aristotle's surviving works |
| Ibn Sina | author of a medical encyclopedia that became the basic medical textbooks for medieval university students |
| Hussein | second son of Ali who led a rebellion against the Umayyads; it failed |
| Damascus | capital of the Umayyad dynasty |
| Baghdah | capital of the Abbasid dynasty |
| Harun al-Rashid | Best known of the Abbasid caliphs; his reign is often described as a golden age |
| bazaar | covered market |
| dowry | in Islamic society, a gift of money or property given to the bride by her husband |
| astrolabe | an instrument used by sailors to determine their location by observing the position of the stars and planets |
| minaret | a tower on a mosque |
| muezzin | a crier, who calls the faithful to prayer |
| arabesque | geometric patterns that decorate Islamic works of art |
| Ibn-Khaldun | Islamic historian who argued for a cyclical view of history |
| Alhambra | Famous palace in Granada, Spain; great example of Islamic architecture |
| Hadith | collection of Muhammad's sayings which warns against any attempt to imitiate God by creating pictures of living beings |
| al-Ma'mum | Harun al-Rashid's son; great patron of learning |
