| A | B |
|---|
| ghazi | A warrior for Islam; similar to a Christian knight in Medieval Europe |
| Osman | The most successful Islamic warrior, his followers were called Ottomans, built a small state in Anatolia between 1300-1326 that would expand and become the Ottoman Empire |
| Timur the Lame | Rebellious warrior and conqueror from Samarkand in central Asia who interrupted the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1400s, conquered both Persia and Russia and burned the city of Baghdad, swept through northern India leaving death and destruction in his wake |
| Mehmet II | Powerful Ottoman sultan who conquered Constantinople in 1453 and made the Hagia Sophia a mosque, renamed the city Istanbul and opened it to people from many religions and backgrounds |
| Suleiman the Lawgiver | Came to the Ottoman throne in 1520 and ruled for 46 years, known as a military leader and for the splendor of his court and his cultural achievements; led empire to its peak in size and grandeur |
| janissary | Slaves of the sultan who were trained as an elite force of soldiers in the Ottoman Empire |
| devshirme | In the Ottoman Empire, the policy of taking children from conquered Christian peoples to be trained as Muslim soldiers or janissaries |
| Safavid | A Shi'a Muslim dynasty that built an empire in Persia (present-day Iran) in the 16th-18th centuries |
| Isma'il | Brilliant Safavid warrior who seized most of what is now Iran, took the Persian title of shah and established Shi'i Islam as the state religion, became a religous tyrant putting to death any citizen who did not convert |
| Shah Abbas | Took the throne in 1587, helped to create a Safavid culture that drew the best of the Ottoman, Persian, and Arab worlds (Golden Age), reformed both military and civilian aspects of life and established relations with Europe |
| Isfahan | Capital city under Shah Abbas with beautiful mosques, palaces, and marketplaces built by collaborating with the Chinese |
| Mughal | A nomadic people who invaded the Indian subcontinent in the 16th century and established a powerful empire there |
| Babur | From what is now Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, built up an army and swept down into India laying the groundwork for the vast Mughal Empire |
| Akbar | Babur's grandson who ruled India with wisdom and tolerance from 1556-1605, governed with a bureaucracy of officials, unified a land of at least 100 million people through a combination of military power and political wisdom, languages and arts flourished under his reign; a Muslim |
| Jahangir | Akbar's son whose wife essentially ran the Mughal Empire because he was extremely weak |
| Nur Jahan | Persian princess who was Jahangir's wife, real ruler of India from 1611-1622, tried to promote only Islam in the Mughal state |
| Sikh | A member of a nonviolent religious group whose beliefs blend elements of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sufism; was persecuted by Mughal rulers for political uncooperation |
| Shah Jahan | Mughal ruler during the 1600s who had a passion for beautiful buildings and his wife for whom he built the Taj Mahal as a memorial, the country and the royal court suffered while he was building beautiful buildings |
| Taj Mahal | A beautiful tomb in Agra, India, built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal |
| Aurangzeb | Ruled the Mughal Empire from 1658 - 1707, master at military strategy and an aggressive empire builder, expanded Mugal holding to their greatest size but the power of the empire weakened due to his oppression of the people |
