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The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century

In Europe economic expansion slowed down. This was due to three factors:

1. In Northern Europe, by the end of the thirteenth century the warm summers of the previous 300 years had given way to bitterly cold summers. Seasons for growing crops were reduced by a month.
2. Trade was hit by a severe shortage of metal money because of a shortfall in the output of silver mines in Austria and Serbia. This forced government to reduce the silver content of the currency and to mix it with cheaper metals.
3. Ships carrying goods from distant countries had started arriving in European ports. The ships came with rats carrying deadly bubonic plague infection (the Black Death).

The division of labor is believed to be the major factor behind the growth of urbanization; because, the people of towns were not self-sufficient. They depended on other people for several kinds of services. Consider the following example:
A person engaged in making stone seals requires bronze metal for engraving it. He could not make tools of his own. Beside this he also had to depend on other person for color stones required for making seals. He did know trade, and had to depend on trades or other people who rendered this services to him. In short, he had to depend on others. Thus, all these functions were performed with mutual co-operation.

1. Meaning: It is a script of Mesopotamia. The word ‘Cuneiform’ is derived from the Latin words cuneus, meaning ‘wedge’ and forma, meaning ‘shape’. Cuneiform letters were wedge shaped, hence, like nails.

2. Uses: By 2600 BCE or so, the letters became cuneiform, and the language was Sumerian. Cuneiform writing in the Akkadian language continued in use until the first century CE, that is, for more than 2,000 years.

Cunieiform is basically wedged cut sign (triangular shapes)which is used in mesopotamia script. It is used in sumerian as well as akkadian language . In akkadian language cunieiform is used around 2000years .

Poor planned or unplanned urban housing, transport, and food systems, along with social and lifestyle factors, are drivers in the epidemic of noncommunicable diseases, which are linked to risks and hazards such as air pollution, poor diet, physical inactivity, traffic injury and domestic injury

Earlier the task of transportation of goods, food grains and other essential commodities were carried by the beasts of burden or bullock-carts. It was time consuming activity and a lengthy process. The river Euphrates helped the people to get rid of this task. It flows almost through the entire region of Mesopotamia. It provided people one of the cheapest means of transport, which made possible to transport bulk goods with any difficulty. The boats guided by the direction of winds were available free of cost. Several stream emerging of it provided an excellent source of water transportation. Most of the trade began to carry out on this route. Hence, we can say that the river of Euphrates was a well renowned trade-route.

Konsa chapter ka answer ha

1. After 2000 BCE the royal capital of Mari flourished. Mari stands not on the southern plain with its highly productive agriculture but much further upstream on the Euphrates.  Here agriculture and animal rearing were carried out close to each other in this region.
2. Herders need to exchange young animals,cheese, leather and meat in return for grain,metal tools, etc., and the manure of a penned flock is also of great use to a farmer. Yet, at the same time, there may be conflict between the regions.
3. In Mesopotamian nomadic communities of the western desert filtered into the prosperous agricultural heartland. Shepherds would bring their flocks into the sown area in the summer.
4. Such groups would come in as herders, harvest labourersor hired soldiers, occasionally become prosperous, and settle down. A few gained the power to establish their own rule. These included the Akkadians, Amorites,Assyrians and Aramaeans.
5. The kings of Mari, however, had to be vigilant; herders of various tribes were allowed to move in the kingdom, but they were watched.The camps of herders are mentioned frequently in letters between kings and officials. In one letter, an officer writes to the king that he has been seeing frequent fire signals at night – sent by one camp to another – and he suspects that a raid or an attack is being planned.
6. Located on the Euphrates in a prime position for trade – in wood,copper, tin, oil, wine, and various other goods that were carried in boats along the Euphrates – between the south and the mineral rich uplands of Turkey, Syria and Lebanon.
7. Boats carrying grinding stones, wood, and wine and oil jars, would stop at Mari on their way to the southern cities. Officers of this town would go aboard, inspect the cargo and levy a charge of about one-tenth the value of the goods before allowing the boat to continue downstream.
8. Thus, although the kingdom of Mari was not militarily strong, but it was exceptionally prosperous.

Effects of Renaissance

(a) BEGINNING OF MODERN AGE

i) Humanism: Humanism was one of the movements that started in Italy in fourteenth century. Italian universities were centres of legal studies. Francesco Petrarch is known as ‘Father of Humanism’. He suggested a shift from the study of law to the ancient Roman culture and texts. The term ‘humanism’ was first used by Roman lawyer and essayist Cicero. Humanists thought that they were restoring ‘true civilisation’ after centuries of darkness, for they believed that a ‘Dark Age’ had set in after the collapse of the Roman Empire. The period from the fifth to fourteenth centuries was the Middle Ages, and the Modern Age started from fifteenth century.

• Humanistic art: In the fifteenth century, Florence was recognised for its  wo prominent Renaissance men. Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), an eminent poet and philosopher of Italy who wrote on religious themes (he is known for his classic ‘The DIvine Comedy‘), and Giotto (1267-1337), an artist who painted lifelike portraits, very different from the stiff figures done by earlier artists. From then it developed as the most exciting intellectual city in Italy and as a centre of artistic creativity.
• Humanistic literature, Humanities stream: By the early fifteenth century, the term ‘humanist’ was used for masters who taught grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy. The Latin word humanitas, from which ‘humanities’ was derived, had been used many centuries ago to mean culture. These subjects were not drawn from or connected with religion, and emphasised skills developed by individuals through discussion and debate. Giovanni Boccaccio was the greatest writer and humanist who wrote Decameron. The universities of Padua and Bologna had been centers of legal studies.
• Humanists reached out to people in a variety of ways. Though the curricula in universities continued to be dominated by law, medicine and theology, humanist subjects slowly began to be introduced in schools, not just in Italy but in other European countries as well.

1. Contribution in the Field of  During the Medieval Ages, the work of imparting education to the people was done by the Church. Only the priests were able to read and write they too, provided education to the monks, etc. through the medium of Latin.

2. Contribution in the Field of Drama: In the Medieval age very few people could read. There was very little to read as books were almost scarce. Therefore drama became the most powerful medium of education.Plays in the local dialects were written to entertain as well as to educate the people who did not know Latin.

Next to the emperor and the Senate, the other key institution of imperial rule was the army. Romans had a paid professional army where soldiers had to put in a minimum of 25 years of service. The army was the largest single organised body in the empire with 600,000 soldiers in the fourth century. The soldiers would constantly agitate for better wages and service conditions. These agitation often took the form of mutinies.

The emperor, the aristocracy and the army were the three main ‘players’in the political history of the empire. The success of individual emperors depended on their control of the army, and when the armies were divided, the result usually was civil war. Except for one notorious year (69 CE), when four emperors mounted the throne in quick succession, the first two centuries were free from civil war.

The crusades were military campaign sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the middle ages.The crusades are generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power -mad popes and fought by religious fanatics.A breed of proto - imperialist,the crusaders introduced western aggression to the peaceful middle east and then deformed the enlightened Muslim culture leaving its ruins. Pope Urban second proclaimed the first crusade in 1091 with the goal of restoring Christians access to their holy land after struggling for 200 years.

Uniform sign did not represent a single consonant over but syllables ( say- come- in) thus, the science that a Mesopotamia Scribe had to to learn ran into the hundreds.,and he had to be able to handle a wet tablet and get It written before it dried. So, writing was a skilled craft but, more important, it was an enormous intellectual achievement conveying in visible form the system of sounds of a particular language.

Wedge shaped

MATHEMATICS: In mathematics, the Arab sifr, or zero, provided new solutions for complicated mathematical problems. The Arabic numeral — an improvement on the original Hindu concept — and the Arab decimal system facilitated the course of science.

ASTRONOMY: Like algebra, the astrolabe was improved with religion in mind. It was used to chart the precise time of sunrises and sunsets, and to determine the period for fasting during the month of Ramadan, Arab astronomers of the Middle Ages compiles astronomical charts and tables in observatories such as those at Palmyra and Maragha.

MEDICINE: In the field of medicine, the Arabs improved upon the healing arts of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Al-Razi, a medical encyclopedist of the ninth century, was an authority on contagion. Among his many volumes of medical surveys, perhaps the most famous is the Kitab al-Mansuri. It was used in Europe until the sixteenth century.

ARCHITECTURE: As with astronomy and mathematics, the great purpose of early Arab architecture was to glorify Islam.

NAVIGATION AND GEOGRAPHY: The world‘s earliest navigational and geographical charts were developed by Canaanites who, probably simultaneously with the Egyptians, discovered the Atlantic Ocean. The medieval Arabs improved upon ancient navigational practices with the development of the magnetic needle in the ninth century.

The term “ Abbasid Revolution” referred to the Dawa movement. This movement was initiated by Abu Muslim from Khurasan against the  Umayyad dynasty. The Abbasid revolution put an end to the Umayyad dynasty. The revolution led not only to a change of dynasty but changes in the political structure and culture of Islam.

Mesopotamia important to Europeans because:

• Mesopotamia has good fertile land and it is considered to be ancestors' land.

• It is very important to Europeans because many inventions and developments started from here only.

• Mesopotamia is important to Europeans because it has Tigris and Euphrates rivers that's why Mesopotamia land is a fertile crescent and the soil is also nutrient-rich.

• This is one of the important reason Mesopotamia is so valuable to Europeans.

A civil war broke out after Muhammad's death due to a dispute about who would succeed Muhammad as caliph. One faction supported Abu Bakr, who was the father in law of Muhammad. The other faction supported Ali, who was the son in law of Muhammad. After Muhammad's death in 632 CE, his friend Abu Bakr was named caliph and ruler of the Islamic community, or Ummah. Sunni Muslims believe that Abu Bakr was the proper successor, while Shi'a Muslims believe that Ali should have succeed Muhammad as caliph.

(i) The first Mesopotamian tablets, written around 3200 BCE, contained picture-like signs and numbers. These were about 5,000 lists of oxen, fish, bread loaves, etc. - lists of goods that were brought into or distributed from the temples of Uruk, a city in the south.

(ii) Mesopotamians wrote on tablets of clay. A scribe would wet clay and pat it into a size he could hold comfortably in one hand. He would carefully smoothen its surfaces.

(iii) Once the surface dried, signs could not be pressed onto a tablet : so each transaction, however minor, required a separate written tablet.

(iv) By 2600 BCE or so, the letters became cuneiform, and the language was Sumerian. Writing was now used not only for keeping records, but also for making dictionaries, giving legal validity to land transfers, narrating the deeds of kings, and announcing the changes a king had made in the customary laws of the land.

The conquest of large territories resulted in destruction of the caliphate based in Medina. In due course of time, an increasingly authoritarian polity took over. To consolidate their leadership within the umma, the Umayyads implemented a series of political measures. Muawiya, who was the first Umayyad caliph, moved his capital to Damascus. He adopted the court ceremonies and administrative institutions of the Byzantine Empire. He introduced hereditary succession. This innovation enabled the Umayyads to retain power for 90 years. In similar manner, the Abbasids ruled for two centuries.

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The Umayyad state became an imperial power which was no longer based directly on Islam but on statecraft and loyalty of Syrian troops. There were Christian advisers, and Zoroastrian scribes and bureaucrats in the administration. But Islam continued to provide legitimacy to their rule. They always appealed for unity and suppressed rebellion in the name of Islam.

The French serfs worked for their lords. They were not allowed to escape from the estate of their lords. A serf was not even allowed to marry without his lord’s permission.

A Roman slave was treated like a commodity with no identity. The slaves could be bought and sold in market. They were often kept in confinements. They were encouraged to marry and produced too many children, so that more slaves could be available for work.

Aramaic is an ancient language of the Middle East, still spoken in parts of Syria and the Lebanon

 Semitic language known since the ninth century b.c. as the speech of the Aramaeans and later used extensively in southwest Asia as a commercial and governmental language and adopted as their customary speech by various non-Aramaean peoples including the Jews after the Babylonian exile.

factors responsible for urbanisation in mesopotamia

• rise of trade and commerce.
• development of writting.
• surplus agricultural production.
• abability of transportation.
• devision of labour.