The term ‘Abbasid revolution’ refers to the Dawa Movement initiated by Abu Muslim from Khurasan against the Umayyad dynasty. This revolution put an end to the Umayyad dynasty, which ruled from 661 to 750. With the fall of Umayyad dynasty in 750, the Abbasid came to power and ruled till 1258.

The three orders are three social categories: Christian priests, landowning nobles and peasants.The term ‘feudalism’ has been used by historians to describe the economic, legal, political and social relationships that existed in Europe in the medieval era.

The Three order

First Order

Priests (The Clergy)

– The Catholic Church

– Europe guided by bishops and clerics.

– Pope lived in Rome

– Women could not be become priests

– Monks – The church and Society

Second Order

Nobles

– Vassals of the king

– They enjoyed a privileged status

– Absolute control over property

– Could raise troops

– Even coin his own money

Third Order

– Peasants

– Free peasants and serfs

– Serfs cultivated plots of land, but these belonged to the lord.

(i) The division of the year into 12 months according to the revolution of the moon around the earth, the division of the month into four weeks, the day into 24 hours, and the hour into 60 minutes - all that we take for granted in our daily lives has come to us from the Mesopotamians.

(ii) These time divisions were adopted by the successors of Alexander and from there transmitted to the Roman world, then to the world of Islam, and then to medieval Europe.

(iii) Whenever solar and lunar eclipses were observed, their occurrence was noted according to year, month and day. So too there were records about the observed positions of stars and constellations in the night sky.

In the West, by contrast, the empire fragmented politically as Germanic groups from the North (Goths, Vandals, Lombards, etc.) took over all the major provinces and established kingdoms that are best described as ‘post-Roman’

In the West, by contrast, the empire fragmented politically as Germanic groups from the North (Goths, Vandals, Lombards, etc.) took over all the major provinces and established kingdoms that are best described as ‘post-Roman’

Senate: The body which had controlled Rome in the days when it was a Republic. Senate was composed of the wealthiest families of the Roman and Italian descent, mainly landowners. Senate was so powerful that emperors were judged by their behavior towards the Senate.

Army: This was another key institution of imperial rule, and its position came after the emperor and the Senate. The Romans maintained a paid professional army. The soldiers had to put in a minimum of 25 years of service. The army was the largest single organized body in the empire. Its strength had become 600,000 by the fourth century. The army had the power to determine the fate of the emperors. The success of the emperor depended on his control of the army.

• The system of nuclear family in the Roman society was one of its modern feature. The family used to be patriarchal in nature. Slaves were included in the family.
•  Marriages were generally arranged, and there is no doubt that women were often subject to domination by their husbands.
• The literacy rate was casual and varied greatly between different parts of the empire.

The city of Babylon had played an outstanding role in the ancient history of Mesopotamia. It was Akkad ruler, Sargon, who ruled from 2370 to 2315 BCE. Being situated on the north-west bank of river Tigris it made tremendous progress under Humurabiera. Babylon witnessed the emergence of glorious era of its history under Keldian ruler Nabopolassor. At that time, it covered an area of more than 850 hectares. Some magnificent features of Babylon were as follows:

• A triple wall was constructed all-around the city to safeguard it from any foreign threat.
• A massivq Ziggurat was the main center of attraction in Babylon.
• It was also a famous commercial center.
• The city had also made a tremendous progress in the field of language, literature, science, medicine, etc.

A man of the southern marshes, Nabopolassar, released Babylonia from Assyrian domination in 625 BCE. His successors increased their territory and organized building projects at Babylon. From that time, even after the Achaemenids of Iran conquered Babylon in 539 BCE and until 331 BCE when Alexander conquered Babylon, Babylon was the premier city of the world, more than 850 hectares, with a triple wall, great palaces and temples, a ziggurat or stepped tower, and a processional way to the ritual centre. Its trading houses had widespread dealings and its mathematicians and astronomers made some new discoveries.

1. Ur was a town whose ordinary houses were systematically excavated in the 1930s Narrow winding streets indicate that wheeled carts could not have reached many of the houses. Sacks of grain and firewood would have arrived on donkey-bac.

Narrow winding streets and the irregular shapes of house plots also indicate an absence of town planning. There were no street drains of the kind we find in contemporary Mohenjodaro

.

Drains and clay pipes were instead found in the inner courtyards of the Ur houses and it is thought that house roofs sloped inwards and rainwater was channelled via the drainpipes into sumps* in the inner courtyards

2. This would have been a way of preventing the unpaved streets from becoming excessively slushy after a downpour.

3. Yet people seem to have swept all their household refuse into the streets, to be trodden underfoot! This made street levels rise, and over time the thresholds of houses had also to be raised so that no mud would flow inside after the rains.

 Babylon witnessed the emergence of glorious era of its history under Keldian ruler Nabopolassor. 

Nabonidus was the last ruler of independent Babylon. He writes that the God of Ur came to him in a dream and ordered him to appoint a priestess to take charge of the cult in that ancient town in the deep south. He writes: ‘Because for a very long-time the office of High Priestess had been forgotten, her characteristic features nowhere indicated, I bethought myself day after day.

Then, he says, he found the stele of a very early king whom we today date to about 1150 BCE and saw on that stele the carved image of the Priestess. He observed the clothing and the jewellery that was depicted. This is how he was able to dress his daughter for her consecration as Priestess.

On another occasion, Nabonidus’s men brought to him a broken statue inscribed with the name of Sargon, king of Akkad. (We know today that the latter ruled around 2370 BCE.) Nabonidus, and indeed many intellectuals, had heard of this great king of remote times. Nabonidus felt he had to repair the statue. ‘Because of my reverence for the gods and respect for kingship,’ he writes, ‘I summoned skilled craftsmen, and replaced the head.’

The great Assyrian kings, who had been immigrants, acknowledged the southern region, Babylonia, as the center of high culture and the last of them, Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE), collected a library at his capital, Nineveh in the north. He made great efforts to gather tablets on history, epics, omen literature, astrology, hymns and poems. He sent his scribes south to find old tablets. Because scribes in the south were trained to read and write in schools where they all had to copy tablets by the dozen, there were towns in Babylonia where huge collections of tablets were created and acquired fame. And although Sumerian ceased to be spoken after about 1800 BCE, it continued to be taught in schools, through vocabulary texts, sign lists, bilingual (Sumerian and Akkadian) tablets, etc. So even in 650 BCE, cuneiform tablets written as far back as 2000 BCE were intelligible – and Ashurbanipal’s men knew where to look for early tablets or their copies.

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.

1. The great palace of Mari was the residence of the royal family, the hub of administration, and a place of production, especially of precious metal ornaments.

2. It was so famous in its time that a minor king came from north Syria just to see it, carrying with him a letter of introduction from a royal friend of the king of Mari, Zimrilim.

3. Daily lists reveal that huge quantities of food were presented each day for the king's table: flour, bread, meat, fish, fruit, been and wine. He probably ate in the company of many others, in or around courtyard 106, paved white.

4. You will notice from the plan that the palace had only one entrance, on the north. The large, open courtyards such as 131 were beautifully paved. The king would have received foreign dignitaries and his own people in 132 a room with wall paintings that would have awed the visitors.

5. The palace was a sprawling structure, with 260 rooms and covered an area of 2.4 h

The royal capital of Mari flourished after 2000 BCE. Mari is situated much further upstream on the Euphrates; rather than on the fertile southern plain. Some communities in the kingdom of Mari had both farmers and pastoralists. Most of its territory was used for pasturing sheep and goats. Exchange of materials was the norm between herders and farmers. But access or denial of access to water resources often led to conflict between herders and farmers. Nomadic communities of the western desert often came to the prosperous agricultural heartland. Some of them also worked as harvest laborers or hired soldiers. Some of them became prosperous and settled down. A few gained power to establish their own rule. Akkadians, Amorites, Assyrians and Aramaeans were examples of such herders.

1. Mesopotamian Writing:

• The first Mesopotamian tablets, written around 3200 BCE, contained picture-like signs and numbers.
• Writing began when society needed to keep records of transactions – because in city life transactions occurred at different times, and involved many people and a variety of goods
• Mesopotamians wrote on tablets of clay.

2. Modern Writing: The greatest legacy of Mesopotamia to the world is its scholarly tradition of time reckoning and mathematics, calender.

It is often said that natural fertility and high levels of food production were the causes of early urbanization. It is because of the following reasons:

• Natural fertility encourages settled life and agricultural production.
• It paved the way for animal husbandry.
• Fertility of the soil was also helpful in the beginning of new occupations.
• Flourishing trade and commerce is also another major factor for urbanization.
• The development of art of writing and administration played a very critical role in the development of urbanization.

Geography: 

• City life began in Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia is derived from the Greek words ‘mesos’, meaning middle, and ‘potamos’, meaning river.)
• It is a flat land between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers that is now part of the Republic of Iraq.
•  In the north, there is a stretch of upland called a steppe, where animal herding offers people a better livelihood than agriculture
• Agriculture began between 7000 and 6000 BCE.
• Soil was very fertile here but agriculture was threatened because of natural causes.
• Ur, Lagash, Kish, Uruk and Mari were some of its important cities.
• The excavation work started 150 years ago.

The south is a desert - and this is where the first cities and writing emerged. This desert could support cities because the rivers Euphrates and Tigris,which rise in the northern mountains, carry loads of silt. When they flood or when their water is let out on to the fields, fertile silt is deposited.

The Mesopotamians believed in several gods. Each city had its own special god. People performed ceremonies each month. The theme of the rituals and festivals for each month was determined by the phases of the moon. The king was the chief priest and thus occupied an important position in the society. He was conisdered as the representative of God on the earth. 

the Mesopotamians buried their deads with various objects such as weapons, ornaments and vessels. This shows that they believed in life after death. 

(i) The division of the year into 12 months according to the revolution of the moon around the earth, the division of the month into four weeks, the day into 24 hours, and the hour into 60 minutes - all that we take for granted in our daily lives has come to us from the Mesopotamians.

(ii) These time divisions were adopted by the successors of Alexander and from there transmitted to the Roman world, then to the world of Islam, and then to medieval Europe.

(iii) Whenever solar and lunar eclipses were observed, their occurrence was noted according to year, month and day. So too there were records about the observed positions of stars and constellations in the night sky.

Role of kings in Construction and maintenance of temples in Mesopotamia

1. As the archaeological record shows.villages were periodically relocated in Mesopotamian history because of food in the river and change in the course of the river. There were man-made problems as well. Those who lived on the upstream stretches of a channel could divert so much water into their fields that villages of downstream were left without water.

2. When there was continuous warfare in a region, those chiefs who had been successful in war could oblige their followers by distributing the loot and could take prisoners from the defeated groups to employ in the temple for various works. 3. In time victorious chiefs began to offer precious booty to the gods and thus beautify the community's temples.

They would send men out to fetch fine stones and metal for the benefit of the god and community and organise the distribution of temple wealth in an efficient way by accounting for things that came in and went out.

4. War captives and local people were put to work for the temple or directly for the ruler. This rather than agricultural tax, was compulsory. Those who were put to work were paid rations. It has been estimated that one of the temples took 1,500 men working 10 hours a day, five years to build.

5. With rulers commanding people to fetch stones or metal ones to come and make bricks or lay the bricks for a temple, or else to go to a distant country to fetch suitable materials.Hundreds of people were put to work at making and baking clay cones that could be pushed into temple walls, painted in different colours, creating a colourful mosaic

The facts of the Mesopotamia seal:

1. In Mesopotamia until the end of the first millennium BCE, cylindrical stone seals, pierced down the centre, were fitted with a stick and rolled over wet clay so that a continuous picture was created.

2. They were carved by very skilled craftsmen, and sometimes carry writing : the name of the owner, his god, his official position, etc.

3. A seal could be rolled on clay covering the the string knot of a cloth package or the mouth of a pot keeping the contents safe. When rolled on a letter written on a clay tablet, it became a mark of authenticity. So the seal was the mark of a city dweller's role in public life.

Answer:
Industrial Revolution is the name given to a series of changes that brought about a transition from production by hand to production by machine.

In spite of natural fertility, agriculture was the subject to hazards because:

• River Tigris was overflowed during the particular month of a year.
• The river often changed its course which causes water scarcity in a particular region.

Species:. The term 'Species' is used to describe the group of organisms that can produce fertile offsprings. Human species are differentiated from each other on the basis of the structure of their bones.

Hominid :

Hominoids have a larger body.

They do not have tails like monkeys.

 There is a longer period of development and dependency amongst Hominoids.

The Regional Continuity model of human origin asserts that modern Homo sapiens developed from different regional populations of archaic Homo sapiens that had previously evolved from regional populations of Homo erectus.

The replacement model asserts that there was a single origin of Homo sapiens in Africa and that these anatomically modern humans migrated out from Africa and replaced all other lesser-evolved humans throughout Europe and Asia.