• Temples served as center of imparting education, where the priests used to serve as teachers.
• Land attached to temples was also used for industrial purposes.
• Temples were also engaged in sales and purchases of goods and also used to provide advance loans to the traders and charge interest thereon.
• The people offered grains, curd, dates, etc. to serve their deities. They also sacrificed ox, sheep, goat, etc. to offer their blessings.
• Temples also served as the centers for entertainment and provided a common platform for the people to meet each other and get a new boost.

• Early settlers (their origins are unknown) began to build and rebuild temples at selected spots in their villages. The earliest known temple was a small shrine made of unbaked bricks. Temples were the residences of various gods.
• Temples were centres of religious activities. They were dedicated to different gods and goddess.

City life began in Mesopotamia. The land between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers (part of modern Iraq) is called Mesopotamia. The plains lie in the north-east. The plains gradually rise to tree-covered mountain ranges with clear streams. Agriculture began in this region between 7000 and 6000 BCE. There is a stretch of upland (called steppe) in the north. This area was used by the herders. Tributaries of the Tigris serve as routes of communication into the mountains of Iran. The south is a desert. The first cities and writing emerged in the southern part. The Euphrates and the Tigris bring loads of silt to make the land fertile in this region.

Answer:
Kharjis were the breakway group of Ali’s followers. They were the sources of trouble for Arab state for half a century.

Although Ali won this war but he was unable to suppress the group led by Muawiya, a kinsman of Uthman and the governor of Syria. Then he fought another war with him at Siffin, which ended in a truce. After the War of Siffin, Ali’s followers got divided into two groups. Some remained loyal to them, while others who left them came to be known as Kharjis.

(i) The late Roman bureaucracy, both the higher and middle echelons, was a comparatively affluent group because it drew the bulk of its salary in gold and invested much of this in buying up assets like land.

(ii) There was of course also a great deal of corruption, especially in the judicial system and in the administration of military supplies. The extortion of the higher bureaucracy and the greed of the provincial governors were proverbial.

But Government intervened repeatedly to curb these forms of corruption -we only know about them in the first place because of the laws that tried to put an end to them, and because historians and other members of the intelligentsia denounced such practices.

(iii) This element of ‘criticism’ is a remarkable feature of the classical world. The Roman state was an authoritarian regime; in other words, dissent was rarely tolerated and Government usually responded to protest with violence (especially in the cities of the East where people were often fearless in making fun of emperors). Yet a strong tradition or Roman law had emerged by the fourth century, and this acted as a brake on even the most fearsome emperors. Emperors were not free to do whatever they liked, and the law was actively used to protect civil rights.

In the late Roman bureaucracy, the higher and middle echelons, was a comparatively affluent group because it drew the bulk of its salary in gold and invested much of it in buying up assets like land. There was, of course, a great deal of corruption especially in the judicial system and in the administration of military supplies.

Sufism was a liberal reform movement within Islam. It is also termed as Islamic Mysticism. It spread into India in the 11^th century but had origin in Persia.

• Shaikh Ismail
  • Shaikh Ismail of Lahore was the first Sufi Saint who started preaching his ideas.
• Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti
  • He was one of the most famous Sufi Saints who settled in Ajmer which became the centre of his activities.
  • He had a number of disciples who are called Sufis of the Chishti Order.
• Bahauddin Zakariya
  • He is another renowned Sufi Saint who was influenced by Shihabuddin Suhrawardi another famous mystic.
  • He founded the Sufis of the Suhrawardi Order.
• Nizamuddin Auliya
  • He belonged to the Chishti Order who is regarded to be a mighty spiritual force.

Industrial societies far from becoming like each other have found their own paths to becoming modern. The histories of Japan and China show how different historical conditions led them on widely divergent paths to building independent and modern nations.

i. Japan was successful in retaining its independence and using traditional skills and practices in new ways.
However modernisation generated an aggressive nationalism, helped to sustain a repressive regime that stifled dissent and demands for democracy, and established a colonial empire that left a legacy of hatred in the region as well as distorted internal developments.

ii. Japan's programme of modernisation was carried out in an environment dominated by Western imperial powers. While it imitated them it also attempted to find its own solutions.

Japanese nationalism was marked by these different compulsions - while many Japanese hoped to liberate Asia from Western domination, for others these ideas justified building an empire.

iii. It is important to note that the transformation of social and political institutions and daily life was not just a question of reviving traditions, or tenaciously preserving them, but rather of creatively using them in new and different ways.

We get the earliest evidence for making and use of stone tools from two sites:

• Ethiopia
• Kenya

The Australopithecus were the first or earliest stone tool makers.

Fossils are the remains or impressions of a very old plant, animal or human which have turned into stone. These are often embedded in rock, and are thus preserved for millions of years.

 Political Factors

• From about 1100 BCE, when the Assyrians established their kingdom in the north, the region became known as Assyria. The first known language of the land was Sumerian.
• Writing was 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.
• It can be inferred that in Mesopotamian understanding it was kingship that organised trade and writing.

Religious Factors

• Early settlers (their origins are unknown) began to build and rebuild temples at selected spots in their villages. The earliest known temple was a small shrine made of unbaked bricks. Temples were the residences of various gods.
• Temples were centres of religious activities. They were dedicated to different gods and goddess.

or most of the early civilizations, including Mesopotamia, the social structure was usually like this:

Ruling Class: Kings and nobles who were chosen because of their courage and success as a warrior. This soon changed to heredity. Then priests and priestesses who intervened with the gods to bring good fortune to the earth. Usually they were members of the royal family or close supporters of the king.

Free Commoners: These are peasant cultivators who farmed on their own land. They can also consist of professional jobs such as doctors or merchants

Dependent Clients: These people work on land that is not their own. It is land that is most likely owned by the King or nobles.

Slaves: These are servants to people and are usually prisoners of war, criminals, or are heavily in debt.

• 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.