Reflection 4

Muslim is one of the many religions that I have little understanding of, which had spread and continued in the modern era at about 22 percent of the world’s population. I was really impressed that the rise of Islam religion was so quickly spread to 1.2 billion of the world’s population. In early history, how nomads, people in general believed in god to overcome difficult times.  In the making of an Arab Empire, they were able to construct such a huge empire so quickly by “continuing a long pattern of tribal raids into surrounding civilization” and were able to organized their own mobilize military. The wide spread of conversion to Islam was amazing, the government offer different incentives for claiming Muslim identity; such as slaves and prisoners, traders who were Muslim did not have to pay taxes in their country.  Muslim practiced the religion very seriously they memorized words and recite in groups, they so into their religion that they gave up everything for it. Muslim religion ruled many countries and other religions during the classical era. For example it rules Christianity in Spain until after 1200.

One of the significance of world history was the Mongol Empire; they gave rise to large land-base empires from Asia to Eastern Europe. “What contributed to his growing power was shifting alliances and betrayals, a mounting string of military victories, the indecisiveness of his enemies, a reputation as a leader generous to friends and ruthless to enemies, and the incorporation of warriors from effected tribes into his own force.”  According to Strayer;  He built a strong empire that contain China, Korea, Central Asia, Russia, most of the Islamic Middle East, and part of Eastern Europe very quickly. His armies were better organized, better led, and more disciplined than their opponents.  While ruling China the Mongol put the Chinese to work to improve infrastructures, water systems, agriculture etc. the Mongols did not become Chinese, they did not allow intermarriage, ignored their examination system, discriminated against the Chinese, did not learn the Chinese language and prohibited the Chinese from learning their script. On the other hand, after conquering Persia, they totally adopted to their culture. The Mongols converted to Muslim, learned the Persian language, and allowed intermarriages.  Unfortunately, after thirty years of services they collapse and disappeared instead of driven out by Persian. Moreover, Russian found it beneficial to adopt Mongol empires government systems by paying the required tributes to the Mongol and be left alone. Hence the Russians learned a lot from the Mongols how to better organize and govern their country.

It was astonishing to find out how the spread of that plague wiped out more than 50 percent of the world’s population and they thought the world was coming to an end. The Mongol empire had lost it with the century; from there they lost control of all the countries that they had once ruled and the “entire Afro-Eurasian world economy was affected and largely closed.”

I was not surprised to find out how Chinese were rebuilt in my understanding Chinese had strong army and emperors.  It was very informative of this text to inform the students that China was once ruled by another empire and rebuilt during the Ming dynasty. I was glad that the Chinese reestablish the civil service examination system and beyond after the chaos of the Mongol empire.