Chapter 2 key terms

Front

The Chinese practice of tightly wrapping girls’ feet to keep them small, prevalent in the Song dynasty and later; an emphasis on small size and delicacy was central to views of female beauty.

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Foot binding

Front

The Chinese dynasty (960-1279) that rose to power after the Tang dynasty. During this dynasty, an explosion of scholarship gave rise to Neo-Confucianism, and a revolution in agricultural and industrial production made China the richest and most populated country on the planet.

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Song dynasty

Front

The “way of the warrior,” referring to the martial values of the Japanese samurai, including bravery, loyalty, and an emphasis on death over surrender.

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Bushido

Front

A phonetic alphabet developed in Korea in the fifteenth century in a move toward greater cultural independence from China.

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Hangul

Front

A major rise in prosperity that took place in China under the Song dynasty, marked by rapid population growth, urbanization, economic specialization, the development of an immense network of internal waterways, and a great increase in industrial production and technological innovation.

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China’s economic revolution

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China’s capital during the Song dynasty, with a population at its height of more than a million people.

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Hangzhou

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Arabic name for Spain, most of which was conquered by Arab and Berber forces between 711 and 718 CE. Muslim Spain represented a point of encounter between the Islamic world and Christian Europe.

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Al-Andalus

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A variation of Chinese writing developed in Vietnam that became the basis for an independent national literature; “southern script.”

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Chu nom

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An Arab dynasty of caliphs who governed much of the Islamic world from its capital in Baghdad beginning in 750 CE. After 900 CE, the empire increasingly fragmented until its overthrow by the Mongols in 1258.

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Abbasid caliphate

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Major Islamic state centered on Anatolia that came to include the Balkans, parts of the Middle East, and much of North Africa; lasted in one form or another from the fourteenth to the early twentieth century.

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Ottoman Empire