By Emily Wexler
Sorry this is so late!!!
During class, we talked about three main areas. We talked about Europe, China and the Song Dynasty, and the Muslim world. The over-all theme of the chapter seemed to be nomadic invaders and how each place dealt with them, and how that affected the success of that empire. The Europeans generally fought off the invaders, whereas the Muslims immediately let in the invaders. This completely eliminated the idea of continuous conflict and gained more allies and supporters of Islam. The Song dynasty essentially payed off the invaders to not attack them and kept them at arm’s length until the invaders decided to become Chinese. This was more effective than fighting them off, but the process of waiting for the invaders to become Chinese took a while and they had to give up a lot of their wealth.
In the Islamic world, the Turks invaded and completely altered the political framework of the Islamic world but did not change the culture of it.
We also discussed the crusades and how they were an outgrowth from pilgrimage. They essentially turned into armed pilgrimages. The notion of holy war came out of this and Christianity justified the violence of these crusades.
Sufism was also talked about in class. Sufism is a mystical version of Islam. It was not widely accepted by legal-minded Muslims because Sufis tolerated cultural differences among Muslims and non-Muslims in a way the legal-minded Muslims could not.
