Islam, the Mongols & the 15th Century

   This week's readings were really interesting to me, even though it took me a while to finish, I was able to finally get it done. The first chapter, was about Mohammed and how the Islam was initially started. It was interesting to learn about all their beliefs and their actions of what is right and wrong. One of the things that I always like to know is how women were treated, so see how bad they had it back then. It seems that even though they had some kind of privileges as being able to sue for divorce in case of  not getting sexual satisfaction, they also had it really tough with the men being able to beat them up if they disobeyed or the "honor killing" part which got to the extreme. It is amazing to learn about how things have changed and evolution through the years. One thing that is important is to understand the impact of this religion and how it has shaped the world and the peoples way of thinking. Religion is something that most of us practice and even when there are so many, it is interesting to understand how one differs from the other.
     The next chapters focuses on the Mongols, The Mongols where a group of pastoral and nomadic people that had its origins in a territory above China and grew to become a powerful empire. This empire dominated Eurasia in the 1200-1500 centuries, through the use of horseback riding  and powerful armies. While ruling China, the Mongols put the Chinese to work to improve infrastructures, agriculture, water systems , etc. Another interesting thing was that the Mongols converted to Muslims, they learned the Persian language instead of the Chinese, allowed intermarriages and discriminated against the Chinese. This chapter has so much interesting and WOW stuff that it seems hard to stop mentioning all the things this group did, but it was a really good chapter.
    The last but not least was the chapter that gives us a broader view of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These centuries signified a lot of changes that left its fingerprints for the future centuries. In some places they were still living the Paleolithic life but had more advanced tools and methods to sustain their food supply. In China, after they restored from what the Mongols had done it was going back up again. Europe was going through the Renaissance period with many classical ideas coming back.  It was a whole new era reflecting a more naturalistic feeling with some of the world's greatest artists creating wonderful paintings, sculptures and music.