After the fall of the Toltec Empire...

...a group of 10,000 Aztecs traveled southward to the shores of Lake Texcoco.

Aztecs and other peoples on the shores of Lake Texcoco acted like city-states, maneuvering politically and creating inconsistent alliances.

The Aztecs won power through their militaristic ethics, mercenary connections, and manipulation of alliances, along with connections to the Toltec culture, like the Nahuatl language.

Egyptian Christians, known as Copts, based their translation of scripture from their traditional contact with Byzantium, although they split on political issues.

Coptic influence traveled down the Nile to the Kush kingdoms.

An important Christian output developed in Axum.

Muslims in Egypt tolerated Copts

Christian Kush kingdoms were left autonomous as invading Muslims faced stiff resistance.

Under constant threat from Red Sea Coast Muslims, the Ethiopians, influenced by Yemeni immigrants, turned inwards and converted, compromised with , and mobilized their population to form a Christian kingdom.

Swahili Coast:

Rulers were emigrated Muslim families.

Islam scarcely penetrated the hunters and pastoralists away from the major trading cities,

Muslim and African traditions combined, seen with the tracing of lineage to the mother and father and with the Swahili language.

Expanded from modern-day Turkey to the Western part of the Mediterranean down to the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden 

 Administration: Military aristocracy and a ruling monarch

Belief: Sunni Islam

Technological: Gunpowder, siege weapons

Exploration: No

Challenges to power: Safavid and Mughal empires, to a lesser extent Europe

Between the Ottoman and the Mughal empires, over what is now Iran, going down into Afghanistan.

Administration: Military aristocracy and a ruling monarch

Belief: Shi’a Islam

Technological: Gunpowder, siege weapons

Exploration: No

Challenges to power: Safavid and Ottoman empires, mostly Ottoman because of disputes over Shi’a and Sunni Islam

One of the only nations to have control over the Indian subcontinent

Administration: Military aristocracy Merged with the Hindu people and attempted to find common ground. 

Belief: Sunni Islam

Technological: Gunpowder, siege weapons

Exploration: Attempted to take over the land in Eastern Asia but failed and were pushed more into India

Challenges to power: Safavid and Mughal empires, to a lesser extent Europe

Same as it is today + Colonies in North America

Administration: Parliamentary Monarchy (Magna Carta)

Belief: Christianity

Technological: No?

Exploration: Became part of the fur trade in North America, established smaller colonies there

Challenges to power: Britain, a few wars with Spain, Native Americans

Same as it is today + Colonies in North America

Administration: Absolute Monarch (Louis 14th)

Belief: Christianity

Technological: No?

Exploration: Became part of the fur trade in North America, established smaller colonies there

Challenges to power: Britain, a few wars with Spain, Native Americans

Expanded Expanded into South America and the mainland of Spain is where it is today

 Administration: Absolute Monarch

Belief: Christianity really really Christian, so Christian Isabel and Ferdinand forced everyone else to be Christian as well

Technological: Compasses, maps, and ships

Exploration: Yes, the first to find the new world as Cristopher Columbus was under Spanish funding.

Challenges to power: Held land in South America and used it to develop their government.

Expansion: Basically where it is today, + Brazil, trading posts in Africa and the Indian Ocean

Administration: Absolute Monarchy (Henry the Navigator)

Belief: Christian 

Technological: Compasses, maps, and ships

Exploration: Accidently found Brazil, trading posts established along the African coast going into the Indian Ocean, dominant power there for several years until dethroned by the Dutch

Challenges to power: Indigenous resistance in the Americas, Maintaining colonies in South America against other European powers

Expansion: Exploring the new world plus trading posts in the Indian Ocean and around Africa, specifically the Cape of Good Hope

Administration: Absolute Monarchy

Belief: Christians

Technological: Most famously developing stock-biased trade companies (Dutch East India Trading Company)

Exploration: Americas and the Indian Ocean

Challenges to power: Britain, Frace, Spain, Portugal

Expansion: More than where it is today, into Ukraine, also expanding into Alaska and Canada

Administration: Absolute Monarchy (Ivan the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, Alexis Romonov, Michelle Romonoav)

Belief: Christian, wanted to be free of Mongol influences 

Technological: Mostly from trade, nothing really of note.

Exploration: Went into North America, Alaska and Canada area to participate in the fur trade and dominated that

Challenges to power: Europe, Mongol influences left

Expansion: Controlled almost all of Oceania, including Hawaii and New Zealand

Administration: Different Tribal based systems

Belief: Polytheistic

Technological: Good canoes

Exploration: All of the ocean

Challenges to power: None until colonialism

Mercenaries made Caliph succession increasingly bloody.

Civil Violence, Public works, Capital relocation dried out the treasury.

Peasant uprisings were enlarged by Shi'a groups.

Mongols invaded and razed Baghdad in 1258

The initial invasions of the Sind (modern-day Pakistan) by Umayyad generals were repeated by Muslim military commanders from Afghanistan following successful Hindu resistance.

Although some conversions were made with outcast Hindu groups, declining, corrupt, and misdirected Indian Buddhism provided the most converts for charismatic Sufis.

Muslim rulers were at the top of a social hierarchy, and their armies and their state was staffed by Hindus who had little direct interaction from their Muslim overlords.

Muslims and Hindus were influenced by their neighbors: Muslim societies became divided by Hindu castes, and the role of women diminished.

However, Hindus found Muslims impossible to absorb. Hindus mobilized against this threat using bhaktic cults. Bhaktic cults were open to all, emphasized the the devotion and emotional connection to gods, and were effective in neutralizing Islam threat to the low-caste groups.

From Sumatra, Southeast Asian Sufis, who infused Islam with Hinduism and animism, spread Islam to Malacca.

With the establishment of the Muslim Malacca trade empire, after the fall of a Buddhist empire, ports and traders, now had incentive to convert to Islam.

THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT IN WORLD HISTORY from 1200-1450.

The Mongols were a herding people. Their warriors acquired their dexterity with weapons and with their horse, as their herding economy required, from an early age.

Courage in battle determined male self-esteem.

Chinggis Khan, after the poisoning of his father and his enslavement and humiliation, is on the brink of extermination. He joins a more powerful chief allied with his father.

This chief gives permission to Chinggis Khan to take revenge, and Chinggis Khan builds his reputation as a commander. More chiefs attach themselves to the young warrior.

Mongol and other Nomadic rivals are defeated and Chinggis Khan is elected Khagan, or supreme leader.

The energy of Mongol warriors is focused on the world-dominating ambitions of Chinggis Khan, not tribal divisions.

The Mongol heavy cavalry, carrying lances and wearing some metal armor, and light cavalry undertook swift campaigns that prevented retreat.

The Mongols soon took hold of Chinese siege weapon technologies.

By 1227, the Mongol Empire stretched from East Persia, bordering the Caspian sea, across modern-day South Russia, and to the coasts of North China .

Muslim merchants, prominent in the grassland empires like Mali, facilitated trade with gold from the southwest forest regions and dates from the Sahara. They also sold slaves.

With their rise, the Mongols created a huge empire of interlocking states. The political homogeneity of these states ensured the security of traders, and further Mongol policies, like the implementation of waystations, increased merchants' safety