• Located in the Middle East, capital at Istanbul (Turkey)

  • Controlled Turkey and most of the Middle East at its height​

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• Believed in Sunni Islam

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• Recruited soldiers & administrators by enslaving Christian boys through a program called devshirme

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• Sultan Suleyman I (r. 1520-1566) was the "great" emperor: Conquered lots of territory & oversaw flourishing arts & literature

• Located in Persia

  • Capital at Tabriz then at Isfahan​

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• Believed in Shi'a Islam

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• Had a strong military run by military elites called qizilbash

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• Shah Abbas (r. 1588-1629) was the "great" emperor who consolidated Safavid power & oversaw construction of large palaces

• Located in India​

  • Capital kept moving around: Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Delhi, Lahore​

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• Believed in Islam

  • Made accommodations for its Hindu-majority population: Emperor Akbar abolished the jizya, a special tax that all non-Muslims had to pay, but Emperor Aurangzeb reinstated it​

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• Had Hindu tax farmers called zamindars

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• Had 6 Great emperors before the empire's decline

  • Babur (founder), Humayun, Akbar (the "great" Mughal emperor), Jahangir, Shah Jahan (who built the Taj Mahal), Aurangzeb (who reinstated the jizya)​

• Sought to remain isolationist from European contact to protect Chinese culture from foreign influence

  • Restricted the activities of foreign merchants​

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• Had a declining economy

  • Changed paper money to silver bullion, but that largely failed​

  • Many pirates raided the city

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• Fell in 1644 to the Manchus (from northern China, near China-Korea border)

  • Manchus came to help Ming Dynasty quell a peasant rebellion, but they instead took power after quelling the rebellion​

• Founded by Manchus, natives of Manchuria (northern China, near China-Korea border)

  • Forbade cultural contact between ethnic Chinese & Manchus​

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• Even though Manchus were foreigners, they hired Chinese to run the government through the Confucian civil service exam

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• Had a strong military that conquered lots of territory​

  • Emperors Kangxi & Qianlong conquered most of Central Asia

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• Very isolationist from European influence

  • Banned Christianity in 1724​

  • Restricted trade to just a few cities (until foreigners started carving spheres of influence in 1800s, more on this in Unit 6)

• Located in Japan​

  • Capital at Edo (Tokyo)

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• Originally had a feudal structure

  • Emperor at the top; Provincial rulers (daimyo) below them, warriors (samurai) below them, and peasants at the bottom​

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• VERY strict in isolationism to protect their Japanese culture

  • Restricted Christianity​

  • Restricted Japanese from traveling abroad

  • Restricted foreigners from trading there

  • Only the Dutch could come at the port of Nagasaki, where the Dutch taught many things to the Japanese & corrected their textbooks with correct info​​

• Located in West Africa

  • Previously controlled by Mali Empire​

  • Sunni Ali established autonomy of Songhai Empire in 1494

  • Capital at Gao

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• Profited from trade in West Africa & Niger River Valley

  • Had a navy patrol the Niger River​

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• Promoted Islam

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• Askia the Great (1493-1528) was the "great" emperor who conquered more territory & gained more influence in West Africa

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• Fell in Battle of Tondibi (1591) against Moroccans as the Moroccans were armed with guns (given by the Europeans)