Class Reflection

To all my faithful readers (aka Mrs. Dailey):

My first time writing in a while. I looked into Beowulf, and it seems to be of an obscure Anglo-Saxon origin. This underlines a main point about vikings - we really don't know. None of the raiders would have been literate. We have no sources outside the extremely biased and one-sided church writing. The vikings are one of the most fascinating and mysterious of European people. Something about them fascinates us. There are scores of movies and books about them. They have become a fixture in our popular culture. But we must separate fact from fiction. We must always consider point of view. The vikings wore no horned helmets, and were not exactly the barbarians we have been taught that they were.

Class Reflection

Our last class was interesting. I feel distressed about our failure to come up with anything good. I am drawing a total blank on this. I don't know why. I read the articles. For some reason we are all having trouble. Hopefully this will not show through in our essays.

Class Reflection

In response to the Question given to us in class: Why did people convert to Islam

I think that people converted to Islam for a wide variety of reasons. One may simply have been mob mentality. When the faith was spreading so rapidly and people saw its success, they decided they should join too. Pretty soon, everyone was doing it. Once Muslims made up a majority, it followed that many others would convert. As we saw in our quote in class, some people in the upper class converted to hold positions of power. In the new Islamic governments, Muslims were preferred to hold power. Refusal to convert would be a total sacrifice of power. To the lower class, the doctrines of the religion would have been appealing. Spiritual equality appealed to both men and women. As a merchant, Muhammad had a middle-class appeal also. If fact, merchants held highly in Islam. This is an interesting contrast with Confucianism in which merchants were considered evil leeches of society who profited from others work.

Reflection: Hajj Video

I thought todays video was interesting. It provided some very interesting insight into the Hajj. I must say, I found the American female convert to Islam to be extremely obnoxious. I found it to be very interesting that such a mass migration (the largest in the world?) occurs over such a small period of time every year. The number of people moved is mind-boggling. I also found the other rituals of the Hajj interesting. I was aware of the Kaaba visit, but not the ritual stoning and the other practices. It was a good learning experience. I think we should do more in-class videos.

Class Reflection

I think our discussion of the new time period was good. We establised some of the key big picture developments well:

• The Spread of Islam
• Globalization and Increased Trade
• Increased Agricultural Production
• Rise Of Transregional Mongol-Turkish Empires

I think that the idea of having us come up with our own questions for homework is interesting. It will be a nice change, and I hope it will open up some new perspectives on the text!

Class Reflection: NEW TIME PERIODIZATION!!!

We are entering a new time period. The post-classical era, lasting from 600 CE to 1450 CE. This is an era of which I know very little. I look forward greatly to learning about this time period. Wedged between the great classical civilizations and the middle ages, not much justice is done to this period. I am sure there is a lot of exiting new history to learn.