Lesson video

Hi there.

My name is Mr. Cooper, and I will be your teacher for the next four lessons.

And this is the inquiry on how was Baghdad connected to the wider world.

So we're going to be moving to a different part of the world, away from this country, all the way to the Middle East, and learning about this really, really important city called Baghdad, still very important, but over a thousand years ago it was important in a different way.

And yeah, so I'm looking forward to teaching you this lesson.

So first of all, if you haven't had me as a teacher before, very simple.

Piece of paper, date, whatever day you're doing this lesson on, title, and then underline it.

Simple.

And if you do find that I talk too quickly, or you just want to to break from my annoying voice, you can pause the video, which is great.

What a gift.

Hide your phone as well, please.

Just put it somewhere over there, over there.

Not near you, 'cause if you've got, if it's vibrating, if you've got things on like flashing on it, then you're not going to be focused.

So do that and then restart the video and then we will start with the lesson.

So if you could please, make sure that you have written the title, The Rise of Islam, and make sure it's underlined, and also put the date of whichever day you're doing this on.

That would be fantastic.

And when you've done that, simply restart the video and we will get on with the lesson.

So we are starting a new inquiry.

The inquiry is how is Baghdad connected to the wider world.

Baghdad, a city, and a different part of the world.

And we'll be talking about mediaeval Baghdad.

So Baghdad for when it was founded in 750 A.

D.

, 1250 years ago.

Now just to give you an idea of where we're talking.

So the blue arrow pointing at this country, pink arrow pointing to the location of the city of Baghdad.

Is actually a little bit further to the left where my arrow is pointing.

It's not quite right.

Baghdad is still a city.

It is the capital city of a country called Iraq.

Iraq is quite a new country, but Baghdad is very, very old.

And as I've mentioned, was founded in 750 A.

D.

And we'll be spending this inquiry looking at why the city was so important, what made it such a special city in the period of time that we're talking.

Before we get there though, we have to talk a little bit about what was going on in that part of the world when Baghdad was founded.

So on the screen, you will see two splodges, a blue splodge and an orange splodge.

Now these are not splodges.

They are in fact the areas that were covered by two very, very ancient, powerful empires, the blue empire, the Byzantine Empire, which was the Eastern part of what was once the Roman Empire.

And then the orange splodge is the Persian Empire.

Now these two empires have been fighting each other for many, many hundreds of years, and they were pretty equally matched, which meant that for those hundreds of years they were fighting, the arrows sort of indicating the direction they were fighting each other, this area, the red cloud was where all this fighting took place.

And this area was a very unhappy place for people.

It was lots of fighting, lots of death, lots of destruction.

And the people in this area were sick and tired of being attacked by these two empires.

The empires exhausted themselves.

They fought so hard for so long that they were unable to, and they weren't quite able to score.

They were always equally matched.

Now what's interesting about this, so I'm zooming in now.

So while these two big empires were fighting, something quite important was happening in this pink circle down here.

Now we're talking here about the Arabian peninsula, mostly desert, very dry.

And at this time, so when these two empires were busy fighting each other, a man called Muhammad, something very important happened to a man called Muhammad.

Now just go back to this.

So he was living in a town in Saudi Arabia.

Or not Saudi Arabia, sorry, in Arabia.

And one time he went.

He was born in about 570 A.

D.

And during his life, he transformed, he completely changed the Arabian peninsula.

And what happens.

He climbed to the top of this mountain, Jabal al-Nour.

And the top of this mountain, he went into this cave.

And in this cave he said he received his first divine revelation.

So a revelation from God or in Arabic Allah.

And Allah gave him a message.

And the message was this.

The way that the people of Arabia, the Arabs had been living was no longer acceptable, and that they had to change their ways.

And so Muhammad came down from this mountain and he came down with his message and upset a lot of people, because what he was saying was very, very controversial.

It was a lot of arguments.

Long story cut short, he managed eventually to deal with a lot of fighting, a lot of resistance to what he was saying.

And he united the Arabian peninsula, the blue area here called the.

It was renamed the Rashidun Caliphate.

Don't worry, lots of strange words on the screen.

That's absolutely fine.

So we actually have the two pink empires fighting each other.

So we have the Byzantine Empire on the left and on the right we have the Sasanian Empire.

Sasanian is another word for Persian.

So don't worry too much.

These are the two empires that had been fighting for centuries.

And then what Muhammad does, the prophet Muhammad, he unites the Arab tribes.

And in this blue area on the Arabian peninsula, we then have a united empire that is known as a caliphate.

So a caliphate is the word that we use to describe a Muslim empire.

Now, what happened then? Well, this happened.

The Arabs having united at this peninsula, they broke through the boundaries into the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire.

And because these two empires were so weakened by the fighting they've been going through for so long, they were not able to fight back.

And as a result, the Muslim armies left the Arabian peninsula and conquered huge parts of the world.

So we've just seen on the previous slide.

So that is what Muhammad achieved.

He died in 632 A.

D.

But the expansion continues right the way out to this area.

So the caliphate, so we call this the caliphate.

The caliphate covered a huge, huge area of land, huge area of land stretching right from the Atlantic coast to the borders of India, all part of the same caliphate ruled by the Muslim caliph living in the Middle East.

And here we have another way of looking at it.

This.

the green area, this just shows you how huge the caliphate was, absolutely huge.

So this is one large empire.

There were no borders inside this empire.

And one of the interesting things, when we're talking about Baghdad, and what was going on in Baghdad, this, the Baghdad became the most important city in this caliphate.

And we'll talk about why it became so powerful.

So we've done this a few times before, but if you could, simply pause here, fill in the gaps using the words in the box below.

And when you've done that, restart the video, and I will give you the answers.

So for centuries, the Byzantine and Persian Empires fought each other.

By the 600s, they were both exhausted from fighting.

This meant that they were too weak to fight back against the Muslim armies when they started to invade in the 620s.

In only 70 years, the Muslim Empire called the caliphate stretched from Spain to India.

So we have quite a few interesting words up here that you might not be familiar with before.

The main thing for you to remember is the word caliphate.

I want you to really, really remember this word because we'll be coming to it again and again.

Caliphate's a similar word to empire or kingdom.

Leader of a caliphate is a caliph, in the same way a king is in charge of a kingdom, and an emperor is in charge of an empire.

So what was going on in these two, in this caliphate? Well, what's really interesting about this.

So we have two coins, two different styles of coins.

The coin on the left is a Roman style coin.

The coin on the right is a Persian style coin.

Now what's very interesting about this is they both are, they're both coins made the similar time.

And the important thing that we take from this is that the Arab, the Muslim armies, they conquered, but they didn't destroy everything.

They copied lots.

So they didn't go into these new parts.

They didn't conquer these new empires, these old empires, and then get rid of everything.

They saw things they liked, and they copied it, including things like coins.

They also built.

So this is a mosque.

A mosque is a place where Muslims worships.

So Christians worship in churches, and Muslims worship in mosques.

Now, this is the Umayyad Mosque.

Don't worry too much about the word Umayyad.

It was one of the most important buildings in the caliphate for many, many hundreds of years, in the city of Damascus, in Syria.

Unfortunately is actually now been very damaged by war that's been going on recently, but this is one of the buildings that was built at this time, by the early, early caliphate.

And so they built, they copied, they had these new ideas about what they wanted their worship, their buildings of worship to look like.

Interestingly, this particular mosque has a shrine to Jesus in it.

So Islam teaches that Jesus was a very important person in the story of God talking or communicating with the human race, but they said that it was the prophet Muhammad who completed the story.

Jesus was one, but not the final.

So here we have a mosque, a really beautiful example of the kind of building that the Muslims carried out.

Here's another beautiful building, The Dome of the Rock in the town of Jerusalem, in the Holy Land.

Now Jerusalem is of course the place where Jesus, the founder of Christianity, was crucified, died and resurrected as Christians believe.

For the Jewish people, Jerusalem is of course a very, very important place as well.

And so in Islam, The Dome of the Rock is also has become a very important part of their faith.

And so we see that beautiful buildings being built all over the Muslim world.

Now, actually, while we're talking about this, the Muslims, they copied coins, and they also copied buildings as well.

So Muslim.

The reason mosques are shaped the way they are is because this is how churches used to be built in the Roman Empire with a dome, this dome shape.

And so, again, we have an example of the Arabs copying what they liked, what they liked or they saw, but also giving it their own kind of twist.

Now, this is a really interesting piece of discovery.

So we're now looking at Egypt, also part of the Muslim caliphate.

And actually Egypt had been one of the most important parts of the Roman Empire for many, many hundreds of years, because of the amount of wheat it produced.

And because of the wheat it produced there was a lot of money that was raised by Egypt, from Egypt.

So what happens? The Muslim armies, they took control of Egypt.

They took it from the Byzantine Empire, and they didn't destroy it.

They didn't kill.

They didn't cause a huge amount of destruction.

What they did, they said to the locals, "You pay us tax now.

You don't pay the Romans tax anymore.

You don't pay the Byzantines tax anymore.

You pay us the tax." And they did.

And as a result, the Muslims left the locals to continue to worship as Christians and to get on with their lives.

Now, this piece of paper, this is actually a papyrus.

So it's made out of reeds.

And you might be able to see, there are two different kinds of alphabets on here.

The lower half is the Arabic script or the scripts the alphabet used by the Muslims. The upper half is Greek, the Greek alphabet.

So what this tells us is that there were different groups of people speaking different languages, but working together or communicating with each other.

Otherwise, this would not have been made.

So we have evidence that there was peaceful living together rather than lots of death and destruction.

And here we have right the way over in Spain now.

So the early Muslim armies, they crossed over to Spain, and Spain was for a long time actually was a Muslim country.

And as elsewhere, they built mosques.

And this is a mosque that still stands to this day.

It is now a church, but it was built as a mosque.

And it is a really beautiful example of early Muslim building.

So again, lots of copying of what was discovered, but also very, very sort of particular way of building that the Muslims came to develop.

So what I'd like you to do, simply correct the mistake in each sentence.

This is a bit tricky, but in each sentence there is a mistake.

And what I want you to do is to copy out the sentence and correct the mistake when you find it.

Do not worry if you find this difficult.

It is quite tricky.

But I will give you the answers in a moment.

So pause now and restart when you're ready.

So here we go with the first one.

The first caliphs copied the styles and fashions of the places they took control of.

So the mistake was saying they did not copy.

They did copy.

Two, The Dome of the Rock was built in Jerusalem, not Mecca.

Three, a papyrus was found in Egypt, which showed how the Muslims and locals lived peacefully together.

Four, a mosque was built in Cordoba, Spain, not Italy.

So make sure you've got the correct answers, and then restart when you're ready.

So what you're going to do now, hopefully you would've done this a few times before.

Very simply you are going to find these questions at the end of the slides on the next screen.

So all you need to do is pause the video, read the slides on the next page, and answer the comprehension questions in full sentences.

This is so important you do full sentences.

Otherwise, it will be a wasted activity.

When you've done that, please simply restart when you're finished.

So pause now and restart when you're done.

So first question, which two empires had been fighting each other for a long time? The acceptable answer: The Romans and the Persians.

The good answer: The two empires, which had been fighting each other for a long time were the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire.

So these two hugely powerful, very old empires, hundreds of years they were fighting each other.

And this was the situation that was going on when Muhammad was born and lived in Arabia.

Two, what was the name of the man who founded the religion of Islam? Acceptable answer: Muhammad.

Good answer: The name of the man who founded the religion of Islam was Muhammad.

He died in 632, and then his successors who were called caliphs, they continued to expand the caliphate further and further and further.

Three, what did Muhammad do to the Arab tribes? The acceptable answer: He united them.

The good answer: Muhammad brought the Arab tribes together and inspired them to conquer an empire, which is exactly what they went on to do.

Four, what was the name of the Islamic Empire? Acceptable answer: Caliphate.

Good answer: The name of the Islamic Empire was the caliphate.

Very important word that we use here, caliphate.

The leader of the caliphate is the caliph.

Five, what did Muslim conquerors do to the people in the lands they took over? Acceptable answer: Left them alone.

Good answer: When the Muslim conquerors took control of new lands, they left people alone as long as they were paid tax.

And this is a really important point.

The Muslims did not cause death and destruction.

There was the initial battling of course, but often, as soon as that was done, people were happy to just pay tax to their new lords because they were quite used to these battles in fact.

So if I've spoken too quickly, you can simply pause, rewind if you need to, make sure you've got the key bits of information in your books, and then we will go to the last part of this lesson.

So the writing activity.

We're going to bring together now that we've learned so far.

We will answer this question: How did the caliphate grow so fast and so far? So slightly different task this time.

We're going to be telling the story.

We're going to be summarising the story of how the caliphate grew so fast and so far.

So don't panic.

I'll explain to you what you're going to do now.

You're going to pause here, and then you're going to write down the following sentences in the correct order.

So these sentences are all jumbled up.

And what you need to do is work out which sentence goes after which sentence.

If you read them through, you'll work out the order that they should be in.

So the first sentence I'll tell you, the first sentence is the second box.

For centuries, the Byzantines and Sassanid Empires fought each other.

That's the first one.

Now, all you need to do is to work out the order for the others coming.

Now, there might be somewhere you're a bit unsure.

Just have a go.

It's absolutely fine if you do so.

And when you've done that, restart the video, and I will give you the correct answers.

And here we go.

So the first question, the first one, for centuries, the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires fought each other.

At that time, a man called Muhammad started the religion of Islam in the early 600s.

He united the tribes of Arabia who then started to attack the nearby empires.

The empires were too weak to fight back, so the Muslims quickly took control.

Within 70 years, the caliphate spread from Spain to India.

The Muslim leaders generally left the locals alone, provided they paid tax.

After the fighting had stopped, the caliphate was peaceful, which allowed people to travel long distances.

So make sure you have the sentences down in order.

If you need to pause again now, do so, just to make sure you've got the sentences in your notes or your books, because I'm going to tell you what you've just done when you've done that.

So pause now, complete it if you need to.

Make any changes, if you need to.

If not, just wait, and then I'll start talking in a moment.

So what you've just done is you've written the answer to this question.

How did the caliphate grow so fast and so far? Well, this is the answer.

All you need to do to write a good account, a good story of this is to write this paragraph in one go.

And this is exactly what you've just done.

So I'm not going to ask you to copy out the paragraph because you've already got it in your books, but this is the kind of practise that we're going to be doing later on in the inquiry.

Just to make sure that you've got the skill of writing a good story, because ultimately this is all.

History is a series of stories that we use to understand the past.

And what we've just done is a really, really important story that is going to help us understand how Baghdad, where Baghdad fits into this picture.

That brings us to the end of the lesson.

If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Not compulsory, but I would love to see the work you're doing.

So that brings us to the end of the first lesson of our full lesson inquiry on how Baghdad was connected to the wider world.

I hope you found it interesting.

I certainly did.

Not the sound of my own voice, just the topic I find very interesting, which is why I'm a history teacher.

So, you know, makes sense.

Quiz, always do the quiz.

Now this won't take you too long.

It's just to make sure that we've got the main bits of information lodged in our brains, because that is of course the goal of doing these lessons.

Not much point if you don't remember anything.

So do the quiz and then you are free to go.

Have a great day.