1. How did Islamic scholarship spark the Italian Renaissance? 2. Christianity spread across Europe through: A) The recognition that the story of Christ’s miracles were true B) Missionary work designed to convert the most powerful local people who could use their influence to convert others C) Armies sweeping across the Byzantine Empire D) The reputation of Jerusalem as a Holy City 3. Why did Europe wait until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to begin exploring the world? What elements had to occur before exploration was possible? 4. Islam spread quickly through: A) The Word of God and the Angel Gabriel B) Missionaries sent to ports throughout the Asian, African, and European continents C) Ties with the conquering Islamic Empires D) Umayyid Caliphs and their network of imams 5. Describe the similarities among global religions that experienced a reformation during the sixteenth century. 6. The primary difference between Christian-occupied and Islam-occupied Jerusalem during the Crusades was: A) Christians created an atmosphere of peace and tolerance where multiple faiths were celebrated B) Muslims allowed the active conversion of willing members to Christianity C) Christians developed a system of feudalism during their occupation D) Muslims allowed people of any faith to live there peaceably so long as they paid a tax 7. What has been the traditional role of women in society throughout history? How does the wealth of a civilization affect the lives of women? 8. The Plague helped spark the Renaissance by: A) Creating a desperate need for wage labor, which balanced the economy of a feudal society and led to a new class of patron-supported scholars B) Killing people from all classes, creating a need for artistic expression C) Making the need for medical knowledge obvious, sparking the scholarly revolution D) Passing through trading ships, which also brought ideas from abroad that inspired Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance thinkers 9. What is legal pluralism? Provide at least two examples and explain the role of legal pluralism in history. 10. The religion known as “Divine Faith” was: A) The Catholic response to Protestant heresy B) A Protestant Sect following the teachings of Zwingli C) The Aztec adoption of Catholic ideals D) The conglomeration of beliefs embraced at the Court of Akbar 11. How do we know about Mesoamerican cultures whose historical records do not survive? Please provide specific examples about the Chavin, Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Teotihuacan, or Inca. 12. The African Mali Empire consisted of three imperial powers, named: A) The Songhay, Mali, and Ghana B) The Benin, Swahili, and Jenne C) The Battuta, Swahili, and Benin D) The Songhay, Jenne, and Griots 13. Why did the establishment of nation-states occur after the religious turmoil of the sixteenth century? What is the connection between the reforms and the growth of secular power? 14. Columbus ended his career: A) Satisfie ...

1. 1. How did Islamic scholarship spark the Italian Renaissance?
2. Christianity spread across Europe through:
A) The recognition that the story of Christ’s miracles were true
B) Missionary work designed to convert the most powerful local
people who could use their influence to convert others
C) Armies sweeping across the Byzantine Empire
D) The reputation of Jerusalem as a Holy City
3. Why did Europe wait until the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries to begin exploring the world? What elements had to
occur before exploration was possible?
4. Islam spread quickly through:
A) The Word of God and the Angel Gabriel
B) Missionaries sent to ports throughout the Asian, African, and
European continents
C) Ties with the conquering Islamic Empires
D) Umayyid Caliphs and their network of imams
5. Describe the similarities among global religions that
experienced a reformation during the sixteenth century.
6. The primary difference between Christian-occupied and
Islam-occupied Jerusalem during the Crusades was:

2. A) Christians created an atmosphere of peace and tolerance
where multiple faiths were celebrated
B) Muslims allowed the active conversion of willing members
to Christianity
C) Christians developed a system of feudalism during their
occupation
D) Muslims allowed people of any faith to live there peaceably
so long as they paid a tax
7. What has been the traditional role of women in society
throughout history? How does the wealth of a civilization affect
the lives of women?
8. The Plague helped spark the Renaissance by:
A) Creating a desperate need for wage labor, which balanced
the economy of a feudal society and led to a new class of
patron-supported scholars
B) Killing people from all classes, creating a need for artistic
expression
C) Making the need for medical knowledge obvious, sparking
the scholarly revolution
D) Passing through trading ships, which also brought ideas from
abroad that inspired Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance
thinkers
9. What is legal pluralism? Provide at least two examples and
explain the role of legal pluralism in history.
10. The religion known as “Divine Faith” was:

3. A) The Catholic response to Protestant heresy
B) A Protestant Sect following the teachings of Zwingli
C) The Aztec adoption of Catholic ideals
D) The conglomeration of beliefs embraced at the Court of
Akbar
11. How do we know about Mesoamerican cultures whose
historical records do not survive? Please provide specific
examples about the Chavin, Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Teotihuacan,
or Inca.
12. The African Mali Empire consisted of three imperial
powers, named:
A) The Songhay, Mali, and Ghana
B) The Benin, Swahili, and Jenne
C) The Battuta, Swahili, and Benin
D) The Songhay, Jenne, and Griots
13. Why did the establishment of nation-states occur after the
religious turmoil of the sixteenth century? What is the
connection between the reforms and the growth of secular
power?
14. Columbus ended his career:
A) Satisfied that he discovered a whole “New World” in his
search for a new route to Asia

4. B) Under arrest for crimes against the Crown
C) After five visits to the New World and incurring incredible
wealth
D) Under tragic circumstances involving the Shipwreck of Santa
Bella
15. Describe the role of Trial by Ordeal in the conviction of
witchcraft. Is this a fair execution of justice? Why or why not?
16. The characteristics of a nation-state include:
A) A distinct border and a political system led by a king
B) European countries after the Reformation
C) A civilization with a specific region and national unity
through social institutions
D) A civilization that adheres to only one specific political and
religious identity
17. What kinds of historical records exist outside of the written
word? Give specific examples of civilizations that we have
learned about using non-written sources.
18. Witchcraft prosecution experienced a spike during the Early
Modern Period because:
A) More people were found practicing witchcraft
B) The coinciding spike in poverty and vagrancy led more
people down a path of crime
C) Heretical fears during the age of the Reformation increased

5. the incidence of witchcraft accusations
D) Women were trying to step out of their position by
remaining single and adopting powerful cult practices
19. Compare the government and social structure of Asian
Empires to that of European Empires using at least two
examples from each.
20. The majority of Korean practices in language, government,
etiquette, art, and music were determined under the rule of:
A) Chinese occupation in the sixteenth century
B) The Joseon period of Korean unity
C) Japanese occupation in the sixteenth century
D) The system of Chungin local administration
Global Legal Systems
What is “law”? What is “crime”? These are words and concepts
that can be found in almost any society throughout the world’s
history. And yet, there are slippery definitions of both. Laws
are magical in some ways, because their strength lies in the
silent agreement among all subjects to adhere to them. If one
person drives on the wrong side of a traffic lane, that person
might receive a ticket. If everyone ignores traffic laws, the law
becomes weaker and weaker until it is useless. In this way, all
laws are a thought experiment in which we all, together, silently
agree to follow what has been written into the legal code.
Obvious examples of crime include murder, rape, arson, and
assault. Less obvious kinds of crime may include manslaughter
(accidental murder), violence in self-defense, or sex while

6. under the influence of drugs or alcohol, precluding a person’s
ability to consent. Beyond these kinds of violent events there is
an enormous realm of grey area: crimes of omission, of parking
tickets, of thoughts. Many civilizations throughout time found
religious expression and belief to be the subject of law, and so
we find societies across the globe criminalizing blasphemy,
atheism, sexual contact outside of religious unions, or other
behaviors that are not offensive unless viewed within a
particular religious context.
Laws are usually granted by some sort of authority. Often, these
authorities overlap. In the modern US system, co-existing
jurisdictions may include the state, city, county, and federal
laws. Some of these legal codes may include laws that actively
contradict each other: a local ordinance against speaking
blasphemy might contract the federal Bill of Rights that protects
free speech. In addition to governments, though, laws can
originate through informal means, like the law of a household,
or through religious structures, like the laws and courts of
churches, rabbis, imam councils, and community leaders. Laws
are often written, but not always; sometimes they develop
gradually through tradition, culture, and historical enforcement.
And so, a community with multiple threads of authority – from
local leaders to a form of state to religious codes of conduct –
might be subject to conflicting orders. During the Reformation,
for instance, Catholics living in Protestant countries were
ordered by their monarchs to begin worshipping in Protestant
services. But their priests and the Pope ordained through
ecclesiastically binding laws that those who participated in
Protestant would lose favor before God and could experience
excommunication. Catholics dealt with this contradiction
through the process of casuistry: the addition of silent words to
a verbal oath that appears to state authorities to conform to their
laws when spoken aloud, but actually negates the oath when the
silent words are added. An example would be “I [do not] pledge

7. my life to the King of England.” In a period when a person’s
oath was the very sense of his or her soul, these kinds of logical
tricks were crucial to an internal acceptance of both authorities.
The coexistence of multiple legal systems to which an
individual or community is subject is called legal pluralism. Co-
existing structures of law codes can lead to contradictory
orders, as a modern person could be forced to choose between
obeying a religious code, a local code, and a federal code, all at
the same time.
The Roman Goddess of Justice, Justitia, holds her scales with a
blindfold
There is a sense that all law is tied to justice, and yet, this is an
illusion, since justice only occurs when there is full knowledge
of a crime, its exact violation, and the nature of the motivation.
Frequently the people involved with pronouncing something
guilty or not can be just as flawed as those they judge. Mistakes
are made, sometimes to the detriment of a society that loses
because of hasty imprisonment or execution.
And this leads us to another question: What is the goal of a
legal system? Superficially, laws create order in a society. They
organize social expectations and create boundaries for those
living under the rule of that law. But if we work with the meat
of laws themselves, it becomes about upholding power and
authority. For without authority, there is no law. In families,
children do not create the rules of the household; parents do. In
the workplace, the rules of office interaction are dictated by
managers and executives, not workers. In the state and in
religious structures, authority is paramount to the strength of
the society and laws are written to enhance loyalty, cooperation,
and even patriotism.
What is the point of punishment? Punishment enforces the law
and supports authority. Beyond that, though, there are two

8. reasons for punishment: deterrence – the prevention of crime
before it happens – and payment after the fact. The former is the
longest-lasting, most traditional sense of legal structure.
However, modern laws seem ever-more attracted to the idea of
making people pay for behavior as a way to extract fealty from
them or portray their power or even to raise money through fees
and fines. Many local governments would be upset if people
stopped running red lights, for it would lead to an ordered
society with less money in the local coffers. I would argue that
the ideal goal is to prevent any crime at all, but the world
appears to be more complicated than that. And so people pay for
their behavior in victimless crimes while laws are written
without successful policy to prevent crime in the first place.
Examining laws throughout history would take multiple
volumes. Here, let us consider some systems of law that have
been exported to various areas around the world: English
Common Law, which is used in most areas that were once
British Colonies, and European Civil Law, which evolved over
thousands of years from Greece to Rome to the Byzantine
Empire before being adopted by many European States. We can
also cover traditional forms of dispute resolution to get a small
taste of legal systems throughout the world.
Ancient Law
Egyptian and Sumerian laws constitute some of the earliest
forms of legal codes known to modern historians. The Egyptian
law code was based on “proper behavior” or Maat, and created
twelve books of punishments for breaking maat in various
situations. In Sumer, the leader Ur-Nammu created a list of
hypothetical situations where people violating local tradition
and harmony would be punished with specific consequences. All
of these laws began with an “if...then” structure. This brief list
of codes was not nearly as successful as the Babylonian Code of
Hammurabi, which we have already seen. The Babylonian Code

9. was similar to Hebrew punishments, in which criminals were
warned that whatever crime they committed would be inflicted
on them. The phrase “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” refers to
this kind of code, which, as Gandhi said, “leaves the world
blind.”
Ancient Greek law departed from these systems and used
instead a sense of family order in their theory of law. If
citizenship was controlled in Athens by those who served in
councils, then disputes and crime could be settled there in an
abstract theory rather than a list of specific laws. The case of
Socrates, for instance, reflected the loyalty of the state and his
position as a citizen more than a violation of a written law.
Outside of citizenships, the people who had authority over
wrong-doers were free to achieve harmony within those
households as they saw fit: the father could punish the son, a
husband his wife, or a master the servant. And so, by using the
family as the basic unit of legal cooperation, Ancient Greek law
occupied a more theoretical, hierarchical system than later,
more explicit systems. This may be different for various periods
in Greek history but lost to time due to a lack of surviving
documents, but the general conclusion for Athens holds true.
Ancient Roman Law was different from those of the Greek city-
states. Just as with religion, Rome studied Greek traditions but
due to the expansive nature of the Roman Empire, written laws,
edicts, and decrees became much more important. Each case
faced a judge whose sole opinion decided the matter of conflict;
cases were not reported and a system of precedent – so popular
in modern countries today – was not a major feature of Roman
Law. The justices’ opinions were based on a few forms of law,
each authored over time and used throughout the Roman
authority. One of these was the Law of the Twelve Tables,
collected in the fifth century BCE. This formed the core of the
Roman “constitution” and covered the obligation of civic duty.
Later Classical Roman Law focused on developing a property-

10. based legal code. The law was divided under Gaius in the
second century CE into three parts: personal, material things,
and actions. These categories corresponded with interpersonal
violence, theft of goods, or civic action from slander to law
suits. Roman Law also covered a regulation of trade, so that
exchanged goods would use standardized units of measurement.
Most of these laws were practical, but some underscored the
authority and power of the Roman Empire. As the Empire fell,
law became less important to former Roman colonies, but
remained paramount to the identity of the Roman successor:
Byzantium.
Civil Law versus English Common Law
Ancient Roman Law established a precedent in historical terms,
if not in legal terms; they did not record preceding trial records
for future information, but the theory behind these laws
persisted in the Byzantine government. The rules laid out under
the unifier Constantine were preserved in the Theodosian Code,
which combined Roman ideas of legal structure with the Greek
emphasis on the family as the ideal unit of harmony and
punishment. Mostly, Theodosius merely collected existing laws
and bound them in a single volume.
In 529, a strong, powerful Emperor known as Justinian the
Great called for the laws of the land to be collected, organized,
and published into a single collection. Contradictory or outdated
laws were to be discarded and the new bound collections sent to
all communities under Byzantine rule. The resulting collection
of law was called the Justinian Code. The Code combined laws
under Roman Empire, Greek traditions, later Christian
developments, and Byzantine laws in response to particular
Byzantine challenges. In addition to covering social obligations
for citizens and legal statuses of families, these laws added new
criminalization decrees concerning blasphemy, heresy, and
plagiarism. The result was to tie religious expectations to the

11. State. As the Justinian Code spread to other Christian countries,
the law code threaded Christian beliefs into the secular law
code, serving to enhance the power of the Medieval Church. The
Code spread beyond the borders of the kingdom into other
European states. The later adoption of a similar code in
European kingdoms is known as Civil Law. In the modern era,
around 1800, the Civil Law would transform into the backbone
of French law through the creation of the Napoleonic Code
under Emperor Napoleon.
Compare the Civil Law tradition with English Common Law,
which help historic preservation to be supreme. In England, the
development of traditions over time were considered to be law:
if a farmer worked the same land for a course of years without
any complaints, even if he never purchased that land, the land
would become his, for he had developed a traditional ownership
over it. Common law marriages – where two people living
together for a set period of time, perhaps five years or seven
years automatically become married under the local customs –
is a direct descendent of English Common Law. There,
precedent is key; tradition provides the legal justification. In
Common Law, the tradition is more powerful than any written
law espoused by a specific congress, parliament, king, or diet.
The underlying idea was that if a system worked for a certain
period of time and preserved the peace of society, then it was a
good system and should enter in the observed collection of
traditions that comprise English Common Law. Furthermore,
precedent was vital to building on the interpretation of written
laws. As a result, English Common Law became a
conglomeration of traditions, written legislation or decrees, and
interpretations at trial based on the real events that tested the
hypothetical conditions of the written laws.
Civil law as developed by Greco-Roman ideas and Justinian
implementation used written assent as its founding guide. In
civil law countries, a law must be written in order to exist.

12. Tradition counts for nothing as much as the codification of the
wishes of an authority. Courts must use only the language as
written in order to decide complicated cases of real-life
offenses. If the law did not mention by word a particular crime,
the crime did not exist and there was little room to apply a
similar law to a previously untreated offense. English Common
Law, by contrast, built flexibility into the system through the
adoption of traditions that proved themselves over time. Any
law might be proposed, written, and passed, but only those
policies that proved to be useful and orderly were adopted long-
term, joining the ranks of English Common Laws. Many of
these “laws” were not written down, merely observed over time.
In contrast, civil law was collected, described, and enforced
regardless of a time frame of cultural adoption.
Trial by Ordeal: Europe
The influence of religion on legal systems can be striking. Some
religious codes avoid corporal punishment, and instead resort to
spiritual punishments instead: years spent in hell, or
excommunication, or banishment from the group. Compare this
to the Hebrew law code calling for an eye for an eye or a tooth
for a tooth, inflicting the crime back onto the convicted criminal
“until we are all blind.”
A fascinating example of the inter-relation between civil law
and religious influence is in the European tradition of Trial by
Ordeal. Through this form of law, guilt is determined through a
physical trial. The accused person is set to perform a very
difficult task. Tasks may include being submerged underwater
for an extended period of time, or told to place their hands into
a pot of boiling water, or even made to walk five full paces
while holding a piercing-hot three-foot iron. Those who can
perform the task completely, without incurring burns or marks
or scars, prove themselves to have the spirit of God within them
and are accepted as pure and innocent souls. Those who are

13. unsuccessful, however, show the truth through injuries; their sin
and crime prevent God’s miraculous healing an indicate guilt.
Asian Legal Codes
The Tang Dynasty of China developed a legal system in the
seventh century CE that synthesized Confucian and Legalist
interpretations of law and society to create a compromise in
legal structure that could be applied across the Chinese Empire.
The resulting Tang Code created a particular penalty for a
specific offense, and then complicated those offenses through
the relationship between victim and offender. For instance, a
person might strike another and receive flagellation as a
penalty. However, if the assaulter was a master correcting a
servant, there was no penalty. Conversely, if the assaulter was a
servant striking the master, then penalty could include extreme
pain, from torture to execution. Bastinado was a form of foot
whipping that emphasized the pain of whipping by creating a
wound in a place that could not heal easily. The whipped
individual had to keep working and walking on foot, increasing
the pain and possibility of infection, to enhance the punishment
of the crime.
Classical Hindu Law,in contrast, holds that the acceptable
practice of civilized people to be authoritative in its very
existence. What is a civilized people? What is acceptable
practice? Hindu scholars were adopting rules and regulations
established under the ancient Veda people, so to them the
civilized description and acceptable practice made sense in the
Veda context. From those early laws, Classical legal scholars in
India created a corpus of law that placed three kinds of concepts
together: (1) the written law, (2) tradition or practice, and (3)
the religious idea of Dharma, the sense that doing right is tied
to one’s obligations and duties to humankind. Dharma is also
the “natural law of things” that points out that even without the
presence of written law, there still exists an obligation of

14. humanity to each other.
In practice, Hindu law was enforced through local courts that
received power and authority from the King. Guidance could be
shared throughout the hierarchy of authority, and the written
texts provided a sense of precedent to assist judges in returning
a community to harmony after the event of a crime or conflict.
Throughout Hindu Law, the sense of Dharma and obligation to
each other was pervasive; even if two parties were guilty of
some level of crime, they had to find a way through punishment
or compromise in order to return the community to its rightful
state of peace.
What is interesting about the Hindu system is that it does not
always assume that there is an offender and a victim. The
European legal systems and much of the ancient systems
prescribed punishments for criminals without considering that
when two people come into conflict, leading to the commitment
of crime, both parties might be guilty of some offense or
another. There is some room in English Common Law to
identify such situations – and clemency was written into the law
through sanctuary, benefit of clergy, diplomatic immunity,
King’s pardons, and other tactics – but Hindu Law considered
this possibility as part of the framework of a fair and equitable
system.
In contrast to the legal systems of Chinese and Indian
governments, the Mongols used a tradition called Yassah.
Created under the leadership of Genghis Khan, Yassah was
designed to create a unified legal code during the occupation of
the Mongol Empire. The law itself was overseen by the leader
and his closest advisers. It demanded absolute fealty throughout
the Mongol occupation, with the most common punishment for
stepping out of line and violating law to be absolute death.
Primarily the law functioned to eliminate tensions among
Mongolian and local traditions by following a strict code of

15. social and economic interaction. So long as the Yassah of
cooperation was observed, the people were free to worship as
they wished without penalizing “heresy” or “blasphemy” or
other non-conformist, religious “crimes.”
Many of the laws included in the Yassah merely forbade the
actions of taking power from the Khan, claiming to be an
inheritor to his authority, or challenging the hierarchy.
Additionally, Mongol law dictated behavior on the battle field
and in social life. Theft was punished severely, but losing a
hand or leg could be avoided by paying up to nine times the
worth of the thing stolen. Some laws were bound to safety –
bathing and washing during thunder and lightning, for instance,
was forbidden. The worst offenses included lying, spying,
indulging vices, conducting witchcraft, and betraying the
Mongol leadership.
Legal Codes around the World: Conclusions
Many systems of law throughout history were not written down
and were not easily preserved to the modern day. Extensive
traditions concerning the restitution for theft, assault, slander,
or offense in communities without a strong written tradition
often had the most interesting legal systems of all. Native
Americans in Inuit traditions developed a form of law that
focuses on three concepts: maligait, behavior that must be
followed, piquijait, things that must be done, and tirigusuusiit,
the forbidden things that must be avoided. During conflict
between two people or families, a song and dance battle
occurred. The two wronged parties performed dances or songs
for the community in order to indicate the offense as it
transpired in their eyes. The winner was proclaimed by the
community who watched. In Somalia, the traditional legal code
Xeer provided a wealth of advice to a council of leaders who
were empowered to dispel disputes, or poor cooperation within
communities. This informal authority of Xeer had no written

16. code, but collected the experiences of others through oral
history and story-telling in order to create a body of reference
through practice – very similar to the English Common Law and
the Tang Legal Code. Leaders or elders could draw upon the
history of tradition in order to deal with challenges in the
present.
The most helpful aspect of studying law throughout history is
that laws tend to be the product of the time. Concerns in a
society become codified into law. A society that is worried
about the sexual promiscuity of women will criminalize
premarital sex or bastardy. A society that is worried about
invasions or assassination plots might make the association with
foreign diplomats to be treason. Through the law, we can see
what ideal behavior is in a particular community, and what is
out of fashion or threatening to the existing authorities. And
finally, the law and especially criminal trials can reveal to us
the lives and conflicts of people who might otherwise never
leave historical records at all.