Write on both questions (2 pages for each question)
1.Thomas Benton Hart has noted that modernity is not only a stage in world historical development whose distinctive, social, cultural, and economic characteristics first appeared in the West but it is also an ideology and a historical construct which required an interpretation of the previous epoch it called “The Middle Ages” as a period of ignorance, backwardness, stagnation, and superstition.
In a well-organized essay discuss why this now discredited interpretation of the Medieval Period developed. Describe the main lines of governmental, social, religious, technological, cultural, and economic development that helped create “Europe” out of the remnants of the Western Roman Empire between 476 C.E. and 1500 C.E. and indicate how these laid the basis for modernity. What did political and cultural landscape of Europe look like in 1500?
2.Islam was the last of the major faiths that emerged out of the Abrahamic Legacy. What elements did Islam share with Judaism and Christianity and what of its features were distinctive? What were some of the key differences? In a concise and well organized essay describe the origins and main lines of the cultural, political, intellectual and religious evolution of Islam between the 7th and 15th centuries and discuss the key reasons for its remarkable growth and expansion as a religion and a theocratic empire.
