Ap World History Dbq Empires

From the 1200’s BCE to 1300 AD, empires grew into existence and fell to destruction. They changed the systems of politics and warfare, shifting through different styles of warfare and uses for the armies they built. Most empires had some sort of military force used to conquer, expand and protect their lands from “barbarians” or certain nomadic people groups. Some empires though, such as the Mongols, Chinese, and those that were apart of the Islamic Empire had specific and vast changes to their military’s role and origin over time.
In 1206 AD, the Mongols set out to conquer pasturelands and settled people to meet their needs of iron and grain. They began as a few groups of people with the same desire. Over the next 100 years, these people expanded
Unlike the Mongols, the Islamic empire originated out of a religion. Muhammad was born in Mecca around 570 AD. He had a small group of followers in his radically different religion and with them, he created the now known religion of Islam (Pollard pg. 304). The vibrant passion of the believers of Islam is what helped to spread it so far and so fast. Within a hundred years, Islam had spread as far as North Africa, sweeping down the east coast of Africa, into southern Europe, and finally into present day India and central Asia (Pollard pg. 306-307) The Islamic empire contained so many vastly different peoples that the leading rulers, the Abbasids, started to conscript local Arab men into their armies to help keep control. As time went by though, the empire continued to grow and eventually, the Abbasid turned to nomadic groups to be hired out as mercenaries (Pollard pg. 309). This was a shift in how empires created armies. Different from the Mongols that relied entirely on their own strength for all military purposes, the Islamic empire chose to focus on spreading their religion and knowledge and leave the fighting to their hired