World History Practice Test: The Islamic Golden Age
- Islamic Golden Age
- 10 questions
- 12 minutes
Ten questions on the Islamic world from the 600s to the 1200s and its advances in science, medicine and learning. Tip: match each scholar to the field he is best known for.
Tap an option to mark your answer. You can change your mind, or tap the same option again to leave the question blank. The correct answers and explanations appear when you finish the test.Tap an option to answer; tap it again to leave the question blank.
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Question 1
The Islamic calendar begins with the Hijra in 622 CE. What was the Hijra?
Correct answer: C
Facing hostility in Mecca, Muhammad and his followers moved to Medina, where the first Muslim community took shape. The Dome of the Rock was built decades later.
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Question 2
Which city did the Abbasid caliphs found in 762 CE as their capital, and which became a great center of learning?
Correct answer: A
Baghdad, on the Tigris River, became one of the largest cities in the world. Damascus had been the capital of the earlier Umayyad caliphate.
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Question 3
What was a major task of scholars at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad?
Correct answer: D
Translators preserved works by authors such as Aristotle and Euclid and added their own commentary. Printing presses were not used there.
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Question 4
The mathematician al-Khwarizmi wrote a book whose title gave us which mathematical term?
Correct answer: B
The word algebra comes from al-jabr in his book's title, and "algorithm" comes from his name. Geometry is a Greek word.
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Question 5
Ibn Sina (known in Europe as Avicenna) wrote the Canon of Medicine. Why is it historically important?
Correct answer: C
The Canon was translated into Latin and taught in European universities into the 1600s. The heliocentric model came from Copernicus in 1543.
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Question 6
Ibn al-Haytham is famous for work in which field, including the idea that we see because light enters the eye?
Correct answer: D
His Book of Optics showed through experiments that light travels from objects into the eye. Many Greek thinkers had believed the eye sent out rays.
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Question 7
In al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), which city was the Umayyad capital in the 900s and was famous for its Great Mosque and libraries?
Correct answer: A
Córdoba was one of the largest cities in Europe in the 900s. Granada's Alhambra was built later, under the Nasrid rulers.
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Question 8
Which technology, learned from China in the 700s, spread across the Islamic world and made books much cheaper to produce?
Correct answer: B
Paper mills appeared in Samarkand and Baghdad, replacing costly parchment and papyrus. Gunpowder and the compass reached the Islamic world later.
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Question 9
Astronomers in the Islamic world improved the astrolabe. What was this instrument used for?
Correct answer: A
The astrolabe helped find the time, latitude and the direction of Mecca for prayer. A thermometer measures temperature, not an astrolabe.
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Question 10
Which event in 1258 is often seen as the end of the Islamic Golden Age?
Correct answer: C
Mongol forces destroyed much of Baghdad, including its libraries, and ended the Abbasid caliphate there. Constantinople fell in 1453 and Granada in 1492.
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