Through History with The New Monday Quiz: the 1210s

Niece #4 feels that The Monday Quiz is rather too difficult, and it's true that I haven't really tailored the thing to eighth grade students.  On the other hand, if you are Niece #4, keep checking out the questions.  It will be a fine day when you answer your first "Through History with The Monday Quiz" question.

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1. In 1211, a Jin Chinese army was outmaneuvered and slaughtered at the Battle of the Badger Mouth. Following the battle, the general of the army retreated to Beijing and assassinated the Emperor. Shortly thereafter, the city was put under a siege that would last for four years, cause incalculable human misery and not a little cannibalism, and end in humiliating surrender. What invading army brought such unhappiness to the Jin state?

2. With the help of the newly converted local tribes of Livs and Latgalians, Christian warriors of the the Livonian Crusades initiated raids into Sakala and Ugaunia in the early years of the decade. “War parties of the different sides [also] rampaged through Livonia and Latgalia." Where was all of this happening, in modern terms?

3. On July 16, 1212, Almohad troops were decisively beaten at the Battle of Navas de Tolosa. This was the beginning for the end of the Almohad Empire, and a key moment in the long process of _________________.

4. Also in 1212, a French shepherd boy had a vision of Jesus and gathered 30,000 children with a plan to recapturing Jerusalem. Except, they all ended up being sold as slaves. Except, it probably never really happened. But it’s a well-known historical story! What do we call this supposed event?

5. The Ten Foot Square Hut, written in 1212, depicts the Buddhist concept of impermanence through the description of various disasters such as earthquake, famine, whirlwind and conflagration that befall the people of the capital city. The opening sentence:

The current of the flowing river does not cease, and yet the water is not the same water as before. The foam that floats on stagnant pools, now vanishing, now forming, never stays the same for long. So, too, it is with the people and dwellings of the world.

In what country do school students still read this set of essays?

Accidental Extra Question #5. On January 18, 1213, Tamar the Great died after a prosperous 24-year reign during which the Kingdom of Georgia reached the apex of its cultural and political power. Canonized as the Holy Righteous King Tamar by the Georgian Orthodox Church, Tamar remains an important symbolic figure in Georgian history and culture. Having said all that, what makes Tamar a little… different from most historical kings?

6 & 7. Here are four pretty things made in or about the decade of the 1210s. For a half mark apiece, speculate in a rational manner about what culture produced each of them.

8. During Easter week of 1215, English aristocrats assembled a small army near London and invited King John to join them in a free and frank dialogue about taxation policy. On June 15th, the resulting document was signed at a meadow called Runnymede. Name that document!

9. The Khwarazmian dynasty had ruled modern Iran and Central Asia for a couple of centuries, but came under aggressive attack at the end of the 1210s. Some of the most prosperous cities in the world were not only sacked, but their populations put to the sword:

The people of Samarkand were ordered to evacuate and assemble in a plain outside the city, where they were killed and pyramids of severed heads raised as the symbol of… victory.

The Persian scholar Juvayni states that 50,000… soldiers were given the task of executing twenty-four citizens [of the city of Urgench] each, which would mean that 1.2 million people were killed.

Who would do such a thing?

10. In 1219, the city of Al Mansurah, shown here, was founded. Where?

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Through History with The New Monday Quiz: the 1200s

1. Riga is the capital of Latvia.
2. The Fourth Crusade attacked Zadar to either capture it or eliminate it as a rival for Venice, because they hadn't brought enough money to pay Venice for the ships they needed.
3. The Fourth Crusade, an undertaking that had a lot of trouble with "mission creep," murdered, raped, looted, and destroyed in Constantinople.
4. Uniting the peoples of the Mongolian Plains was the charismatic young Genghis Khan.
5. The Mamluks -- these Mamluks, anyway -- took charge of Northern India.
6. The Chinese capital, largest city in the world, big fire: Hangzhou.
7. The cloth merchant's son going through a fervent religious phase: St. Francis of Assisi
8. Building plots were sold on London Bridge.  Very picturesque, especially on days where there were relatively few heads on spikes.
9. The goal of the Albigensian Crusaders was to stamp out Catharism, and if that extended the power of the French state southward into Provence, they were probably OK with that too.
10. The university near Ely: Cambridge.

I'm going to give top honors to Morgan and pfly, at basically nine apiece.Well done all around!