Islam spread through military conquest, trade, pilgrimage, and missionaries. Arab Muslim forces conquered vast territories and built imperial structures over time.
The Muslim community spread through the Middle East through conquest, and the resulting growth of the Muslim state provided the ground in which the recently revealed faith could take root and flourish.
Humanist, system of education and mode of inquiry that originated in northern Italy during the 13th and 14th centuries and later spread through continental Europe and England. The term is alternatively applied to a variety of Western beliefs, methods, and philosophies that place central emphasis on the human realm.
The dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on heir lords land and give him homage, labour, and share of the produce.
Social inequality is defined as a condition where one category of people are attributed an unequal status in relation to other categories of people. This relationship is perpetuated and reinforced by a confluence of unequal relations in roles, functions, decisions, rights, and opportunities.
At the beginning, the fiefs were granted to the most loyal warriors, nobles, judges, church representatives, and military officers. They were all close to the king.
The feudal lords could subdivide their fiefdoms, to be managed by other, less important lords, who in turn became their servants. The system formed a chain of personal bonds that linked the individuals involved with promises of protection, servitude and loyalty.
The Crusades contribute to the end of the Middle Ages. The word crusade means ¨a war against infidels or heretics, fought with the approval or in defense of the Church¨
They also served the expansionist interests of the feudal nobility; the desire to control Asian trade routes; and the objective of the church hierarchy to extend the Catholic church´s control over the Byzantine Empire territory, which was the birthplace of the Orthodox religion.
