Sugar Changed the World, Part 2: Central Ideas Answers

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.When the prophet Muhammad began preaching in A.D. 610, he attracted only a few disciples. Yet by the time he died in 632, his faith had spread throughout Arabia. By 642, the armies of Muslim conquerors, along with the arguments of the Muslim faithful, took the religion all across Syria, Iraq, parts of Iran, and Egypt. From there, Islam spread through North Africa along the Mediterranean, across to the Iberian Peninsula, and over to France. Islam's march into Europe ended in 732, when the French defeated the Muslim armies at the battle of Poitiers. But that was not all. Muslim rulers took Alexander's old lands in Afghanistan and then, from there, swept through to conquer northern India. The pagan tribes of Central Asia chose Islam. By conversion or conquest, Islam, the religion of Muhammad, won over nearly all the lands of the ancient world: Egypt, Persia, India, and the Christian Mediterranean.

Read the passage and study the drawing from Sugar Changed the World.

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Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.The vast Muslim world was wonderful for the growth of knowledge. The Greeks had developed a level of practical experience and technical understanding a thousand years more advanced than anyone else nearby. The Muslims began to translate some of these ancient Greek texts. From India, Muslims learned of the zero, which allowed them to invent what we still call "Arabic” numerals. And because the Koran, the sacred book of Islam, is written in Arabic, scholars throughout the Muslim world learned to read Arabic and to share their knowledge. The Muslims swept past Jundi Shapur and learned the secrets of sugar. As they conquered lands around the Mediterranean Sea, they spread word of how to grow, mill, and refine the sweet reed.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.When knowledge of sugar was just beginning to spread from India, from Persia, from Greece, from the great school of Jundi Shapur, cooks working for the wealthiest people treated it as a spice, blending it with other tastes. They continued to do that for another thousand years.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.The Hindu writings tell us of a religion in which fire was extremely important. People believed that the gods gave fire to human beings. Yet fire was also a way for humans to reach the gods. By placing offerings in a special fire, a priest could turn them into smoke and send them on to the gods. Five ingredients were selected for this special burning: milk, cheese, butter, honey, and sugar cane.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.The traders who came up from Italy offered items they had bought [from] Muslims, which were not available in Europe: fruits such as oranges, apricots, and figs; dyes such as cochineal, which produces a rich red; rare fabrics such as cotton and raw silk. Many of the fabrics that we know of today came to Europe via the Muslims, and their names still show their origins: damask from Damascus, muslin from Mosul, gauzes from Gaza.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.THE WORLD’S FIRST TRUE UNIVERSITYToday, few people have heard of Jundi Shapur. But in its time, it was an exceptional university. Jundi Shapur was built in what is now Iran sometime between the 400s and mid-500s A.D. We can only guess the dates, but we do know more about the school. It was the meeting place of the world's great minds. In 529, Christians closed the school of Athens—the last link to the academies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The remaining Greek scholars moved to Jundi Shapur. Jews joined them, as did a group of Christians called Nestorians, who had their own ancient and scholarly traditions. Persians added their voices, and one of their learned doctors set off for what is now India, to gather and translate the wisdom of the Hindus. The school created the very first teaching hospital in the world, a place where the sick were treated and young doctors learned their craft, as well as a fine observatory to track the heavens. At Jundi Shapur the best scholars west of China all gathered to think and study together. By the 600s, the doctors at the school were writing about a medicine from India named sharkara or, as the Persians called it, shaker—sugar. Indeed, scholars at Jundi Shapur invented new and better ways to refine cane into sugar. Since the school had links with many of the great civilizations of Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe, word of sugar and the experience of tasting its special sweetness began to spread.

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Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.The year is 326 B.C. Alexander the Great stands at the Indus River in what is now Pakistan. For a decade he and his Greek soldiers have been battling their way across the known world, defeating even the mighty Persians, rulers of Asia. Alexander's string of victories only feeds his hunger to conquer all, to know all. But his men balk. Tired of fighting, homesick, they refuse to go on. Alexander realizes he cannot continue to conquer Asia, but he is too curious to stop exploring. He has already built a fleet of eight hundred ships, appointed his close friend Nearchus captain, and sent them to investigate the coast of lndia by sea.