THE three states into which China had split were soon split up themselves into even smaller divisions. For three and a half centuries, war raged almost continuously among rival kings. Doubt and confusion were everywhere. The period between 220 and 589 is called the Six Dynasties era, after six ruling families in a row which used Nanking as their capital. In all those years‚ the memory of the Han Empire never died. Looking back longingly at the peace and order of that time, the people came to think of the Han government as the great model which all rulers should …

THE vast East Asian land of China is named after its first family of emperors, the Ch’in. The Ch’in brought the country together under one government and built the Great Wall to keep out northern barbarians. They were in such a hurry to get things done, however, that they drove their subjects too hard and lost their support. In 206 B.C., after only a few years in power, they were overthrown. The Ch’in were replaced by an imperial family named Han. The Han dynasty ruled for two centuries before the time of Christ and then, after a break, for another …

MORE than two centuries before Aurungzeb’s death and even before the coming of Babur, a new kind of invader had appeared in India. Instead of thundering down on horseback from the Himalayan passes, he arrived on the coast by ship. Instead of plunder, he sought trade. Instead of wanting to conquer the subcontinent, he wanted to conquer the seas around it. This invader’s name was Vasco da Gama. He had sailed his small fleet all the way around Africa from his homeland of Portugal in southwest Europe. In 1498, just six years after Columbus discovered America, he landed at the …

WHEN Akbar died, the hope of a peaceful, prosperous India died with him. None of his successors was nearly so wise, open-minded, and farsighted. Even so, the Mogul Empire kept growing. The seventeenth century was, indeed, the height of Mogul power. Akbar’s son Jahangir reigned from 1605 to 1627. His name, which meant “grasper of the world,” did not fit him at all well, for he added only a little territory to the empire. Although he was clever and well-educated, Jahangir was also lazy and pleasure-loving. He was content to leave affairs of state to his Persian wife and her …

THE name “Mogul” comes from the Arabic word for “Mongol.” Babur, the founder of the Mogul dynasty, was probably descended from both Timur and the mightiest of all Mongol conquerors, Genghis Khan. His early story was much like that of Genghis. Born a minor prince in what is now Soviet Turkistan, he was driven from his throne while still a child. He spent years wandering about with a few hundred ragged, half-starved followers. In 1504, he captured Kabul and began to dream of conquering the richer lands south of the Khyber Pass. In 1519, he made a start by seizing …

IN 711‚ when other Moslem forces were invading distant Spain, Arab soldiers fought their way to the mouth of the Indus River and captured the area called Sind. There they stopped. Nearly three centuries passed before Moslems again menaced India. In 998, a Turk named Mahmud, the amir of Ghazni in Afghanistan, burst through the Khyber Pass with an army of Turkish horsemen to sweep across the Punjab in the first of seventeen raids. Not even the savage, pagan Huns had been as bloodthirsty as these civilized sons of Islam. They hated the Hindus with a special hate. Believing in …

UNTIL 1947, when the Moslem state of Pakistan was carved out of its western and eastern corners, the entire triangle of land that points south from the Himalaya Mountains into the Indian Ocean was known as India. Geographers call this huge land mass a subcontinent, because it is almost completely cut off from the rest of the continent of Asia. The Himalayas on its northern frontier form a continuous barrier of rock, the highest in the world. “MOTHER GANGES” From the southern slopes of the Himalayas, two great rivers run down to the ocean. The valley of the Indus River, …

IF Islam had never existed, the Christian countries of the world would probably be less advanced and certainly less varied, than they are. For it was Moslems who gave the West many of its basic skills and ideas. From the eighth to the thirteenth centuries, the Arabs and the other Islamic peoples were the main carriers of western civilization. While Europe was torn by almost constant fighting, Moslem scholars preserved the learning of the ancient world. Other Moslems added discoveries and original works of their own. In time, translators in the parts of Europe that were in closest contact with …

ACCORDING to their tradition, the Ottoman Turks once belonged to the same Central Asian tribe as the Seljuk Turks. Their ancestors came to Asia Minor with the Seljuks. In time, they began to challenge the authority of their fellow Turks. The Ottomans took their name from a chieftain called Othman, who in 1299 became the emir of Seljuk lands bordering on the Byzantine Empire. Othman declared holy war on his Christian neighbours. His son Orkhan captured the city of Brusa and in 1362 Orkhan’s son Murad took Adrianople, beyond the strait and sea that separated Asia Minor from Europe. Thereafter, …

LIKE THEIR relatives the Mongols, the Turks began as wandering herdsmen in Central Asia. Their first contact with Islam was as victims rather than victors. When Arab armies overran the southern part of their homeland in the eighth century, many Turks were captured and enslaved. Recognizing their talent for fighting, their new masters enrolled them in their armies. In time, many of them reached high positions in the lands of their adopted religion. About the middle of the tenth century, tribesmen from Turkistan, led by a chief named Seljuk, settled near the city of Bokhara. There they became converted to …