Camel Kuo the Gardener - Pascack Valley Regional School District

ut notin the number ofgrain rations.these requests.the stipulatedhis own register iniber ofor makes advanceto require him toof cashin which casemay beReflections 299table proportions. If grants cannot be made to all entitled to them, theyshould be made first to those who have suffered bereavement, next tothose with weddings. In cases where more than one death has occurredat the same time, senior members take precedence over junior ones.Where the relative seniority of those concerned is the same, the grantshould be made on the basis of which death or burial took place first.If, after paying out the rations and the allowances for marriages andburials, a surplus still remains, it must not be sold off, but hulled andput into storage for use as rations for three or more years. If there is adanger that the stored grain might go bad, it may be sold off andplaced with fresh rice after the autumn harvest. All members of thebranches of the lineage will carefully comply with the above rules.Tenth month, 1050. Academician of the Zizheng Hall, Vice-presidentof the Board of Rites, and Prefect of Hangzhou, Fan. Sealed.REFLECTIONSleaveWhatever particular period or region historians work on -- in the caseof this chapter, medieval Europe, Islam, and China -- they also tend toin particular kinds of documents and related aspects of life.are social historians, or economic historians, or cultural historians.As a matter of fact, most of them would characterize their workmore precisely than that. A particular social historian might prefercalled a historian of gender or a historian of the family. A politiadiplomatic historian. A cultural historian mightion, or even of medieval Christianity, or of Chrisinthe sciences, historians are able to dig deeperlearn more by specializing. And, as in any field, the more you’spethemore you discover you do not know, the more questionshave, and the more you can learn.of this begins, however, with some basic categories, like thoseused in this chapter. That is why you were asked to think inof political, economic, social, and cultural history.7o pull together and compare some of the characterizations youselections in this chapter, make a chart: Write the namesthree civilizations- European, Islamic, and Chinese--acrossof the page, and the categories social, economic, political, and:he left margin, allowing a quarter page for each. Try to~nas many of the blocks as you can. You might use more than onein the box for social aspects ofcivilization you would, no doubt, write "feudalism." Youalso write "nobles," "monasteries," "fealty and homage," "vas-" and "sons inherit status." Or your style of observing and

300 Medieval Civilizationscharacterizing might lead you to such notes as "churches can be landlords," "lots of witnesses," and "they were very formal." All of thesdescriptions are correct: Just make sure your comments are about s~)ciety,social behavior, social relationships, social organization, or variousocial elements- class, family, men and women, population, and ageRepeat this exercise with the other three categories. These are by nomeans exclusive, but try not to use the same words in describing, say, asocial and an economic aspect.After you have filled in as many of the blanks as you can, you canmake comparisons in a number of interesting ways. (You have alreadydone some of this, but here you can be more systematic.) First, comparehow one category, say society, is different in Europe and Islam, or Europeand China, or China and Islam. You might, for example, say thaEuropean society was less centralized than Chinese or Islamic society othat the extended family was more important in China.After doing the same for economics, politics, and culture, notichow the four categories of any civilization fit together. How does thtype of society in medieval Europe, for instance, "fit" medieval Erope’s economy? This interaction is what constitutes a civilization. Sif you used a word repetitively in characterizing each of the four aspecof a particular civilization. Then try to categorize the civilization awhole.Now you are ready to compare each of these civilizations toother one. These characterizations may be general, or they mayqualified and later modified, but at the very least you now have a geeral starting point for more in-depth analysis of these three great civlizations in future chapters.