History at key stage 3 (Year 7)
Unit 6: What were the achievements of the Islamic states 600-1600?
Section 3: A new Islamic city: how did the Abbasid caliphs organise their new capital at Baghdad?
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Objectives |
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- how a new capital city was established by the caliphs in Baghdad
- how the layout of the city gives us information about early Islamic civilisation
- about daily life in Baghdad
- to select and deploy information for a specific form of writing
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Activities |
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Outcomes |
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Children: |
- Ask pupils to discuss which features they would include in a completely new town. Discuss what this tells us about our values and priorities.
- Tell pupils that the Abbasid caliphs who ruled the Islamic world after 749 built a new capital in the 760s at Baghdad. Pupils study the layout and characteristics of the city. Ask pupils to work out what the design of the city tells us about the caliphs.
- Provide pupils with a range of sources about the new city of Baghdad. Tell them how the city was organised and how people were expected to behave to avoid trouble with the officers of the caliph.
- Ask pupils to provide a guide to merchants wishing to travel to the fabulously wealthy city of Baghdad during its heyday in the eighth century.
- Describe how the power of the caliphs of Baghdad fluctuated in the following centuries until the Mongols sacked the city in 1258 and the last caliph was murdered.
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- describe and analyse the layout of the new Islamic capital city of Baghdad
- use their analysis of Baghdad to make inferences about the caliphs
- select, organise and use sources of information for the purpose of writing a guidebook
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Points to note |
- Teachers might wish to draw on pupils' prior knowledge of towns in other periods/locations to make comparisons,
eg Roman, Viking, Egyptian, medieval European or Aztec settlements.
- Language for learning: pupils could group sentences into coherent paragraphs with subheadings.
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This unit is divided into sections. Each section contains a sequence of
activities with related objectives and outcomes. You can view this unit by
moving through the sections or print/download the whole unit.
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