History at key stage 3    (Year 7)

• Discuss pupils' prior knowledge of Islam today and the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad .
• Ask pupils to explain in their own words the meaning of the word Islam and the significance for Muslims of the Qur'an, the Hadith and the Five Pillars of Islam.

• Describe the dramatic spread of Islam during the lifetimes of the Prophet and the first four caliphs.
• Pupils plot the expansion of Islam on maps. Ask pupils to use textbooks and other resources to find as many reasons as they can to explain the success of the armies of Islam and the failure of the Persian and Byzantine empires to withstand Arab conquerors.
• Show the strengths of Islam and the weaknesses of the old empires in diagrammatic form.
• Focus on a particular early caliph such as Umar (634-644) and consider his career.
• Tell pupils about the effective use of spies in the Islamic empire. How might a Byzantine spy, who has visited the court of the caliph at Medina, explain why Umar was a particularly successful leader? Pupils write a report to the Byzantine emperor, Heraclus (610-641), describing distinctive features of Umar's rule, explaining how they helped him to control a huge new empire and suggesting ways in which this could be undermined.

• 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.

• Provide pupils with jumbled Arabic numbers and a jumbled list of English words of Arabic origin relating to mathematics and science, eg algebra, zero, average, sodium, alkali and chemistry. Ask pupils to sort these words and to use them to make some educated guesses about the subjects that interested the thinkers of early Islamic civilisation.
• Pupils could devise questions to structure an investigation into the work of early Islamic mathematicians and scientists, such as Khwarizmi (780-850). Lead a class discussion on the importance of their work.
• Ask pupils to choose either science or mathematics and to research how Islamic civilisation contributed to the development of the subject. Produce notes of guidance for secondary-school mathematics and science teachers explaining the importance of Islam in the origins of their subject.

• Look at pictures of surviving early mosques from different parts of the Islamic world. Identify common features and ask pupils to use correct technical terminology when describing the mosques.
• Discuss the Islamic tradition of not decorating religious buildings with representative art and the development of decorative calligraphy.
• Ask pupils what we can learn from these buildings about the people who built them.
• Tell the story of the rise and fall of Muslim Spain. Focus on two contrasting surviving buildings: the mosque at Cordoba and the Alhambra Palace. Look at pictures of these two buildings.
• Ask pupils to draw conclusions from the study of these buildings.

• Introduce the idea of conflict between different faiths by looking at modern news stories that show that there are arguments today about who should control Jerusalem. Discuss the importance of the city to followers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
• Provide an overview of the Crusades 1095-1291. Ask pupils to create a crusade timeline and to decide for each major event whether it was a victory for the crusaders or for the forces of Islam; events should include:
• the capture of Jerusalem 1099
• the Battle of Hattin 1187
• the Fourth Crusade 1198
• the fall of Acre 1291

• Tell the story of Salah al-Din.
• Brainstorm why he is an important figure in the history of the conflict between crusaders and the forces of Islam.
• Pupils study a contemporary crusader and Muslim accounts of Salah al-Din, identifying similarities, differences and indicators of bias.
• Pupils then consider different modern interpretations of Salah al-Din.
• Pupils compare accounts, identify differences and suggest reasons for differences.

• Provide an overview of the rise of the Ottoman dynasty and the significance of the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Use maps to gauge the extent of Ottoman power in the sixteenth century.
• Ask pupils to research the power of the sultan in general, and the career of Suleyman the Magnificent in particular.
• Provide pupils with summary information on the career of Suleyman's English contemporary, King Henry VIII.
• Pupils produce a comparison of the two monarchs, identifying similarities and differences.

• Tell pupils that they have been commissioned by the editors of a new internet encyclopedia to produce several linked web pages devoted to Islamic civilisation 600-1600. The editors say that they want the web pages to describe key features of Islamic civilisation and to explain why this is an important aspect of world history.
• Pupils must review their work so far and select and organise relevant and significant information. There is room for only one picture and they must choose a single image that encapsulates the achievement of this huge period in history and justify the choice made.