Trace the Indian Ocean network c. 800-1500 CE — the Swahili Coast city-states (Mogadishu, Mombasa, Kilwa, Zanzibar, Sofala), ibn Battuta's 1352-3 visits, the Calicut spice-trade entrepôt, and Zheng He's 1405-1433 Treasure Fleet voyages
Exercise Difficulty 4 ~15 min hist.g7.f.ex_41

Source Card Analysis

MG-7 Diagram
MG-7 SEVEN-QUESTION SOURCE CARD — primary instructional scaffold for ALL source analysis in the unit. 8.5x11 inch double

MG-7 SEVEN-QUESTION SOURCE CARD — primary instructional scaffold for ALL source analysis in the unit. 8.5x11 inch double-sided laminated card. Front: Seven questions with sentence-frame scaffolds. (1) WHO created this source? (Wineburg sourcing) (2) WHEN was it created and where? (Wineburg contextualization) (3) WHY was it created and for whom? (Wineburg sourcing — purpose + audience) (4) WHAT does it say + show + leave out? (Wineburg close reading) (5) WHAT do OTHER sources say? (Wineburg corroboration) (6) WHOSE living descendants connect to this source today? (NMAI 5th — present-tense protocol) (7) WHOSE GOLDEN AGE does this source name — and whose golden age does it occlude? (NEW G7-Fall 7th — Banks Level-3 transformative move; refuses single-narrative golden-age framing). Back: scaffolded sentence frames for each question.

Prompt

Apply MG-7 Q5 corroboration to Marco Polo Il Milione c. 1300 + Rashid al-Din Jami al-Tawarikh c. 1310 on Kublai Khan's Yuan court. Identify AGREED FACTS / POLO-EMBELLISHED / RASHID-EMBELLISHED / SOURCE-SILENT.

How it's presented
mode text
Answer criteria
type structured response rubric
rubric
AGREED FACTS (Yuan court at Khanbaliq + paper currency + Kublai's reign) (15 pts); POLO-EMBELLISHED (12,000 bridges Hangzhou + exaggerated numbers) (10 pts); RASHID-EMBELLISHED (Mongol-imperial-legitimacy framing) (10 pts); SOURCE-SILENT (Polo doesn't mention tea, footbinding, Great Wall, Chinese script) (10 pts). Total 45 pts.
Hints
  1. Polo wrote in prison via Rustichello-amanuensis-romance-genre.
  2. Rashid al-Din was Ilkhanate vizier with direct Yuan-court correspondence.
Misconceptions to watch
  • Treating one source as 'correct' and the other as 'wrong' — both have biases