Social structures and governance

Those who fight (bellatores/nobility), those who pray (oratores/clergy) and those who work (laboratores/peasants).

Bishop Adalbero of Laon set it out clearly around 1025, making the hierarchy seem God-given.

Bellatores = those who fight (nobility/knights); oratores = those who pray (clergy); laboratores = those who work (peasants).

Military service, typically about 40 days of fighting a year, plus loyalty to his lord.

A free peasant rented land and could usually move; a serf (villein) was tied to the land, owed labour dues and could not leave without permission.

An unfree peasant tied to the land and to a lord, owing labour dues, but not owned as property and holding his own plot.

Owning a human being as property to buy and sell. It continued on a large scale in the Islamic world.

Lords found serfs, who fed themselves and were tied to the land, more useful than slaves they had to feed. Slavery merged into serfdom.

A system where a lord grants land (a fief) to a vassal in return for loyalty and military service — a two-way bond.

The fief is the granted land; homage is the ceremony of becoming a lord's man; vassalage is the resulting sworn service relationship.

Manorialism is the economic system of the manor binding lord and peasants. The demesne is the land the lord kept and had farmed for his own use.

Peasant labour on the demesne produced the food that fed the fighting and praying orders, so those who worked carried everyone above them.

The pope in Rome led a single hierarchy: pope → bishops (running dioceses) → priests, plus monastic orders. Many bishops and monasteries were also great landlords.

The Benedictines were monks following St Benedict's rule ('pray and work'). Cluny (founded 910) was a reformed abbey that led a wave of monastic renewal.

They preserved learning by copying manuscripts, cleared and farmed land, ran schools and hospitals, gave charity, and prayed for people's souls — and grew rich from land gifts.

Muslim religious scholars and legal experts. They held authority through their learning in the Qur'an and sharia, not through any appointment — Islam had no priesthood.

An Islamic college (spreading from the 11th century) that trained scholars, judges (qadis) and administrators — a genuine route of social mobility through learning.

A religious endowment: wealthy Muslims funded mosques, madrasas, fountains and hospitals as charity, so religion paid for public services.

Both were subordinate and gendered. But Islamic law let women own and inherit property and keep their dowry (mahr); in Europe a woman's identity was largely absorbed into her husband's, though convents offered abbesses real authority.

Non-Muslims (Jews and Christians) living under Islamic rule as 'protected peoples' — they kept their faith and courts in return for a special tax, the jizya. Toleration with second-class status.

Tolerated as useful (often in trade and moneylending) but periodically persecuted, expelled or attacked, especially from the era of the Crusades.

The Church (peasant's son could rise to bishop), the military (knights won land; Mamluks rose to rule Egypt), urban trade (wealthy merchants), and administration/learning.

In chartered towns, a runaway serf who survived a year and a day gained legal freedom (German: Stadtluft macht frei). Growing towns became islands of freedom with new groups — merchants, craftsmen and guilds.

Paper 2 needs two examples from different regions. Both were deeply religious societies, but their contrasting institutions (one hierarchy vs no clergy) give sharp compare-and-contrast material.

A feudal-manorial society: land granted for loyalty and service, ruled by many local lords, with the Church as the dominant institution and serfs farming the land.

A centralised, city-based empire ruled from Baghdad by the caliph and a large paid bureaucracy, rich in trade, scholarship, merchants and artisans.

A system where land is granted in return for loyalty and military service, creating a pyramid of king, lords, knights and peasants.

An unfree peasant tied to the land of a manor who owed labour to a lord and could not leave without permission.

The caliph — both political ruler and religious leader of the Muslim community — supported by a vizier and thousands of salaried officials.

Europe was decentralised, with power split among many lords; the Abbasids were centralised, ruled by one caliph and a paid bureaucracy in Baghdad.

An enslaved soldier, often bought young and trained as an elite warrior; some rose to real political power in the Abbasid world.

Both were unfree, but a serf stayed bound to the manor for life while a mamluk could be armed, promoted, and even seize power.

The protected legal status of non-Muslims (mainly Christians and Jews) in the Abbasid Caliphate, who could worship freely in return for paying the jizya tax.

They had no protected legal status, were tolerated mainly for trade and moneylending, faced rising restrictions, and suffered expulsions such as from England in 1290.

Both remained steep, male-dominated hierarchies resting on unfree labour — no medieval society was equal.

Compare theme by theme (governance, labour, minorities), show similarities and differences in each, and finish with a judgement on which contrast mattered most.