1. How did Byzantium emerge from the Roman Empire? How did it differ culturally from the Latin West, and how did it break with the Latin church? How did it decline and fall?
2. How did Byzantine law develop? What was Justinian's principal goal in directing the work of his legal scholars?
3. Who were the major Byzantine historians? What did they learn from their Hellenic Greek precursors, and how did they apply those lessons in their own works?
4. What did Byzantine music take from earlier Greek music? What are the distinctive Byzantine musical forms and techniques? How did these influence Western music?
5. How did the iconoclastic controversy affect the course of Byzantine art?
6. What are the principal monuments of Byzantine architecture? What are their distinctive characteristics?
7. How did Islam grow from Muhammad's religious experience? How did Islam spread through Arabia and then beyond? What was the greatest extent of the Islamic Arab empire, and how did that empire decline?
8. What are the basic theological principles of Islam? What functions do the Qur'an and Hadith perform in Islam?
9. What are the three principal sects of Islam? How do they differ from each other?
10. How was Muslim society theocratic? What was the status of women, Jews, and Christians in that society?
11. Who are the major figures of Islamic science, medicine, and philosophy?  What were their contributions to those disciplines? What role did they play in the preservation and transmission of classical Greek thought?
12. What are the major works of Islamic literature? What themes do these works explore, and what techniques do they employ to present those themes?
13. What are the defining characteristics of Islamic art, and what special role does calligraphy play in that tradition? What are the principal monuments of Islamic architecture, and what are their notable characteristics?
14. What legacy did Byzantium and Islam pass on to Western civilization?