The Ottoman, The Safavid, And The Mughal Empire

The devastation of the Black Death following hard on the heels of the Mongol destruction of Islam’s most important city and capital of the Abbasid Empire, Baghdad, eliminated Islam’s old political order. Nonetheless, these two catastrophes prepared the way for new Islamic states to emerge. Of these, the Ottoman, the Safavid, and the Mughal dynasties ultimately grew powerful enough to become empires themselves.

The most powerful, the Ottoman Empire, occupied the pivotal area between Europe and Asia. They embraced a Sunni view of Islam, while adopting traditional Byzantine ways of governance and trying new ways of integrating the diverse peoples of their expanding territories. They were able to win the favor of exceedingly diverse polities by embracing a flexible and tolerant position on language policy and in politics. When local administrators became difficult to control, the Ottomans recruited, converted, and trained local young men to become soldiers and bureaucrats. They artfully balanced the decentralizing tendencies of the outlying regions with the centralizing forces of the imperial capital. Relying on a careful mixture of faith, patronage, and tolerance, the sultans curried loyalty and secured political stability.
An internally cohesive people, their rulers were not so effective at expanding beyond their Persian base. They did not tolerate diversity. Whatever territories they conquered they ruled much more directly, based on central – and theocratic – authority. They also succeeded in transforming Iran, once a Sunni area, into a Shiite