Between 1453 and 1526 Muslims founded three major states in the Mediterranean, Iran and South Asia: respectively the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires. By the early seventeenth century their descendants controlled territories that encompassed much of the Muslim world, stretching from the Balkans and North Africa to the Bay of Bengal and including a combined population of between 130 and 160 million people. This book is the first comparative study of the politics, religion, and culture of these three empires between 1300 and 1923. At the heart of the analysis is Islam, and how it impacted on the political and military structures, the economy, language, literature and religious traditions of these great empires. This original and sophisticated study provides an antidote to the modern view of Muslim societies by illustrating the complexity, humanity and vitality of these empires, empires that cannot be reduced simply to religious doctrine.

A History of the Muslim World to 1750 traces the development of Islamic civilization from the career of the Prophet Muhammad to the mid-eighteenth century. Encompassing a wide range of significant events within the period, its coverage includes the creation of the Dar al-Islam (the territory ruled by Muslims), the fragmentation of society into various religious and political groups including the Shi'ites and Sunnis, the series of catastrophes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that threatened to destroy the civilization, and the rise of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires. Including the latest research from the last ten years, this second edition has been updated and expanded to cover the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. Fully refreshed and containing over sixty images to highlight the key visual aspects, this book offers students a balanced coverage of the Muslim world from the Iberian Peninsula to South Asia, and detailed accounts of all cultures. The use of maps, primary sources, timelines, and a glossary further illuminates the fascinating yet complex world of the pre-modern Middle East. Covering art, architecture, religious institutions, theological beliefs, popular religious practice, political institutions, cuisine, and much more, A History of the Muslim World to 1750 is the perfect introduction for all students of the history of Islamic civilization and the Middle East.

Perhaps no other Western writer has more deeply probed the bitter struggle in the Muslim world between the forces of religion and law and those of violence and lawlessness as Noah Feldman. His scholarship has defined the stakes in the Middle East today. Now, in this incisive book, Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the shari'a--the law of the traditional Islamic state--in the modern Muslim world. Western powers call it a threat to democracy. Islamist movements are winning elections on it. Terrorists use it to justify their crimes. What, then, is the shari'a? Given the severity of some of its provisions, why is it popular among Muslims? Can the Islamic state succeed--should it? Feldman reveals how the classical Islamic constitution governed through and was legitimated by law. He shows how executive power was balanced by the scholars who interpreted and administered the shari'a, and how this balance of power was finally destroyed by the tragically incomplete reforms of the modern era. The result has been the unchecked executive dominance that now distorts politics in so many Muslim states. Feldman argues that a modern Islamic state could provide political and legal justice to today's Muslims, but only if new institutions emerge that restore this constitutional balance of power. The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State gives us the sweeping history of the traditional Islamic constitution--its noble beginnings, its downfall, and the renewed promise it could hold for Muslims and Westerners alike.

Drawing on political oratory, diplomatic correspondence, crusade propaganda, and historical treatises, Meserve shows how research into the origins of Islamic empires sprang from—and contributed to—contemporary debates over the threat of Islamic expansion in the Mediterranean. This groundbreaking book offers new insights into Renaissance humanist scholarship and long-standing European debates over the relationship between Christianity and Islam.