196 Reviews

STEPHEN F. DALE, The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and

Mughals (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
New Approaches to Asian History. Pp. xiv, 347, ill., maps $ 84.00 Cloth

Stephen F. Dale's The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and

Mughals is a much-needed and long-awaited study that analyzes the historical
trajectories, cultural achievements and economic structures of the three empires. As
Dale eloquently states in his introduction, "a world is revealed in the history and
culture of these empires that is scarcely to be imagined by contemporary Middle
Easten Muslims or by Wes ten observers amiliar only with the crabbed views of
narrow-minded clerics or the simplistic distortions of their own popular media."
The book has a clear scholarly agenda as well: to describe the "imperial cultural
zone" within which these empires existed and to study them both as political
ormations with predominantly Muslim ruling classes and also as empires whose
main aim was to rule over diverse religious and ethnic communities.
The irst chapter of the book ("India, Iran, and Anatolia rom the tenth to the
sixteenth century") draws a detailed picture of the geographic and cultural zone over
which the three empires would eventually prevail. Important issues such as the
Sunni-Shiite division, the decline of the Abbasid caliphate and the rise of the local
rulers, and the role played by the scholars (ulama) are identified and discussed. The
author addresses the political and military inluence of the Turkish nomads and
military men and the cultural and institutional importance of the leaned Iranian
urban dwellers. He then discusses the rise and all of political entities such as the
Ghaznavids, the Great Saljuks, the Delhi Sultanate, the Saljuks of Rum, and the
Ilkhans. He pays considerable attention to what I would like to call the intellectual
climate, or the "mentalities" that existed in the period beore the rise of the three
empires, and particularly to mysticism in its various garbs. The irst chapter thus
provides a very detailed summary of Islamic history up to the rise of what the author
calls the "Turco-Mongol, Perso-lslamic states."
The second chapter ("The rise of Muslim empires") is devoted to a near­
synchronic narrative of the empires' beginnings. The author cites various uniying
traits such as a Turkic ethnic/imagined background, the use of Turkish dialects by
the ruling classes in the early stages, the unction of Suism, the patronizing of the
ulama by the dynasties, and the predominance of a Persianate leaned culture. The
historical narrative comes up to 1453 in the Ottoman case, while it extends into the
reigns of Shah lsma'il and Babur in the Saavid and Mughal cases. The author is
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espeeially skillful in identifying the different strategies of legitimacy employed by

the mling classes; "the eharisma of [politieal and military] success" for the
Ottomans, "the eharisma of religious sanetity" for Shah Isma'il, and "the eharisma
of dynastic [i.e., Timurid] success" for the Mughals. The historieal narrative treats
each empire under separate headings, but the author ereates a sophistieated
comparative dimension by making frequent references to the other two. The third
ehapter ("The legitimaey of monarehs and the institutions of empires") revolves
around the careers of Mehmed II, Shah Abbas and Babur. These three mlers are
presented as the figures who radieally changed the nature of their respeetive political
entities and as the genuine ereators of empires with regard to bureaueratization,
military strength, religious poliey, and legitimaey. The sixth ehapter ("Golden ages:
profane and saered empires") looks at the reign of Suleyman, analyzes the "post-
Abbas stasis" in Safavid Iran, and focuses on Shah Jahan and Jihangir. The eighth
ehapter ("Quests for a phoenix") looks at the reasons behind the demise of the three
empires, such as the laek of eeonomie resourees for the Safavids, tremendous soeial
and religious ehanges in Mughal India, and the impact of European expansion in the
Ottoman ease. These problems, as the author suggests, are exaeerbated by the laek
of skills that is eonsistently displayed by the mlers of all three empires. In his
eonelusion the author addresses the thomy question of imperial legaeies. He sees
important Safavid legaeies in today's Iran (the very idea of the land of Iran, the
Shiite identity, ete.), discusses the ambiguous eultural legaey of the Mughals on the
minds of Indian and Pakistani Muslims, and points out the tension between Kemalist
seeularism, the logical consequence of late Ottoman attempts at modemization, and
the persistenee of Islamie and eommunal identities.
While the author weaves eeonomie and eultural issues into his diseussion of
the empires' historieal trajeetories, he also treats these issues in separate ehapters.
Thus, the fourth ehapter ("The economies around 1600") offers a very eoncise and
poignant summary of the agrieultural and commereial dynamies that eontributed to
the emergence and perpetuation of the three empires and also diseusses the issue of
global trade and eommereial integration. Chapters five ("Imperial eultures") and
seven ("Imperial eulture in the golden age") elaborate on the rise and transformation
of distinet eultural expressions in arehiteeture, poetry and painting. These two
ehapters indeed show that, on the basis of a eommon Persianate/Timurid eultural
heritage, the three empires forged related but distinet eultural identities. The book
eoneludes with a detailed and very useful glossary, a bibliography of relevant works
for eaeh empire and for the general study of the period, and a well-prepared and
eomprehensive index. This is a serious seholarly study of the three empires. Thanks
to these additions, it can also be used as a very reliable teaehing tool in advaneed
leetures and seminars on Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal history.
Studying the three Islamie empires together, with referenee to their similarities
and differenees, has been aecepted as a worthy pursuit for some time, but Stephen
Dale has the merit of produeing the first seholarly work to that effect since Marshall
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Hodgson's Venture of Islam (1975-77). Historians of Mughal India have been more
receptive than historians of the Ottoman and Safavid Empires to sueh endeavors,
and it is not surprising that the present book was written by a historian whose
primary area of specialization is Mughal history. The Turkish and Iranian nation-
states eontinue to exert an inordinate influence on the minds of Oftoman and Safavid
historians, who tend to be foeused more on the uniqueness of their areas of study.
Dale's work is a panaeea against, among other things, the paroehialism that is
ereated and fueled by modem nationalist approaehes. Even though the author is
somehow "Ibn Khaldunian" in his treatment of the rise, maturity and decline of
these empires, his narrative does not surrender to a simplistic version of the "decline
paradigm," and raises serious issues about the factors that led to the empires' failure
to reproduce their earlier successes. The author gives considerable weight to the
effectiveness of individual mlers, but he is able to eombine the dynamics of
individual reigns with more stmetural aspeets of Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal mle.
As a historian of the Oftoman Empire, my main objection is to the author's
periodization of Ottoman history. I believe it would be more appropriate to discuss
Mehmed II together with Shah Isma'il/Tahmasb and Babur/Jahangir, as the
individual mler who prepared the groundwork for the establishment of a distinctly
Ottoman "empire." The task of ereating that empire, however, fell to Suleyman, who
eould be paired in the book with Shah Abbas and Akbar. The post-Abbas and post-
Akbar mlers eould then be diseussed together with Ottoman sultans sueh as Murad
III (r. 1574-1595), Ahmed I (r. 1613-1617), or Mehmed IV (r. 1648-1687), who
played important roles in the so-ealled post-elassieal period. This would also save
the author from lumping together nearly three and a half centuries of Ottoman mle
and plaeing the eeonomie and soeial problems of the early seventeenth century
together with the dynamics of quite different and distinet eras such as the Tulip
Period, the Tanzimat, the reign of Abdulhamid II (r. 1876-1909) and the Young
Turk rule. On the other hand, I eannot flnd the author too much at fault for this
particular approaeh, since he adopts a traditionalist and teleological version of
Ottoman history produeed by Ottoman historians. Aeeording to this approaeh,
Oftoman empire-building follows a unidireetional progress from Osman, who was in
reality the leader of a small group of nomads and soldiers of fortune, to Mehmed II
and Suleyman himself. Although I do not agree with the author's periodization, I
believe it is potentially useful sinee it invites Ottoman historians to correct the
narrative about the empire's formation and better study the reign of Suleyman as an
era of empire-building and as an important institutional, eultural and politieal
break—rather than continuity—in Oftoman history.
All in all, this is a groundbreaking work that makes a very convincing case
about the common origins of the three major Islamie empires and also demonstrates
the tremendous political, eultural and institutional ereativity that resulted in the
emergenee of distinet entities. These "patriarehal-bureaueratic" (Dale), "gunpowder"
(Marshall Hodgson) or "early modem Islamie" empires played important roles in
Islamic as well as global history. Stephen Dale's book shows how rewarding it can
 Reviews 199

be to study these three empires together and how revolutionary such an endeavor
promises to be with regard to our current understanding of the Ottomans, the
Safavids and the Mughals.

Kaya $ahin
Tulane University