Introduction David Morgan and Anthony Reid; Part I. The Impact of the Steppe Peoples: 1. The steppe peoples in the Islamic world Edmund Bosworth; 2. The early expansion of Islam in India André Wink; 3. Muslim India: the Delhi sultanate Peter Jackson; 4. The rule of infidels: the Mongols and the Islamic world Beatrice Forbes Manz; 5. Tamerlane and his descendants: from Paladins to Patrons Maria E. Subtelny; Part II. The Gunpowder Empires: 6. Iran under Safavid rule Sholeh A. Quinn; 7. Islamic culture and the Chinggisid Restoration: Central Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries R. D. McChesney; 8. India under Mughal rule Stephen Dale; Part III. The Maritime Oecumene: 9. Islamic trade, shipping, port-states and merchant communities in the Indian Ocean, 7th-16th centuries Michael Pearson; 10. Early Muslim expansion in South East Asia, eighth to fifteenth centuries Geoffrey Wade; 11. Islam in China to 1800 Zvi Ben-Dor Benite; 12. Islam in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean littoral, 1500-1800: expansion, polarisation, synthesis Anthony Reid; 13. South East Asian localisations of Islam, and participation within a global Umma, c. 1500-1800 Michael Feener; 14. Transition: the end of the old order - Iran in the eighteenth century Gene Garthwaite; Part IV. Themes: 15. Conversion to Islam Richard W. Bulliet; 16. Armies and their economic basis in Iran and the surrounding lands, ca. AD 1000-1500 Reuven Amitai; 17. Commercial structures Scott C. Levi; 18. Transmitters of authority and ideas across cultural boundaries, eleventh to eighteenth centuries Muhammad Qasim Zaman.