With the decline of the Mongol Empire in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, power shifted to a number of Turkish territories. By the sixteenth century, three areas had developed into major Islamic empires: the Safavid in Persia, the Ottoman in Anatolia, and the Mughal in India. Their collective territories stretched from eastern Europe and West Africa through present-day Bangladesh. As each state flourished, it made significant political, economic, intellectual, and artistic contributions. Islamic culture was enriched by the states’ interactions with one another and with the increasingly mobile peoples of Christian Europe. However, the impressive extent of Islamic society and culture represented by the three states belies the sharp and often violent differences among them and the internal tensions in each society. The following documents reveal the splendor and troubled nature of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires, as well as their increasing interactions with western Europeans.