After the decline of the Mongols in Central Asia and Persia, many small Turkic-
Each of the three Islamic empires presided over an extraordinary artistic and intellectual flowering in everything from carpet making and book illustration to architecture and gardening, from geography and astronomy to medicine. Each of these empires drew legitimacy from their support for Islam. There were, however, key differences: the Ottomans and Mughals supported the Sunni tradition, the Safavids the Shi’a tradition.
The three Islamic empires all had a substantial number of non-
European exploration opened new trade routes and enabled Europeans to trade directly with India and China, bypassing Muslim intermediaries in the Middle East. Within India British merchants increased their political control in politically unstable areas, leading before the end of the eighteenth century to a vast colonial empire in India.
By the end of the eighteenth century all three of the major Islamic empires were losing territory. The first to fall was the Safavid Empire. From the late seventeenth century Ottoman armies began losing wars along the northern and eastern borders, resulting in substantial loss of territory. Military challenges proved daunting in Mughal India as well. In all three empires, as central power declined, local notables and military strongmen seized power.