The fifteenth century in Islamic West-Asia, in the aftermath of the Mongol Empire, was a time of widespread political reorganization. For van Steenbergen, it forms an ideal moment to examine state formation in the region. The stated goal of this book is to analyze the region’s history using political-science theories of state formation. The seven contributors of the evidentiary chapters, however, are mainly historians whose empirical studies are largely disconnected from the more theoretical chapters at the beginning, despite the editor’s “multiple attempts to maximize the volume’s coherence” (vii). These authors provide five episodes from the histories of the Mamluk Sultanate, one about the Timurid realm, one about the Ottoman Empire, three about young sultans and their attempts to mold their states around themselves, three about states and their provincial elites (intellectual, political, and commercial), and one about the state’s relationship with foreign elites. These chapters are all solidly historical;...

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