ABSTRACT
We will look in this chapter for those features in three Muslim societies, in different parts of the world, which are explained by their regional culture and history. The three societies, which were contemporaneous, represent the three great Muslim empires, Ottoman, Saffavid and Mughal. The first section draws brief, impressionistic pen pictures of the empires, highlighting major events and drawing attention to their characteristic features. The second points to certain similarities between them and the central obsession in each of these societies created by the confrontation with a major alien ideology which already existed. Christianity for the Ottomans, Sunni Islam for the Saffavids and Hinduism for the Mughals were to provide the obsession, the main theme and the neurosis. In some cases there was synthesis, in others stimulation, but the obsession could not be dismissed. In an important sense the three empires were supplanting these older, established systems which they confronted. They were thus usurpers, but successful usurpers.
