ABSTRACT
‘Medieval’ Islamic West-Asia’s post-Seljuk landscapes of leadership as discussed so far, from the post-nomadic stabilizations in the Euphrates-to-Nile zone, eventually extending into Asia Minor, to the returning instabilities of nomadic conquest and dynastic formation in the enormous Euphrates-to-Jaxartes-and-Indus zone, did not—as so often continues to be assumed in popular and generalist discourses—feed on sociocultural wastelands that lacked genuinely creative or sophisticated capacities. At the same time, even the polycentric reality of ongoing inter- and intra-dynastic fragmentation and competition became for many part of the idea of one Islamic world order, as willed, led, and confirmed by God and as guaranteed by the sovereignty of the successor of His prophet, the Abbasid caliph in Bagdad. The heterogeneous experimentality and competitive agency just described as key characteristics for ‘medieval’ Islamic West-Asia’s history certainly similarly marked the numerous trade networks that intensely connected these many regions.
