Early modern empires

By the early modern period, the Circle of Justice was a secure part of the Islamicate political heritage, essential to political relations in the new empires arising in that period. ¹ These empires all had Turco-Mongol origins, but they overcame nomadic instability to create “Well-Protected Domains,” larger and more stable territories that endured for centuries rather than the decades of earlier regimes, with more consistent boundaries and more effective central control. The tug of war between the central state and its warrior nobility did not pull these states apart but left them intact, stronger and more independent, in a better position to put the recommendations of the advice writers into practice. The institutional transformations of the period from 1500 to 1800 created large urbanized states with sophisticated administrative systems, centralized revenue collection, gunpowder weapons, and political ideologies in which the reciprocal obligations of the Circle of Justice formed a core element. For them, the Circle was not problematic in any way; it was an integral part of their political thought and behavior.