within dynastic kin-groups were regulated through an elaborate system of inheritance practices. Important mechanisms of organizing political power were institutions of public authority, Roman law, administration of justice, coinage, households, and patronage. In Byzantium, elites were rather vaguely defined and less separated from other social groups, but there were certain criteria precluding access to the highest echelons of the state hierarchy. Rosemary Morris surveys the sources of power and economic resources of Byzantine elites, differentiating between the leading aristocratic clans, provincial nobility, and wealthy merchants. A complicated system of imperial stipends, land grants, and tax exemptions enabled elite members to accumulate wealth and gain influence in the inner circles of power, but many details of this system are still subjects of controversy. It is quite questionable, for instance, whether offices and salaries outstripped land as a source of wealth, as some scholars hold, so that Byzantine aristocrats were less land-based than their Western peers. Again, the Islamic world throughout the centuries underwent numerous profound shifts, each of which brought new elite groups to the foreground. Arab, Berber, and Iranian military elites, war bands of Turkic and Mongol background, and Mamluk royal households employed and developed Muslim administrative and fiscal practices of the classical age, relied on the legal principles and doctrines laid out by religious scholars (ʿulamaʾ), and introduced traditions and organizational patterns rooted in their original homelands and tribal cultures. Although Islam provided a shared set of structures, practices, and principles, there were more varieties and particularities in time and space than in the other two spheres.Overall, this volume is a major achievement of interdisciplinary collaborative scholarship. Specialists who feel at home in one or two fields will be inspired by thought-provoking observations, unexpected parallels, and helpful cross-references and comparisons. Students and general readers will find a dense, but highly readable and comprehensive, introduction into the intricate subject area of medieval political culture with its manifold subareas and scholarly debates. The book will be an indispensable tool for all sorts of transregional comparative endeavors aspiring to cross the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines.
