The study of the Mongol empire has occupied historians from a range of sub-fields: Chinese history, Russian history, Mongolian history and philology, Islamic history and religious studies, as well as the history of medieval trade and money circulation. Most of the current leaders in the field fall into three groups: those primarily based in Chinese sources, those primarily based in Persian sources, and finally a small group who have mastered both. Peter Jackson belongs to the second of these categories, a Persianist. His Ph.D. dissertation of 1977 from Cambridge University covered the relations between the Mongol empire and the Sultanate of Delhi, roughly from 1206 to the late fourteenth century. Subsequently, he published an authoritative new translation and commentary (with David Morgan) of the famous traveler William of Rubruck (originally published 1990, paperback reprint, Hackett Publishing, 2009) and authored The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (Harlow: Longman, 2005). As these two later publications show, Peter Jackson also stands out among historians of the Mongol empire as an expert Latinist, thoroughly at home in the manuscript record of medieval European history.

This volume collects twelve articles published by Professor Peter Jackson from 1975 to the present. According to his introduction, the papers cover three topics, the Mongol empire, the Sultanate of Delhi, and the relations between the two. I think almost all readers will agree with me, however, that the current book divides more neatly into two collections: five chapters on the Mongol empire, and seven on the Delhi Sultanate. These two sections differ not just in topic, but also in approach and sources. The articles on the Mongol empire are topically organized and exploit an extremely wide range of West Eurasian sources (Mongolian and Chinese sources, touched on throughout in translation and secondary studies, are never given a foundational role). Rather than establish what happened when in the political history of the Mongol empire, they aim to reinterpret the broad narrative of that history. By contrast the seven articles on the Delhi Sultanate exploit a narrower source base and mostly aim to clarify the sequence of events.

The five articles on the Mongol empire start with the “The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire” (first published in 1978), a landmark work in understanding the creation of the Il-Khanate and the relationships between the branches of the Mongol imperial family. “From Ulus to Khanate” (1999) refines some of the bold formulations of his earlier article, but the broad outlines of his analysis have stood the test of time. The two other areas of focus for Jackson have been religious policy and Mongol conversion to world religions (in “Hülegü and the Christians,” 2003, and “The Mongols and the Faith of the Conquered,” 2005), and the ideas behind Mongol diplomatic advances (“World Conquest and Local Accommodation,” 2006). For Jackson, these three topics—the break-up of the empire, religion, and diplomacy—all fit together. In the old story, the Mongols started out as unified and religiously tolerant empire builders who early on conceived the idea of conquering the world, but who after converting to various world religions lost both their unity and their world-conquering ambition. In Jackson's view, however, the Mongol view of religion was always instrumental, and their diplomacy always modulated world-conquest and local accommodation depending on circumstances. The break-up of the empire happened because of long-standing family rivalries, and claims of Mongol rulers to be acting on behalf of one or another religious faith were mostly propaganda deliberately deployed to achieve political aims. These aims remained world-conquest if possible, well into the fourteenth century.

The seven articles on the Delhi Sultanate mine in great detail the relatively small number of narrative sources, mostly in Persian, to illuminate the history of the earliest autonomous Muslim regimes in South Asia. Jūzjānī's Ṭabaqāt-ī Naṣirī, and Baranī's Ta'rikh-i Fīrūzshāhī appear constantly in their confusions and contradictions and their strengths and weaknesses as sources are carefully assessed. Topics include the fall of the Ghorid dynasty in Afghanistan, the institution of military slavery and the role of Turks in South Asia, the clashes between the Muslim rulers of India and the Mongols and commanders like Jalāl al-Dīn Mingbirnī fleeing the Mongols, and Delhi as a military encampment. Specialists in thirteenth-fourteenth century Indian political history will find the collection of these articles invaluable for reference, but for me, and I suspect for other readers as well, the level of detail makes them somewhat slow going. Regardless, though, this volume will be of great utility to graduate students seeking to master the sprawling literature on the Mongol empire and South Asia's early Islamic regimes, as well as to scholars trying to get a more rounded view of Professor Jackson's developed conclusions on these topics.