156 • 9 FIREARMS, SLAVES, AND EMPIRESproduction, and promoting economic well-being. As the empire expands,
it builds up a large army and bureaucracy, which it must then pay for by
taxing its subjects. The ruling class and the ulama become rich, powerful,
and conservative. The rulers' descendants prove to be less and less capable
of ruling, and their subjects become more and more prone to rebel, until
the empire falls and the cycle repeats itself.
All of the empires that you have studied here—the Mamluks and the
Il-Khanids, the Timurids and their Mughal descendants (slighted here, be¬
cause India is not part of the Middle East), the Ottomans and the Safavids—
were Muslim military states in an era when possession and mastery of
gunpowder weapons became prevalent, and then essential for survival. In
addition, some of these states established institutions that ensured the best
use of their subjects' talents as soldiers and bureaucrats while maintaining a
power balance among their competing factions. When these strategies failed,
the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim states found another type of equi¬
librium to maintain their independence: the European balance of power.