Maribel Fierro's volume in the New Cambridge History of Islam covers the western Islamic lands from the break-up of caliphal unity to the arrival of European colonialism. Her opening essay uses the westward paths of tea and coffee to show how far apparently separate regions were linked, then maps the successive powers: Fatimids, Almoravids and Almohads, Ayyubids, Mamluks, Marinids, Sa'dis and Ottomans. Legitimacy is the connecting thread. Rulers built it from Prophetic genealogy, control of Mecca and Medina, dynastic tombs and pilgrimage sites, accusations of unbelief levelled at rivals, and later from sharifian descent entwined with Sufi authority. Fierro also follows how Berber tribal armies gave way to mercenaries, slaves and Arab tribesmen, how Arabic and Turkish worked as Islamic languages while Andalusi Romance did not survive expulsion, and how scholars from al-Ghazali to Ibn Taymiyya shaped a portable Sunni culture. Closing chapters address state formation, conversion, taxation and scholarship.