The Islamic culture that developed in the ninth and tenth centuries AD in what is now Eastern Iran was to have a significant impact on most Muslims of west, south and central Asia. Under the patronage of Persianized Turkic Muslim rulers, the culture spread westward to the Mediterranean and eastward into India. Up to the fifteenth century AD, Turko-Persia represented a distinctive variant of Islamic life and thought in these regions, particularly among the elite, but thereafter regional variants started to emerge. This collection of essays comprises an historical survey of the culture, a chronology of major developments in the region from the rise of the Persian empire before Islam up to the present, and six chapters by eminent authorities on the region, focusing on the importance of literature; the tension between central and peripheral institutions in Turko-Persian societies; and the confrontation of the Turko-Persian Islamicate world with the European world.