The Studies in the History and Culture of the Islamic Orient (STIO) is the series of “Supplements” to the journal Der Islam. Both are published by the Section for the History and Culture of the Near East in the Asian-African Institute of the University of Hamburg. The Section was established in 1908, before the foundation of the University of Hamburg. Under its first Director, C.H. Becker, it was the first academic centre in Germany in which teaching and research concentrated on the historical and cultural aspects of the Islamic world, and not just on philological issues. Many of Germany’s leading authorities in Islamic Studies have studied and/or taught here. The “Supplements” have maintained the same high quality and met the same high demands as the journal Der Islam and have published numerous studies on the history and culture of the Islamic world which have represented milestones in their relevant fields. The “New Series” of Supplements appearing since 2004 carries this tradition forward and provides a platform for publishing studies on the history and culture of the Islamic world from the beginnings of Islam up to the present day.

The papers published in this volume go back to a conference held November 2011 in Hamburg. The conference was built around the question of domination: of nomads over sedentary people, of sedentary people over nomads, and of nomads over nomads. The contributions study how domination worked in a nomadic context, and how nomadic elites (aristocracies) related to imperial rule.

How is political rule organised? Top-down, in a process of delegation? Or are there other forms and can local rulers take their position without being legitimised from above, relying on their own basis of power? This book takes a fresh look at this question. It proceeds in three steps: At first, the author proves that there was indeed a stratum of local lords in Iran in the period in question – local lords who were not appointed by any overlord. Such lords can be shown to have existed on both the sedentary and the nomad side of society. In a second step, the author analyses the links between the sultan and such local lords, but also those grandees who belonged to the sultan’s household. As a result, he observes a dynamism of “service” and “benefit” – personal relationships which often were concluded or affirmed by oaths of fealty and/or other ceremonies. And last but not least, in the introduction, he presents the theoretical framework, and in the conclusion, he contrasts the Iranian material with the situation in medieval Western Europe and Japan.