In the 16th century, gunpowder became available outside of East Asia for the first time, allowing militaristic Islamic powers to flourish. Armstrong identifies three key Empires as being a part of this trend: The Safavid Empire, the Mughal Empire (also spelled “Moghul”), and the Ottoman Empire. She briefly acknowledges that lesser-known Muslim polities were also flourishing in far-flung places like Malaysia, so on the whole, she brands this two-hundred year span as a “triumphant” period for Islam. Furthermore, she argues that unlike the early Caliphates, these empires adhered more closely to Shariah and were therefore more truly Islamic than the empires of prior eras. Looming, however, was the increasing global influence of Christian Europe, an issue that would not make itself fully apparent to the Islamic world until the eighteenth century.

The first of the three great Muslim empires discussed by Armstrong is the Safavid Empire, based in Azerbaijan and Iran. Following the withdrawal of the Mongol Empire, this region had been in a state of political uncertainty. Ismail I, the first Safavid Shah, used a militarist method of conquest and governance (inherited from the Mongols), to convert Iran to Shia Islam; Iran remains a predominantly Shia country to this day.