Managing the Turco-Mongol Legacy: Restless Princes at the Ottoman and Mughal Royal Courts

In the centuries immediately following Mongol political collapse in West Asia, successor kingdoms formed sharing Turco-Mongol political culture and imperial aspirations. These kingdoms grappled with some of the more complex and potentially debilitating features of that legacy, particularly the tradition of the open succession. The Ottomans eventually chose to reinvent understandings of inheritance and legitimacy, creating a highly innovative system of managing restless princes and determining succession. In contrast, the Timurid-Mughals, whose political capital derived almost entirely from their charismatic lineage, never constructed an alternative method of ordering succession. Their generational conflicts were bloody and destructive, but they did not threaten the power and sovereignty of the dynastic whole, and in fact carried significant political benefits that affirmed divine sanction and effectively marginalized discontent.