The late medieval eastern Mediterranean, before its incorporation into the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, presents a complex and fragmented picture. The Ayyubid and Mamluk sultanates held sway over Egypt and Syria, Asia Minor was divided between a number of Turkish emirates, the Aegean between a host of small Latin states, and the Byzantine Empire was only a fragment of its former size. This collection of thirteen original articles, by both established and younger scholars, seeks to find common themes that unite this disparate world. Focusing on religious identity, cultural exchange, commercial networks, and the construction of political legitimacy among Christians and Muslims in the late Medieval eastern Mediterranean, they discuss and analyse the interaction between these religious cultures and trace processes of change and development within the individual societies.

'Shared worlds' : religious identities : a question of evidence / Catherine Holmes -- Imperial Constantinople : relics, Palaiologan emperors, and the resilience of the exemplary centre / Jonathan Shepard -- The eastern Mediterranean in the later Middle Ages : an island world? / David Jacoby -- Constantinople as city-state, c. 1360-1453 / Jonathan Harris -- Transposed images : currencies and legitimacy in the late Medieval eastern Mediterranean / Eurydice Georganteli -- Conquest legitimized : the making of a Byzantine emperor in crusader Constantinople (1204-1261) / Teresa Shawcross -- Conquest and political legitimation in the early Ottoman Empire / Dimitris Kastritsis -- Byzantine authority and Latin rule in the Gattilusio lordships / Christopher Wright -- 'New wine in old skins?' crusade literature and crusading in the eastern Mediterranean in the later Middle Ages / Christopher Tyerman -- Aragon versus Turkey : Tirant lo Blanc and Mehmed the conqueror : Iberia, the crusade, and late medieval chivalry / David Abulafia -- Palestine in late medieval Islamic spirituality and culture / Robert Irwin -- Turks, Mamluks, and Latin merchants : commerce, conflict, and the cooperation in the eastern Mediterranean / Kate Fleet -- Byzantium and the West in the 1360s : the Kydones version / Judith Ryder.