The Making and Breaking of Kinetic Empire: Mobility, Communication and Political Change in the Eastern Mediterranean, <i>c</i>. 900–1100 CE

Abstract This paper applies the concept of ‘kinetic empire’ to eastern Mediterranean world in tenth and eleventh centuries. The term is borrowed from Hämäläinen's analysis eighteenth- nineteenth-century north American Comanche Empire. It refers way which trans- supra-regional power could be created, expressed enforced through mobile means. article focuses primarily on role mobility expansion Byzantine Empire between c . 900 1050, but also makes comparison with contemporaneous Fatimid caliphate other regional polities we might usually regard as sedentary states. Recovering kinetic not only extends our understanding modalities this crucial region medieval world, it allows us question nature degree transformation wrought by newcomers, such Normans, crusaders Turks later decades century. In sense developing exploring concepts useful for study transregional premodernity questioning standard periodisations, a practical exercise global history.