Vast amounts of territory were conquered by the gunpowder empires with the use and development of the newly invented firearms, especially cannon and small arms, in the course of imperial expansion.

[1] The Mughals, based in the Indian subcontinent, inherited in part the Timurid Renaissance,[2] and are recognised for their lavish architecture and for having heralded in Bengal an era of what some describe as proto-industrialization.

[3] The Safavids created an efficient and modern state administration for Iran and sponsored major developments in the fine arts.

Hodgson used the phrase in the title of Book 5 ("The Second Flowering: The Empires of Gunpowder Times") of his highly influential three-volume work, The Venture of Islam (1974).

"[5] McNeill argued that whenever such states "were able to monopolize the new artillery, central authorities were able to unite larger territories into new, or newly consolidated, empires.

[7] By contrast, such monopolies allowed states to create militarized empires in West Asia, Russia, and India, and "in a considerably modified fashion" in China, Korea, and Japan.

[6] More recently, the Hodgson–McNeill "gunpowder empire" hypothesis has been called into disfavour as a neither "adequate [n]or accurate" explanation, although the term remains in use.

[10] Whether or not gunpowder was inherently linked to the existence of any of these three empires, it cannot be questioned that each of the three acquired artillery and firearms early in their history and made such weapons an integral part of their military tactics.

[12] The adoption of the gunpowder weapons by the Ottomans was so rapid that they "preceded both their European and Middle Eastern adversaries in establishing centralized and permanent troops specialized in the manufacturing and handling of firearms.

[18][19] The combination of artillery and Janissary firepower proved decisive at Varna in 1444 against a force of Crusaders, Başkent in 1473 against the Aq Qoyunlu,[20] and Mohács in 1526 against Hungary.

Only the limited campaign radius of the Ottoman army prevented it from holding the city and ending the Safavid rule.

[29] Although the Chaldiran defeat brought an end to Ismail's territorial expansion program, the shah nonetheless took immediate steps to protect against the real threat from the Ottoman sultanate by arming his troops with gunpowder weapons.

[31] The Safavids first put their gunpowder arms to good use against the Uzbeks, who had invaded eastern Persia during the civil war that followed the death of Ismail I.

Babur used this formation at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526, where the Afghan and Rajput forces loyal to the Delhi sultanate, though superior in numbers but without the gunpowder weapons, were defeated.

Similarly Babur also used these gunpowder weapons to win the decisive Battle of Khanwa against the numerically superior Rajput confederacy.

The decisive victory of the Timurid forces is one reason opponents rarely met Mughal princes in pitched battle over the course of the empire's history.

The reigns of Akbar The Great, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb have been described as a major height of Indian history.

[38] The three Islamic gunpowder empires are known for their quickly gained success in dominating the battle fields using their newly acquired firearms and techniques.

During the golden age of East Asian Piracy between the 1540s and 1560s, it was most likely that through their battles and other encounters with these pirates, the Ming dynasty forces inevitably got hold of the weapons and copied them[citation needed].

It was also likely that a powerful mariner Wang Zhi, who controlled thousands of armed men eventually surrendered to the Ming in 1558 and they replicated his weapons.

[42] The Wubei Zhi (1621) later described Turkish muskets that used a rack-and-pinion mechanism, which was not known to have been used in any European or Chinese firearms at the time.

Qi Jiguang, a revered Ming military leader, drilled his soldiers to extremes so that their performance in battle would be successful.

In addition, Qi Jiguang also used innovative battle techniques like volleys, countermarchs, and division into teams, and it even encouraged flexible formation to adapt to the battlefield.

[39] During the Sino-Dutch War beginning in 1661, Southern Ming commander Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) used similar tactics to Qi Jiguang effectively in battle.

[44] The Manchu elite did not concern themselves directly with guns and their production, preferring instead to delegate the task to Han-Chinese craftsmen, who produced for the Qing a similar composite metal cannon known as the "Shenwei grand general.

Multiple accounts have said that Portuguese men working for Chinese pirates ended up in Japan by chance and impressed the local ruler with the weapons.

Europeans are said to have pushed gunpowder technology to its limits, improving the formulas that existed and devising new uses of the substance after it was introduced to Europe via the Silk Road in the thirteenth century.

[54] Roger Bacon, a renowned early European alchemist (1214 – 1292), set forth the marvels of the world; key among them was the ingredients of gunpowder.

[55] Due to constant warfare, Europe saw an exponential growth innovation of gunpowder firearms, making it the most advanced in the whole world.