Discuss the ways in which gunpowder, cannons, and muskets plays critical roles in the rise, rivalries and decline of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires, and their eclipse by the growing power of expansionist European states

The three empires were among the strongest and stablest economies of the early modern period, leading to commercial expansion and greater patronage of culture, while their political and legal institutions were consolidated with an increasing degree of centralisation. They underwent a significant increase in per capita income and population and a sustained pace of technological innovation. The empires were centralised from the Eastern Europe and North Africa in the west to between today's modern Bangladesh and Myanmar in the east.

They were Islamic and had considerable military and economic success. Vast amount of territories were conquered by the Islamic gunpowder empires with the use and development of the newly invented firearms, especially cannon and small arms, in the course of imperial construction. Unlike in Europe, the introduction of gunpowder weapons prompted changes well beyond military organization.