Eric Chaney of University of Oxford reviews “Conquests and Rents: A Political Economy of Dictatorship and Violence in Muslim Societies” by Faisal Z. Ahmed. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Examines how the institutional legacy of Muslim conquest is a robust determinant of less cohesive institutions in contemporary Muslim societies, detailing how variation in economic rents explain ebbs and flows of dictatorship and propensity for civil wars in these societies.”