International audience Reconsidering the question of religious authority, L'autorité religieuse et ses limites en terres d'islam offers various case studies located in Central Asia, throughout the Ottoman Empire, in the Balkans and in Turkey. The present volume discusses the complex relationships between political power and religious authorities, such as Sufi shaykhs, ulamas, sheikh ul-islâm, hegumens, and the latin clergy in the premodern period. The 20th and 21th centuries are analysed from the perspective of the transformation of religious authority - certainly fragmented but vigorous - among the Bosnian Muslim Reformists, the Albanian Bektashis, the Alevis of Anatolia, and in female Sufism in Istanbul. It appears that religious authority is not limited to traditional authorities and is continuously confronted with limits, whether theological, political, social or institutional.