Jeroen Duindam is Professor of Modern History at Leiden University. Duindam studies dynastic centres and elites in a comparative perspective. His publications include Myths of Power. Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court (Amsterdam 1995) and Vienna and Versailles. The Courts of Europe’s Dynastic Rivals 1550-1780 (Cambridge 2003).Tülay Artan is Profesor at Sabanci University, Istanbul. Artan’s research focuses on the Ottoman elite in Istanbul, the lives of its members and material culture that surrounded them in the eighteenth century. She is the author of a section on “Art and Architecture”, in : Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 3, Suraiya Faroqhi ed. (Cambridge 2006) and numerous other publications.Metin Kunt is Professor of History at Sabanci University, Istanbul. Kunt previously taught at Bogazici University, Istanbul, and at Cambridge University; he also held visiting positions at Harvard, Yale and Leiden. His main areas of research are Ottoman political sociology and sociology of knowledge. His publications include Sultan's Servants (Columbia, 1983) and The Age of Suleiman the Magnificent, co-edited with Christine Woodhead (London 1995).

• AcknowledgementsList of figuresRoyal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires, Jeroen DuindamFROM ASSYRIA TO ROMEPride, Pomp and Circumstance: Palace, Court and Household in Assyria 879 – 612 BCE, Gojko BarjamovicHellenistic Court Society: The Seleukid Imperial Court under Antiochos the Great, 223-187 BCE, Rolf StrootmanThe Roman Imperial Court: Seen and Unseen in the Performance of Power, Andrew Wallace-HadrillCourt and State in the Roman Empire – Domestication and Tradition in Comparative Perspective, Peter Fibiger Bang SUCCESSORS AND PARALLELS IN EAST AND WEST Court and Capital in Byzantium, Paul MagdalinoA King on the Move: The Place of an Itinerant Court in Charlemagne’s Government, Rosamond McKitterickCourt Historiography in Early Tang China: Assigning a Place to History and Historians at the Palace, Isenbike ToganTo be a Prince in the Fourth/Tenth-Century Abbasid Court, Nadia Maria El CheikhCeremonies and the City: The Court in Fourteenth-Century Constantinople, Ruth MacridesTHE EARLY MODERN WORLDThe Pope’s Household and Court in the Early Modern Age, Maria Antonietta Visceglia The Monarch and Inner-Outer Court Dualism in Late Imperial China, Sabine Dabringhaus Turks in the Ottoman Imperial Palace, İ. Metin Kunt The Mughal Audience Hall: A Solomonic Revival of Persepolis in Form of a Mosque, Ebba Koch Royal Weddings and the Grand Vezirate: Institutional and Symbolic Change in the Early Eighteenth Century, Tülay Artan Versailles, Vienna, and Beyond: Changing Views of Household and Government in Early Modern Europe, Jeroen DuindamList of ContributorsIndex