Royal Courts and Capitals Conference

Sabanci University will be hosting the “Royal Courts and Capitals” conference in Istanbul on October 14-16. The conference will be realized as part of the COST Action “Tributary Empires Compared: Romans, Mughals and Ottomans in the Pre-Industrial World From Antiquity Till the Transition to Modernity”. “Tributary Empires Compared” is a four-year project which aims to produce a better understanding of classical tributary empires and the problems relating to segmented, loosely integrated and partly overlapping forms of power and authority, through the establishment of a European network for the comparative study of the Roman, Ottoman, Mughal and related empires. “Royal Courts and Capitals” conference brings together scholars working in different disciplines to explore and share the latest research on imperial courts. The proceedings will be published in the future.

Conference Organizers:

Metin Kunt (Sabanci): mkunt@sabanciuniv.edu

Tulay Artan (Sabanci): tulay@sabanciuniv.edu

Jeroen Duindam (Utrecht): jeroen.duindam@let.uu.nl

For further information please contact Tulay Artan

Royal Courts and Capitals, 14- 16 October 2005

Sabanci University, Karakoy Center, Istanbul

14 OCTOBER, FRIDAY

09:00-10:00 Opening (Metin Kunt / Jeroen Duindam)

10.30-12.00 Session I: Variants of Dynastic Power

Metin Kunt (Sabanci) “How to become a sultan”
Walter Scheidel (Stanford/Graz) “Towards a comparative study of monarchical succession and dynastic stability”
Robert Frost (Aberdeen) “Court, power and ritual in Poland-Lithuania under the Vasa dynasty, 1587-1668”

13.30-15.30 Session II: Households and Bureaucracies: ‘state’ and ‘court’

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (The British School at Rome) “The Roman imperial court: seen and unseen in the performance of power”
Peter Bang (Copenhagen) “Court and State in the Roman World”
Hugh Kennedy (St Andrews) “Women and power in the early Abbasi court”

16.00-17.30 Session III: Households and Bureaucracies: ‘state’ and ‘court’

Jeroen Duindam (Utrecht) “Households and state bureaucracies: status, influence, and decision-making in Vienna and Versailles"
Toby Osborne (Durham) “A shadow of a prince: diplomats embodying princes in early modern court ceremonial”

15 OCTOBER, SATURDAY

9.00-12.30 Session IV: Household Organization: Structures and Practices

Mia Rodriguez Salgado (LSEP) “Microcosm of empire or Castilian enclave? The court of Philip II of Spain”
Tülay Artan (Sabanci) “The grandvizier's 'new' household on parade : refashioning bureaucracy at the 1720 Circumcision Festival ?”
Paul Magdalino (St Andrews/Koc) “Court and capital in Byzantium”

13.30-15.30 Session V: Courts as Meeting Places and Centres of Elite Integration

Rosamond McKitterick (Newnham Cambridge) “The itinerant Frankish royal court in the reign of Charlemagne”
Janos Bak (CEU, Budapest/Sabancı) “Court and courtiers in the medieval kingdom of Hungary”
Jonathan Shepard (Oxford) “Young Barbarians at Court”

16.00-17.30 Session VI: Courts as Conspicuous Centres: Legitimation and Display, I

Ebba Koch (Vienna) “Court ceremonial and architecture as statements of Mughal rulership
Michael Rogers (London) “Ottoman Regalia”

16 OCTOBER, SUNDAY

9.00-10.30 Session VII: Courts as Conspicuous Centres: Legitimation and Display, II

Amira Bennison (Cambridge) “The Qur'an of 'Uthman: The transformation of Cordoban Umayyad ceremonial at the Almohad court in Marrakesh?”
Steven Blake (St. Olaf College) “Time in the early modern Middle East: Calendar and ceremony in the Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman Empires: An introduction”

11.00-13.00 Session VIII: General Evaluation & Discussion

Philip Mansel (Society for Court Studies, London) “Dynastic matters”
Greg Woolf (St Andrews) “Government and administration”
Peter Burke (Cambridge) “Ceremonies and representation”