"Royal Courts and Capitals"

October 14-16 2005

Sabanci University, Istanbul

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): mkuntsabanciuniv.edu
Tulay Artan (Sabanci): tulaysabanciuniv.edu
Jeroen Duindam (Utrecht): jeroen.duindamlet.uu.nl

For further information please contact Tulay Artan

Program:

14 OCTOBER 2005

Friday Morning

9.00-10.00

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"

Friday afternoon

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 II 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 2005

Saturday morning

9.00-12.30
Session III Household Organization: Structures and Practices

Mia Rodriguez Salgado (LSEP)
"Microcosm of empire or Castilian enclave? The court of Philip II of Spain"

Maria-Antonietta Visceglia (Rome)
"The Pope's Household (XIV- XVII centuries) (court personnel)"

Tulay 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"

Saturday afternoon

13.30-15.30
Session IV 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/Sabancž)
"Court and courtiers in the medieval kingdom of Hungary"

Jonathan Shepard (Oxford)
"Young Barbarians at Court"

16.00-17.30

Session V 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 2005

Sunday morning

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

I'senbike Togan (METU-Ankara)
"Tang court (7th c.) assigns a place to history and historians"

Amira Bennison (Cambridge)
"The Qur'an of 'Uthman: The transformation of Cordoban Umayyad Ceremonial at
the Almohad court in Marrakesh"

11.00-13.00
Session VII 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"

Sunday afternoon

Palace and museum visits for non-members