Empire of Salons: Conquest and Community in Early Modern Ottoman Lands

A history of the Ottoman incorporation of Arab lands that shows how gentlemanly salons shaped culture, society, and governance

Historians have typically linked Ottoman imperial cohesion in the sixteenth century to the bureaucracy or the sultan’s court. In Empire of Salons, Helen Pfeifer points instead to a critical but overlooked factor: gentlemanly salons. Pfeifer demonstrates that salons—exclusive assemblies in which elite men displayed their knowledge and status—contributed as much as any...