Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Part I. Politics. The prophet and the early caliphates -- 1. Did the prophet keep court? -- 2. The representation of the early Islamic Empire and its religion on coin imagery -- 3. Great estates and elite lifestyles in the Fertile Crescent from Byzantium and Sasanian to Islam -- 4. Court and courtiers: a preliminary investigation of Abbasid terminology in Muslim court cultures of the Middle Ages -- 5. Redressing injustice: "Ma'alim" jurisdictions at the Umayyad court of Cordoba (eighth-eleventh centuries CE) -- 6. Social elites at the Fatimid court -- 7. Courts, capitals and kingship: Delhi and its sultans in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries CE -- 8. Between Dihliz and Dar al-'adl. Forms of outdoor and indoor royal representation at the Mamluk court in Egypt -- 9. The Mongol court in Baghdad: the Brothers Juwayni between local court and central court: Muslim court cultures of early modernity -- 10. Monolithic or dynamic? The Safavid court and the subaltern in the late seventeenth century -- 11. Court culture and cosmology in the Mughal Empire : Humayun and the foundation of the Din-i ilahi -- 12. Taming the tribal native: court culture and politics in eighteenth century Shiraz -- 13. Global and local patterns of communication at the court of the Egyptian Khedives (1840-1880) -- Part II. Patronage. Networks of patronage: 14. The administration of welfare under the Mamluks -- 15. Favouritism at the Ottoman court in the eighteenth century sciences -- 16. Enacting the rule of Islam: on courtly patronage of religious scholars in medieval and early modern times -- 17. Ayyubid princes and their scholarly clients from the ancient sciences literature -- 18. Royal dishes: on the historical and literary anthropology of the Near and Middle East -- 19. The guidance of kingdoms: function of a mirror for princes at court and its representation of a court art and architecture -- 20. Art and architecture of the Artuqid courts -- 21. Court patronage and public space: Abu 'l-hasan ani al-Mulk and the art of persianizing the other in Qajar Iran -- 22. Theatres of power and piety: architecture and court culture in Awadh, India.