Marigold Acland of Cambridge University Press commissioned this book and, like dozens of other scholars, I deeply appreciate both her encouragement and her sympathetic interest in and sophisticated knowledge of Islamic studies. The book was written during a wonderful leave year funded by a research fellowship from the National Endowment of the Humanities in Washington, DC, supported by matching funds from the Ohio State University.

I have benefited from the work of so many scholars in so many disciplines that it is impossible to credit them all. My intellectual debts will be obvious from the footnotes and bibliography, but beyond those citations, I want to particularly acknowledge Cornell Fleischer, who introduced me to both Turkish and Ottoman history; my own colleagues in Ottoman studies, Carter Findley and Jane Hathaway; Gülru Necipoğlu for her cultural studies of Ottoman architectural history; and Suraiya Faroqhi for her many works on Ottoman social history. Hamid Algar introduced me to Persian and modern Iranian history and John Masson Smith Jr. taught me the use of documents and coins for pre-modern Iranian and Middle Eastern history. In addition I am particularly indebted to Rudi Matthee for his publications on the Safavids and to Paul Losensky for his revealing studies of Persian poetry of the Safavid and Mughal eras. I first studied Indian history with Eugene F. Irschick, and began my studies of Mughal history with the work of the late John Richards.