Summary This volume brings together innovative contributions on the history and nature of families in the early modern Middle East, covering Central Asia, Iran, Ottoman Turkey and the Arab World from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century and beyond. It argues the importance of connecting the key concept of family in its widest possible meaning, whether descent group, lineage, household or dynasty, with the notion of transmission of knowledge, authority, status and power, and develops this idea through a pluridisciplinary and cross-regional approach. Based on primary sources in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish as well as art and material culture, the individual articles detail processes and dynamics of transmission, thus initiating a comparative dialogue. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Religious Lineages and Knowledge Networks Torsten Wollina, Family and Transmission of Knowledge in Mamluk and Early Ottoman Damascus Adam Sabra, Narrating a Lineage's Transition Crisis between Biography and Hagiography. A Case from Ottoman Egypt Alberto Tiburcio, Converts and Polemicists as Bridges in Knowledge Networks. The Case of Safavid Iran Kinship, Status, and Legitimacy Sacha Alsancakli, Warriors, Kings and Caliphs: Questions of Origins and Dynastic Culture in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Kurdistan Syrinx von Hees, Wann f llt der Apfel nicht weit vom Stamm? Zeitpunkte famili rer Amts bertragung in mamlukischer Zeit Nicolas Michel, Families of Cairene Civil Servants, from Mamluk to Ottoman Times (Fifteenth-Sixteenth Centuries) Marriage Alliances and Political Strategies Albrecht Fuess, Sihr and Musahara in Mamluk Royal Relations. Transmitting Power and Enlarging Networks Through In-Law Ties in Pre-Modern Egypt Juliette Dumas, L'histoire du pacha exemplaire mari une sultane extravagante. Genre, politique et r cit intime la cour ottomane au XVIIe si cle Professional Lineages and Transmission Sandra Aube, Family Legacy versus Regional Style: Tracing Three Generations of Woodworkers in Mazandaran (Iran, 1460s to 1500s) Francis Richard, La formation d'un calligraphe dans le monde iranien Managing Households and Family Estates Christoph U. Werner, The Razavi Sayyids of Mashhad: Families within a Family Maria Szuppe, Documenting the Barnabadi Estate: Establishment and Growth of a 'Saintly' Family in Fifteenth to Eighteenth-Century Herat Naofumi Abe, Creating a Family Property in Early Modern Iran: Socioeconomic Activities of Najafquli Khan Dunbuli of Tabriz in the Eighteenth Century