Acknowledgements
In the summer of 2016 the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies held a conference in Cambridge on the Ottomans and entertainment. The success of the conference gave rise to the idea of a volume of essays based on various papers presented there. This book is the outcome. We should like to thank the Skilliter Centre and Newnham College, Cambridge, all those who took part in the conference, and those who contributed to this volume. As always, we should like to express our thanks to Nicolette van der Hoek and Nienke Brienen-Moolenaar at Brill with whom it is a great pleasure to work.