Ottoman gentlemen placed great value on the art of conversation. From a young age, they watched their fathers cultivate it; they read and wrote books on it; and above all, they spent hours engrossed in it. This was true across the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. And yet, the particulars of gentlemanly conversation varied from locale to locale. This talk, which is based on Pfeifer’s new book Empire of Salons, examines conversational practice in the rapidly expanding empire of the sixteenth century, especially in the wake of the 1516-7 conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate.