Social Networking during the 'Age of the Beloveds': Parties, Poetry, and Patronage.

Parties (Meclis) both as idealized in poetry and as performed at all levels of Ottoman society as a gathering for sociable enjoyment is central to visualizing the structure and sense of Ottoman poetry. The actual meclis was the material representation of networks of mutual support among bonded individuals. Symmetrical social and emotional bonding between actors on different levels of power, as scripted and rehearsed in the poetry and embodied in the meclis, has an economic as well as a social dimension.