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.