In this ambitious comparative approach to the concept of ghazā (roughly, holy war), Ali Anooshahr seeks not to determine what ghazā meant and whether particular individuals lived up to the model of a ghāzi but rather how Muslim authors and rulers understood, created, and modified ghāzi rhetoric. He attempts to answer what role this rhetoric played in rulers' political self-expression through case studies of three men: Mahmud of Ghazna (d. 1031), the Ottoman Sultan Murad II (d. 1451), and Babur (d. 1530), founder of the Mughal Empire. To accomplish this, Anooshahr focuses on the interrelationships between texts in the creation and transmission of ghazi images, the ways authors and rulers understood and appropriated these images, the images' employment in propaganda campaigns, and the effect of these campaigns on audiences. Although he connects his literary discussion to historical events, he admits in the introduction that his intent is not to provide a historical narrative. The list of works consulted is impressively long, linguistically diverse, and chronologically and geographically wide ranging: histories, epics, poetry, and advice manuals in Persian, Turkish, and Arabic from the early Abbasid, Ghaznavid, Seljuk, Qarakhanid, Khwarazm-Shah, Ottoman, non-Ottoman Anatolian, and early Mughal worlds. The author also draws on letters written for Temür, Beyazid I, Mehmed I, Murad II, and Babur.

This book is ambitious not only because of its tremendous scope and the linguistic challenges of its sources but also because Anooshahr works squarely in the realm of human intent and understanding, even though these highly personal abstractions are rarely expressed clearly. By following a complex web of textual borrowings and influences, stated and otherwise, Anooshahr must guess what authors of histories, epics, letters, and advice manuals were trying to do (which was not always what they claimed to be doing). He also attempts to understand how previous works affected these authors' writing and how this writing in turn influenced the images rulers used to express themselves, their methods of self-presentation, and their actual behavior. One of his most impressive and creative feats is to locate what may be the autobiographical voices of rulers embedded in works written by others.

Anooshahr begins by describing the way Babur's familiarity with an established literary tradition on heroic ghāzi figures affected both his actions and his self-presentation in his famous memoir titled The Baburnama. Anooshahr situates Babur in the context of his ancestor Temür, whose highly sophisticated methods of self-presentation through literary and artistic propaganda were inherited by his descendants. Despite Babur's overall success with propaganda, he found Temür's legacy unhelpful in India and switched to a new rhetorical strategy by promoting himself as a ghāzi ruler, which allowed him to draw on a rich tradition of literature on ghazā dating back to Mahmud of Ghazna. After analyzing the influence of earlier works on The Baburnama and the variations within the book itself, Anooshahr taps an unexpectedly extensive amount of post-Babur literary evidence and convincingly measures the impact, reception, and success of Babur's propaganda campaign.

Anooshahr's second case study deals with Mahmud of Ghazna. Here he examines how ideas about austerity and dissipation used by al-Tabari and al-Masʿudi to critique the Abbasid caliphs were taken up by historians working under Ghaznavid patronage. The historians used these ideas to present the founder of the dynasty, Sebüktegin, as an austere and hardy yet compassionate convert to Islam. Anooshahr then analyzes Ghaznavid, Seljuk, Qarakhanid, and Khwarazm-Shah literary works to elaborate the theory of the triad of kings: an austere founder king who personally leads his men in ghazā, followed by a glorious monarch who oversees other ghazi warriors but rarely undertakes ghazā himself, and finally a dissolute ruler who fails to wage ghazā successfully and whose debauchery leads to the dynasty's downfall. Anooshahr traces the origins of this literary model to works by the Seljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk and the Ghaznavid historian Bayhaqi, after which the triad of kings became a standard way to conceptualize rulers, dynasties, and the role of ghazā. Of particular interest is the way some authors and rulers tinkered with the triad, and with history, to avoid the last, inglorious phase (that of the dissolute dynasty wrecker). Anooshahr also details the active roles played by both Sebüktegin and Mahmud in the creation and dissemination of their images.

In his final case study on the Ottoman Sultan Murad II, Anooshahr sets the stage by charting the changing meanings of ghazā and the ghāzi king in letters written for the Ottoman Beyazid I (d. 1403) and the Mongol warlord Temür (d. 1405). He also uses Anatolian histories and their rhetorical concerns about the Mongols—who had preceded Temür into the region and on whose model Temür drew—to provide the literary background for Mongol elements within Ottoman concepts of ghazā. Anooshahr also describes another peculiarity of the Ottoman case: ghazā against Christians and the accompanying rhetoric. The author then moves to relations between the Ottoman sultans Mehmed I (d. 1421) and Murad II, on the one hand, and Temür's son Shahrukh (d. 1447), on the other hand, and meticulously maps the way definitions of ghazā changed (particularly on the Ottoman side and in light of the triad of kings model) as the sultans regained power and confidence in the postinterregnum years.

Anooshahr's study is a major contribution to scholarship. His comparative approach allows him to engage multiple fields at once, from Ottoman and Mughal studies to Ghaznavid history. He charts a new and critically important path in scholarly investigations of the ever-thorny and ever-compelling question of ghazā. His work will be indispensable to scholars interested in ideas, literature, and the creation of texts, as well as those seeking to develop a more sophisticated view of kingship, rule, and the subtleties of royal power in the Muslim medieval world. Critiques of this remarkable monograph must be few and slight. Because Anooshahr is working with abstract ideas, ambiguous evidence, and the elusive quarry of human understanding and intent, some of his conclusions will not be as convincing as others. In addition, this reader occasionally wished for details on the nuts and bolts of literary production. For example, when and where did rulers read (or have books read)? What did their exchanges with authors look like? What about those with chancellery officials and other rhetoricians? Despite these minor points, Anooshahr's work is persuasive, interesting, and groundbreaking. This thoughtful, highly erudite, and creative book is very impressive and doubly so because it is Anooshahr's first monograph. It will be fascinating to see what he does next.