Book excerpt: A.C.S. Peacock is Lecturer in Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews, and holds a PhD in Oriental Studies from Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is the author of Early Seljuq History: A New Interpretation (2010), and is the co-editor of The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (I.B.Tauris, 2012) and Ferdowsi, the Mongols and the History of Iran: Art, Literature and Culture from Early Islam to Qajar Persia (I.B.Tauris, 2013).D.G. Tor is Assistant Professor of Medieval Middle Eastern History at the University of Notre Dame, and holds a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. She is the author of The Great Selkuq Sultanate and the Formation of Islamic Civilization: A Thematic History (forthcoming) and Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry and the 'Ayyar Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World (2007).