In this groundbreaking book, Altaf examines jihad in the Afghan borderland and the dynamics and intricate relations between various communities in Pukhtunkhwa. Focused on the early 19th century jihad against the Sikh empire led by Sayyid Ahmad Barailvi, it examines the assumed ‘failures’ of this movement. While earlier analyses have blamed the Pukhtanah or the British colonial state for the ‘failure’, this book highlights Sayyid Ahmad and the mujahidin’s inability to understand the socio-economic dimensions of Pukhtu society. In particular, it draws attention to the leadership of Sayyid Ahmad and how he was not able to draw on the virtues and qualities of a traditional leader that the Pukhtanah would be mobilized by. The study brings a number of Pukhtu sources to the limelight, in additional to critically examining previous histories as well as colonial and Urdu language sources. Moving beyond colonial, postcolonial nationalist, and ethnonationalist perspectives, the book engages with crucial questions of the local and its intersections with the regional and emergent national or ummatic. It has important insights for the formation and tensions within broader political movements well beyond the Afghan borderland. — Hafsa Kanjwal Associate Professor, Department of History at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania and author of Colonizing Kashmir: State-building under Indian Occupation