A B S T R A C TFor decades, families in Lebanon have fought in vain for the release of information about their missing relatives. Their struggle has become increasingly entangled in a transnational configuration of experts, discourses, and practices, a configuration that is sustained by the humanitarian imperative to alleviate suffering and by an appeal to trauma, victimhood, and human rights. This appeal animates new legal and judicial forms of activism that have expanded the scope of the families' rights, compelled the government to release long-held information, and urged it to enact reforms in accordance with international standards. The convergence of these processes extends a framework of compassionate global governance that is supposed to work on behalf of subjects who are construed as victims and whose experience is essentially one of suffering.

she explains how the experiences of migration and displacement described in the first chapter shaped the ways in which Mughal lineages were manipulated to suit different historical needs, such as the formations of a community, a common culture, and a political regime. Focusing on memory is theoretically timely as many recent studies have adopted this analytical approach, but it is also inordinately valuable to her work; by stressing the manipulation of memory and its effects on self-conceptualization, action, and public articulation, Balabanlilar successfully avoids merely listing historical events or data that support her claim of Mughal hybridity, and instead demonstrates the empire's unique positionality.The later chapters deal with themes familiar to scholars of Central and South Asia-gardens and issues of lineage-and relate them to the formation of Mughal identities. These chapters stress the role of both Timurid and Perso-Islamic influences upon the Mughal Empire. Gardens are, as many scholars have pointed out, a defining characteristic of both Timurid and Perso-Islamic cultures. Balabanlilar discusses the importance of such features to individual kings as expressions of their individual political might; she argues that gardens were less religious than imperial affirmations of dominance over new territory, and, as such, were crucial to the expansionist efforts of the nomadic empire. Toward the end of the work, Balabanlilar addresses issues of succession and legitimacy. While this later chapter centers on the ways in which princes were trained to rule and how they actually came to rule, the author pays special attention here to the role of women, as well; by stressing the importance of clan in Timurid systems, she highlights the ways in which mothers and wives served to legitimate fathers, sons, kings, and princes. Balabanlilar ultimately concludes by stating that the Mughals were truly Timurid kings of India, having maintained a remembered lineage of generations past while simultaneously forging new, distinct characteristics and norms for their empire. Throughout the book, Balabanlilar nimbly weaves together divergent sources that span the entirety of the period; furthermore, she utilizes a variety of theoretical lenses (memory, identity, migration, imagination) to great effect. The particular contributions of this work lay in her close readings of a collection of Central and South Asian texts that deal not only with political events but also with religion, lineage, and Mughal self-fashioning, and will no doubt serve as useful resources for scholars of those regions. The broader contribution of the work, however, may simply lay in her premise: the Mughal Empire drew upon its Timurid genealogy in a way that, with few exceptions, has been overlooked or downplayed. By making this relationship primary, Balabanlilar successfully articulates an innovative way through which to view not only the Mughal Empire but also the Turco-Mongol lineage from which it stems as well as the relationship of the Mughals to other P...