In Exercising Authority and Representing Rule, Andras Barati examines twenty-two hitherto unpublished Persian royal decrees issued by various rulers of eighteenth-century Iran and Afghanistan kept at the Astan-i Quds-i Razawi in Mashhad. Considering the paucity of primary sources from this period due to relatively frequent political turmoils, he aims to improve this situation by offering the transcription and translation of these original documents as well as a commentary concerning the textual elements, external aspects, and content of the decrees. Making use of previously published documents, Andras Barati presents the first substantial study on post-Safavid eighteenth-century diplomatics and addresses several issues related to the political, economic, and administrative history of the region in the early modern period.