In the winter of 1705, after losing his fortress, his soldiers, and four beloved sons to the armies of the Mughal Empire, Guru Gobind Singh did something extraordinary: he wrote a poem. The Zafarnama — the Letter of Victory — is the Guru's verse epistle to Emperor Aurangzeb, and it turns the world's idea of triumph upside down. Though he has been driven from his city and has lost nearly everything, the Guru writes not as a defeated refugee but as a free man, holding the emperor to the standard of his own sacred oath. With irony, grief, and unshakable faith, he charges that real defeat belongs to the emperor who broke his word, while real victory belongs to the one who keeps it. This modern-English edition makes the ancient Persian classic, familiar to millions of Sikhs and long treasured as one of world literature's boldest letters, accessible to today's readers in clear, faithful, present-day language. Part of The World Scriptures Library.