Such is the way that the famous Egyptian military historian, 'Abdel-Raḥmān Zakī, chooses to narrate the battle of Konia. The reason for reproducing his account of the battle more or less in full is that it represents clearly a style of writing the history of wars and campaigns that was once described by the leading European military historian, John Keegan, as "the battle piece." Such accounts typically portray battles as orderly and organized events in which thousands of men are moved around on the battle plain in neat machine-like precision. Essentially bloody, tense and chaotic happenings, battles are transformed in these accounts into orderly events which are executed exactly as planned, and in which the successful commander is he who is able to conceive of the better plan and to stick to it.

DEFINE: Introduces the concept of 'the battle piece' as a genre of military history writing. Builds on: "Napoleon's Grande Armée campaigns were heavily improvised and troubled."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 902