In this paper I explore the circulation of a martyrdom contract between the militant group Al-Qaida in Iraq and Khalaf Ahmad Nawfal-al-Rashdan, known by his nom-de-guerre Abu Ahmad. Through it I want to consider first, the transformations of value and of form that made this contract possible; and second, the conceptual and epistemological exchanges and circulations that made these transformations possible. One of the many notable aspects of the document is that it formalizes the martyrdom of Abu Ahmad as contractual labour, detailing the various rights and responsibilities between facilitator and suicide bomber. The document was one of many acquired by the U.S military in the 2006-7 “Surge” and sent back to the U.S for posterity. Now categorized and digitized in West Point Combatting Terrorism Center archive, the document stands variously as a spoil of war, a testament to contemporary American military adventurism, and a claim that documents may provide future American militarists critical intelligence to combat terror. The martyr, I am suggesting, like a commodity, has a ‘social life’ that goes beyond the moments and context—the ‘event’—of their death. With this in mind I ask more broadly how, like a commodity, the martyr in its multiplicity of manifestations, is regulated, transformed, and traded, and the ways in which that traveling, this exchange and transmutation of form, effects the institutions in which it is embedded. By doing so I hope to highlight the hybrid nature of militant groups’ cultural and institutional practices, while engaging with anthropological theories of value alongside critical ethnographic theories of sacrifice. In doing so I hope to demonstrate the interconnections between states, militant, and civil society groups’ commemorative, memorial, and archival practices and the hybrid forms of political and social authority that underpin them.