The Sword of Persia

In his odd review of my book The Sword of Persia, Thomas Welsford made some criticisms of its account of the life of Nader Shah and cast some doubt on the book's originality. I felt I should comment upon one or two points. Part of the way the book addresses its subject is to develop from known facts to speculate about Nader's attitudes and thoughts. Welsford dislikes this, but I would suggest that these speculations are a natural extension of the narrative, engaging the reader's imagination (other reviewers have praised my handling of these aspects). To write ‘Axworthy's entire narrative is framed and punctuated by such psychological readings’ is an exaggeration. In each case I made clear that these were speculations. Some of Welsford's other errors are quickly dealt with, though it is not possible in a short space to address them all. He says that the book should have distinguished between the terms Turcoman and Turkmen: it does so—p. 291, n. 5. He says ‘the reader might have hoped for some textual attestation’ for the tensions created by Nader's position between Turkic tribal culture and urbanized Persian culture—this appears on p. 292, n. 18. His urging of greater use of the Soviet historians Arunova and Ashrafian, et al., is eccentric. The features he alleges to be valuable in their work are covered fully in The Sword of Persia by reference to primary sources

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