A COMMENT ON KIOUMARS GHEREGHLOU'S REVIEW OF RUDI MATTHEE, PERSIA IN CRISIS: SAFAVID DECLINE AND THE FALL OF ISFAHAN (IJMES 47 [2015]: 815–18)

Extract

Criticism arising from disagreement is what advances debate, making scholarship progress. A critical review therefore should leave an author unperturbed—as long as it is honest and fair. Kioumars Ghereghlou's review of my book Persia in Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan is neither. Rather than engaging in a serious and substantive discussion of the book's content and argument, it offers a string of innuendo-filled swipes and tendentious statements reflecting a prickly type of modern identity politics. I thus feel compelled to respond.