It was appropriate therefore that his power derived in part from the enormous treasure chest of Mughal gems plundered by the Persian marauder Nadir Shah from the Red Fort in Delhi sixty years earlier these Ahmad Shah had seized within an hour of Nadir Shah’s assassination. His family came from Multan in the Punjab and had a long tradition of service to the Mughals. It was Shah Shuja’s grandfather, Ahmad Shah Abdali, who is usually considered to have founded the modern state of Afghanistan in 1747. When a hefty 514-page galley of Dalrymple’s book arrived on my doorstep, I dug in. A reasonably well-educated reader should, I believe, be able to understand and evaluate a non-specialized text written in his native tongue. Return of a King is not an academic text my assigning editor warned me the book was long, but assured me Dalrymple is usually a “very accessible” author. Sure, I needed the money, but reviewing a book on a subject I don’t know much about was also a matter of principle. Though I knew little about colonial Afghanistan, I didn’t hesitate to take the assignment. In March, I reviewed William Dalrymple’s Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-1842, for The Christian Science Monitor.
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