One could assume from the misleading title of this work that it is a new analytical history of the fall of the Safavid empire and the nine-year Afghan usurpation of the Safavid throne. More than forty years after Laurence Lockhart published his monumental work, The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia, a new study based on subsequent research would be a major contribution to the field. But Willem Floor has made a different, yet extremely significant, contribution. He has performed a yeoman's service by annotating, translating, and compiling primary source materials from the archives of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), or the Dutch East Indies Company, that someday will assist such an effort.