The Guardian published a review of the book by retired British Ambassador Oliver Miles whes which claimed it contained mistakes such as regarding the Ba'ath party and Iraq's revolutions, the Balfour declaration, locations of US bases, claiming the Hijazi Hashemites were Gulf people, wrongly assigning an Umayyad character to Baghdad, the century of Ali ibn Abi Talib's death, and mistakes in the meaning of Arabic, Persian, Russian, and French words and the birthplace of Jesus.[6]