Nadir Shah
This article is about the Persian shah. For the 20th century king of Afghanistan, see Mohammed Nadir Shah.Nadir Shah (
Persian: نادر شاه) (
Nadir Qoli Beg (
Persian: نادر قلی بیگ), also
Tahmasp-Qoli Khan (
Persian: تهماسپ قلی خان) also
Nadir Shah Afshar (
Persian: نادر شاه افشار) ) (
October 22,
1688 -
June 19,
1747) ruled as
Shah of Iran (
1736–
47) and was the founder of the short-lived
Afsharid dynasty. Some historians have described him, because of his
military genius, as the
Napoleon of Persia or the
Second Alexander. He created a great Iranian Empire with boundaries from the
Indus River in
Pakistan to the
Caucasus Mountains (north) and
India (east).
He gained prominence as a military leader during the Afghan occupation of
Iran in the 1720s. Acting in behalf of the defeated
Safavids, he expelled the Afghans in
1729, and in
1732 became regent. The following year he forced the
Ottomans out of
Mesopotamia, which they had seized during the Afghan invasion, and induced the
Russians to give up Iranian territory they had occupied. In
1736 he took the Iranian throne for himself as Nadir Shah. By
1738 he had conquered
Afghanistan, and in
1739 he invaded northern
India, capturing Delhi, the capital of the
Mughal Empire; he soon extended his rule into what is now Western
Turkistan. Nadir Shah's victories made him briefly the
Middle East's most powerful sovereign, but his empire quickly disintegrated after he was assassinated in
1747. Nadir Shah was probably the last great
Asian military conqueror. But Nadir was also responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians, especially non-Muslims, during his military campaigns.
|
A Portrait of Nadir Shah by Jonas Hanway |
He was born in the
Dastgerd region of
Khorasan, a province of
Iran. His father, a poor
peasant, died while Nadir was still a child. Legends say that Nadir and his mother were carried off as
slaves by marauding
Uzbeg or Turkmen tribesmen, but Nadir managed to escape. He joined a band of
brigands while still a boy and eventually advanced to become their leader. Later he found refuge with the Turkic
Afshar tribe, where, under the patronage of Afshar chieftains, he rose through the ranks to be a powerful military leader.
After the Afghans invaded Persia in 1722, deposing the Safavid Shah Soltan Hosein, Nadir supported Hosein's son
Tahmasp II with a force of 5,000 soldiers against the Afghan usurper
Ashraf Ghilzay. Nadir defeated the Afghans in the
Battle of Damghan,
1729. He had driven out the
Afghans, who were still occupying Persia, by
1730. In 1729 Tahmasp II was proclaimed shah in
Isfahan. While Nadir was in Khorasan, putting down the revolt, Tahmasp II moved in person with an army against the Ottoman Empire. He was, however, heavily defeated. He made peace and
Georgia and
Armenia were lost. Nadir returned to Isfahan, exiled Tahmasp II to Khorasan, deposed him and placed his infant eight month old son
Abbas III on the throne, declaring himself
regent. In
1736 Nadir ascended to the throne himself, as Shah. Tahmasp and Abbas were killed in prison at the orders of Nader's son in 1739.
|
Tomb of Nadir Shah, a popular tourist attraction in Mashhad |
Nadir then turned west against the
Ottomans, defeating them. In the siege of
Baghdad in
1733 he was defeated behind the walls of the city. Nadir, however, came back with a larger army and the Ottomans were forced to make a peace treaty. Nadir was given the cities on the west of
Aras River in addition to
Karbala and
Basra in southern
Iraq. With this victory, he recovered all the land lost to the
Ottomans before the
Afghan invasion.
Invasion of India
In
1738, Nadir Shah conquered
Kandahar. In the same year he occupied
Ghazni,
Kabul and
Lahore. He continued on to
India, crossing the river
Indus before the end of year. He defeated the great
Mughal army of
Mohammad Shah within the span of one month at the
Battle of Karnal and Nadir Shah triumphantly entered
Delhi where he had the
Khutba read in his name,
February 24 1739. After victory, Nadir captured Mohammad Shah and entered with him into
Delhi. In the rioting that followed, more than 30,000 civilians were killed by the Persian troops, forcing
Muhammad Shah to beg for mercy. In response, Nadir Shah agreed to withdraw, but
Muhammad Shah paid the consequence - handing over the keys of his royal treasury and losing even the
Peacock Throne to the Persian emperor.
Nadir returned home with vast treasures, including the
Peacock Throne, which thereafter served as a symbol of Persian imperial might, and, among a trove of other fabulous jewels, the famous
diamonds
Koh-i-Noor and
Darya-ye Noor (while
Koh-i-Noor implies "Mountain of Light",
Darya-ye Noor means "Sea of Light", in Persian). The Persian troops left Delhi at the beginning of May
1739. Nadir's soldiers also took with them thousands of
elephants,
horses and
camels, loaded with the
booty they had collected. The plunder seized from India was so rich that Nadir stopped
taxation in Iran for a period of three years, following his triumphant return.
After India
After India, Nadir attacked the
Uzbeks of
Transoxania. Nadir also started to build a powerful Persian
navy. He recaptured
Bahrain from the Arabs. In
1743 he conquered
Oman and its main capital,
Muscat.
In
1741, after an assassination attempt on him failed, Nadir suspected his oldest son
Reza Quli Mirza as being responsible for the
conspiracy and had him
blinded. Soon afterwards, Nadir started executing the nobles who had witnessed his son's blinding. In his last years, Nadir became increasingly
paranoid, ordering the assassination of large numbers of supposed enemies.
In
1743 Nadir started another war against the
Ottoman Empire. It ended with a peace treaty in
1746, by which treaty the Ottomans agreed to let Nadir occupy
Najaf.
Nadir had been married four times; he had 5 sons and 15 grandsons. He also had 33 women in his
harem. During Nadir Shah's brief reign a 400,000-man army was created, and the boundaries of his empire extended to the greatest extent in Iran's history since the days of the
Sassanids.
Nadir was assassinated on
19 June,
1747, at Fathabad in Khorasan, where he was preparing to punish some rebellious Kurds. The assassination was probably planned by his nephew, Ali Qoli. Nadir was surprised in his sleep by Salah Bey, captain of the guards, and killed with a
sword.
After his death, he was succeeded by his nephew Ali Qoli, who renamed himself
Adil Shah ("righteous king") Adil Shah was deposed within a year. During the struggle between Adil Shah, his brother
Ibrahim Khan and Nadir's grandson
Shah Rukh almost all provincial governors declared independence, established their own states, and the entire Empire of Nadir Shah fell into
anarchy. Finally,
Karim Khan founded the
Zand dynasty and became ruler of Iran by
1760, while
Ahmad Shah Durrani had already proclaimed independence in the east, marking the foundation of modern
Afghanistan.
In
1768,
Christian VII of Denmark commissioned
Sir William Jones to translate a
Persian language biography of Nadir Shah into
French. It was published in
1770 as
Histoire de Nadir Chah, and subsequently translated into
English, becoming the vehicle by which Nadir Shah became known to the reading public in the West.
* H. Maynard,
Nadir Shah, (Oxford, 1885)
* Sir H. M. Durand, in the
Journal of the Asiatic Society [?
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland?], (London, 1906)
* Lawrence Lockhart "Nadir Shah" (London, 1938)
* Cambridge History of Iran, vol 7
* Michael Axworthy, "Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant" Hardcover 348 pages (26 July 2006) Publisher:
I.B. Tauris Language: English ISBN 1850437068
*
Nadir Shah's portrait*
History of Iran: Afsharid Dynasty (Nader Shah)*
Biography of Nadir Shah Afshar "The Persian Napoleon*
Nader Shah Mausoleum and Museum*
Nader Shah
