I. B. Tauris (usually typeset as I.B.Tauris) is an independent publishing house with offices in London and New York.

History[link]

I.B.Tauris was founded in 1983. Its declared strategy was to fill the perceived gap between trade publishing houses and university presses—that is, to publish serious but accessible works on international politics and culture.^[1] The company specialised in its early days on publishing on the Middle East, an area in which its current output still makes it one of the most prolific publishers on the subject: both for academics in the field of Middle East studies and for the serious general reader.^{[citation needed]}

I.B.Tauris today[link]

The publisher now specialises in non-fiction books on history; politics and International Relations; the Middle East and Islamic world generally; religion; and visual culture (including film, photography and contemporary art). Its books are aimed primarily at the specialist market—including academics and students—but because of strong current interest in its preferred topics, they also sell to a general audience.^[2] In the period following the September 11 attacks for example, its publication Taliban by Ahmed Rashid is reported to have sold nearly 500,000 copies in English worldwide with 27 licensed editions around the world.^[3]

Its New York offices are co-located with those of Palgrave Macmillan who function as the company's North American distributors. Tauris Parke Paperbacks is a paperback imprint belonging to the firm that concentrates on travel writing, popular history and biography.

In May 2011 the company acquired the fine arts publisher Philip Wilson Publishers after handling its sales, marketing and distribution for several years.^[4]

References[link]

1. ^ Zeitchik, Steven (7 January 2002). "Mideast Studies House Hits Its Stride". Publishers Weekly (Reed Business Information). http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA189663.html. Retrieved 23 September 2009. ^{[dead link]}
2. ^ Bagherzade, Iradj; The Book Depository. "Publisher of the week—IB Tauris". http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/publisher/oftheweek/name/ib-tauris. Retrieved 23 September 2009. 
3. ^ McDonnell, Jonathan (6 October 2004). "Hardlines in the headlines". The Bookseller. http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-miscellaneous/4667183-1.html. Retrieved 23 September 2009. 
4. ^ Page, Benedicte (9 May 2011). "I B Tauris buys PWP". The Bookseller. http://www.thebookseller.com/news/i-b-tauris-buys-pwp.html. Retrieved 17 June 2011. 

External links[link]

• Official website
• Philip Wilson Publishers website
• I.B.Tauris on Facebook
• I.B.Tauris on Scribd

Kamal Salibi
Personal portrait of Prof. Salibi, April 2009
Born	(1929-05-02)2 May 1929 Beirut, Lebanon
Died	1 September 2011(2011-09-01) Beirut, Lebanon
Occupation	Historian, academic, researcher

Kamal Suleiman Salibi (Arabic: كمال سليمان الصليبي ‎) (2 May 1929 – 1 September 2011)^[1][2] was a prominent Lebanese historian, professor of history at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the founding Director (later Honorary President) of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies in Amman, Jordan.^[3] He was a lifetime bachelor, who devoted his life to books.^[4]

Career[link]

Born to a Protestant family in Beirut,^[5] Salibi's family came from the Lebanese village of Bhamdoun in French Mandatory Lebanon. After studying at French missionary schools in Bhamdoun and Broummana,^[6] he completed his secondary education at the Prep School in Beirut (now International College), and his BA in History and Political Science from AUB, before moving to the School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS (University of London) where he earned his PhD in history in 1953 under the supervision of historian Bernard Lewis.^[7] His dissertation was subsequently published under the title Maronite Historians of Mediaeval Lebanon. ^[8]

After his graduation from SOAS, Salibi joined AUB as bibliographer of the Arab Studies Program. He then became professor in the Department of History and Archaeology where he joined other prominent and already established historians such as Nicholas Ziadeh and Zein Zein. In 1965, he published The Modern History of Lebanon, which was subsequently translated into Arabic, Russian, and French. Salibi eventually became one of the pillars of the history department, mentoring, training and supervising many students who later became authorities in their own right.^{[citation needed]}

In 1982 Salibi finalised his book, The Bible Came from Arabia, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.^[9] It was translated into German at the same time as the original English version was being published in London. Salibi wrote subsequent works on biblical issues using the same etymological and geographic methodology. Some of his books are today considered classics, notably A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (1988) and The Modern History of Jordan (1993). In 1994, Salibi helped found the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies^[3] in Amman, Jordan, and became its director from 1997 until 2004, following his retirement from AUB. He was associated as a consultant with the Druze Heritage Foundation.^[10] He retired from the Department of History and Archeology at the American University of Beirut in 1998, and became professor emeritus.^[11] He moved to Amman in the early 1990s and became director of the Institute for Interfaith Studies there from 1994 to 2003. He believed Lebanon's Christian community had an important role to play in building a Lebanon distinct from its Islamic ambiance, but was free of the fanatical Christianity characteristic of many of his Maronite colleagues.^[12] He dismantled the foundational myths which many of Lebanon's communities were attached to, and replaced them with a complex portrait of the nation as an intricate mosaic of disparate but interconnected communities, over which no one group exerted dominance.^[13] He was strongly opposed to sectarian politics, believing that it had been the ruin of his country, and was one of the first Lebanese to remove his sect (madhdhab) identification from the Lebanese census records. He pinned a copy of his new ID, which has 'I' for his madhdhab outside his apartment in Ras Beirut.^[14]

Arabian Judah theory[link]

Kamal Salibi wrote three books advocating the controversial "Israel in Arabia" theory. In this view, the place names of the Hebrew Bible actually allude to places in southwest Arabia; many of them were later reinterpreted to refer to places in Palestine, when the Arabian Hebrews migrated to what is now called Eretz Israel, and where they established the Hasmonean kingdom under Simon Maccabaeus in the second century B.C. In this new Israel, they switched from Hebrew to Aramaic. It was this switch in language that created the confusions which lead to the distortion of the immigrants' stories.^[15] He also argued that 'Lebanon' itself in high antiquity was a place in the Southern Arabian peninsula-^[16]

The (literally) central identification of the theory is that the geographical feature referred to as הירדן, the “Jordan”, which is usually taken to refer to the Jordan River, although never actually described as a “river” in the Hebrew text, actually means the great West Arabian Escarpment, known as the Sarawat Mountains. The area of ancient Israel is then identified with the land on either side of the southern section of the escarpment that is, the southern Hejaz and 'Asir, from Ta’if down to the border with Yemen.

The theory has not been widely accepted anywhere, and embarrassed many of his colleagues.^[17] and several academic reviewers^[18][19][20] criticised Cape for having accepted “The Bible Came from Arabia” for publication. Salibi argued that early epigraphic evidence used to vindicate the Biblical stories has been misread. Mesha, the Moabite ruler who celebrated a victory over the kingdom of Israel in a stone inscription, the Mesha stele found in 1868, was, according to Salibi, an Arabian, and Moab was a village 'south (yemen) of Rabin' near Mecca. The words translated 'many days' actually meant 'south of Rabin'.^[21]

He shared the view of such scholars as Thomas L. Thompson that there is a severe mismatch between the Biblical narrative and the archaeological findings in Palestine. Thompson's explanation was to discount the Bible as literal history but Salibi's was to locate the centre of Jewish culture further south.^[22]

His theory has been both attacked and supported for its supposed implications for modern political affairs, although Salibi himself has made no such connection. Tudor Parfitt wrote “It is dangerous because Salibi's ideas have all sorts of implications, not least in terms of the legitimacy of the State of Israel”.^[20] Since the theory casts no doubt on the existence, location or legitimacy of the Hasmonean kingdom, nor rewrites in any way the history of Palestine in the last 2200 years or more, it can only have that implication for those who take literally the divine award of the Promised Land to Abraham and his successors.^{[citation needed]}

The location of the Promised Land is discussed in chapter 15 of “The Bible Came from Arabia”. Salibi argues that the description in the Bible is of an extensive tract of land, substantially larger than Palestine which includes a very varied landscape, ranging from well-watered mountain-tops via fertile valleys and foothills to lowland deserts. In the southern part of Arabia there are recently-active volcanoes, near to which are, presumably, the buried remains of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Works[link]

• Maronite Historians of Mediaeval Lebanon, Beirut, AUB Oriental Series 34, 1959
• The Modern History of Lebanon, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965
• Crossroads to Civil War, Lebanon 1958-1976, Beirut, Caravan Books, 1976
• Syria under Islam: Empire on Trial 634-1097, Beirut, Caravan Books, 1977
• A History of Arabia, Beirut, Caravan Books, 1980
• The Bible Came from Arabia, London, Jonathan Cape, 1985
• Secrets of the Bible People, London, Saqi Books, 1988
• Who Was Jesus?: Conspiracy in Jerusalem, London, I.B. Tauris, 1988
• A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered, London, I.B. Tauris, 1988
• The Historicity of Biblical Israel, London, NABU Publications, 1998
• The Historicity of Biblical Israel (second edition), Beirut, Dar Nelson, 2009
• The Modern History of Jordan, London, I.B. Tauris, 1993
• A Bird on an Oak Tree" (Arabic طائر على سنديانة), Amman, Ashshoroq Publishers, 2002

Notes[link]

• Anderson, Brooke Friends remember Lebanese historian for his generosity and storytelling,' The Daily Star, September 1, 2011
• Beeston, A.F.L., Review of "The Bible Came from Arabia", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1988, pp. 389–93)
• Berry, Steve. “The Alexandria Link” Hodder & Stoughton, 2007; fiction. A thriller using Salibi’s theory as a plot device.
• Cardinal, P., "La Bible et L'Arabie", Revue d'études Palestiniennes vol. 7 No. 26 (winter 1988) pp. 63–70
• Dahlberg, Bruce, Comments in the Ancient Near East Digest, 1994.
• Parfitt, Tudor, “The hijacking of Israel”, The Sunday Times (London) 27 October 1985
• Rabinowitz, Itamar, 'Eulogy for a Lebanese intellectual:On the death of historian Kamal Salibi,' in Haaretz, 29 September, 2011.
• Salamé-Sarkis, H., "Et si la Bible venait d'Arabie?", Berytus, Beirut 1985 XXXIII pp. 143–165
• Sbaiti, Nadya and Mikdashi, Maya, 'Kamal Salibi (1929-2011),' in Jadaliyya, September 6, 2011
• Segev, Tom, 'The Makings of History / Myths and facts,' in Haaretz 16 September 2011.
• Towner, W. Sibley, Review of "The Bible Came from Arabia", Middle East Journal 1988, 42 pp. 511–513

External links[link]

• http://www.cwo.com/~thowoods/salibi.htm more information and pictures of Asir.
• Phillip C. Hammond's 1990 Review of The Bible Came from Arabia, in The International Journal of Middle East Studies (August, 1990)
• http://baheyeldin.com/science/kamal-salibi-and-the-israel-from-yemen-theory.html gives lots of links.
• Kamal Salibi's personal blog [1].

References on his theory of Jewish history[link]

Al-Ahram weekly, a major Egyptian publication, briefly alluded to it [2]

Other references[link]

• Biella, Joan (2004) Dictionary of Old South Arabian – Sabaean Dialect Eisenbrauns, Winola Lake, Indiana, USA
• Hubbard, David (1956) The Literary Sources of the Kebra Nagast Ph.D. dissertation.,St.Andrews University, Scotland
• Leslau, Wolf (1991) Comparative Dictionary of Ge’ez Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, Germany
• Rabin, Chaim (1951) Ancient West Arabian London: Taylor’s Foreign Press
• Savoie, Denis (2009), Sundials: Design, Construction, and Use Springer Praxis, ISBN 978-0-387-09801-2 (see pp. 163-164)
• Schneider, Roger (1973) Deux inscriptions subarabiques du Tigre. Leiden, Netherlands: Bibliotheca Orientalis, 30, 1973, 385-387
• Ullendorff, Edward (1956) Hebraic Jewish Elements in Abyssinian (Monophysite) Christianity in Journal of Semitic Studies, 1, no.3, 216-256
• Ullendorff, Edward (1960) The Ethiopians London: Oxford University Press
• Ullendorff, Edward (1968) Ethiopia and the Bible London: Oxford University Press

Professor Amin Saikal (born 2 December 1950 in Kabul, Afghanistan) is the Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (The Middle East & Central Asia) and Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. Professor Saikal has specialised in the politics, history, political economy and international relations of the Middle East and Central Asia. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University, Cambridge University and the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex), as well as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in International Relations (1983-1988). He is a member of many national and international academic organisations. He is also a frequent commentator on radio and television.

Writings[link]

• Saikal, Amin (2009). The Rise and Fall of the Shah: Iran – From Autocracy to Religious Rule. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-207-14412-5. 

• Saikal, Amin. The Rise and Fall of the Shah 1941 - 1979. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-207-14412-5. 

• Saikal, Amin (2004). Modern Afghanistan. A History of Struggle and Survival. I. B. Tauris and Co. Ltd.. 

• Saikal, Amin (2003). Islam and the West: Conflict or Co-operation?. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Professor Saikal has also published numerous articles in international journals, as well as many feature articles in major international newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times and The Guardian.

External links[link]

• http://cais.anu.edu.au/
• East Asia Forum

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It has been suggested that Conquest of Persia by Afsharids be merged into this article or section. (Discuss) Proposed since May 2012.

Nader Shah
Shahanshah of Persia
Nader Shah's portrait from the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Reign	1736–1747
Born	1688
Birthplace	Dargaz (Khorasan, Iran)
Died	June 19, 1747(1747-06-19)
Place of death	Quchan (Khorasan, Iran)
Predecessor	Abbas III
Successor	Adil Shah

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}} Nāder Shāh Afshār (Persian: نادر شاه افشار‎; also known as Nāder Qoli Beg - نادر قلی بیگ or Tahmāsp Qoli Khān - تهماسپ قلی خان) (November, 1688^[1] or August 6, 1698^[2] – June 19, 1747) ruled as Shah of Iran (1736–47) and was the founder of the Afsharid dynasty. Because of his military genius, some historians have described him as the Napoleon of Persia^[3] or the Second Alexander.^[4] Nader Shah was a member of the Turkic Afshar tribe of northern Persia,^[5] which had supplied military power to the Safavid state since the time of Shah Ismail I.^[6]

Nader rose to power during a period of anarchy in Iran after a rebellion by the Hotaki Afghans had overthrown the weak Persian Shah Sultan Husayn, and both the Ottomans and the Russians had seized Persian territory for themselves. Nader reunited the Persian realm and removed the invaders. He became so powerful that he decided to depose the last members of the Safavid dynasty, which had ruled Iran for over 200 years, and become shah himself in 1736. His numerous campaigns throughout the Naderian Wars created a great empire that encompassed what is now part of or including Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, India, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Oman and the Persian Gulf but his military spending had a ruinous effect on the Persian economy.^[1]

Nader idolized Genghis Khan and Timur, the previous conquerors from Central Asia. He imitated their military prowess and—especially later in his reign—their cruelty. His victories briefly made him the Middle East's most powerful sovereign, but his empire quickly disintegrated after he was assassinated in 1747. Nader Shah has been described as "the last great Asian military conqueror".^[7] He is credited for restoring Iranian power as an eminence between the Ottomans and the Mughals.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Early life[link]

Nader Shah was born in Darra Gaz ^[12] into the Qereqlu (in Persian قرقلو) clan of the Afshars, a semi-nomadic Qizilbash tribe settled in northeastern valleys of Khorasan, a province in the north-east of the Persian Empire.^[13] His father Emamqoli, a poor shepherd ^[1] or Coat-maker (poostinduz in Persian language),^[14] died while Nader was still a child. According to legends, Nader and his mother were carried off as slaves by marauding Uzbek or Turkmen tribesmen, but Nader managed to escape. He joined a band of brigands while still a boy and eventually became their leader. Under the patronage of Afshar chieftains, he rose through the ranks to become a powerful military figure. Nader married the two daughters of Baba Ali Beg, a local chief.^[1]

Fall of the Safavid dynasty[link]

Nader grew up during the final years of the Safavid dynasty which had ruled Persia since 1502. At its peak, under such figures as Abbas the Great, Safavid Persia had been a powerful empire, but by the early 18th century the state was in serious decline and the reigning shah, Sultan Husayn, was a weak ruler. When Sultan Husayn attempted to quell a rebellion by the Ghilzai Afghans in Kandahar, the governor he sent was killed. Under their leader Mahmud Hotaki, the rebellious Afghans moved westwards against the shah himself and in 1722 they defeated a vastly superior force at the Battle of Gulnabad and then besieged the capital, Isfahan.^[15] After the shah failed to escape to rally a relief force elsewhere, the city was starved into submission and Sultan Husayn abdicated, handing power to Mahmud. In Khorasan, Nader at first submitted to the local Afghan governor of Mashhad, Malek Mahmud, but then rebelled and built up his own small army. Sultan Husayn's son had declared himself Shah Tahmasp II, but found little support and fled to the Qajar tribe, who offered to back him. Meanwhile, Persia's imperial rivals, the Ottomans and the Russians, took advantage of the chaos in the country to seize territory for themselves.^[16]

Fall of the Hotaki dynasty[link]

Tomb of Nader Shah, a tourist attraction in Mashhad

Tahmasp and the Qajar leader Fath Ali Khan (the ancestor of Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar) contacted Nader and asked him to join their cause and drive the Ghilzai Afghans out of Khorasan. He agreed and thus became a figure of national importance. When Nader discovered that Fath Ali Khan was in treacherous correspondence with Malek Mahmud and revealed this to the shah, Tahmasp executed him and made Nader the chief of his army instead. Nader subsequently took on the title Tahmasp Qoli (Servant of Tahmasp). In late 1726, Nader recaptured Mashhad.^[17]

Nader chose not to march directly on Isfahan. First, in May 1729, he defeated the Abdali Afghans near Herat. Many of the Abdali Afghans subsequently joined his army. The new shah of the Ghilzai Afghans, Ashraf, decided to move against Nader but in September 1729, Nader defeated him at the Battle of Damghan and again, decisively, in November at Murchakhort. Ashraf fled and Nader finally entered Isfahan, handing it over to Tahmasp in December. The citizens' rejoicing was cut short when Nader plundered them to pay his army. Tahmasp made Nader governor over many eastern provinces, including his native Khorasan, and married him to his sister. Nader pursued and defeated Ashraf, who was murdered by his own followers.^[18] In 1738 Nader Shah besieged and destroyed the last Hotaki seat of power at Kandahar. He built a new city near Kandahar, which he named "Naderabad".^[1]

Ottoman campaign[link]

Painting of Nader Shah

In the spring of 1730, Nader attacked the Ottomans and regained most of the territory lost during the recent chaos. At the same time, the Abdali Afghans rebelled and besieged Mashhad, forcing Nader to suspend his campaign and save his brother, Ebrahim. It took Nader fourteen months to defeat the Abdali Afghans.

Relations between Nader and the Shah had declined as the latter grew jealous of his general's military successes. While Nader was absent in the east, Tahmasp tried to assert himself by launching a foolhardy campaign to recapture Yerevan. He ended up losing all of Nader's recent gains to the Ottomans, and signed a treaty ceding Georgia and Armenia in exchange for Tabriz. Nader saw that the moment had come to ease Tahmasp from power. He denounced the treaty, seeking popular support for a war against the Ottomans. In Isfahan, Nader got Tahmasp drunk then showed him to the courtiers asking if a man in such a state was fit to rule. In 1732 he forced Tahmasp to abdicate in favor of the Shah's baby son, Abbas III, to whom Nader became regent.

Nader decided he could win back the territory in Armenia and Georgia by seizing Ottoman Baghdad and then offering it in exchange for the lost provinces, but his plan went badly amiss when his army was routed by the Ottoman general Topal Osman Pasha near the city in 1733. Nader decided he needed to regain the initiative as soon as possible to save his position because revolts were already breaking out in Persia. He faced Topal again with a larger force and defeated and killed him. He then besieged Baghdad, as well as Ganja in the northern provinces, earning a Russian alliance against the Ottomans. Nader scored a great victory over a superior Ottoman force at Baghavard and by the summer of 1735, Persian Armenia and Georgia were his again. In March 1735, he signed a treaty with the Russians in Ganja by which the latter agreed to withdraw all of their troops from Persian territory.^[19][20]

Nader becomes shah[link]

In January 1736, Nader held a qoroltai (a grand meeting in the tradition of Genghis Khan and Timur) on the Moghan plain in Azerbaijan. The leading political and religious figures attended. Nader suggested he should be proclaimed the new shah in place of the young Abbas III. Everyone agreed, many—if not most—enthusiastically, the rest fearing Nader's anger if they showed support for the deposed Safavids. Nader was crowned Shah of Iran on March 8, 1736, a date his astrologers had chosen as being especially propitious.^[21]

Religious policy[link]

Nader Shah and two of his sons on the reverse side of Nader Shah's Sword

The Safavids had introduced Shi'a Islam as the state religion of Iran. Nader was probably brought up as a Shi'a ^[13] but later espoused the Sunni^[22] faith as he gained power and began to push into the Ottoman and Mughal Empires. He believed that Safavid Shi'ism had intensified the conflict with the Sunni Ottoman Empire. His army was a mix of Shi'a and Sunni and included his own Qizilbash as well as Uzbeks, Afghans and others. He wanted Persia to adopt a form of religion that would be more acceptable to Sunnis and suggested that Persia adopt a form of Shi'ism he called "Ja'fari", in honour of the sixth Shi'a imam Ja'far al-Sadiq. He banned certain Shi'a practices which were particularly offensive to Sunnis, such as the cursing of the first three caliphs. Personally, Nader is said to have been indifferent towards religion and the French Jesuit who served as his personal physician reported that it was difficult to know which religion he followed and that many who knew him best said that he had none.^[23] Nader hoped that "Ja'farism" would be accepted as a fifth school (mazhab) of Sunni Islam and that the Ottomans would allow its adherents to go on the hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca, which was within their territory. In the subsequent peace negotiations, the Ottomans refused to acknowledge Ja'farism as a fifth mazhab but they did allow Persian pilgrims to go on the hajj. Nader was interested in gaining rights for Persians to go on the hajj in part because of revenues from the pilgrimage trade.^[1] Nader's other primary aim in his religious reforms was to weaken the Safavids further since Shi'a Islam had always been a major element in support for the dynasty. He had the chief mullah of Persia strangled after he was heard expressing support for the Safavids. Among his reforms was the introduction of what came to be known as the kolah-e Naderi. This was a hat with four peaks which symbolised the first four caliphs.^[1][21]

Invasion of India[link]

Afsharid forces negotiate with a Mughal Nawab.

In 1738, Nader Shah conquered Kandahar, the last outpost of the Hotaki dynasty. His thoughts now turned to the Mughul Empire of India. This once powerful Muslim state was falling apart as the the Hindu Maratha Empire made inroads on its territory from the south-west. In 1737, Maratha forces sacked Delhi, following their victory against the Mughals in the First Battle of Delhi, further weakening the Mughal authority. Its ruler Muhammad Shah was powerless to reverse this disintegration. Nader asked for Afghan rebels to be handed over, but the Mughal emperor refused. Nader used the pretext of his Afghan enemies taking refuge in India to cross the border and capture Ghazni, Kabul, Peshawar, Sindh and Lahore. He then advanced deeper into India crossing the river Indus before the end of year.

"Battle of Karnal" painting by adel adili

He defeated the Mughal army at the huge Battle of Karnal on 13 February 1739. After this victory, Nader captured Mohammad Shah and entered with him into Delhi.^[10] When a rumour broke out that Nader had been assassinated, some of the Mughal soldiers attacked and killed Persian troops. Nader reacted by ordering his soldiers to plunder the city. During the course of one day (March 22) 20,000 to 30,000 Mughal were killed by the Persian troops, forcing Mohammad Shah to beg for mercy.^[24]

In response, Nader Shah agreed to withdraw, but Mohammad Shah paid the consequence in handing over the keys of his royal treasury, and losing even the Peacock Throne to the Persian emperor. The Peacock Throne thereafter served as a symbol of Persian imperial might. Among a trove of other fabulous jewels, Nader also gained the Koh-i-Noor and Darya-ye Noor diamonds (Koh-i-Noor means "Mountain of Light" in Persian, Darya-ye Noor means "Sea of Light"). The Persian troops left Delhi at the beginning of May 1739. Nader'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 Nader stopped taxation in Iran for a period of three years following his return.^[25]

After India[link]

A map of the extent of Nader Shah's empire

The Indian campaign was the zenith of Nader's career. Afterwards he became increasingly despotic as his health declined markedly. Nader had left his son Reza Qoli Mirza to rule Persia in his absence. Reza had behaved highhandedly and somewhat cruelly but he had kept the peace in Persia. Having heard rumours that his father had died, he had made preparations for assuming the crown. These included the murder of the former shah Tahmasp and his family, including the nine-year old Abbas III. On hearing the news, Reza's wife, who was Tahmasp's sister, committed suicide. Nader was not impressed with his son's waywardness and reprimanded him, but he took him on his expedition to conquer territory in Transoxiana. In 1740 he conquered Khanate of Khiva. After the Persians had forced the Uzbek khanate of Bokhara to submit, Nader wanted Reza to marry the khan's elder daughter because she was a descendant of his hero Genghis Khan, but Reza flatly refused and Nader married the girl himself. Nader also conquered Khwarezm on this expedition into Central Asia.

Nader now decided to punish Daghestan for the death of his brother Ebrahim Qoli on a campaign a few years earlier. In 1741, while Nader was passing through the forest of Mazanderan on his way to fight the Daghestanis, an assassin took a shot at him but Nader was only lightly wounded. He began to suspect his son was behind the attempt and confined him to Tehran. Nader's increasing ill health made his temper ever worse. Perhaps it was his illness that made Nader lose the initiative in his war against the Lezgin tribes of Daghestan. Frustratingly for him, they resorted to guerrilla warfare and the Persians could make little headway against them. Nader accused his son of being behind the assassination attempt in Mazanderan. Reza angrily protested his innocence, but Nader had him blinded as punishment, although he immediately regretted it. Soon afterwards, Nader started executing the nobles who had witnessed his son's blinding. In his last years, Nader became increasingly paranoid, ordering the assassination of large numbers of suspected enemies.

With the wealth he gained, Nader started to build a Persian navy. With lumber from Mazandaran, he built ships in Bushehr. He also purchased thirty ships in India.^[1] He recaptured the island of Bahrain from the Arabs. In 1743 he conquered Oman and its main capital the city of Muscat. In 1743 Nader started another war against the Ottoman Empire. Despite having a huge army at his disposal, in this campaign Nader showed little of his former military brilliance. It ended in 1746 with the signing of a peace treaty, in which the Ottomans agreed to let Nader occupy Najaf.^[26]

Domestic policies[link]

Nader changed the Iranian coinage system. He minted silver coins, called Naderi, that were equal to the Mughal rupee.^[1] Nader discontinued the policy of paying soldiers based on land tenure.^[1] Like the late Safavids he resettled tribes. Nader Shah transformed the Shahsevan, a nomadic group living around Azerbaijan whose name literally means "shah lover", into a tribal confederacy which defended Iran against the Ottomans and Russians.^[27][28] In addition, he increased the number of soldiers under his command and reduced the number of soldiers under tribal and provincial control.^[1] His reforms may have strengthened the country, but they did little to improve Iran's suffering economy.^[1]

Death and legacy[link]

A Western view of Nader in his later years from a book by Jonas Hanway (1753). The background shows a tower of skulls.^[29]

Nader Shah's dagger with a small portion of his jewelry. Now part of the Iranian Crown Jewels.

Nader Shah's tomb was designed by Hooshang Seyhoon.

Nader became crueller and crueller as a result of his illness and his desire to extort more and more tax money to pay for his military campaigns. More and more revolts broke out and Nader crushed them ruthlessly, building towers from his victims’ skulls in imitation of his hero Timur. In 1747, Nader set off for Khorasan where he intended to punish Kurdish rebels. Some of his officers feared he was about to execute them and plotted against him. Nader Shah was assassinated on 19 June 1747, at Fathabad in Khorasan. He was surprised in his sleep by Salah Bey, captain of the guards, and stabbed with a sword. Nader was able to kill two of the assassins before he died.^[30][31]

After his death, he was succeeded by his nephew Ali Qoli, who renamed himself Adil Shah ("righteous king"). Adil Shah was probably involved in the assassination plot.^[19] Adil Shah was deposed within a year. During the struggle between Adil Shah, his brother Ibrahim Khan and Nader's grandson Shah Rukh almost all provincial governors declared independence, established their own states, and the entire Empire of Nader 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.

Nader Shah was well known to the European public of the time. In 1768, Christian VII of Denmark commissioned Sir William Jones to translate a Persian language biography of Nader Shah written by his Minister Mirza Mehdi Khan Astarabadi into French.^[32] It was published in 1770 as Histoire de Nadir Chah.^[33] Nader's Indian campaign alerted the British East India Company to the extreme weakness of the Mughal Empire and the possibility of expanding to fill the power vacuum. Without Nader, "eventual British [in India] would have come later and in a different form, perhaps never at all - with important global effects".^[34]

See also[link]

• Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent
• Safavid conversion of Iran from Sunnism to Shiism
• Treaty of Kerden
• Talpur

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Michael Axworthy, The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant Hardcover 348 pages (26 July 2006) Publisher: I.B. Tauris Language: English ISBN 1-85043-706-8
• The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 7 (Cambridge University Press, 1968)

Additional reading[link]

• Lawrence Lockhart Nadir Shah (London, 1938)
• Ernest Tucker, Nadir Shah's Quest for Legitimacy in Post-Safavid Iran Hardcover 150 pages (4 October 2006) Publisher: University Press of Florida Language: English ISBN 0-8130-2964-3
• Michael Axworthy, Iran: Empire of the Mind: A History from Zoroaster to the Present Day (Paperback) ISBN 0-14-103629-X Publisher Penguin 6 November 2008

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Nader Shah

• Nader Shah's portrait
• Nader Shah Mausoleum and Museum

This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Discussion about the problems with the sole source used may be found on the talk page. (January 2010)

Homa Katouzian

Homa Katouzian, PhD (born Homayoun Katouzian, Persian: محمد علی همايون کاتوزیان ‎, on 17 November 1942 in Tehran) is an economist, historian, political scientist and literary critic, with a special interest in Iranian studies. Katouzian’s formal academic training was in economics and the social sciences but he concurrently continued his studies of Persian history and literature at a professional academic level. He began studying the life and works of the modern Persian writer, Sadeq Hedayat, and that of the Prime Minister of Iran in the early 1950s, Mohammad Mosaddeq, while still a faculty member in the department of economics at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Having taught economics at universities in Britain and other countries for eighteen years, he took voluntary retirement in 1986 to devote his entire time to Iranian studies. In recent years, he has been teaching and writing on classical Persian literature, in particular the 13th century poet and writer, Sa‘di. Currently based at the University of Oxford, Katouzian is a member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies and the Iran Heritage Research Fellow at St. Antony's College, where he edits the quarterly Iranian Studies Journal. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Biography[link]

Katouzian was born in Tehran, Iran. After graduation from Alborz High School and a year at the University of Tehran, in 1961 he went to Britain to study economics. He received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Birmingham (1967); his Master’s from the University of London (1968); and his PhD from the University of Kent at Canterbury (1984). Between 1968 and 1986, he taught economics in Britain, Iran, Canada and the United States, and also worked as an economic consultant with the Organization of American States, the International Labor Organization, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Since 1986, Katouzian has been teaching Persian literature and Iranian history at the University of Oxford and has organized two international conferences: the Hedayat Centenary, at the Middle East Centre, St. Antony’s College, March 2003, and Iran Facing the New Century, at Wadham College, April 2004.

Katouzian has been involved in Iranian cultural and artistic activities in Britain. He is a director of the Thirty Bird Company theatre group and a founding member and member of the Board of Trustees, Library for Iranian Studies, London. He has written for the British press and contributed to BBC radio and television programs.

Contribution to economics[link]

Katouzian has written extensively in pure and applied economics, but his original contributions in economics are in the theory of the development of the service sector, the economics of petroleum-exporting countries, and economic method and philosophy. As early as the late 1960s he predicted that the share of services in output and employment would rapidly grow in advanced countries and in some developing countries, for different sets of reasons, and that the share of non-factor services in international trade would also grow steadily, the advanced countries tending to specialize in the export of services.

Also, he was one of the first economists, from the late 1960s, to describe petroleum revenues received by the petroleum-exporting countries as economic rent, and the countries in question as rentier economies, and studied the effect of the receipt of the petroleum rent by the state on the economics as well as politics of petroleum-exporting countries.

In the field of economic philosophy and method, Katouzian has published a critique of economic method, maintaining that economic theory and theorizing could not be described as scientific, once the economists’ own criteria for scientificity are applied to their works. The subject further involved him in a critique of the philosophies of science developed by Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn arguing that Popper’s criteria were no longer applied by modern scientists, and that Kuhn’s historical generalizations were largely circular.

Researching modern Iran[link]

Katouzian has taught the history of nineteenth and twentieth century Iran at Oxford University. He has published extensively on twentieth century Iranian history and has been responsible for a number of cases of historical revisionism, for example that the 1921 coup in Iran was not engineered by the British government; that the Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919 was not intended to turn Iran into a British protectorate; and that the Iranian-Azarbaijani political leader, Sheikh Mohammad Khiyabani was not a separatist, was not pro-Bolshevik and was not opposed to the 1919 agreement.

On Iranian history[link]

Apart from writing descriptive and analytical history, Katouzian has put forward "the theory of arbitrary rule, and the fundamental state-society conflict in Iranian history" which has led him to comparative studies of the sociology of Iranian history with that of Europe. The theory has been described virtually in all of his major writings on Iranian history, but, within a single volume, it is propounded in his Iranian History and Politics, the Dialectic of State and Society (2003). Here, he has also introduced the concept of "the short-term society" or Jameheh-ye Kolangi, literally meaning "the pick-axe society", an allusion to the Iranian practice of demolishing buildings after only a few decades, considering them to be "dilapidated". He has developed and discussed this theory more extensively in the article, "The Short-Term Society, A Study in the Long-Term Problems of Political and Economic Development in Iran", published in Middle Eastern Studies, 40, 1, 2004.

On Persian literature[link]

Katouzian has both taught and written on modern as well as classical Persian literature and has taught modern

Dr Katouzian at Tripoli Castle, Lebanon, March 2008

poetry and fiction at Oxford University. Modern writers he has written about include Sadeq Hedayat, and Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh, the founder of modern Persian fiction. He has also published on modern poets such as the Poet Laureate Mohammad Taghi Bahar and Iraj Mirza, and modernist poets such as Forough Farrokhzad and Ahmad Shamlou. He has taught classical Persian literature from the 10th century to the 19th century, both in prose and poetry. His special subject is the great Persian classic, Sa‘di, on whom he has published books in Persian and English.

Personal information[link]

Katouzian has a son and a daughter, both living in Oxford.

Publications[link]

Books in English[link]

• Ideology and Method in Economics (cloth and paper), London and New York: Macmillan and New York University Press, 1980.
• The Political Economy of Modern Iran (cloth and paper), London and New York: Macmillan and New York University Press, 1981.
• Musaddiq's Memoirs, London : Jebhe, 1988 (the English translation of the memoirs translated (with S. H. Amin) and edited and annotated, together with an 81-page introduction by Homa Katouzian).
• Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, second, paperback, edition, 1999; first edition, 1990.
• Sadeq Hedayat: The Life and Legend of an Iranian Writer, paperback edition, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2002; original edition, 1991.
• State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Rise of the Pahlavis, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, paperback edition, 2006; original edition, 2000.
• Sa‘di, the Poet of Life, Love and Compassion, Oxford: Oneworld Publishers, 2006.
• Iranian History and Politics, the Dialectic of State and Society, London and New York: Routledge, paperback edition, 2007 (original edition, 2003).
• Iran in the 21st Century, co-ed (with Hossein Shahidi), London and New York: Routledge, 2008.
• Sadeq Hedayat, His Work and His Wondrous World, ed., London and New York: Routledge, 2008.
• The Persians: Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern Iran, New Haven and London, 2009.

Books in Persian[link]

• International Economic Theory (an advanced textbook), Tehran: Tehran University Press, 1973.
• Universities and Higher Education Today (Persian translation of Herbert Butterfield’s book and with a 25-page introduction), second edition, Tehran: Teacher Training University, 1978; first edition, Shiraz: Pahlavi University Press, 1974.
• Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations (an abridged translation and with 100-page introduction), Tehran: Amir Kabir, second impression, 2003 (first edition, 1979).
• The Political Memoirs of Khalil Maleki (Maleki's manuscript, edited and with a 250-page introduction), second edition, Tehran: Enteshar, 1988; first edition, Tehran: Ravaq, 1981.
• The Political Economy of Modern Iran, trs. M. Nafissi and K. Azizi, together with a long new introduction by the author, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 14th impression, 2008 (second, enlarged, edition 1993; first edition, 1988).
• Essays in Memory of Khalil Maleki, edited jointly with Amir Pichdad, Tehran: Enteshar, 1991.
• Sadeq Hedayat, The Life and Legend of an Iranian Writer, translated by Firuzeh Mohajer, second impression, Tehran: Tarh-e Naw, 1998; first edition, 1993.
• Democracy, Arbitrary Rule and the Popular Movement of Iran, fourth impression, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 2009 (first editions, Nashr-e Markaz. 1993, and London and Washington: Mehregan, 1993).
• Sadeq Hedayat and the Death of the Author, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, fourth impression, 2005; third impression, 2003; second impression, 1997; first edition, 1993.
• Hedayat's The Blind Owl (a critical monograph), Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 5th impression, 2008; 4th impression, 2005; 3rd impression, 2003; 2nd impression, 1998; first edition, 1994.
• Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran, tr. Farzaneh Taheri, second edition, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 1999, first edition 1994.
• Ideology and Method in Economics, tr. M. Qa'ed, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 1995.
• Fourteen Essays on Literature, Society, Philosophy and Economics (some of them translated from the English), second impression, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 1996; first edition, 1995.
• Khalil Maleki's The Contest of Ideas, edited with an introduction (with Amir Pichdad), second impression, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 1997; first edition, 1995.
• A Song of Innocence, a book of Homa Katouzian's poems, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, second enlarged edition 2004 (first edition, 1997).
• Ahmad Kasravi's The Revolt of Sheikh Mohammad Khiyabani (Kasravi's unpublished manuscript, edited and annotated, and with a 82-page introduction) Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, third impression, 2006, second impression, 1999; first edition, 1997.
• Nine Essays on the Historical Sociology of Iran, etc., tr. Alireza Tayyeb, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz; third impression 2009 (first edition, 1998).
• State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis, tr. Hasan Afshar, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz; 5th impression, 2010, 4th impression, 2007; 3rd impression, 2005; 2nd impression 2002; first edition, 2001.
• The Dialectic of State and Society in Iran, tr. Alireza Tayyeb, Tehran: Nashr- e Ney, third impression, 2005, second impression 2003; first edition 2002.
• Iran Nameh, guest ed. Special Issue on Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh, 21, 1&2, spring and summer 2003.
• Khalil Maleki’s Letters, ed. (with Amir Pichdad), Tehran, Nashr-e Markaz, 2003.
• Satire and Irony in Hedayat, Stockholm: Arash, 2003.
• Jamalzadeh and His Literature, Tehran: Shahab, 2003.
• Eight Essays on Contemporary History and Literature, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 2nd impression 2010 (first edition, 2006).
• Sa‘di, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 2006.
• Golchin-e Sa’di: Golestan, Ghazal-ha, Bustan, Qasideh-ha, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 2009.

References[link]

• His Official page at Oxford University website

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Homa Katouzian

• Homa Katouzian’s homepage
• St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford
• Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford
• Iranian Studies journal
• Sadeq Hedayat Centenary Conference, Oxford University, 2003
• Iran Heritage Foundation