Nāder Shāh Afshār (; also known as ''Nāder Qoli Beg'' - نادر قلی بیگ or ''Tahmāsp Qoli Khān'' - تهماسپ قل) (November, 1688 or August 6, 1698 – 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'' or the ''Second
Alexander''. Nader Shah was a member of the
Turkic Afshar tribe of northern
Persia, which had supplied military power to the
Safavid state since the time of
Shah Ismail I.
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 campaigns created a great empire that briefly encompassed what is now Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts of the Caucasus region, parts of Central Asia, and Oman but his military spending had a ruinous effect on the Persian economy.
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". He is credited for restoring Iranian power as an eminence between the Ottomans and the Mughals.
Early life
Nader Shah was born in Dastgerd into the Qereqlu clan of the
Afshars, a semi-nomadic
Qizilbash tribe in
Khorasan, a province in the north-east of the Persian Empire. His father Emamqoli, a poor shepherd or Coat-maker (poostinduz in Persian language ), 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.
Fall of the Safavid dynasty
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. 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.
Fall of the Hotaki dynasty
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.
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. 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".
Ottoman campaign
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.
Nader becomes shah
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 figures in Persian political and religious life 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.
Religious policy
The Safavids had introduced
Shi'a Islam as the state religion of Iran. Nader was probably brought up as a Shi'a but later espoused the
Sunni 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 Persia should 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. 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. 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. When a rumour broke out that Nader had been assassinated, some of the Indians 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 Indians were killed by the Persian troops, forcing Mohammad Shah to beg for mercy.
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.
After India
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. 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.
thumb|"Battle of Karnal" paining by adel adili
Domestic policies
thumb|Nader Shah's dagger with a small portion of his jewelry. Now part of the Iranian Crown Jewels.Nader changed the Iranian coinage system. He minted silver coins, called ''Naderi'', that were equal to the Mughal
rupee. Nader discontinued the policy of paying soldiers based on land tenure. 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. In addition, he increased the number of soldiers under his command and reduced the number of soldiers under tribal and provincial control. His reforms may have strengthened the country, but they did little to improve Iran's suffering economy.
Death and legacy
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.
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. 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. It was published in 1770 as ''Histoire de Nadir Chah''. 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".
See also
Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent
Safavid conversion of Iran from Sunnism to Shiism
Treaty of Kerden
Talpur
References
Sources
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
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 014103629X Publisher Penguin 6 November 2008
External links
Nader Shah's portrait
Nader Shah Mausoleum and Museum
Category:Afsharid dynasty
Category:Iranian generals
Category:Murdered monarchs
Category:1688 births
Category:1747 deaths
Category:Muslim generals
Category:Turkic rulers
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