Nadir Shah
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- 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 Turkic 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.
Early life
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.
Military life and Rise to Power
After the Afghans invaded Persia in 1722, deposing the Safavid Shah Soltan Hosein, Nadir supported Hosein's son Tahmasp II -- in deference to whom he had named himself Tahmasp Qoli (Slave of Tahmasp)-- with a force of 5,000 soldiers against the Afghan usurper Mahmud 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.
King of Persia and military campaigns
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.
Death
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.
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References
- 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 (June, 2006) Publisher: I.B. Tauris Language: English ISBN 1850437068
External links
- [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]
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