The last great Asiatic military conqueror, Nader Shah.

[Prince of Lasanod]

Early life

Nader Shah was born in the fortress of Dastgerd(Iran) into the Qereqlu clan of the Afshars, a semi-nomadic Qizilbash tribe settled in the northern valleys of Khorasan, a province in the northeast of the Persian Empire. His father, Emam Qoli, was a herdsman who may also have been a coatmaker.

At the age of 13, his father died and Nader had to find a way to support himself and his mother. He had no source of income other than the sticks he gathered for firewood, which he transported to the market. Many years later, when he was returning in triumph from his conquest of Delhi, he led the army to his birthplace and made a speech to his generals about his early life of deprivation. He said, "You now see to what height it has pleased the Almighty to exalt me; from hence, learn not to despise men of low estate." Nader's early experiences did not, however, make him particularly compassionate toward the poor. Throughout his career, he was only interested in his own advancement. Legend has it that in 1704, when he was about 17, a band of marauding Uzbek Tartars invaded the province of Khorasan, where Nader lived with his mother. They killed many peasants. Nader and his mother were among those who were carried off into slavery. His mother died in captivity. Somehow, Nader managed to escape and returned to the province of Khorasan in 1708. Living under the most desperate circumstances, he and his friends stole a flock of sheep and sold them in the market. With the money they made, they fled into the mountains.

Tiring of life as a fugitive, Nader presented himself to a Persian nobleman. He was employed as a courier, to deliver important messages to the royal court at Isfahan in 1712. A second courier accompanied Nader on these missions. On one of their journeys, he murdered his fellow courier either because his companion was slowing him down or, as is more likely, because he wanted to be the sole carrier of messages to the royal court.

At the court of Sultan Husayn in Isfahan, Nader gave such a convincing account of the reasons he had been forced to kill his companion on the road that he was pardoned and sent back with presents and answers to the letters he had brought. However, upon his return he saw that his master was quite upset. By the look on his face, Nader assumed that the nobleman planned to kill him. He had also fallen in love with the nobleman's daughter, but his master flatly refused to consider letting them marry. Because of his disappointment and in order to defend himself, Nader killed the nobleman and fled into the mountains with the daughter, where their first son, Reza Qoli Mirza, was born. Other servants of the dead nobleman joined Nader and they formed a gang of robbers operating in the province of Mazanderan.

Fall of the Safavid Dynasty

Nader grew up during the final years of the Safavid dynasty which had ruled Iran 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 (Gurgin Khan) was killed. Under their leader Mahmud Hotaki, the rebellious Afghans moved westwards against the shah himself and in 1722 they defeated a force at the Battle of Gunabad and then besieged the capital, Isfahan. After the Shah failed to escape or 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 neighboring rivals, the Ottomans and the Russians, took advantage of the chaos in the country to seize and divide territory for themselves. In 1722, Russia, led by Peter the Great and further aided by some of the most notable Caucasian regents of the disintegrating Safavid Empire, such as Vakhtang VI, launched the Russo-Persian War (1722-1723) in which Russia captured swaths of Persia's territories in the North Caucasus, South Caucasus, as well as in northern mainland Persia. This included mainly, but was not limited to, the losses of Dagestan (including its principal city of Derbent), Baku, Gilan, Mazanderan, and Astrabad The regions to the west of that, mainly Iranian territories in Georgia, Iranian Azerbaijan, and Armenia, were taken by the Ottomans. The newly gained Russian and Turkish possessions were confirmed and further divided amongst themselves in the Treaty of Constantinople(1724).

 

[Prince of Lasanod]

The Hotak dynasty or the Hotaki dynasty was an Afghan monarchy of the Ghiliji Pashtuns, established in April 1709 by Mirwais Hotak after leading a successful revolution against their declining Persian Safavid overlords in Kandahar. At its peak, the Hotak dynasty ruled very briefly over an area which is now Afghanistan, western Pakistan, and large parts of Iran.

Fall of the Hotaki dynasty
Tahmasp and the Qajar leader Fath Ali Khan (the ancestor of Afgha Mohammed 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, banishing the Afghans from Persian soil forever. 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–Persian War (1730–35)

The Caucasus theatre, alongside the Mesopotamian theatre was one of the key regions where Ottoman and Persian empires had fought for hegemony throughout much of early modern period. The collapse of the Safavid state during the 1720s due to the invasion of the Hotaki Afghans gave the Ottomans the opportunity to seize not only the Caucasian territories under Persian suzerainty but to also extend their borders deep into western Iran itself. After Nader's successful campaigns in western Persia and Ottoman Iraq the western frontier of the empire was once again secure. However to the north, the Ottomans were still entrenched and Istanbul had seen fit to reinforce the battlements with a fresh army under Koprulu Pasha to ensure the Caucasus remained under Ottoman rule.

On 3 November, 1734 Nader arrived at the gates of Ganja after subduing Shirvan by capturing its capital Shamakhi in August 1734. The fortifications of Ganja so impressed Nader that he decided on a protracted siege of the city. Leaving behind a portion of his force around Ganja, he set of with the remainder towards Georgia and Armenia in the west, besieging Tbilisi and Yerevan respectively. Abdollah Koprulu Pasha exited Kars with an army of 50,000 cavalry, 30,000 infantry plus 40 guns in order to find and bring Nader's main force to battle with the purpose of lifting the sieges of Ottoman holdings in the region. Although primary sources give the figure of 120,000 Ottoman soldiers in total.

When news of Koprulu Pasha's entrance into area via crossing the Arpachy river the Armenian chronicler Abraham of Crete records Nader's reaction as being "praise be to god, I had been awaiting this moment for such a lengthy time" and immediately set out to meet him with his advance guard of 15,000–18,000. That night Nader camped on a high ground overlooking the plain nearby a forest.

Battle

Hearing of Nader's proximity as well as the meagreness of his numbers, Koprulu Pasha hastened his approach. Nader, instead of falling back towards the main body of the Persian army, started to deploy his advance guard on the spot. Battle commenced at 2 o'clock in the afternoon with Nader, having deployed a contingent of troops in the nearby forest, led 3,000 men down onto the valley below beginning a skirmish with the Ottomans to fix their attention.[12]

The Turks who were in the process of deploying a significant number of their guns on the crest of a small hill were caught completely off guard when Nader, in an aggressive manoeuvre, dispatched 2–3,000 of his elite musketeers (the Jazāyerchi) to seize the hill. The Ottomans were driven off the hill and their precious artillery pieces were captured causing great dismay among the Ottoman soldiers who witnessed the ease with which their guns fell into enemy hands in just the opening phase of the battle.

Nader at this moment sent forward another unit in order to neutralise the other concentration of Ottoman artillery on the left, after which the order for the advance of the Persian centre was given. Nader's own artillery was augmented by the presence of 500 zamburaks (which were essentially swivel guns mounted on the back of camels, providing light manoeuvrable artillery). Although zamburaks were extremely vulnerable to cannon fire, all of the Ottoman guns had been silenced allowing the zamburaks to play a decisive role in the battle.

At this crucial juncture, with the Ottoman centre thrown back and reeling in confusion, Nader summoned his contingent of troops hidden away at the edge of the nearby forest to settle the matter decisively by a brilliant flanking manoeuvre, converting the Ottoman's disarray into a headlong rout. Nader put himself at the head of 1,000 chosen horsemen to seal the path of retreat on his foe.

Koprulu Pasha was set upon during the rout by a Persian soldier by the name of Rostam who threw him from his horse, knocking him unconscious just prior to beheading him and taking the morbid trophy back to camp in order to present it to Nader. Many other high-ranking generals were also slaughtered and their troops fared even worse, being pursued and butchered all the way back to the Arpachay River. The massacre of the Ottoman soldiery was such that Nader himself later wrote (with little exaggeration) that "we made a butchery of all the Janissaries; not a single one of them could make away with his life" and that "an overwhelming number of the Ottoman cavalry... almost all of them were killed by the grace of god".

The defeat at Yeghevārd was so crushing that scarcely 8,000 soldiers made their way back to Kars out of the original number of 80,000 while Persian casualties were minuscule. In many ways it was the perfect battle to the end of one of the most tumultuous wars between the two superpowers where advantages were gained and then lost in an almost perpetual shift of fortunes.

Nader himself, writing to the prince of Gulytsin, claimed "never in any of my wars have I been as fortunate"[17] and was content enough to order a monument to be built on the high ground upon which he had set up camp the night prior to the battle. The strategic ramifications of the battle were felt almost immediately throughout the Caucasus with Ganja and Tbilisi surrendering in despair though Yerevan held out until Nader, crossing the Aparchay river blockaded Kars and the Ottomans were convinced to exchange Yerevan for the lifting of the blockade on October 13, 1735.

Nader scored a great victory over a superior Ottoman force at Yeghevard and by the summer of 1735, 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. The Ottomans sued for peace, recognizing Persian territorial integrity as well as Persian hegemony over the Caucasus.

The success of Nader's campaigns were such that his prestige swayed many of the Persian elites and he capitalised on the opportunity to overthrow the Safavids and establish his own, the Afsharid dynasty. Nader's next campaign took him to Qandahar where he overthrew the Hotaki dynasty once and for all before going on to invade India. Nader also launched his first campaign against the Lezgis during the Perso-Ottoman war of 1730-1735.

 

[Prince of Lasanod]

Invasion of the Mughal Empire

In 1738, Nader Shah conquered Kandahar, the last outpost of the Hotaki dynasty. His thoughts now turned to the Mughal Empire based in Delhi. This once powerful Muslim state to the east was falling apart as the nobles became increasingly disobedient and local opponents such as the Sikhs and Hindu Marathas of the Maratha Empire were expanding upon its territory. Its ruler Muhammad Shah was powerless to reverse this disintegration. Nader asked for the 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 invade the militarily weak but still extremely wealthy far eastern empire,[38] and in a brilliant campaign against the governor of Peshawar he took a small contingent of his forces on a daunting flank march through nearly impassable mountain passes and took the enemy forces positioned at the mouth of the Khyber Pass completely by surprise, utterly beating them despite being outnumbered two-to-one. This led to the capture Ghazni, Kabul, Peshawar, Sindh and Lahore. As he moved into the Mughal territories, he was loyally accompanied by his Georgian subject and future king of Georgia, Erekle II, who led a Georgian contingent as a military commander as part of Nader's force.[39] Following the defeat of Mughal forces priorly, he then advanced deeper into India crossing the river Indus before the end of year. The news of the Persian army's swift and decisive successes against the northern vassal states of the Mughal empire caused much consternation in Delhi, prompting the Mughal ruler, Muhammad Shah, to summon an overwhelming force of some 300,000 men and march this gigantic host north towards the Persian army.
At the Battle of Karnal, Nader crushed an enormous Mughal army six times greater than his own
Despite being outnumbered by six to one, Nader Shah crushed the Mughal army in less than three hours at the huge Battle of Karnal on 13 February 1739. After this spectacular victory, Nader captured Mohammad Shah and entered with him into Delhi.[40] When a rumour broke out that Nader had been assassinated, some of the Indians attacked and killed Persian troops. Nader, furious, reacted by ordering his soldiers to plunder and sack 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 Nader 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. It is estimated that Nadir took away with him treasures worth as much as seven hundred million rupees. 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, but before they left, he ceded back all territories to the east of the Indus which he had overrun to Muhammad Shah.[42]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.[43] Nader attacked the empire to, perhaps, give his country some breathing space after previous turmoils. His successful campaign and replenishment of funds meant that he could continue his wars against Iran's archrival and neighbour, the Ottoman Empire,[44] as well as the campaigns in the North Caucasus.

North Caucasus, Central Asia, Arabia, and the second Ottoman war

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.[45]

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.[46] Though Nader managed to take most of Dagestan during his campaign, the effective guerrilla warfare as deployed by the Lezgins, but also the Avars and Laks made the Iranian re-conquest of the particular North Caucasian region a short lived one; several years later, Nader was forced to withdraw. During the same period, Nader accused his son of being behind the assassination attempt in Mazanderan. Reza Qoli 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.[14]He recaptured the island of Bahrain from the Arabs. In 1743, he conquered Oman and its main capital 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, the Treaty of Kerden, in which the Ottomans agreed to let Nader occupy Najaf.[47]

 

[Prince of Lasanod]

Death and legacy

Nader became increasingly cruel as a result of his illness and his desire to extort more and more tax money to pay for his military campaigns. New 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 20 June 1747,[3] at Quchan 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.[51][52]

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.[26] Adil Shah was deposed within a year. During the struggle between Adil Shah, his brother Ibrahim Khan and Nader's grandson Shah Rukh and almost all provincial governors declared independence, established their own states, and the entire Empire of Nader Shah fell into anarchy. Also Oman and the Uzbek khanates of Bukhara and Khiva regained independence, while the Ottoman Empire regained the lost territories in Eastern Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Finally, Karim Khan founded the Zand dynasty and became ruler of Iran by 1760. Erekle II, who had been appointed king of Kakheti in 1744 by Nader himself for his loyal service,[53] took control of the neighbouring Kingdom of Kartli, and declared formal independence. He would unify both kingdoms several years later in the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti, becoming the first Georgian ruler in three centuries to preside over a politically unified eastern Georgia,[54] and due to the frantic turn of events in mainland Iran he would be able to maintain its autonomy until the advent of the Iranian Qajar dynasty.[55] The rest of the Iranian territories in the Caucasus, comprising present-day Azerbaijan, Dagestan, and Armenia became subsequently ruled throughout various Caucasian khanates, and whilst they were subjects and vassals to the Iranian king,[56] they were semi-independent or quasi-independent until the advent of the Qajar dynasty some decades later as well. In the far east, Ahmad Shah Durrani had already proclaimed independence, marking the foundation of modern Afghanistan. Iran finally lost Bahrain to Housa of Khalifa during Invasion of Bani Utbah in 1783.

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.[57] It was published in 1770 as Histoire de Nadir Chah.[58] 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".[59]

 

[oday1kenobi]

Nader Shah is badass alright and I've heard that some high-ranking Pakistanis (mostly politicians) are descended from Persians who arrived with Nader Shah?

Many Hindus and Sikhs today lay the decline of the Mughal empire during the wars with the (Hindu) Marathis and the Sikh state but Nader Shah's direct attack and sacking of Dehli as well as the massive looting that followed prior absolutely devastated and weekend the Mughals.

What a far cry from Mujahid Aurangzeb's (AUN) expansions and victories in the Deccan/south (which did stretch his army/logistics) to the Afsharid invasion 30 years after his death.

 

[Prince of Lasanod]

Nader Shah is badass alright and I've heard that some high-ranking Pakistanis (mostly politicians) are descended from Persians who arrived with Nader Shah?

Many Hindus and Sikhs today lay the decline of the Mughal empire during the wars with the (Hindu) Marathis and the Sikh state but Nader Shah's direct attack and sacking of Dehli as well as the massive looting that followed prior absolutely devastated and weekend the Mughals.

What a far cry from Mujahid Aurangzeb's (AUN) expansions and victories in the Deccan/south (which did stretch his army/logistics) to the Afsharid invasion 30 years after his death.

Persian's have a really fascinating history.

At one point, the Archaemenid Empire held 44.48% world population during it's Reign.

Iran's current size pales in comparison to what it was very recently ago.

 

[oday1kenobi]

Persian's have a really fascinating history.

At one point, the Archaemenid Empire held 44.48% world population during it's Reign.

Iran's current size pales in comparison to what it was very recently ago.

I agree.

The Persians have been at the forefront of history since classical times and being slap bang in the middle of the known world (and the silk road), they have fought off and rebounded from wave after waves of invasions from the likes of the Greeks, Arabs, Mongols, Turks as well as successfully held off against the Romans/Byzantines, Ottomans, and Russians.

Not only did they retain their culture and language after invasion and destruction, but they also influenced the cultures of their invaders as well which is why Persian influence can be seen from Moorish Spain to the depths of India.

I'm starting to sound like a persophile now...

I've heard that Iranian's are hospitable towards everyone except Arabs (lol) but they may be hostile to a Somali like me as they may think I'm an "afro ayrab" when infact we are a indigenous group and a member of the Cushitic master race!

Ok, I'm officially a Iranian bootyclapper now! @fardowsa