#afshar

Nader Shah Afshar (1688-1747) was the Shah (King) of Persia officially from 1736 until his assassination in 1747.  Though he de-facto became Iran’s most powerful figure by 1729 and especially after 1732 he was regent of then the Shah, ruler in all but name.  Nader Shah is sometimes known as by monikers as the “Sword of Persia” or the “Second Alexander the Great” or “Napoleon of Persia”.  These names don’t really do him entirely justice, especially the latter considering he lived prior to Napoleon.  Though the comparison as a successful conqueror and tactician in battle is true enough.  Nader’s rise from abject poverty to the heights of dominating the Middle East and Western and Central Asia is nothing short of extraordinary and in many cases is the last in the long line of famous conquerors in the East of a Turco-Mongol tradition that included his true idols Genghis Khan and Timur.

Nader was born presumably in 1688 according to most sources in the area of Dargaz of the Khorasan Province of modern Iran located in the northeastern extremity of the country.  He was part of the ethnically Turkic Afshar tribe, that was semi-nomadic and had years before settled in parts of Northern Iran and Azerbaijan.  The Afshar were Turkic in their blood but culturally a synthesis of Persian (Iranian) and Turkic tradition, their religion was a brand of Shia Islam.  His father was a herdsman and coatmaker and they maintained a nomadic lifestyle, his father died at 13 and without income his family was reduced to greater poverty than his earlier upbringing.  He earned money by gathering sticks in the Iranian Plateau for firewood which he would sell at market.  In 1704 Uzbek Turkic raiders captured his family including him and his mother and were put into slavery where his mother died.  According to some sources he escaped by deception but by 1708 he had returned to the Khorasan Province.

What he had grown up in and returned to was an increasingly declining Persian Empire ruled by the famed Safavid Dynasty that had ruled Persia and much the Middle East since 1502 but at this time it was under the rule of Sultan Husayn from (1694-1722).  He was facing rebellion in the east from Afghan Pashtuns under Mahmud Hotek, who rose to become Emir of Afghanistan and briefly in 1722 overthrew Husayn as Shah of Persia by besieging the capital Isfahan, ruling until 1725.  Hotek was not completely recognized as Shah and Tahmasp (son of Sultan Husayn) fought against this.  Meanwhile, Persian’s arch rivals to the west and north the Ottoman and Russian Empires respectively used this chaos to  grab Persian territory in the Caucasus and elsewhere.  Hotek was killed and replaced by his cousin and who actually fought back against the Ottomans and Russians who tried to restore Tahmasp.

Nader in these chaotic years began a steady rise to personal power.  According to some sources, Nader started as a royal mail carrier for the Safavid Empire, however he is said to have killed a fellow royal mail carrier and taken over his route himself, then killed a nobleman who employed him and married the nobleman’s daughter.  He then became a bandit on the loose in his native Khorasan Province and gradually added members of his tribe into a sort of local army, becoming a powerful warlord in the process.  He was contacted by the Safavid under Tahmasp who wished to employ him as a sort of mercenary against the Hotek Dynasty.  1729 saw Nader defeat the Afghans, first in Afghanistan and then in the Battle of Damghan he beat the Afghans once more helping pave the way for Tahmasp to rise to Shah of Persia as Tamasp II.  As thanks for his help, Nader was made royal governor of Eastern Iran, namely Khorasan and he was married to Tahmasp’s sister, Razia.

1730 saw Nader now undertaking campaigns on behalf of the Safavids to retake Mesopotamia (Iraq) and the southern Caucasus regions previously ceded to the Turkish Ottomans who were Sunni Muslims.  His campaigns became the stuff of legend as he had reformed the Persian Army as one no longer based solely on cavalry now in the age of gunpowder, instead he sought a combined arms strategy, mixing cavalry with artillery, namely with the use of the camel mounted artillery on swivel guns known as zamburaks, this mobile form of artillery was inventive on the battlefield and  combined with aggressive infantry tactics as well.  Nader was a proponent of aggressive and bold moves involving great mobility and preferred flanking maneuvers to offset his enemies.  Time and again the Ottomans fell in battle to aggressive tactics.  Nader was successful in gaining territory back from the Ottomans.  However, Shah Tahmasp now jealous of Nader’s success launched his campaign to take Armenia from the Turks, it failed and undid much of Nader’s earlier success.

In 1732, Nader used the ineptness of Tahmasp’s campaign to provide fodder for his being deposed from the throne, in his place Tahmasp’s infant son, Abbas III was named Shah with Nader as his regent, becoming in effect ruler of Persia.  He resumed a campaign in 1733 against the Ottomans in Iraq which initially did not go well for Nader.  Nader however quickly rebuilt his army and fought the Ottomans at Kirkuk, defeating them with a pincer movement.  However, rebellion in Iran and Afghanistan compelled him back to Persia.  He put these down and by 1735 was back onto invading Ottoman territory winning the major Battle of Yeghevard, ending the war with the Ottomans and leading to Persia regaining its western territories once more. 

1736 saw the pretense of regency thrown off as Nader deposed the young Abbas by throwing a qoroltai, a traditional meeting of the leading nobles in the countryside as part of a great hunting party where they signed a document, granting their support to Nader’s suggestion to be named Shah.  This was done in a tradition imitating Genghis Khan and Timur in centuries past.  Now Nader was officially Nader Shah and founder of his own Afsharid Dynasty.  As a ruler, Nader implemented many domestic changes.  Including a new silver coinage system, called Naderi after himself which was paired with the Indian rupees.  Nader also paid his army in coins and currency rather than the previous tradition of grants of land and spoils of war.  He also reformed the army into a national identity, rather than a mix of provincial and tribal loyalties that had divided and decentralized Persia in the past.  He spoke Persian and Turkic.  The former being the official language of the nation and its government and the latter for his military administration.  Nader in religious policy was more pragmatic than a true believer, like Napoleon who followed him, he saw religion as a tool to wield for political purposes.  His level of true belief is a matter of debate and it appears he may not in fact have been personally that religious if at all.  Officially, Persia followed Shia Islam but his army was a mix of Shia and Sunnis and Christian vassals from Georgia and Armenia.  He eventually settled on a blend of Shia Islam  called Ja’fari that was less offensive to Sunnis, believing previous Safavid Shia policy had alienated the Ottoman Sunnis.

1739 saw his most famous campaign, the invasion of India.  India at that time was ruled by a mix of local kingdoms and European colonies but in the North it was still nominally under the rich but declining Islamic Mughal Empire which was ruled by a 16th century dynasty descended from his hero, Timur of Turco-Mongol extraction.  His impetus for invasion was the Mughals hiding Afghan rebels.  Nader lead his Persian Army, supported by Georgian Christian vassals into Afghanistan, Pakistan and India with a goal to take over the Mughal capital at Delhi.  The Mughal Emperor, Muhammad Shah lead an army of 300,000 troops north of Dehli to meet the Persian invasion which number 55,000.  Outnumbered six to one it looked as Nader would be overwhelmed but on February 24, 1739 the greatest battle of his career would take place, the Battle of Karnal.  What Nader lacked in numbers he made up for in experience, discipline, mobility and tactical prowess.  The Mughals were numerous but their army, including war elephants was more ornate than effective and was cumbersome due to their large numbers and baggage trains.  The Mughals advanced in divided columns while the Pesians split their forces too.  Nader ordered his camel mobile artillery, the zamburaks to fire along with his artillery and infantry which devastate the advancing Mughals, it worked.  The sheer volume of artillery and infantry fire mowed down the Indian army and then combined with ambushes put them into confusion and disarray.  The Mughals suffered heavy losses and were forced into a retreat. Subsequently, their Emperor met with Nader and accompanied him in a humiliating fashion as a sort of hostage back to Delhi where Persian troops occupied the city.  Nader planned to leave India soon.  He planned little to no territorial gains but did plan to plunder much of the Mughal treasury, famed for its diamond, emeralds and rubies, including the the famed jeweled Peacock Throne of the Mughal Emperor.  A riot broke out in Delhi which killed Persian troops, outraged Nader let his army loose on the city.  Muslim and Hindu were killed and raped in the thousands.  The city was torched and looted until Nader ordered it to stop, 30,000 killed.  Indeed the Persians collected so levied tax in currency and jewels from the Mughals, that upon their return to Persia the government was so wealthy Nader placed a three year moratorium on local taxes in all of the empire. He also now forced the Mughals to cede all their land by treaty west of the Indus River, securing eastern Persia’s borders in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.  The Mughals were so weakened by Nader’s invasion that it allowed for a power vacuum to develop in Northern India that by century’s end would see the rise of the British East India Company overtaking much of country.

Nader had reached his pinnacle of success and wealth with his victory in India.  Despite the wealth and moratorium on tax, the economic burden of endless war continued to drain Persia’s economy.  He invaded the Northern Caucasus of modern Dagestan in Russia to mixed results, the Uzbeks in Central Asia with success, the Arabs of Oman on the Arabian Peninsula were also conquered and another war with the Ottomans from 1743-1746 which ended in stalemate.  The endless wars also saw him develop a rivalry with his first son, leading to having his son punished with torture and the blinding of his eyes.  He also suppressed supposed conspiracies and uprisings in Persia too, killing his opposition, implementing torture and symbolically stacking the skulls of his dissidents both real and imagined in literal towers of beheaded skulls.  Nader was also building a navy at this time but it was never large enough of a force to effect much power beyond the Persian Gulf. 

In 1747, Nader returned to Khorasan to fight Kurdish rebels in the area.  However, conspiracy finally caught up with him when relatives of his, worried about his draining of Persia’s economy with endless war and his own derangement from reality due to ill health in his advancing age, megalomania and desire for blood lust estranged him from their favor.  These relatives plotted an assassination and June 20th, acted on their plot when 15 assassins armed with swords rushed into his war tent as he slept intent on hacking him to death.  The noise of the nervous and impatient assassins awoke Nader who personally killed two in the struggle that followed.  His relative came in and hit him with a sword blow followed by three other conspirators stabbing him repeatedly while eyewitnesses say Nader pleaded for them to stop, offering to spare their lives and give them riches in return, finally another relative came in and beheaded Nader with one fell swoop, ending his once promising reign which had become twisted and deranged due to his paranoia.

His dynasty officially lasted until 1796 though it never reached the heights it did under Nader who had territory from Arabia and Iraq to Russia and all the way to India in his control by his conquest and military prowess.  It would be replaced by the Qajar Dynasty which ruled Persia until 1925.  Nader was a source of pride for Persia and source of ruin, the last in a tradition of Asiatic conquerors from the days of Genghis Khan and Timur, both of whom he emulated in his tactical prowess and his personal cruelty.  Nader indeed is another example somewhat like Napoleon Bonaparte who followed in the coming decades, of a man rising from nearly nothing to the heights of absolute power by personal military talent and opportunity in a time of national chaos.  Nader is sometimes called the “Persian Napoleon” though it maybe more correct to call Napoleon the “French Nader Shah!”