Nādir Shāh

Shāh of Persia (r. 1736-1747)

• Born: October 22, 1688
• Birthplace: Dastgird, Persia (now in Iran)
• Died: June 1, 1747
• Place of death: Khabushan, Persia (now in Iran)

As the Ṣafavid Dynasty fell into decline, Nādir Shāh assembled an army in northern Persia and reconsolidated the country under his control. He expelled the Afghan rulers from Persia, reconquered the northwestern provinces from the Ottomans, and invaded Afghanistan, India, and Uzbekistan, annexing their territory.

Early Life

Nādir Shāh (NAH-duhr shah), born Nādir Qolī Beg, was born in 1688 to a family of the Kirklu clan of the Turkoman Afshar tribe. His mother gave birth to him at Dastgird, in northern Khorāsān, during the clan’s seasonal migration to winter pastures. In his youth, Nādir joined the retinue of a local governor, BābāՙAlī Beg Kūsā-Ahmadlu, who eventually gave him two daughters in marriage and, upon his death in 1723, passed on his own property to the young man.

During the anarchy caused by the Afghan invasion of Persia, Nādir joined the service of Malik Maḥmūd of Sistan, who had occupied Mashhad. After some time, Nādir formed his own band of raiders and, in alliance with a Kurdish group, contested control of the city. This brought him to the notice of theṢafavid heir-apparent, Ṭahmāsp Mirzā, who recruited Nādir and his small army as protectors along with FatḥՙAlī Khān Qājār and his troops. In 1727, as Persia was in the process of being dismembered by the Ottomans and Russians, Ṭahmāsp designated Nādir his military commander.

In 1729, Nādir initiated his career by stopping the Ghilzai army in Khorāsān. He then defeated the Ottoman forces in Western Persia in 1730 and recovered Herāt from the ՙAbdali Afghans in 1732. During this period, Ṭahmāsp had been obliged to sign unfavorable treaties with the Ottomans and the Russians. As a result, Nādir was able to persuade the Kizilbash leaders to depose Ṭahmāsp and place his son,ՙAbbās III, on the throne with Nādir as his regent. In this position, Nādir defeated the Ottomans in a second series of battles between 1733 and 1735, in response to which the Russians withdrew their forces from Persia. In 1735, they signed the Treaty of Ganjeh, which established boundaries between the two countries and formed a defensive alliance.

Life’s Work

Early in 1736, following his significant successes, Nādir called an assembly of notables near his hunting encampment on the Mughan Plain. There, army commanders, governors, nobles, and the learned class of ulama (religious scholars and jurists) were brought together from all over his realm. During this staged event, Nādir informed the gathered dignitaries that he planned to retire to Khorāsān and asked the assembly to elect a new Ṣafavid ruler. His cunning tactic worked, and all insisted that he become shāh himself. After a few days, Nādir accepted, on the condition that the Sunni faith be adopted in place of the Shiism formerly sponsored by the Ṣafavid state.

Under Nādir’s plan, Shiism could still be practiced but only in a form deemed acceptable by the shāh. This version, which he called Jafari Shiism, was stripped of practices offensive to Sunni Muslims, such as cursing the first three caliphs (successors to the Prophet Muḥammad). This abrupt shift in religious policy had multiple causes. It served to diffuse the religious prestige of theṢafavid house. It also sought to remove a source of much bloodshed between Persia and Ottoman Turkey. Immediately, Nādir drafted a peace treaty with the Ottomans that stipulated the status of the Jafari faith within Sunni Islam. Soon after the settlement of the treaty, on March 8, 1736, Nādir was crowned shāh.

Having secured peace on his western borders, Nādir Shāh turned his attention eastward. The following spring, he led an army against Qandahār, where Hussein Sultan Ghilzai, brother of the invader Maḥmūd, was seated as a last reminder of Afghan victory over Persia. In 1738, after a long siege, Nādir’s troops finally captured Qandahār. They then set out for India by way of Kabul and Peshawar. The army captured Lahore and defeated the Mughal army at Karnal. By March of 1739, it stormed the city of Delhi. After amassing large amounts of booty, including the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond and jewel-encrusted Peacock Throne, Nādir left the Mughal emperor Muḥammad Shāh in power. After Muḥammad Shāh had ceded all territories west of the Indus River to Persia, Nādir returned to Herāt. Next, he defeated the Uzbeks, making the Oxus River the northeastern boundary of his kingdom. Meanwhile, he attempted to build a fleet in the Persian Gulf to prepare for an impending invasion of Oman.

Though he was successful as a military commander, problems began to mount for Nādir Shāh after 1741. Suspended hostilities with the Ottoman Empire were soon resumed. Though his army forced Kirkuk into submission in 1743, the renewal of hostilities was costly. To pay for the resumption of campaigns in the west, Nādir rescinded the tax amnesty he had declared while in India and increased his tax extractions from the Persian populace. Around this time, pretenders to theṢafavid throne began to revolt in several areas, including Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Khwārizm, and the Ottoman frontier. After quelling these rebellions, Nādir returned to Eşfahān in December of 1745 to extort funds and punish his officials.

After a short time, in 1746, he instituted these punishments with renewed vigor. Then, after signing another treaty with Turkey that essentially restored the frontiers of 1639, Nādir behaved with arbitrary ferocity against his nobles and his populace. Reports of European visitors to his court judged him to be deranged. Contemporary sources report that as he left Eşfahān for Kermān and Khorāsān, he erected towers of heads wherever he stopped. On June 20, 1747, while putting down a rebellion against the Kurds in Khabushan, a group of Nādir’s Persian, Afshar, and Qājār officers assassinated him at the encampment. Nādir’s army then disbanded, his treasure was plundered, and his progeny were killed. On July 6, 1747, his nephewՙAli Qolī Khan ascended the throne asՙAdil Shāh.

Significance

Nādir Shāh is credited with rescuing Persia from partition and foreign domination. He excelled as a commander and military strategist, and the scope of his achievements may be compared with those of the fourteenth century ruler Tamerlane, whose exploits he consciously emulated. Nādir’s military endeavors had a significant impact upon broader political dynamics in the eighteenth century, initiating a shift of power from the two dynasties on Persia’s eastern and western borders. His campaigns against Turkey weakened the Ottoman state and ultimately swayed the balance of power in favor of Russia, while his humiliation of the Mughal emperor hastened the empire’s eventual fall under the British.

Nādir Shāh succeeded in reversingṢafavid policies of the previous century: He confiscated properties secured in pious endowments, threatened to abolish state sponsorship of Shiism, and favored Sunni Afghans and Uzbeks over Shīՙite Persian and Turkoman Kizilbash officers. Nonetheless, by the end of his life, Nādir’s military endeavors had begun to turn sour, and through his irrational behavior he fully alienated all of his former political supporters.

Bibliography

Avery, Peter. Nadir Shah and the Afsharid Legacy. Vol. 7 in The Cambridge History of Iran. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. The most comprehensive source on political developments in Persia during the fall of theṢafavid Dynasty and the reign of Nādir Shāh. Contains plates, maps, and genealogical tables.

Daniel, Elton L. The History of Iran. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. A general survey, which locates Nādir Shāh’s rule in the larger scope of Persia’s history. Contains maps, a glossary of terms, and a bibliographical essay.

Lockhart, Laurence. The Fall of the Safavid Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1958. The study that laid out the historical framework of the lateṢafavid period and that still offers unsurpassed information on the end ofṢafavid rule and the rise of Nādir Shāh. Contains illustrations, maps, a genealogical table of theṢafavid Dynasty, and a bibliography listing primary sources, including European travelers’ accounts.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Nadir Shah: A Critical Study Based Mainly upon Contemporary Sources. London: Luzac, 1938. The principal monograph on Nādir Shāh’s life and achievements. This study, which contains material from difficult-to-access primary sources, is yet to be surpassed. Contains a genealogical table, maps, and a bibliography of primary sources.

Perry, John R. “The LastṢafavids, 1722-1793.” Iran 9 (1971): 59-69. A scholarly article that investigates the relationship between the Ṣafavids and Nādir Shāh Afshar in the early eighteenth century.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Nadir Shah Afshar.” In The Encyclopedia of Islam, edited by H. A. R. Gibb. Rev. ed. Vol. 7. Leiden, the Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1960-2004. A comprehensive synopsis of scholarship on Nādir Shāh’s life and accomplishments. Includes a thorough bibliography complete with sources published in Persian, Russian, and Turkish.