Although it was not until A.D. 1736 that Nádir deemed it expedient to take the title of King, he became from A.D. 1730 onwards the de facto ruler of Persia. Of his humble origin and early struggles it is unnecessary to speak here; they will be found narrated as fully as the circumstances permit in the pages of Hanway, Malcolm and other historians of Persia. Sháh Ṭahmásp was from Incapacity of Ṭahmásp. the first but a roi fainéant, and his only serious attempt to achieve anything by himself, when he took the field against the Turks in A.D. 1731, resulted in a disastrous failure, for he lost both Tabríz and Hamadán, and in January, 1732, concluded a most unfavourable peace, whereby he ceded Georgia and Armenia to Turkey on condition that she should aid him to expel the Russians from Gílán, Shírwán and Darband. Nádir, greatly incensed, came to Iṣfahán in August, 1732, and, having by a stratagem seized and imprisoned Ṭahmásp, proclaimed his infant son (then only six months old) as 'Abbas III proclaimed King. king under the title of Sháh 'Abbás III, and at once sent a threatening letter to Aḥmad Páshá of Baghdád, which he followed up by a declaration of war in October.
In April of the following year (1733) Nádir appeared
before Baghdád, having already retaken Kirmánsháh, with
Further successes of Nádir.
an army of 80,000 men, but suffered a defeat on
July 18, and retired to Hamadán to recruit
and recuperate his troops. Returning to the
attack in the autumn he defeated the Turks on October 26
in a great battle wherein the gallant and noble-minded
Ṭopál 'Osmán ('Uthmán) was slain. Having crushed a
revolt in favour of the deposed Sháh Ṭahmásp in Fárs, he
invaded Georgia in 1734, took Tiflís, Ganja and Shamákhí,
and obtained from Russia the retrocession of Gílán, Shír-
On the following Nawrúz, or Persian New Year's day (March 21, 1736), Nádir announced to the assembled army Nádir proclaimed King. and deputies of the nation the death of the infant Sháh 'Abbás III and invited them to decide within three days whether they would restore his father, the deposed Sháh Ṭahmásp, or elect a new king. His own desire, which coincided with that of most of his officers and soldiers, was evident, and, the unwilling minority being overawed, the crown of Persia was unanimously offered to him. He agreed to accept it on three conditions, namely: (1) that it should be made hereditary in his family; (2) that there should be no talk of a restoration of the Ṣafawís, and that no one should aid, comfort, or harbour any member of that family who might aspire to the throne; and (3) that the cursing of the first three Caliphs, the mourning for the death of the Imám Ḥusayn, and other distinctive practices of the Shí'a should be abandoned. This last condition was the most distasteful to the Persians, and the chief ecclesiastical authority, being asked his opinion, had the courage to denounce it as “derogatory to the welfare of the true believers”—a courage which cost him his life, for he was immediately strangled by Nádir's orders. Not content with this, Nádir, on his arrival at Qazwín, confiscated the religious endowments (awqáf) for the expenses of his army, to whom, he said, Persia owed more than to her hierarchy. Towards the end of the year he concluded a favourable treaty with Turkey, by which Persia recovered all her lost provinces; and in December he set out at the head of 100,000 men against Afghánistán and India, leaving his son Riḍá-qulí as regent.
The next two years (A.D. 1737-9) witnessed Nádir Sháh's
greatest military achievement, the invasion of India, capture
Nádir's Indian
campaign
(A.D. 1737-1739).
of Lahore and Delhi, and return home with
the enormous spoils in money and kind which
he exacted from the unfortunate Indians, and
which Hanway
*
estimates at £87,500,000. Having taken
Qandahár, Kábul and Peshawur in 1738, he crossed the
Indus early in the following year, captured Lahore, and
in February, 1739, utterly defeated the Indian army of
Muḥammad Sháh, two hundred thousand strong, on the
plains of Karnál. Delhi was peaceably occupied, but a few
days later a riot occurred in which some of Nádir's soldiers
were killed, and he avenged their blood by a general
massacre of the inhabitants which lasted from 8 a.m. until
3 p.m., and in which 110,000 persons perished. He never
dreamed of holding India, and, having extorted the enormous
indemnity mentioned above and left the unhappy Muḥam-
During the absence of Nádir Sháh his son Riḍá-qulí had
put to death the unfortunate Ṭahmásp and most of his
Nádir's son
Riḍá-qulí rebels
and is blinded.
family at Sabzawár, and began to show signs of
desiring to retain the powers with which he had
been temporarily invested by his father. Being
suspected of instigating an unsuccessful attempt on Nádir's
life, he was deprived of his eyesight, but with this cruel act
the wonderful good fortune which had hitherto accompanied
Nádir's views
on religion.
Nádir began to desert him. His increasing
cruelty, tyranny, avarice and extortion, but
most of all, perhaps, his attempt to impose on
his Persian subjects the Sunní doctrine, made him daily
more detested. His innovations included the production of
Persian translations of the Qur'án and the Gospels. The
latter, on which several Christians were employed, he caused
to be read aloud to him at Ṭihrán, while he commented on
it with derision, and hinted that when he found leisure he
might (perhaps after the model of Akbar) produce a new
religion of his own which should supplant alike Judaism,
Christianity and Islám.
*
His military projects, moreover,
began to miscarry; his campaign against the Lazgís in
A.D. 1741-2 did not prosper, and in the war with Turkey
in which he became involved in 1743 he was unsuccessful
in his attempt to take Mosul (Mawṣil). Revolts which
broke out in Fárs and Shírwán were only suppressed with
difficulty after much bloodshed. However he put down a
rebellion of the Qájárs at Astarábád in A.D. 1744, defeated
the Turks in a great battle near Erivan in August, 1745,
and concluded a satisfactory peace with them in 1746. In
the following year Nádir Sháh visited Kirmán, which
suffered much from his cruelties and exactions, and thence
proceeded to Mashhad, where he arrived at the end of
May, 1747. Here he conceived the abominable plan of
killing all his Persian officers and soldiers (the bulk of
his army being Turkmáns and Uzbeks and consequently
Sunnís), but this project was made known by a Georgian
slave to some of the Persian officers, who thereupon decided,
in the picturesque Persian phrase, “to breakfast off him ere
he should sup off them.” A certain Ṣáliḥ Beg, aided by
four trusty men, undertook the task,
*
and, entering his tent
by night, rid their country of one who, though he first
Assassination
of Nádir
(June 20, 1747).
appeared as its deliverer from the Afghán yoke,
now bade fair to crush it beneath a yoke yet
more intolerable. At the time of his death
Nádir Sháh was sixty-one years of age and had reigned
eleven years and three months (A.D. 1736-47). He was
Chaos succeeding Nádir's
death.
succeeded by his nephew 'Alí-qulí Khán, who
assumed the crown under the title of 'Ádil
Sháh, but was defeated and slain by his brother
Ibráhím in the following year. He in turn was killed a
year later (A.D. 1749) by the partisans of Nádir's grandson
Sháhrukh, the son of the unfortunate Riḍá-qulí and a
Ṣafawí princess, the daughter of Sháh Husayn, who now
succeeded to the throne. Youth, beauty and a character at
once amiable and humane
*
did not, however, secure him
against misfortune, and he was shortly after his accession
deposed and blinded by a certain Sayyid Muḥammad, a
grandson on the mother's side of the Ṣafawí Sháh Sulay-