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In 1722, the 220 year old Safavid Dynasty of Persia was in decline. Its Sultan, Husayn,
had just been defeated in the Battle of Gulnabad by forces of the Hotaki Dynasty
of Afghanistan. And his son, and heir had been unable to attract significant support. And the
Empire was being attacked in other places as well, attacked by its old enemies the Ottoman Empire,
and its new enemy, an expanding Russia. It seemed in the face of this, that the Safavid
Dynasty would collapse, but in the chaos, a leader arose. And despite humble origins,
he would rise to lead great armies, and win a string of victories, often against
overwhelming odds, that would earn him a powerful reputation. Nader Shah, the Persian Napoleon.
Persia had been the cradle of great empires ever since the Achaemenid Empire, established in the
sixth century BC by Cyrus the Great. In its time it was the largest empire to that point
in history, covering more than 2 million square miles. But most of the Empire was conquered by
Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC. Eventually another great Persian Empire,
the Sasanian Empire arose, and ruled for nearly 400 years between the 3rd and 7th centuries AD,
before being defeated in the Arab conquest of Persia in 651 AD. The Muslim Caliphate was
eventually destroyed by the Mongol invasion in the 13th century. An invasion so brutal,
that it is estimated that as much as 90% of the population of Iran, died as a result of
mass exterminations and famine. The beginning of modern Iranian history is often considered
to be the rise of the Safavid Dynasty in the 16th century. The Safavid Dynasty was distinguished in
that the Empire practiced Shia Islam, putting it at odds with its great rival the Ottomans,
who practiced Sunni Islam. Over two centuries the Safavids re-established Persia as a wealthy
trade connection between East and West, and left their mark on world by spreading Shia
Islam. At its height, the Safavid Dynasty ruled over an area of over a million square miles.
It was in the waning years of the Safavid Dynasty that a young peasant grew up. The young man whose
name was Nader was born to a semi-nomadic tribe in the northeast part of the Empire,
the son of a humble herdsman. He and his mother were left destitute when his father died when
Nadir was just 13 years old, and then they were captured and taken into slavery by a roving band
of Uzbek Tartars, essentially land pirates. His mother died, but he managed to escape slavery,
and returned home where he lived a desperate, and impoverished life. No one at that time could have
guessed, that he would rise to become one of the greatest leaders in the history of Iran.
He managed to secure a position as a messenger for a persian nobleman, he and another messenger would
run messages back and forth between the nobleman, and the royal court. On one of those missions,
he murdered the other messenger, apparently with the goal of making his own position more
secure. But when his boss found out he was angry. Nader thought that he might kill him,
and so first, Nader murdered the nobleman, married his daughter,
and took most of his servants up into the hills to form a gang of bandits.
In the first quarter of the 18th century the Safavids were beset by numerous enemies. Their
old rivals the Ottomans had always been a threat, but a new rival, an expansionist Russia under
Peter the Great also started to encroach on their territory, as well as the Indian Mughal Empire in
the south. More importantly Europeans, starting with the Dutch East India Company, and later
the British, had used their dominant fleets to control the trade routes in the western Indian
Ocean. As military threats increased, revenues fell. The Sultan Husayn was weak and ineffectual,
more interested in wine than governing. But the greatest challenge actually came from
within the Empire. Afghan tribes, angry as the Safavids had tried to forcibly convert
them from Sunni to Shia Islam, rose under a tribal ruler, Mahmud Hotak and defeated
Husayn's army in the Battle of Gulnabad in 1722. The capital was besieged, and Husayn abdicated.
Taking advantage of the chaos, the Russians and Ottomans took vast swaths of the former Empire
But in the chaos that small group of bandits under Nader, had grown into a small rebel army,
and he threw that army in support of Husayn’s son Tahmasp, and he quickly rose to become the leader
of Tahmasp’s army. In a sweeping campaign Nader defeated the Hotakis, first chasing them from
Persia, and eventually conquered them entirely by 1738, with much of the defeated force joining his
army. The campaign was astounding! At the crucial Battle of Damghan in 1729, Nader was outnumbered
almost two to one, and yet thoroughly routed the Hotaki army. He then swung his army against the
Ottomans,regaining the territory the Ottomans had taken after Husayn's abdication. When Tahmasp lost
that territory again, in a disastrous campaign of his own, Nader forced him to abdicate in favor of
his infant son in 1732. Nader then made himself Regent, effectively, taking control of the Empire.
His conquest continued. He besieged Baghdad, and defeated the superior Ottoman force in 1735,
gaining back the territories of Armenia and Georgia. The Russians, seeing opportunity
against the Ottomans, signed a treaty with Nader, and withdrew from Persian territory. In 1736,
he held a great meeting of the nation's nobility, and by loyalty and intimidation, won their favor
and was proclaimed King in his own right, giving up the pretense of the Regency. Not content to
have won back the old Safavid territory, in 1738 he attacked the Mughal Empire in India. It was
another brilliant campaign, including a daring flanking maneuver to take the Khyber Pass. He
won a spectacular victory over a massive Mughal army at the Battle of Karnal in 1739, a battle
where he was outnumbered nearly six to one, and where he captured the Mughal ruler Muhammad Shah.
His troops ransacked the Mughal capital of Delhi, killing as many as 30,000 people, before Mohammed
Shah bribed him with the keys to the Mughal Treasury. The Magnificent treasure was said to
be worth as much as seven hundred million Mughal rupees, the equivalent of about eighty five and a
half million English pounds at the time. Including the famed Peacock Throne, the symbol of the Mughal
power, and two of the world's most famous jewels, the Koh-i-noor and the Darya-i-noor diamonds. The
baggage train to carry the loot stretched for over a hundred miles. His army stripped India
of nearly all their mules, donkeys, camels, and elephants to carry it all. With the massive haul,
he was able to give his empire a three-year break from taxes, and fund further campaigns.
Nader Shar continued his military campaigns. He built a navy and conquered the Arab lands
of Oman, and Bahrain. But he grew increasingly ill-tempered, and paranoid in his old age. He had
his own son blinded after accusing him of being complicit in an assassination attempt. In 1747, a
group of his officers, afraid that he was planning to have them executed, plotted his assassination.
He was attacked in his tent, and killed by his own captain of the guard. His empire did not
last. While he was a brilliant military commander, his eleven year rule did no good for the economy,
which struggled to the cost of all his military campaigns. And partly owing to his paranoia, he
never established a clear line of succession, and so his empire fell into civil war after his death.
There are persistent rumors of something called, The Lost Treasure of Nader Shah. These were from
the legend that Nader Shah was killed by his generals on the way back from the India campaign,
and that the great treasure of the Mughals was taken by one of those generals, and hidden in
caves in Afghanistan, before he himself died. Several famous treasure hunters have gone seeking
the treasure, and there are even rumours that today the Taliban are searching for that treasure
in Afghanistan. But the legend doesn't make sense, Nadia Shah was known to live eight years after the
India campaign. And the disposition of the Mughal treasure is well known. The famous 183 karat,
pale pink Darya-i-noor diamond, for example, is still part of the Iranian crown jewels.
One impact of his campaigns was that his attack on the Mughals demonstrated the weakness of
that Empire, and that led the British East India Company to move to fill the vacuum,
and thus contributed to the British domination of India. Nader Shah was once a penniless peasant,
but he became the greatest military commander of his era. He was great not just because he had a
brilliant tactical mind, but because he had the superior understanding of combined arms,
and of the importance of gunpowder. He reorganized his army around infantry units armed with muskets,
and modern artillery, breaking from the Middle Eastern tradition of depending largely upon
cavalry. And that allowed him to win a string of victories, often against superior numbers. The
empire that he conquered was more than a half million square miles larger than the Safavid
Dynasty that he replaced, and in fact was second only to the Achaemenid Empire of Cyrus the Great,
in Persian history. At one point he commanded an army of 375,000 fighting men. It was the largest
army in the world at the time. Nader Shah is most often compared to Napoleon because of his
brilliant military victories, but Nader Shah's empire that he conquered was more than twice the
size of the French Empire, under Napoleon. And so it might be more proper to say that instead
of Nader Shah being Persia’s Napoleon, that Napoleon Bonaparte was France's, Nader Shah.
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