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Afsharid dynasty
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The Afsharid Persian Empire or Afsharids were an Iranian dynasty from Khorasan that ruled the Persian Empire in the 18th century. At this time, the empire reached its greatest extent since Sassanid Persian Empire.
The dynasty was born with Nader Shah, the Iranian King of Turkic descent who proclaimed himself the Shah of Iran in 1736. Soon after wards he waged a war against the Afghans (Pashtuns) and captured Kandahar.
In 1738, he invaded India, massacred most of the population of Delhi and in a single campaign captured an incredible wealth, including the legendary Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor diamond.
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Encyclopedia
The Afsharid Persian Empire or Afsharids were an Iranian dynasty from Khorasan that ruled the Persian Empire in the 18th century. At this time, the empire reached its greatest extent since Sassanid Persian Empire.
The dynasty was born with Nader Shah, the Iranian King of Turkic descent who proclaimed himself the Shah of Iran in 1736. Soon after wards he waged a war against the Afghans (Pashtuns) and captured Kandahar.
In 1738, he invaded India, massacred most of the population of Delhi and in a single campaign captured an incredible wealth, including the legendary Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor diamond. The plunder seized from India was so rich that Nader stopped taxation in Iran for a period of three years, following his triumphant return. Nader partially restored lands lost to the Ottomans in the downfall of the Safavid Empire. He made the Shia holy city of Mashhad his capital but also was very tolerant towards his minority Sunni subjects in the Shia Persia.
A despotic ruler, he was assassinated in 1747. There was in essence a three-sided struggle between the descendants of Nader Shah, the Zand dynasty and the Qajars. For much of the time, Shahrokh, grandson both of Nader and Shah Hossein, remained nominally on the throne at Mashhad, but, blinded and intermittently imprisoned, he exercised no effective power.
History
In 1719 the Ghilzai Afghans had invaded Persia. They deposed the reigning Shah of the Safavid Persian Empire in 1722. Their ruler, Mahmoud Ghilzai (±1699-1725), murdered a large number of Safavid Princes, hacking many of them to death by his own hand. After he had invited the leading citizens of Isfahan to a feast and massacred them there, his own supporters assassinated Mahmoud in 1725. His cousin, Ashraf Khan (±1700-1730), took over and married a Safavid princess.
Nadir Shah
At first, Nader fought with the Afghans against the Ozbegs until they withheld him further payment. In 1727 Nader offered his services to Tahmasp II (±1704-1740), heir to the Safavid dynasty. Nader started the reconquest of Persia and drove the Afghans out of Khorasan. The Afghans suffered heavy losses, but before they fled Ashraf massacred an additional 3000 citizens of Esfahan. Most of the fleeing Afghans were soon overtaken and killed by Nader's men, while others died in the desert. Ashraf himself was hunted down and murdered.
By 1729 Nader had freed Persia from the Afghans. Tahmasp II was crowned Shah, although he was little more than a figurehead. While Nader was putting down a revolt in Khorasan, Tahmasp moved against the Turks, losing Georgia and Armenia. Enraged, Nader deposed Tahmasp in 1732 and installed Tahmasp's infant son, Abbas III (1732-1740), on the throne, naming himself regent. Within two years Nader recaptured the lost territory and extended the Empire at the expense of the Turks and the Russians.
Persian invasion of India
In 1738, Nader Shah conquered Kandahar, the last outpost of the Ghilzai Afghans. His thoughts now turned to Mughal India to the south. This once powerful Muslim state was falling apart as the nobles became increasingly disobedient and the Hindu Marathas made inroads on its territory from the south-west. Its ruler Mohammed Shah was powerless to reverse this disintegration. Nader used the pretext of his Afghan enemies taking refuge in India to cross the border and capture Kabul, Ghazni and Lahore. He then advanced deeper into India crossing the river Indus before the end of year. He defeated the Mughal army at the huge Battle of Karnal in February, 1739. After this victory, Nader captured Mohammad Shah and entered with him into Delhi. When a rumour broke out that Nader had been assassinated, some of the Indians attacked and killed Persian troops. Nader reacted by ordering his soldiers to massacre the population and plunder 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 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. 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. 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.
After India
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.
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. Nader accused his son of being behind the assassination attempt in Mazanderan. Reza 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 from India, Nader started to build a Persian navy. With lumber from Mazandaran, he built ships in Bushehr. He also purchased thirty ships in India. He recaptured the island of Bahrain from the Arabs. In 1743 he conquered Oman and its main capital the city of 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, in which the Ottomans agreed to let Nader occupy Najaf.
Nader's Successors
Nader became crueller and crueller as a result of his illness and his desire to extort more and more tax money to pay for his military campaigns. More and more 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 19 June, 1747, at Fathabad 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.
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. Adil Shah was deposed within a year. During the struggle between Adil Shah, his brother Ibrahim Khan and Nader's grandson Shah Rukh almost all provincial governors declared independence, established their own states, and the entire Empire of Nader Shah fell into anarchy. Finally, Karim Khan founded the Zand dynasty and became ruler of Iran by 1760, while Ahmad Shah Durrani had already proclaimed independence in the east, marking the foundation of modern Afghanistan.
Nader was Persia's most gifted military genius and is known as "The Second Alexander" and "The Napoleon of Persia". Although he restored national independence and effectively protected Iran's territorial integrity at a dark moment of the country's history, his obsessive suspicions and jealousies plunged Iran into political turmoil. Little is known about Nader's personal life. His grandiosity, his insatiable desire for more conquests and his egocentric behaviour suggest a narcissistic personality disorder and in his last years he seems to have developed some paranoid tendencies.
List of Afsharid Monarchs
See also
External links
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