Nadir Shah: AD 1736-1747
Nadir Shah, in a reign of eleven years, devotes himself to conquest with the single-minded determination of Timur, the last great conqueror to sweep through these regions.
First, after a long siege in 1736, he recovers Kandahar - the stronghold of the Afghan chieftains who have until recently been in possession of Isfahan. With Afghanistan safely back under imperial control, Nadir Shah is next tempted further east (like Timur before him) into the fabulously wealthy empire of India. The Moghul dynasty, possessing probably a greater number of precious stones than any other ruling family in the world, is itself in a feeble state. A visit to Delhi is irresistible - as is Nadir Shah himself.
In December 1738 Nadir Shah crosses the Indus at Attock. Two months later he defeats the army of the Moghul emperor, Mohammed Shah. In March he enters Delhi. The conqueror has iron control over his troops and at first the city is calm. It is broken when an argument between citizens and some Persian soldiers escalates into a riot in which 900 Persians are killed. Even now Nadir Shah forbids reprisals until he has inspected the scene. But when he rides through the city, stones are thrown at him. Someone fires a musket which kills an officer close to the shah.
In reprisal he orders a massacre. The killing lasts for a day. The number of the dead is more than 30,000.
Amazingly, when the Moghul emperor begs for mercy for his people, the Persian conqueror is able to grant it. The killing stops, for the collection of Delhi's valuables to begin.
Untold wealth travels west with the Persians. The booty includes the two most spectacular possessions of the Moghul emperors - the Peacock Throne, commissioned by Shah Jahan, and the Koh-i-Nur diamond. Nadir Shah is able to send a decree home from Delhi remitting all taxes in Persia for three years. In addition to the jewels and the gold, he takes with him 1000 elephants, 100 masons and 200 carpenters. The parallel with the visit of Timur, 341 years previously, is almost exact.
But Timur was at least creating a capital city at Samarkand. Nadir Shah has little interest in any activity other than conquest. He takes Bukhara in 1740 and continues to campaign (though with diminishing success and increasing ferocity) until his death in 1747, stabbed in his tent by an assassin.
Nadir Shah's achievement has been to reassemble by conquest the Persian empire. After his death it rapidly falls apart again. The eastern part now begins its separate existence as Afghanistan. The west enjoys a rare period of peace under a leader of the Zand tribe, Karim Khan, who rules from 1757 to 1794 with his capital at Shiraz. He is followed by the last of Persia's lengthy dynasties, the Qajars.
Read more:
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?ParagraphID=hin#653#ixzz0nSGtJOdP
