Nader Shah Afshar (born Nadr Qoli; Persian: نادرشاه افشار; 6 August 1698 or 22 November 1688 – 20 June 1747) was the founder of the Afsharid dynasty of Iran and one of the most powerful rulers in Iranian history, ruling as the emperor of Iran (Persia) from 1736 to 1747, when he was assassinated during a rebellion. He fought numerous campaigns throughout West Asia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and South Asia, emerging victorious from the battles of Herat, Mihmandust, Murche-Khort, Kirkuk, Yeghevārd, Khyber Pass, Karnal, and Kars. Nader belonged to the Turkoman Afshars, one of the seven Qizilbash tribes that helped the Safavid dynasty establish their power in Iran.
Nader rose to power during a period of chaos in Iran after a rebellion by the Hotaki Afghans had overthrown the weak emperor Soltan Hoseyn (r. 1694–1722), while the arch-enemy of the Safavids, the Ottoman Empire, as well as the Russian Empire, had seized Iranian territory for themselves. Nader reunited the Iranian realm and removed the invaders. He became so powerful that he decided to depose the last members of the Safavid dynasty, which had ruled Iran for over 200 years, and declared himself Shah in 1736. His numerous campaigns created a great empire that, at its maximum extent, briefly encompassed all or part of modern-day Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Georgia, India, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Oman, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, the North Caucasus, and the Persian Gulf, but his military spending had a ruinous effect on the Iranian economy.
Nader Shah has been described as "the last great Asiatic military conqueror". He idolized Genghis Khan and Timur, the previous conquerors from Central Asia. He imitated their military prowess and, especially later in his reign, their reputation of ruthlessness. His victories during his campaigns briefly made him West Asia's most powerful sovereign, ruling over what was arguably one of the most powerful empires in the world.
Following his assassination in 1747, his empire quickly disintegrated, and Iran fell into a civil war. His grandson Shahrokh Shah was the last of his dynasty to rule, ultimately being deposed in 1796 by Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, who crowned himself ruler of Qajar Iran the same year.
Background
Nader belonged to the Turkoman Afshar tribe, which was one of the seven tribes of the Qizilbash who helped the Safavid dynasty establish their power in Iran. The Afshar tribe had originally lived in the Turkestan region, but during the 13th century they moved to the Azerbaijan region in northwestern Iran as a result of the expansion of the Mongol Empire.
Nader was from the semi-nomadic Qirqlu clan of the Afshars, which lived in the Khorasan region of northeastern Iran. They had either settled there during the reign of the first Safavid emperor, Ismail I (r. 1501–1524), or had been resettled by Shah Abbas I (r. 1588–1629) to fend off Uzbek attacks. Regardless, the Afshars' migration to Khorasan was already taking place by start of the 16th century.
The Afshar dialect is categorized either as a language/dialect of the Southern Oghuz group or a dialect of the South Azerbaijani language. As he was growing up, he must have swiftly learned Persian, which was the language of the cities and high culture. However, unless he was speaking to someone who spoke only Persian, he always preferred to communicate in Turkic. His knowledge of Arabic is not documented, but it seems doubtful given his lack of interest in literature and theology. Nader is known to have acquired reading and writing skills at some point in his life, probably later on.
Approximately three million people or more were nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralists in Iran in the beginning of the 18th century, accounting for one-third of the country's population. Strong ties of kinship as well as customs of helping each other out with fights and finances kept their tribal groups united. Despite being partially or fully absorbed into the more urbanized Persian culture, many of them nevertheless identified culturally with the Turco-Mongol heritage that had been passed down from the era of Timur and Genghis Khan. The settled population was seen by the semi-nomads and nomads as inferior. Nader was part of this heritage, which the British academic Michael Axworthy calls "paradoxical".
Early life
Nader was born in the fortress of Dastgerd in the northern valleys of Khorasan, a province in the northeast of the Iranian Empire. His father, Emam Qoli, was a herdsman who may also have been a coatmaker. His family lived a nomadic way of life. Nader was a long-waited son in his family.
At the age of 13, Nader lost his father and had to find a way to support himself and his mother. He had no source of income other than the sticks he gathered for firewood, which he transported to the market. Many years later, when he was returning in triumph from his conquest of Delhi, he led the army to his birthplace and made a speech to his generals about his early life of deprivation. He said, "You now see, to what a height it has pleased the Almighty to exalt me; from this you should learn not to despise men of low estate." Nader's early experiences did not, however, make him particularly compassionate toward the poor. Throughout his career, he was only interested in his own advancement. Legend has it that in 1704, when he was about 17, a band of marauding Uzbeks invaded the province of Khorasan, where Nader lived with his mother. They killed many peasants. Nader and his mother were among those who were carried off into slavery. His mother died in captivity. According to another story, Nader managed to convince Turkmens by promising help in the future. Nader returned to the province of Khorasan in 1708.
At the age of 15, he enlisted as a musketeer for a governor. He rose through the ranks and became the governor's right-hand man.
Fall of the Safavid dynasty
Nader grew up during the final years of the Safavid dynasty, which had ruled Iran since 1502. At its peak, under such figures as Abbas the Great, Safavid Iran had been a powerful empire, but by the early 18th century the state was in serious decline, and the reigning shah, Soltan Hoseyn, was a weak ruler. When Soltan Husayn attempted to quell a rebellion by the Ghilzai Afghans in Kandahar, the governor he sent (Gurgin Khan) was killed. Under their leader Mahmud Hotaki, the rebellious Afghans moved westwards against the shah himself, and in 1722 they defeated a force at the Battle of Gulnabad and then besieged the capital, Isfahan. After the Shah failed to escape or to rally a relief force elsewhere, the city was starved into submission and Soltan Husayn abdicated, handing power to Mahmud. In Khorasan, Nader at first submitted to the local Afghan governor of Mashhad, Malek Mahmud, but then rebelled and built up his own small army. Soltan Husayn's son had declared himself Shah Tahmasp II, but found little support and fled to the Qajar tribe, who offered to back him. Meanwhile, Iran's imperial neighboring rivals, the Ottomans and the Russians, took advantage of the chaos in the country to seize and divide territory for themselves. In 1722, Russia, led by Peter the Great and further aided by some of the most notable Caucasian regents of the disintegrating Safavid Empire, such as Vakhtang VI, launched the Russo-Iranian War (1722–1723) in which Russia captured swaths of Iran's territories in the North Caucasus, South Caucasus, as well as in northern mainland Iran. This included mainly, but was not limited to, the losses of Dagestan (including its principal city of Derbent), Baku, Gilan, Mazandaran, and Astrabad. The regions to the west of that, mainly Iranian territories in Georgia, Iranian Azerbaijan, and Armenia, were taken by the Ottomans. The newly gained Russian and Turkish possessions were confirmed and further divided amongst themselves in the Treaty of Constantinople (1724). During the chaos, Nader cut a deal with Mahmud Hotaki to rule Kalat in the north of Iran. However, when Mahmud Hotaki began minting coins in his name and asked for everyone's allegiance, Nader refused.
Fall of the Hotaki dynasty
Tahmasp and the Qajar leader Fath Ali Khan (the ancestor of Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar) contacted Nader and asked him to join their cause and drive the Ghilzai Afghans out of Khorasan. He agreed and thus became a figure of national importance. When Nader discovered that Fath Ali Khan was in treacherous correspondence with Malek Mahmud and revealed this to the shah, Tahmasp executed him and made Nader the chief of his army instead. Nader subsequently took on the title Tahmasp Qoli (Servant of Tahmasp). In late 1726, Nader recaptured Mashhad.
Nader chose not to march directly on Isfahan. First, in May 1729, he defeated the Abdali Afghans near Herat. Many of the Abdali Afghans subsequently joined his army. The new shah of the Ghilzai Afghans, Ashraf, decided to move against Nader but in September 1729, Nader defeated him at the Battle of Damghan and again decisively in November at Murchakhort. Ashraf fled and kidnapped several Safavid princesses, and Nader finally entered Isfahan, handing it over to Tahmasp in December. The citizens' rejoicing was cut short when Nader plundered them to pay his army. Tahmasp made Nader governor over many eastern provinces, including his native Khorasan, and Tahmasp's sister was given in marriage to Nader's son. Nader pursued and defeated Ashraf at Zarghan, with his Kurdish contingent pursuing them further and inflicting devastating losses. Ashraf submitted a peace offer by returning the princesses and the piles of loot he'd plundered from Isfahan during his retreat, but he was later murdered by his own followers.
In 1738 Nader Shah went on to besiege and destroy the last Hotaki seat of power at Kandahar. He built a new city near Kandahar, which he named "Naderabad".
First Ottoman campaign and the reconquest of the Caucasus
In the spring of 1730, Nader attacked Iran's archrival the Ottomans and regained most of the territory lost during the recent chaos. At the same time, the Abdali Afghans rebelled and besieged Mashhad, forcing Nader to suspend his campaign and save his brother, Ebrahim. It took Nader fourteen months to crush this uprising.
Relations between Nader and the Shah had declined as the latter grew jealous of his general's military successes. While Nader was absent in the east, Tahmasp tried to assert himself by launching a foolhardy campaign to recapture Yerevan. He ended up losing all of Nader's recent gains to the Ottomans and signed a treaty ceding Georgia and Armenia in exchange for Tabriz. Nader, furious, saw that the moment had come to remove Tahmasp from power. He denounced the treaty, seeking popular support for a war against the Ottomans. In Isfahan, Nader got Tahmasp drunk then showed him to the courtiers, asking if a man in such a state was fit to rule. In 1732 he forced Tahmasp to abdicate in favour of the Shah's baby son, Abbas III, to whom Nader became regent.
Nader decided, as he continued the 1730–1735 war, that he could win back the territory in Armenia and Georgia by seizing Ottoman Baghdad and then offering it in exchange for the lost provinces, but his plan went badly amiss when his army was routed by the Ottoman general Topal Osman Pasha near the city in 1733, and the 12,000 soldiers he'd left under the commander Mohammad Khan Baloch to resume the siege were turned to flight. This was the only time that he was ever defeated in battle, and it was due to overconfidence which Nader had built through what was a, so far, unblemished military record. Nader decided he needed to regain the initiative as soon as possible to save his position because revolts were already breaking out in Iran. He faced Topal again with a larger force and defeated and killed him. He then besieged Baghdad, as well as Ganja in the northern provinces, achieving an alliance with Russia against the Ottomans. Nader scored a great victory over a superior Ottoman force at Baghavard despite being outnumbered nearly six to one, and by the summer of 1735, Iranian Armenia and Georgia were his again. In March 1735, he signed a treaty with the Russians in Ganja by which the latter agreed to withdraw all of their troops from Iranian territory (those which had not already been ceded back by the 1732 Treaty of Resht), resulting in the reestablishment of Iranian rule over all of the Caucasus and northern mainland Iran.
Shah of Iran
Nader suggested to his closest intimates, after a great hunting party on the Moghan plain (presently split between Azerbaijan and Iran), that he should be proclaimed the new king (shah) in place of the young Abbas III. This small group of Nader's close friends included Tahmasp Khan Jalayer and Hasan-Ali Beg Bestami. The group made no objections, but Hasan-Ali stayed silent. When Nader asked Hasan-Ali why he remained silent, he replied that the best thing for Nader to do would be to assemble to all the most prominent men of the state in order to receive their agreement in "a signed and sealed document of consent". Nader approved of this proposal, and the writers of the chancellery, which included the court historian Mirza Mehdi Khan Astarabadi, were instructed to sending out orders to the military leaders, clergy and nobility of the nation to summon at the Moghan plain. The summonses for the people to attend had gone out in November 1735, and they began arriving in January 1736. That same month, Nader held a qoroltai (a grand meeting in the tradition of Genghis Khan and Timur) on the Moghan plain. The Moghan plain was specifically chosen for its size and "abundance of fodder". Everyone agreed to the proposal of Nader becoming the new king, many—if not most—enthusiastically, the rest fearing Nader's anger if they showed support for the deposed Safavids. Nader was crowned Shah of Iran on 8 March 1736, a date his astrologers had chosen as being especially favorable, in attendance of an "exceptionally large assembly" composed of the nobility and military and religious elite of the nation, as well as the Ottoman ambassador Ali Pasha.