A History of Iran

by Michael Axworthy

  From the battlefield of Karnal, Nader went on to Delhi, where he arrived in March 1739. Shortly after his arrival there, rioting broke out and some Persian soldiers were killed. So far from home, and with the wealth of the Moghul Empire at stake, Nader could not afford to lose control. He ordered a ruthless massacre in which an estimated thirty thousand people died, mostly innocent civilians. Prior to this point, Nader had generally (at least away from the battlefield) achieved his ends without excessive bloodshed. But after Delhi, he may have decided that his previous scruples had become redundant.

  With a characteristic blend of threat and diplomacy, Nader stripped the Moghul emperor of a vast treasure of jewels, gold, and silver, and accepted the gift of all the Moghul territories west of the Indus River. The treasure was worth as much as perhaps 700 million rupees. To put this sum in some kind of context, it has been calculated that the total cost to the French government of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), including subsidies paid to the Austrian government as well as all the costs of the fighting on land and sea, was about 1.8 billion livres tournois (the standard unit of account in prerevolutionary France). This was equivalent to about £90 million sterling at the time—close to the rough estimate of £87.5 million sterling for the value of Nader’s haul from Delhi. Some of the jewels he took away—the largest, most impressive ones, like the Kuh-e Nur, the Darya-ye Nur, and the Taj-e Mah—had a complex and often bloody history of their own in the following decades.

  Nader did not attempt to annex the Moghul Empire outright. His purpose in conquering Delhi had been to secure the cash necessary to continue his wars of conquest in the west, for which the wealth of Persia alone had, by the time of his coronation, begun to prove inadequate.

  Nader’s campaigns are a reminder of the centrality of Persia to events in the region, in ways that have parallels today. A list of some of Nader’s sieges—Baghdad, Basra, Kirkuk, Mosul, Kandahar, Herat, Kabul—has a familiar ring to it after the events of the first years of the twenty-first century. It is worth recalling that Persians were not strangers in any of the lands in which Nader campaigned. Although he and his Safavid predecessors were of Turkic origin and spoke a Turkic language at court, the cultural influence of Persian was such that the language of the court and administration in Delhi and across northern India was Persian, and diplomatic correspondence from the Ottoman court in Istanbul was normally in Persian, too. Persian hegemony from Delhi to Istanbul would, in some ways, have seemed natural to many of the inhabitants of the region, echoing as it did the Persian character of earlier empires and the pervasive influence of Persian literary, religious, and artistic culture.

  Nader’s annexation of Moghul territory west of the Indus, removing the geographical barrier of the Afghan mountains, was one indicator that his regime, had it endured, might have expanded further into India. Other indications include his construction of a fleet in the Persian Gulf, which would have greatly facilitated communications between the different parts of such an empire, and his adoption of a new currency designed to be interchangeable with the rupee. If this had happened—especially if the trade route through to Basra, Baghdad, and beyond had been opened up—and if it had been managed wisely, Nader could have seen a release of trade and economic energy comparable to that under the Abbasids a thousand years earlier. But that was not to happen.

  On his return from India, Nader discovered that his son, Reza Qoli, who had been made viceroy in his absence, had executed the former Safavid shahs Tahmasp and Abbas. Nader’s displeasure at this was increased by his dislike of the magnificent entourage Reza Qoli had built up while Nader had been in India. In response, Nader took away his son’s viceroyship and humiliated him. From this point, their relationship deteriorated, and Nader came to believe that Reza Qoli was plotting to supplant him.

  From India, Nader made a successful campaign in Turkestan. Then he went on to subdue the rebellious Lezges of Daghestan, but there he was unlucky. The Lezges avoided open battle and carried out a guerrilla war of ambush and attacks on supply convoys. Nader’s troops suffered from lack of food, and Nader himself was troubled by illness, probably liver disease caused originally by malaria and exacerbated by heavy drinking. The sickness, which grew worse after his return from India, was accompanied by great rages that became more ungovernable as time went on. While he was in Daghestan in the summer of 1742, he was told that Reza Qoli had instigated an assassination attempt against him. Reza Qoli denied his guilt. But Nader did not believe him and had him blinded to prevent his ever taking the throne.

  Nader’s failure in Daghestan, his illness, and above all his terrible remorse over the blinding of his son brought about a crisis, a kind of breakdown, from which he never recovered. Perhaps because of the poverty and humiliations of his childhood, Nader’s family were of central importance to him, and loyalty within the family had up to that time been unquestioned. It had been one of the fixed points on which he had constructed his regime. Now with that foundation given way, Nader’s actions no longer showed his former energy and drive to succeed, and he underwent a drastic mental and physical decline. Withdrawing from Daghestan without having subdued the Lezges tribes, he called new forces together—according to plans laid months and years before—for another campaign in Ottoman Iraq.

  When they gathered, his army numbered some 375,000 men—larger than the combined forces of Austria and Prussia, the main protagonists in the European theater of the Seven Years’ War when that conflict began thirteen years later.11 This was the most powerful single military force in the world at that time. It was also, in the long term, an insupportable number of troops for a state the size of Persia (no Iranian army would reach that size again until the Iran/Iraq war of 1980–1988). It has been estimated that whereas there were around thirty million people in the Ottoman territories in the eighteenth century, and perhaps one hundred fifty million in the Moghul Empire, Persia’s population was perhaps as low as six million, having fallen from nine million before the Afghan revolt. Over the same period the economy collapsed, as a result of invasion, war, and exactions to pay for war.12

  The army, and the taxation to pay for it, are recurring themes in Nader’s story. Was this army a nomad host, or a modern military force? This points to the wider question of whether Nader’s style of rule looked backward or forward. It is an extreme mixture. Nader repeatedly compared himself with Timur, stressing his Turkic origin and Timurid precedents in many of his public statements. He named his grandson Shahrokh after Timur’s son and successor. At one point he even removed Timur’s tombstone from Samarkand for his own mausoleum, only to return it later (unfortunately, it was broken in half in the process). On several occasions he described himself as the instrument of God’s wrath on a sinful people, after the manner of earlier Asiatic conquerors, and his brutal conduct of government—particularly after his return from India—has as much in common with the actions of a nomad warlord as with those of a modern statesman.

  But he was not in any simple sense a tribal leader, and in many ways he remained an outsider throughout his life. He was not born into the leadership of the Afshar tribe to which he belonged, and some of his most determined enemies throughout his career were fellow Afshars. From the beginning his followers were diverse, including especially Kurds and Jalayir tribesmen. Later he repudiated his Shi‘a heritage, turned Sunni (at least for public consumption), and depended most heavily on his Afghan troops. Like other Persian leaders (as well as Napoleon), he was close to his immediate family and promoted them politically; but in his wider connections he was an opportunist, and the term Afsharid that is applied to him and his dynasty is misleading. The name Nader means “rarity” or “prodigy,” and both are appropriate. He was sui generis, a parvenu.

  Nader used government cleverly, began an important and thorough reform of taxation, and had a strong administrative grip. His religious policy was novel and tolerant in spirit. One should not overstate it, but some contemporaries remarked upon his unusually considerate treatment of
women. In military matters he was wholly modern. He established the beginnings of a navy and it now seems plain that something very like the beginnings of a military revolution, as described in the European context by Geoffrey Parker, was brought about in Persia by Nader Shah. It was under Nader that the majority of troops in the army were equipped with firearms for the first time, necessitating a greater emphasis on drill and training—characteristic of developments that had taken place in Europe in the previous century. Under Nader the army increased greatly in size and cost, and he was forced to make improvements in his capability for siege warfare. He began to reshape state administration to make structures more efficient. These are all elements that have been shown to be typical of the military revolution in Europe.

  If Nader had reigned longer and more wisely, and had passed on his rule to a competent successor, the drive to pay for his successful army could have transformed the Persian state administration and ultimately the economy, as happened in Europe. It could have brought about in Iran a modernizing state capable of resisting colonial intervention in the following century. If that had happened, Nader might today be remembered in the history of Iran and the Middle East as a figure comparable with Peter the Great in Russia: as a ruthless, militaristic reformer who set his country on a new path. In the early 1740s he seemed set for great things—contemporaries held their breath to see whether he could succeed in taking Ottoman Iraq and establishing his supremacy through the Islamic world as a whole. He had already achieved a large part of that task. Unfortunately, Nader’s derangement in the last five years of his life meant that the expense of his military innovations turned Persia into a desert rather than developing the country. His insatiable demands for cash brought about his downfall and the downfall of his dynasty.

  Nader’s troops invaded Ottoman Iraq in 1743 and rapidly overran most of the province, except the major cities. Baghdad and Basra were blockaded. Nader brought up a new array of siege cannon and mortars to bombard Kirkuk, which quickly surrendered, but the defense of Mosul was conducted more resolutely. Nader’s new siege artillery pounded the walls and devastated the interior of the city, but a lot of his men were killed in unsuccessful assaults, and he no longer had the will or patience to sustain a long siege. When he withdrew, he sent peace proposals to the Ottomans. Mosul marked the end of his ambition to subdue the Ottoman sultan and demonstrate his pre-eminence in the Islamic world. It was another important turning point.

  The latest round of forced contributions and requisitioning, to make good the losses in Daghestan and provide for the campaign of 1743, had caused great distress and resentment across Persia. Revolts broke out in Astarabad (led by Mohammad Hasan Khan Qajar, whose son was to found the Qajar dynasty later in the century), Shiraz, and elsewhere. Early in 1744, Nader withdrew to a camp near Hamadan, in order to be closer to the troubles and coordinate action against them. The insurrections were put down with great severity. Shiraz and Astarabad were devastated, and in each place two white towers were erected, studded with niches that held the heads of hundreds of executed men.

  At length Nader realized that the Ottomans were not going to accept his peace proposals—new Ottoman armies were advancing toward his frontiers. Nader’s son Nasrollah defeated one of these forces, while Nader achieved victory over the other—near Yerevan, in the summer of 1745. This was his last great victory, and it was followed by a treaty with the Ottomans in the following year. But by this time, new revolts had broken out, driven by Nader’s oppressive practices: each place he visited was ransacked by his troops and tax collectors, as if they were plundering enemies. His demands for money reached insane levels, and cruel beatings, mutilations, and killings became commonplace. His illness recurred and furthered his mental instability. By the winter of 1746–1747 his crazy demands for money extended even to his inner circle of family and close advisers, and no one could feel safe. His nephew, Ali Qoli, joined a revolt in Sistan and refused to return to obedience. Unlike previous rebels, Ali Qoli and his companions had contacts among Nader’s closest attendants. In June 1747 Nader was assassinated by officers of his own bodyguard near Mashhad. They burst into his tent in the harem while he was sleeping. One of the assassins cut off his arm as he raised his sword to defend himself, and then another sliced off his head.13

  The short-lived nature of Nader’s achievements is one explanation for his not being better known outside Iran, but it is not a sufficient one. With a few exceptions Nader, having excited much interest and writing in Europe among his eighteenth-century contemporaries, was largely ignored in the nineteenth. Why should this have been so?

  Without overstating the case, it seems plausible that it was because Nader’s vigor and his successes fit badly with the crude Victorian view of the Orient as incorrigibly decadent and corrupt, ripe for and in need of colonization. From a purely British perspective, his military successes might then have been thought to detract from the later victories of Clive and Wellington in India, and to have conflicted with the myth of the supposedly inherent superiority of European arms (an important element in the edifice of British imperialism). By the latter part of the twentieth century the Great Men of History—as Carlyle described them—could no longer be regarded with the same hero worship they had enjoyed before, and the oblivion to which Nader had been consigned was perhaps deepened by a general distaste for conquerors.

  But Nader’s historian, Mirza Mahdi Astarabadi, far from showing distaste, celebrated Nader’s victories as a sign of the favor of God—and of God’s will that Nader should reign. In this as well as in other respects, Mirza Mahdi’s account serves as a conduit for Nader’s own attitudes. Writing as Nader’s official historian in Nader’s own lifetime, Mirza Mahdi was never likely to show any radical independence of thought. An independent observer who met him described him as “wise, humble, polite, attentive, and respectable. . . .” His history is painstakingly accurate about dates and places, with only occasional lapses. Having accompanied Nader on his campaigns from the earliest days, he was in an almost unique position to know the facts of what happened, but he tended to put a favorable gloss on events. On occasion he even omitted mention of actions that would have reflected badly on Nader.

  By far the greatest single omission in Mirza Mahdi’s narrative was his failure to include the blinding of Reza Qoli Mirza in 1742. It is generally agreed that Mirza Mahdi’s history was for the most part written as a chronicle while Nader was alive. But some years later he added a section dealing with the last months of Nader’s life, and the aftermath of his assassination. In this section the criticism he had been forced to suppress in Nader’s lifetime flooded out. He described how Nader’s cruelties, instead of calming him, only made him more frenzied; and how many of his people were driven by his oppression to abandon their houses and towns and take to the deserts and mountains, or to emigrate. The words that Mirza Mahdi used to introduce this last section of his history serve well to summarize Nader’s career. He wrote,

  From the beginning of Nader Shah’s reign until his return from Khwarezm and his march into Daghestan, he was entirely occupied with the care of his empire and the administration of justice, in such a manner that the people of Iran would have given their lives for his preservation; but after this time he changed his conduct entirely. At the instigation of some hostile spirit, this unhappy monarch listened to ill-intentioned spies, and had the eyes of Reza Qoli, the best and the dearest of his sons, torn out. Remorse quickly followed this rash cruelty, and Nader Shah became like a madman. The reports of bad news that he received in succession thereafter of troubles in various parts of his dominion increased his rage.14

  NEW MAPS OF HELL

  The story of the decades after Nader’s death is one of chaos, destruction, violence, and misery. Anyone looking to restore their faith in the innate goodness of human nature would do well to skip the next few pages. After Nader’s assassination his nephew Ali Qoli made himself shah, renamed himself Adel Shah (which means The Just Shah—a misnomer), and sent tro
ops to Nader’s stronghold at Kalat-e Naderi in Khorasan. There they murdered all but one of Nader’s sons and grandsons, and even cut open the bellies of pregnant women in the harem to finish off heirs as yet unborn.

  The army Nader had assembled, within which he had encouraged competition between commanders and ethnic groups, could not hold together once he was gone. Like that of Alexander after his death, the army split, following charismatic generals. The commander of the Afghans, Ahmad Khan Abdali—whom Nader had released from prison in Kandahar in 1738—fought Nader’s assassins in the camp and then left for home. Along the way he and his men captured a quantity of treasure, including the fabulous Kuh-e Nur diamond that Nader had taken from Delhi. On his arrival in Kandahar, Ahmad was elected to be the first shah of the Durrani dynasty, founding a state based on Kandahar, Herat, and Kabul that was to become modern Afghanistan. In this sense one could say that Afghanistan was founded in the muster lists of Nader Shah. Another of Nader’s commanders, the Georgian Erekle, who had accompanied him to Delhi, went home and established an independent kingdom in Georgia. Most of the other ethnic and tribal groups Nader had assembled in Khorasan returned home also, including the small Zand tribe, originally from Lorestan (though perhaps ultimately of Kurdish origin), under one of their leaders, Karim Khan, and the Bakhtiari, under Ali Mardan Khan.

  Adel Shah, who was unable to maintain control in an impoverished country swarming with unemployed soldiers, was deposed after little more than a year by his brother, Ebrahim. Other rulers followed, only to be deposed in turn: Nader’s surviving grandson, Shahrokh; then a Safavid descendant of Shah Soleiman; then Shahrokh again (though he had been blinded in the interim). Shahrokh remained in place from 1750 until 1796, seemingly with the consent and even the protection of Ahmad Shah Durrani, who respected him as the descendant of Nader. But from the early 1750s the regime in Mashhad could exert little influence beyond Khorasan.15