149

The Afshārids

1148–1210/1736–96

Persia

Nadr or Nādir was a chieftain of the Afshār, a Türkmen tribe settled in northern Khurasan; it was in this home territory that he later constructed his stronghold and treasury, the Qal‘at-i Nādirī. In this period of Ṣafawid decay, when much of Persia was in the hands of the Ghilzays, the national unity of Persia, which had been built up by the earlier Ṣafawids, seemed likely to disintegrate. It was to be Nādir‘s achievement temporarily to restore the territorial integrity of Persia, albeit at the price of leaving the country financially and economically exhausted. His ascent to power began through service with the ineffective Ṣafawid Shāh Ṭahmāsp II (whence the name which he adopted, ‘slave of Ṭahmāsp’). He began systematically to clear the Afghan invaders from Persia, and when by 1140/1727 this had been achieved, the Shāh rewarded him wth the governorship of Khurasan, Kirman, Sistan and Māzandarān. With such extensive lands under his personal control, Nādir began to act like an independent ruler, now minting his own coins. Turning to external enemies, he drove the Ottomans out of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, and penetrated through the Caucasus as far as Dāghistān. Ṭahmāsp’s conclusion of a treaty with Turkey and Russia unfavourable to Persia’s interests provided Nādir with a pretext to depose him, setting up another Ṣafawid prince as puppet ruler, until in 1148/1736 he was himself proclaimed Shāh. Nādir seems at this point to have sought an end to the ancient Shī‘ī-Sunnī hostility between Persia and Turkey, and he announced the abandonment of Twelver Shī‘īsm as the state religion and the establishment instead of much-attenuated form of Shī‘ism whose spiritual head was to be the Sixth Imām, Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq; in practice, this conciliatory move pleased no-one and did not bring about détente with the Ottomans.

The expense of continual warfare drove Nādir into his brilliantly successful Indian campaign of 1151–2/1738–9, as a result of which the Mughal emperor Muḥammad Shāh (see below, no. 175) had to cede all his provinces north and west of the Indus and to pay an enormous tribute; because of this last, Nādir declared the people of Persia exempt from taxation for three years. An assassination attempt on him in 1154/1741, in which Nādir suspected the complicity of his son Riḍā Qulī, caused a deterioration in his character, so that his policies became more and more cruel and erratic. Rebellions broke out in the provinces against his exactions, and in 1160/1747 a group of Afshār and Qājār Türkmen chiefs finally murdered him. Two of his nephews reigned briefly, and then his blinded grandson Shāh Rukh ruled as a puppet of military commanders in Khurasan, until Agha Muḥammad Qājār (see below, no. 151) extended his power eastwards from northern Persia in 1210/1796 and ended what remained of the authority of the Afshārids.

Lane-Poole, 257–9; Zambaur, 261; Album, 57–8.

EI² ‘Nādir Shāh Afshār’ (J. R. Perry).

Peter Avery, ‘Nādir Shāh and the Afsharid legacy’, in The Cambridge History of Iran. VII. From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic, Cambridge 1991, 3–62.