Nader Shah's invasion of India

Nader Shah became the Persian ruler in 1730. His troops captured Esfahan from the Safavid dynasty and founded the Afsharid dynasty in that year. In 1738, Nader Shah conquered Kandahar, the last outpost of the Hotaki dynasty in Afghanistan, he then began to launch raids across the Hindu Kush mountains into Northern India, which, at that time, was under the rule of the Mughal Empire. As he moved into the Mughal territories, he was loyally accompanied by his Georgian subject and future king of eastern Georgia, Erekle II, who led a Georgian contingent as a military commander as part of Nader's force.[3]

The Mughal empire had been weakened by ruinous wars of succession in the three decades following the death of Aurangzeb. The Marathas had captured vast swathes of territory in Central and Northern India, whilst many of the Mughal nobles had asserted their independence and founded small states. The Mughal ruler, Muhammad Shah, proved unable to stop the disintegration of the empire. The defenses in Afghanistan, especially, were weak after tribal uprisings by the Pashtuns on the Northern Frontier. The imperial court administration was corrupt and weak. However, the country was extremely rich and Delhi’s prosperity and prestige was still at a high. Nader Shah, attracted by the country's wealth, sought plunder like so many other foreign invaders before him.[4]

Nader had asked Muhammad Shah to close the Mughal frontiers around Kabul so that the Afghan rebels he was fighting against could not seek refuge in Kabul. Even though the Emperor agreed, he practically took no action. Nader seized upon this as a pretext for war.[5] Together with his Georgian subject Erekle II (Heraclius II), who took part in the expedition as a commander leading a contingent of Georgian troops,[3] he began marching into Mughal territory on May 10, 1738.[6]

The Afsharid occupation led to price increases in the city. The city administrator attempted to fix prices at a lower level and Afsharid troops were sent to the market at Paharganj, Delhi to enforce them. However, the local merchants refused to accept the lower prices and this resulted in violence during which some Afsharid troops were assaulted and killed.

When a rumour spread that Nader had been assassinated by a female guard at the Red Fort, some Indians attacked and killed 3,000 Afsharid troops during the riots that broke out on the night of 21 March.[8] Nader, furious at the killings, retaliated by ordering his soldiers to carry out the notorious qatl-e-aam (qatl = killing, aam = common public, in open) of Delhi.

On the morning of 22 March, the Shah rode out in full armour and took a seat at the Sunehri Masjid of Roshan-ud-dowla near the Kotwali Chabutra in the middle of Chandni Chowk. He then, to the accompaniment of the rolling of drums and the blaring of trumpets, unsheathed his great battle sword in a grand flourish to the great and loud acclaim and wild cheers of the Afsharid troops present. This was the signal to start the onslaught and carnage. Almost immediately, the fully armed Afsharid army of occupation turned their swords and guns on to the unarmed and defenceless civilians in the city. The Afsharid soldiers were given full licence to do as they pleased and promised a share of the wealth as the city was plundered.

Areas of Delhi such as Chandni Chowk and Dariba Kalan, Fatehpuri, Faiz Bazar, Hauz Kazi, Johri Bazar and the Lahori, Ajmeri and Kabuli gates, all of which were densely populated by both Hindus and Muslims, were soon covered with corpses. Muslims, like Hindus, resorted to killing their women, children and themselves rather than submit to the Afsharid soldiers.

In the words of the Tazkira:

"Here and there some opposition was offered, but in most places people were butchered unresistingly. The Persians laid violent hands on everything and everybody. For a long time, streets remained strewn with corpses, as the walks of a garden with dead leaves and flowers. The town was reduced to ashes."[4]

Muhammad Shah was forced to beg for mercy.[9] These horrific events were recorded in contemporary chronicles such as the Tarikh-e-Hindi of Rustam Ali, the Bayan-e-Waqai of Abdul Karim and the Tazkira of Anand Ram Mukhlis.[4]

Finally, after many hours of desperate pleading by the Mughals for mercy, Nader Shah relented and signalled a halt to the bloodshed by sheathing his battle sword once again.

It has been estimated that during the course of six hours in one day, 22 March 1739, approximately 20,000 to 30,000 Indian men, women and children were slaughtered by the Afsharid troops during the massacre in the city.[10] Exact casualty figures are uncertain, as after the massacre, the bodies of the victims were simply buried in mass burial pits or cremated in grand funeral pyres without any proper record being made of the numbers cremated or buried. In addition, some 10,000 women and children were taken slaves, according to a representative of the Dutch East India Company in Delhi.[8]

Tavernier's illustration of the Koh-i-Noor under different angles

The city was sacked for several days. An enormous fine of 20 million rupees was levied on the people of Delhi. Muhammad Shah handed over the keys to the royal treasury, and lost the Peacock Throne, to Nader Shah, which thereafter served as a symbol of Persian imperial might. Amongst a treasure trove of other fabulous jewels, Nader also gained the Koh-i-Noor and Darya-i-Noor ("Mountain of Light" and "Sea of Light," respectively) diamonds; they are now part of the British and Iranian Crown Jewels, respectively. Nader and his Afsharid troops left Delhi in the beginning of May 1739, but before they left, he ceded back all territories to the east of the Indus, which he had overrun, to Muhammad Shah.[11]

The plunder seized from Delhi was so rich that Nader stopped taxation in Persia for a period of three years following his return.[1][12]The governor of Sindh didn't comply with Nader Shah's demands. Nader Shah's victory against the crumbling Mughal Empire in the East meant that he could afford to turn to the West and face the Ottomans. The Ottoman Sultan Mahmud I initiated the Ottoman-Persian War (1743-1746), in which Muhammad Shah closely cooperated with the Ottomans until his death in 1748.[13] Nader's Indian campaign alerted the East India Company to the extreme weakness of the Mughal Empire and the possibility of expanding to fill the power vacuum. Without Nader, "eventual British [rule in India] would have come later and in a different form, perhaps never at all - with important global effects".[14]

Sources

• Michael Axworthy, The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant Hardcover 348 pages (26 July 2006) Publisher: I.B. Tauris Language: English ISBN 1-85043-706-8
• John Clark Marshman (1863). "Nadir Shah". The History of India. Serampore Press. p. 199.
• Jadunath Sarkar, Nader Shah in India 110 Pages (1925) Book from the Archaeological Survey of India Central Archaeological Library, New Delhi

• "Muhammad Shah". The Cambridge History of India. CUP Archive. 358–364.
• Jassa Singh Ahluwalia:The Forgotten Hero of Punjab by Harish Dhillon
• Grant, RG: Battle
• (Nader Shah) Until His Assassination In A.D. 1747. A Literary History of Persia by Edward G. Browne. Publisher T. Fisher Unwin, 1924.