Empire: World History - 117. Nader Shah: The Sword of Persia

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

Nader Shah was not born to rule. He was poor, the son of a shepherd in a semi-nomadic tribe, and had no connection to the throne. But he was physically impressive; he stood over six feet tall, had dark piercing eyes, and a voice so loud that it is said to have caused his enemies to flee. He also innately understood warfare and it was in the military where he started to make a name for himself. Step-by-step, this poor shepherd from Khorasan accumulated power and influence. Before long he overthrew the last of the Safavids and ruled over all of Persia, but he did not stop there. He went on to push back the Ottomans, win many victories in Central Asia, and, most notoriously, sack Delhi, carting off the Peacock Throne, the Koh-i-Noor and eight thousand wagons of bejeweled loot. Listen as William and Anita discuss the life of Nader Shah, dubbed by some as the Napoleon of Persia. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. In spite of his humble birth, he seemed born for the throne. Nature had given him all the great qualities that make a hero, and even some of those that make a great. king. His beard, dyed black, was in stark contrast to his hair which had gone completely white. His natural constitution was strong and robust of tall stature. His complexion was sombre and weather-beaten,

with a longish face, an aquiline nose, and a well-shaped mouth, but with a lower lip, slightly jutting out. He had small piercing eyes, with a sharp and penetrating stare. His voice was rough and loud, though he managed to soften it on occasion as self-interest or caprice demanded. He had no fixed abode. His court was his military camp. His palace was a tent. His throne was placed in the middle of his weapons, and his closest confidence were his bravest warriors. Intrepid in combat, he pushed bravery to the limits of rashness and was always to be found in the midst of danger among his braves as long as the action lasted. And yet, so did avarice, and his unheard-of cruelties,

soon wearied his own people, and the excesses and horrors to which his violent and barbarous character led him, made Persia weep and bleed. He was at once admired, feared and execrated. Hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnan. And me, William Durimple. Well, who sounded a little bit like you're doing an audition for a major theatrical production in the Western. It's this kind of some kind of itch that you wanted to scratch for a while, because that was really,

that was a very powerfully delivered monologue there, young man. Very good. So that was the wonderful Per Bazin. And I discovered these letters by this French Jesuit, which never been published in English. They're still only in the original Jesuit magazine, which first published them in the 1730s. What was the front cover of Jesuit magazine? Now my mind's going all over the place. Carry on. Yes.

It's only found in the British Library. I managed to get out these volumes. And this Jesuit had originally gone as a missionary to Persia in the 1720s ended up because he had some medical training as the personal doctor and physician of Nader Shah. Who is the subject of this podcast today? And that gorgeous translation is my wonderful much-mistfriend, Bruce Wunel, who loved and dived deep into this subject and produced these wonderful translations. We're talking about Naldei Shah, who is the subject of that,

that very dramatic, beautifully delivered monologue from a learned friend over there, described as, by some, as the Persian Napoleon, although really it would be better to call Napoleon, who came a century later as the European nuns. Shah because Napoleon admired him. And, you know, we've done a little bit of dabbling into Nathashar together, haven't we, when we did the Coen-Aul book. Again, the first thing that brought us together. We had great fun doing this. Yes. I mean, yes, we, our eyes looked across a crowded warlord. The rest is history. It was that black beard and white shock of her that brought

us together. Well, yes, the black beard and the piercing eyes will come up quite a lot in this podcast, this King of Kings who had actually, you know how we love to talk about an origin story, but he did have a very, very modest origin story. And some think that that's why Napoleon kind of fell head over heels for him, because like Nathashar, Napoleon also did not have an illustrious beginning in life. He wasn't a blue blood either. And yet he was a man with dreams of conquering the world. We'll have more of that in a little while. In some ways, like the man we were dealing with last week, Timor, who, as we know, started off. as a sheepstealer. Yeah. So look, this is the story today, Nathosha's story, is the story of a

self-made man who overcame extraordinary odds in the 18th century. And this is at a time when Persia is facing enemies on all sides. And the leadership is disintegrating. Nobody's listening to anybody. There is violent civil strife. And here is a boy, Nader, who comes from nothing and yet is hailed as the man who saved Persia from destruction and brought it back from the brink. We should actually just maybe say at this point what we have said before, but it's worth repeating that Persia, as a political unit, had almost completely disappeared for 400 years, that after the Arab conquests, Persia was just absorbed into the first Umayyad and the Abbasid caliphates, was just a region in a vast, vast, global Islamic empire that stretched from Gibraltar,

or even beyond to Al-Andalus, right through to Sindh and the industry. river. And it's only at the time of Ferdowsy that you begin to get the revival of Persia as a courtly language. And then only with the Safavids who we discussed last episode that Persia, for the first time, gets reunited in some sort of shape comparable to its Sasanian and a Kamanid past. And you have a consciously Persian, ethnically Persian ruler, speaking Persian as the centre of an empire which reflects in some way the former boundaries of ancient Persia. And the Safavids have built this wonderful empire, which stretches from the borders of the Ottomans to the borders of the Mughals.

And it looks during the childhood of Nardashah as if all that is falling apart again. Well, that's because the walls are closing in. And also because after you've had the great Safavid Renaissance, if you like, you have a number of unworthy successes to that sort of beginning, that pushback and revival, who have fritted it all away, who have become less interested in governing, less interested in the welfare of their people, less interested in how much is in the coffers, as long as there's enough for their own pleasures. And so the place is looking as if it may be crushed. Another Shah is right in the midst of this. He's born in 1688 in Dastagad, as a village in Khorasan in present day, Iran.

I mean, Khorasan, I think it's good to describe. It's sort of northeastern Iran where Afghanistan and Iran kiss, isn't it? That's where we're talking about. And it goes on into, it defies that modern boundary because Khorasan included quite a lot of modern Afghanistan and particularly Herat, which we talked about in the earlier issues. And which we'll talk about again, because Herat figures here too. Which we'll talk about again, which was this extraordinary centre of civilisation at this period in history. And this place that today feels so incredibly remote was a place of,

of huge learning of centre of architecture, the arts. But neither didn't have the privilege of enjoying any of these spoils because he is born in a poor, dirt, poor family. His family with people are a semi-nomadic tribe who've settled in the region. The Afshahs. Yeah, the Afshars. So, I'm Turkmen in origin. And one of the seven tribes of the Kisselbush, you know, the red caps,

the Kisselbukes that we've talked about in previous episodes, who helped the Safavid dynasty establish their power in Iran. But even though, you know, he comes from this line of people who are very important in Persian history, his family is not that important. They are forced back to the land and the land is not kind to them. And there are two divergent stories about his childhood. In one version, his dad is a shepherd. And in another, he makes fur hats. As I suppose the two could both be true.

You could make fur hats and be a shepherd. The two are not mutually exclusive. You've got time on your hands. I mean, I think shepherding is quite full time, full on. As a goat herd, I can thoroughly second that thought. But the hand-to-mouth existence of living on the land at that time. And, you know, the sources that I've been looking at do place him in a nomadic herding family. They have to take the livestock, you know, miles away to graze.

And he's doing this when he's just a little boy. You know, imagine this sort of skinny, scabby-need child having to take on the responsibility of many animals. And he has to take them to greener pastures. and when he does, you know, there's always the threat of banditry, not just animals, not just, you know, sort of predatory animals who might come and pick off your herd. But also, you know, there are Uzbek tribes that are rampaging around at this time. And Nader has got to get tough very early. And one thing that you sort of get to know very quickly about Naila Shire is that he never

try to conceal his poverty, whereas some people try to go back in time and rewrite the blood that runs in their veins and reprint their DNA. He never does that. He had a personal historian. You must have come across him. Maddie Mirza, yeah. Maddie Mirza, who said about him, the sword takes its merit from the natural strength of its temper,

not from the mine from which the iron was taken. Lovely. I love that. Yeah, he's made of dirt and stuff, but it doesn't matter. Actually, I just run through a few of the stories because there are lots of bullshit stories which flow around after a great man has died. We love a good bullshit story on this pod. So there were stories of him.

fighting with lions, panthers and bears, oh my. Another one has neither playing with other children and immediately calling himself the king of this band of children and letting other children rule smaller parts of this sort of imaginary kingdom that he makes in this rugged fields that he has. You kind of know this kind of story just isn't true? Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, if I wasn't there, I don't know, it sounds very suss and it sounds very familiar to other stories. I mean, when I wrote the Utham Singh story, he was also fighting leopids and lions and bears oh my but the one thing that did sort of stand out from this was this story that he used to make the children fight each other he used to make them into prince

that does sound right that sounds about right doesn't it and whoever won he would give them his own clothes as prizes and then i've read somewhere that he would have to run home naked often much to his mother's irritation and as somebody who's frequently replacing socks after PE I can only sympathise let's talk about his appearance for a bit because um that great imposing figure. He's the man who thinks every photograph or image taken of him is him posing for a passport photo. He never smiles. He's always very stern. He's very glaring. But imagine those eyes in the head of it, a young boy, because that's what some of the early historians talk about that. These eyes are piercing. Piercing black eyes and that piercing voice over and ever again, you hear that, yeah.

They bang upon about his voice all the time, that he has this voice that carries over great distances, that people cannot resist, they have to obey. But in the end, you know, as William's first quote suggests, you know, there's a strapping man who appears. They say he was over six feet tall, which is really very unusual for the day. And overwhelmingly austere, as you say, if you think of the other rulers of the time,

you think of the pictures of the early muggles like Humayon and Babu, or the pictures of the Safavid shahs with their wonderful fluffy moustache. is looking like rather like they come out of the Battle of Britain and should be flying in the cockpit of a spitfire. Nadia looked more like a monk and there's a famous portrait which I got once to an exhibition I curated in New York and saw in the flesh for the first time. And it's done by one of the painters that he actually kidnapped from Delhi and brought back to Central Asia. And it's

about six foot tall. And he's in sort of just brown, fast in. He looks as much like a monk or a a friar than he does a warlord. And he's this grim character. He's, he's, he's, is deeply austere, deeply grim and very serious. You know, there were not many jokes in the court of Nade Shah. No, and maybe looking at his origin story, you can understand why, because, you know, he is living this terribly difficult life, but, you know, happy to a point, because his father adores him. He has a younger brother, but, you know, the chroniclers say Nader was the out-and-out favorite. Now again, you know, they may be back projecting. But he was love. He wasn't educated, practically illiterate, but really very, very good on horseback, very good with a spear.

This life of subsistence, though, what it meant for another in his childhood was that, you know, you lose some of your flock, you have a bad winter. This is the difference between, you know, eating and not eating. So that first imprint of his life is one of being tough and one of hardship. And as you say, this obsession with war, this seems to be a big deal in his life from the beginning. There's a lovely story that he comes across an Imam who's describing to him the qualities of heaven. And Nada asks, would there be any wars in heaven? Would it be able to fight? And the Imam says, no, no, is only peace.

The delights of heaven do not include warfare. To which Nada replies, no war in paradise. How can there be any delights then? Yeah. So this is a do-do who likes a punch-up, right, from the start. So let's just, I mean, let's remind everybody of what this world is and the Safavids, what's happened to the Safavids. since, you know, the time of Shah Ismail. As Barnaby Rogerson wonderfully described, Persia is recovering from Timor.

And in the northwest, in Tabriz, in the hills above Tabriz, this extreme Sufi sect, who are strongly allied with Shiism, emerges from the mountains with this very charismatic character, Shah Ismail, who is sort of messianic and believes that he is the, the massar. the Mardi to come. And his followers are both warriors and holy men. And this charisma that he exudes is sort of partly that of a warrior leader, partly that of a religious leader. And using this charisma, he sweeps through Persia and creates this great empire initially centered on Tabriz, but which moves to Isfahan. And in our last episode, we had that wonderful description of the golden age of Misfahan under the Safavids. This is the setting to the beginning of this story.

Although, I mean, you know, you still have the things that those great rulers left behind, but now the person who has taken the helm is a man called Shah Hussein. And he has this brilliant nickname, Yakhshidir, which is the Persian for Let It Be, because everything, his advisors, he surrounds himself with this network of spies and eunuchs and basically hangers on. And whatever they present to him, saying, I think this is a lot of. be a really good idea, Shah. He says, let it be. He agrees with anybody who flatters him. He is a bad ruler. He is not a good ruler. He loves pleasure. He builds up the harem. He concentrates on what is being banqueted on. And, you know, he has no interest in his people.

And I have to say, it's one of the great features of Persian history, this pursuit of pleasure. You see it in the Caymanids. You see it in the Sasanians with their gorgeous. plates with pictures of feasts and hunting. And they are one of the great pleasure-loving peoples of history. And yet this is not the style of Naderas, we'll see. No, it isn't. You know, this man is in charge. Neither's life, while this man is living it up in his capital,

neither's life is getting a lot harder because at the age of 13, his father, who loves him very much, dies. So now it's up to Nother, the oldest son, to find a way to support his mother and his family. And, you know, there are sources that say he couldn't do the herding on his own, so he turns to gathering sticks for firewood, which he takes to market. Years later, when he returns in triumph, from the sack of Delhi, which we're going to come onto in a moment, he goes back, he takes his army back to his birthplace, and he makes his speech to his generals, which gives you some idea of his own idea of his early life of privation. He says, you now see to what height it has pleased the Almighty to exalt me, from hence, and waving on this sort of, you know, desolate place,

learn not to despise men of low estate. Again, very good quote that, lovely. Isn't it a great quote? It's great quote. So, you know, he's sort of struggling away. But at the age of 15, his fortunes change because, you know, sticks clearly aren't enough. They're not going to feed you. So he enrolls as a musketeer for the governor of Khorasan, who by all accounts,

is a terrifying, bellowing, very scary man. You know, he sort of assembles this militia. of nobly need teen boys who are going to defend Khorasan. And this is where, for the first time, Nader is exposed to a gun. And it completely enthralls him. Because until this point, we've talked about the Persians on horseback, bow and arrow, and the lance. These are the things which are chivalrous fighting. From top to bottom, this is the way the Persians fight.

The Ottomans, they've known about firearms for some time, which may explain why they're doing so well. pressing in on Persia's borders. If you remember in our lovely episode on the fall of Constantinople, the Ottoman's right back at the time of Mehmet the Conquer, bring in this Hungarian dude called Orban. And Orban, maybe or maybe not any relation of the current... Victor. Exactly.

He builds the super weapon, which smashes down the great Theodosian walls of Constantinople. I remember that episode so well, yeah. And after that, Guns become a big part of Ottoman warfare. And both the Mughals and the Safavids, who are the two other great warrior nations of the same period, are much slower to take up this thing. And the Safavids really do not have a major artillery. So Narda's interest in artillery is a new and striking thing. It's unusual. It makes him an outlier. And also he has to thank the governor of Khorasan for this, because he provides, you know, his young recruits, his young slightly useless

recruits with a musket, which is the old-fashioned thing where you had dry powder in a pouch that was covered in Greece and you rip the paper and you pour it in and then you put in your ball of metal and it's cumbersome, it's slow, but it is devastating in you. And it's also considered by the old swordsmen and the old archers as somehow cheating. Oh, lusch. Yeah, it's not gentlemen's, no, it's a scoundrel's weapon. And that remains true in Mughal India. So you have the Ottomans who get the hang of this early on and go for it. And the Safavids don't and the Mughals don't. And the Mughals belatedly bring in European gunners. And there's a wonderful description of an entire suburb of Delhi called Ferengipura to the

north of Shahjahabad at this period. The area of the foreigners. And they're all artillerymen. And we have these sort of characters, these sort of chances and so on, like Nicola Manucci, who's this very dodgy Venetian, who tries his hand to anything. And sometimes he pretends he's a kind of Faith Heller, sometimes he pretends he's a holy man. And at one point, during the Civil War, he tells them all he's a great expert in artillery. And this is what the Mughals expect Europeans to do. So he's recruited into Arang Zeb's artillery at one point. Well, I mean, neither is not a European, but he has now seen and admired and loved the strength that a little man can have with a gun. And again, you know, you sort of reflect that on his background and how, you know, if you are outnumbered,

a gun can help. And he doesn't have the snobbery of the staff of a elite who would look down on this and show off their archery. No, but more importantly, he's good. You know, he's a really fast study. So he rises through the ranks so that this governor, of Khorasan, notices him. And, you know, by all accounts, he's a withering fellow who makes everybody's life hell. But he notices Nader and he allows him to rise through the ranks. And he's so impressed, he marries his daughter off to Nathar.

So, you know, things are starting to look up for Nathasham. Meanwhile, things are going to shit in Persia. Right, to Persia. And the guys who come now and invade Iran are the Gilzai tribe, who we last met on the retreat from Kabul in 1842. Do you remember in our great game episodes when the British are trying to get out of Afghanistan, having foolishly tried to take it in the middle of winter? And the people who ambush them and cut them up in the passes, the Kudkabul Pass and so on are the same tribe, the Gilzai. And the Gilzai are like Nader. They're herders and nomads.

But they're Afghans. I mean, they're very much Afghans. They would identify themselves Afghans. Very much Afghans. But dirt poor, nomadic Afghans. And these guys would have been exactly the sort of people that the Tophs, Safavid Toff sitting in the glories of Isfahan would have looked down their nose very, very obliquely at.

Yeah. That would have been one of the options. But what they actually end up doing is not looking at them at all. So what this, you know, Char Let It Be does, Shah Hussein, he just withdraws into his palace. He doesn't want to hear what the Gilzai's are doing and he doesn't want to meet the Gilzai's force on force head on. He doesn't have the right people advising him. So the Gilzai just make, hey, they're led by a man called Mahmoud at the time, who advances on Isfahan. 1719, they start, 1722 they get to Isfahan.

Yeah, he's stripping local leaders of all of their wealth. There is a horrible siege. And the Safavids have to surrender the city of Isfahan. They're great capital, the most beautiful place in the world, the place of high fashion, as we heard last episode of delicious rice dishes and gorgeous squares and polo matches, all this sort of snobby stuff. And a bunch of herders, the Gilzai from Afghanistan, take the city in October 1722. And they humiliate, Char Let It Be, Shah Hussein.

They make him hand over all his symbols of royalty. They appoint themselves to all the positions of power. He is utterly reduced to nothing. And he just fades away. He dies. Now, you know, the death of Shah Hussein also signals just the most horrific time for Persians in the greater realm. Our friends, the Russians turn up at this point, don't they? Yeah.

So you've got, you know, sort of Peter the Great, who's, yeah, flexing on one side. You've got the Ottomans who never ceased to flex advancing into the Caucasus. And the whole thing is just miserable. And particularly nasty for the persons who now having converted to Sheism are regarded as just ripe for enslavement by the Ottoman armies. So the Ottomans don't just slaughter these guys. If they capture them, they immediately turn them into slaves and deport them to the furthest ends of the empire. But Shah Mahmoud's going to meet his comeuppance shortly because he allows or does not stop the son of Shah useless. this is a man called Tamasp from escaping. And he is now the, you know, the Safavid air. And as we've

said in previous episodes, there is something very important about being of the Safavid bloodline. You know, it is a trace back to the prophet. It is the bedrock of Shiaism. But Tamasp manages to get away. They're after him. They're trying to find him. They're trying to hunt him down. So this is the kind of turmoil that is going on within the realm. So this is the point to which the Safavid Empire and this reformed Persian world reaches its lowest point. There are the Ottomans nibbling away on one side, the Russians charging through the Caucasus and attacking Georgia, and the Gilzai, even the humble Gilzai, have seized Isfahan, half the world. And this is probably a good place to take a break before we plot Nard Dershaar's rise to power. Welcome back. So just before the break, we were giving you this picture of a place that is disintegrating, a place that is once again being driven into what feels like a civil war where new rulers are persecuting old inhabitants and it's all miserable. And this is where Nader in Khorasan is learning how to use his power and his influence. So as you remember, maybe he married the governor's daughter in Khorasan. And it puts him in a really good position in a tiny little kingdom, if you like, to start learning about rule. And he rules with terror.

Even back then, there are accounts that this is a man who has people flogged frequently. But he's also from the beginning, someone that really takes his army craft, his military, the art of war very, very seriously. He drills his infantry daily on the European model. He imposes this on his troops. And there's a Greek traveller, Basilius Vatsatsatsis, that observes, they would attack from various positions, and they would do wheels and counterwheels and close up formation and charges and disperse formations and then close up again on the same spot. And this is very

much, this infantry warfare is exactly what Frederick the Great is doing in Prussia. It's what the French and the very early East India company are introducing to the south of India. And you're about to have the first of the carnatic wars breaking out. Sinada's absolutely on the money. He's right up there, although he's stuck in the Central Asia. But is it likely that he's doing this through instinct, William, because, you know, I can't imagine, you know, the illiterate shepherd boy sitting down and reading great tombs of military strategy from Europe? No, but I'm quite sure that there were sufficient Europeans in Persia

with their new techniques of musketry and so on, and working already on the fringes of the Safavids. One of the things that's very clear about Nanda is that he understands how to use Europeans. and he does use European gunners. Later, he will. Yeah, I mean, at the moment, he's still, you know, we're still talking about in his early 20s. And what he has coming from nowhere is this instinct.

He's very meritocratic and innovative, and he's not stuck in convention. No, I mean, so, you know, whereas with the Safavid court, if your uncle was somebody important, you'd sort of end up commanding a legion or a battalion. But, you know, he just finds the best fighter, and he promotes them. And he says, right, you've got 100 men,

you've got 50 men, you now have to draw them. And he builds a professional army, which exists to fight. And so, you know, one of the things that he does is he mobilises them constantly, rather than, you know, you've got a call-up period and then you have your time away. Furlough, no, they're always, always on manoeuvres. They're always doing something. And he's always finding places that they can go into so that they can be rewarded with the money and the loot. But he's also no full politically.

And he realizes that the most valuable ally he can have is the young Prince Tamasp. And so quite early on, by autumn 1726, I think, he teams up with Tamask, who's declared himself now Tamas II. And together they have a bid to take on Coruscant. But there is a problem because Michael Axway, the historian, says he's an ineffectual, lazy, vindictive alcoholic. Tamasp is a jealous and suspicious and inferior, fighter to Nader. And that gives him the biggest chip on his shoulder when it comes to Nader, a man that he needs, but also despises because he's just better. You know, he's a better fighter and a better leader. He's already becoming quite unstable, Thomas, when Nader decides

to support his claim. You know, he's an alcoholic. There's a wonderful story you told me about the Russian emissary at court. Tell us that story. Oh, go on, you tell it. I'm glad you like that, story. I love that story. Can you tell it. So the Russian ambassador, This is Peter the Great's ambassador, and he's in quite a tricky position because Peter the Great's been nibbling away, rather than nibbling, gobbling up great chunks of the Caucasus, as we heard in our Russian episodes. It's all beginning to fit together this jigsaw of different empires. And anyway, Shatamask learns that the Russian Emiris has got a bottle of Chikir, which is a sort of Georgian spirit, sort of somewhere between cognac and vodka, and threatens to behead every Russian in the party if he's not given the bottle. that's how to do diplomacy. Yeah.

I mean, you just imagine this man of such a high bank going, give it to me. Give it to me now. I don't know that feeling though. They'd have to eat when you want to drink. Soon after, poor Shatamask, weather or not, because of drinking too much Shakir, falls off his horse into a ditch and becomes covered in mud,

which is also blamed on their mystery, before then also blaming him for the loss of his kingdom. So things are going downhill for Shatamask, but it's quite clear that the rising man. is Nader. Although he's just a shepherd's son, this is his moment. And he pushes back the Gilesai and takes back the capital of Corazan. And Nader is given this title, slave of Tamas, which sounds like a terrible thing to be, but actually it was the most honored position to be, you know, you are the slave, you are the faithful servant of the king. This is rather like

social media humble bragging. When you say I'm humbled by something, when actually you're quite smart about it. Being slave of the king is slightly to say that you're his chief general. It's kind of an inverted honour. And there's this old tradition has been known in Islamic kingdoms of the gulam, the slave warrior, who's often the prime minister, who often rises to be the main man in court. So this is very much Nader. This is his moment. He's coming up now. And I mean, it could have been okay. It could have been okay if Tamas wasn't such a small-minded get. But, you know, he is so deeply threatened. He sees Nader as

being too successful as a leader, too admired by his people. So he starts denouncing him as a traitor and starts sort of spreading, you know, through his unix and his network of useless is. Yeah. And now there's not having it. I mean, if you think of the

stern-eyed, loud, voiced, black-bearded man, he's not going to have this. So he turns on Tamas and he confiscates possessions, the possessions of his minister, he cuts off their supply he effectively wages war on his king. His own boss. But what he does do, William, is, you know, he takes everything from Tom Ashton.

He makes it very, very clear that, you know what, you cross me, you're not in charge anymore, I'm in charge, but he doesn't take the title. He leaves him as Shah, which itself is interesting. And we've seen precedence of that as well in history, haven't we? It's basically a military coup. This is what we would call in modern terms, the military coup. And the leader of the army is taking the completely useless, but nonetheless, elevated figure of Thomas, who's from the royal line. And now he's reducing him to being a puppet.

And interestingly, exactly the same time as this is going on, you have the same thing going on in Delhi. The moguls are being reduced to ciphers. And in the 1710s and 1720s, you have a whole series of Mughals who are basically not allowed out of their palace and a series of viziers who are the real controlling power in the land. In my book, the anarchy, we have the young Shah Alam, who's this wonderful gallant poet prince, who has to fight his way out of Delhi because the Vizio is planning to have him assassinated, exactly at this moment. So, parallel lives.

But Nader is a far more powerful, far more ruthless and far more effective character than any of the moguls of this period. And he continues to push back against the enemies. I mean, notionally in Thomas's name, although Tomas is really not happy. He's sort of tried to maneuver. He's tried to plot. He's tried to send forces against Nader's faithful in Khorasan, and Nathar just stumps on him with very heavy boots. One night, there's a story that Thomas realizes, you know, how wretched his position is, the wretched king. So he tries to run away, but he's caught, and he tries to stab himself to death, but he's stopped, and Nader wants him alive but produced.

But, you know, Nader carries on. He takes her up. He seems unstoppable. But then, you know, he starts to be noticed, and the pushback comes. And we should say at this point that NADA has got it just invented a brand new technology, which will serve him very well in the years to come. And this is a sort of camel-mounted artillery. The camels are taught to kneel down and reveal a small cannon on their back. It's the, you know, the gumpowder empire equivalent of the tanks in the early 20th century. And I've seen one of these.

They adapt to them also for horses. They have them in the National Museum in Delhi. and they're mounted jazils. And they're like very small cannon, but entirely mobile. And you can gallop them around the battlefield and surprise people from unexpected directions. So it paid me a picture because I've only read about them. So do they hang on the side of the hump or on top of their hump? So I've seen a horse-borne one, but it's the same principle.

It's basically got a sort of like a saddle. But rather than mounting a man on top of the saddle, you mount the gun. and it's a big, heavy, wooden contraption with a small cannon attached to it. And what is it of fire? What are balls of, what kind of thing comes out of it? Yes, large, large, two inch maybe small cannon balls. So something in between the bore of a musket and a full cannon. But very, very effective if it's being moved rapidly around a battle at speed. And camels can gallop pretty fast.

We had one episode where they were set on fire and they galloped very fast and devastated an army. I mean, but look, this one, I mean, there was one. account of this, the use of this, that he is able to cut down his enemies like cucumbers, it said. So you can just imagine, that's a very visceral description of what he manages to do. And as you say, what's so interesting about this is that it is an adaptation of the latest European technology. It's not just an imitation. He's taking these ideas. This is one of Frederick the great's great military adaptations that leads the military revolution in Europe is the invention of horse artillery. And previously in medieval warfare, when you'd had cannon, these things were

enormous great big blocks. Like, have you ever seen Mons Meg on Edinburgh Castle, Chaste a Coz? He used to show it off. And it was, you know, it's an enormous cannon. And it just sits there. But what Frederick the Great realizes is that far more effective than one big sort of enormous cannon that takes years to load and is immobile is horse artillery, which you can gallop to one end of the battlefield, fire a volley quickly from an unexpected position and then move to another part of the battlefield. And this is the Horosani version. You're using camels and small bow cannon. And it completely rips apart all his enemies. And this is the point at which Nadia now begins to push back against Persia's enemies. Especially the Ottomans. I mean, the Ottomans are too close for comfort.

Very much. He's using the Ottoman and European technology against them. And you're beginning to see push back in the Caucasus against the Russians, push back west of Tabriz against the Ottomis, and particularly, I think, in Mesopotamia. So miserable Tamasso is not allowed to stab himself to death, but is a king in name alone, is not able to do anything at all, except if Nader gives him the nod to do it, you know, don't even cough unless I say so. And Nathar is not only he's stabilising the region, he's stopping bits being chipped off, but William he's taking great bits. Yep, he retakes both Armenia and Georgia. These are major victories. And in an era when you've seen

Persia invaded by the Gilzai and nibbled away from all sides, this is a major surprise for everyone. Everyone's slightly given up on the Persians. And Nadir is now really taking on both the Ottomans and the Russians and pushing back the boundaries of Persia. So despite the fact that he's been so successful, he's taken back, you know, huge amounts of territories, taken back Armenia and. And Georgia, this is the jewel in the crown, he thinks he can have a day off. He goes back to Khorasan. But in the meantime, Tamas, who, remember, has been introduced and reduced, decides this is the time that he is going to exert his authority. He's the Shah after all.

And he does this crazy deal undoing all of Nathar's achievements. It makes a deal with the Ottoman saying, you know what, we'll give you back. We'll do swapsis. We'll give you back Georgia and Armenia and other territories. but you give us back Hamadan, Tabriz and Kermanshah and it's not a good deal when there's so much blood and coin has gone into taking Armenia, which is Georgia, which is just vast, huge and important,

strategically important. So, I mean, is now that a man who is going to take that kind of backroom dealing well? Absolutely not. And this is the point where he begins to make his plot. And he decides that he's going to use like a good judo partner. He's going to use Shatamas weaknesses against him. So what he does is that he invites him for a celebratory dinner in the famous Saddabad Gardens on the outskirts of Isfahan.

And there's a review of the troops and afterwards Nadia invites Shatamas to a sumptuous meal. Which he's painful. Nader is painful whether he stumped it up. So yeah. And both men drink wine and musicians play to ease up the atmosphere. And Nader encourages, of course, Tamasp to drink heavily, which was not a difficult thing anyway, because Shatimus was famously a drunk. And then Nader tells him that he's ordered an end to all-state business for several days so that he could enjoy himself and properly relax. So Shatamask gets completely wasted, not to put it too gently. And after lengthy jollifications, according to the sources, under Nada's grim eye, Shatamasp falls into a stupor. this is the point in which Nader moves in. He makes a speech to his men jeering at Shatamask as this

hopeless drunk. And once the Shah has fallen completely unconscious, Nader has him confined, shouldering aside Shatamask's personal servants and guards. And this has all been pre-planned, as Nader knew exactly how to do it. He calls together the officers of the army and the ability, the courtiers and the ministers. He shows them Shatamask who's still lying sort of prostrate on the ground. And one account says that Nader actually personally carries Shatamask out of the pavilion, which he has been lying, and puts him down on the law of the gardens, roaring drunk. And the assembled nobleman see Shatamas crowned fallen to one side, his trousers are stained, the top of his heads dirty has been lobbed on the grass.

And this is the moment to which initially Nader imprisons him and crowns his son. and then before long just decides that he's going to take power for himself. His infant son, there's a detail which is so tragic about that he picks up this little child and says, right, Abbas, the third, you're going to be the new king. And he's crying his eyes out while he's being enthroned. Yeah, and that continues for some time. Shabas, the third, is kept as a puppet for six or seven years. but finally both are murdered at Sabzivar in 1740 by Nadashar's eldest son, Reza Koli Mirza.

And that's the moment that the Safavids fall and the Afshar seized total control. So there follows in the immediate aftermath of the coup a battle with the Ottomans. And the Ottomans send their crack commander, this guy called Topol Osman. and he is in many ways Narder's equal. And there are several months of counter movements on both sides with very similarly balanced forces. And Nader knows that what he really needs is more money so he can buy more mercenary troops, increases artillery and take on the Ottomans and the Russians properly. Well, I mean, this guy, Top Osman, manages to kill 30,000 of his men.

I mean, he's hurting for the first time in his life he's hurting. It's the worst defeat in Mesopotamia that Nader ever suffers. So this is what makes him decide, I need more cash. Where can I get cash? And then he suddenly realizes that the Mughals, this incredibly rich empire in India, are now on their feet and that their treasuries are bursting with jewels and gold. And so Nader decides to, as he nicely puts it, pluck some golden feathers from the Mughal peacock's tail.

That's another quote, incidentally, from his Jesuit physician, who he talks to on a daily basis. And we have in this Jesuit physician's diaries extraordinary access to Nadia's own personal thoughts. You know, what he's saying is he's being shaved in the morning, what he's saying at breakfast, as he's being examined by his doctor. And the Jesuit, Pabazin, is taking this all down, and we have the details. So what happens is that Nadia, now the big daddy, now totally in command. I mean, can we say why he's the big dad? Because that's actually what his troops call him.

Go for it. They call him Baba Bazaar. Where's the name that they start revering to him by, and that does literally translate as Big Daddy. So he is Big Daddy. Very literal sense. Anyway, we told this story before in our Coenor episodes, and it's the story that brought Anita and I first together.

So we're going to do a quick recap rather than tell you the whole thing. If you want the full story, go to our Coenore episodes. But in brief. Well, in brief, he is up against a man who, again, like the Shah just as you like, he's not really interested in leading. It's not very good at it. Mohamed Shah Rangila, the great Rangila, the East Thet, the one who likes getting dressed up in women's clothes and throwing amazing parties,

but is a really rubbish ruler. And in all sorts of ways, he's a very, very important characters. And every time you enter an Indian restaurant in Britain and here, a sitar twanging, you have Muhammad Shah Ranghili to thank for that because he brings what is, at that point, just a folk instrument in the Punjab, intercourt music, ditto the tabla. So there's all sorts of bits of, you know, that we now assume to be central Indian culture, which we have Mohammed Shah Rangila to thank for. But as you say, not a great ruler, not interested in war, the very opposite in many ways

of Nadia, as gay and in every sense and as florid as Nader is grim, austere. and obsessed with fighting. So in brief, this is what happens. Nader wants to go and capture Kabul, which he knows is the summer palace of the Mughals. And he thinks if he can capture Kabul, there's probably going to be a nice fat treasury full of gems for him. And so he crosses the mountains from Herat, where he's from, to Kabul, which is only a journey of about two weeks.

and he falls on Kabul unexpectedly and takes it. And indeed, there are more jewels and gold than he knows what to do with. And he realizes that the moguls are simply not interested in spending their money as he would on mercenaries, on Jazeals, on cannon, on these extraordinary military maneuvers that he's obsessed with. So he carries on. And this is not part of the plan. He then goes down the Kaiba Pass. He takes Peshawar. Nothing stops him. He goes on. to Lahore takes that, nothing, no resistance. So finally, he and his camels with their natty little cannons on the back and his new horseborne heavy Jazeal artillery, which pierce armour, they finally come across the moguls in 1739 at the Battle of Carnal. And according to some accounts,

the moguls bring three armies under three rival. generals, which amounts to almost a million men, while the Persians have only got 160,000. But the Persians are absolutely cutting-edge technology. They've all got firearms, and the Mughals don't. The Mughals have merely got arrows. And as one of the chroniclers says, the Mughals fought bravely, but you cannot defeat musket balls with arrows. And what happens is that the Mughals line up over about 10 miles of the plains of Karnal. And in the bright light, this cavalry charge with heavy horse armour sets off towards the Persian lines. And the Persians just present they're like cavalry in front.

And at the last minute, they part like a curtain. And there are all these camel jazales and these horse jazels in front. And literally two minutes later, it's all over. The flower of Mughal shivery lied dead on the ground. And that evening, in the famous bit of the story, Nader invites Mohamed Shah Ranghila to dinner. and the idiot goes. And he takes his dancing girls and he takes just a handful of bodyguards because he trusts in Nader's honour. And Nader is not the kind of man to let this opportunity slip. That evening at the end of dinner, Mohamed Sharinghila gets up to go back to his camp. And Nader

says, I don't think so. You are my guests now. Stay here. And over the next week, you have this stalemate with this enormous Mughal army effectively immobilized by the fact that its commander is sitting in the Persian camp, a prisoner. Eventually, Nader puts Mahmashah on his elephant, joins him in the Hauda, and they march into Dedele together. Six weeks later, they leave with 8,000 wagons of loot, including Arcoenor, including the peacock throne, including every other great gem like the Darienor, which still remains in Tehran. Timor Ruby. Timor Ruby, all these wonderful things that people will be fighting over for generations to come. And Nader takes the whole lot back to Herat, where he piles them up and puts them on display.

And everyone is invited to see the treasures of the moguls. So, I mean, you should think this would make this man happy. But it's sort of a very shortly after this, he starts going completely mad. And it's an odd thing. And I wondered whether it had anything to do with the death of his mother, which happens at around the same time. Because she's the one, the one from his past, who knows him best of all, and who was there for all the hard times, who's seen him ascend through the ranks, who will have told

him how proud she is and loves him unconditionally, but she dies. And this seems to have affected him very deeply. Some people also say he got an illness, he was bitten by mosquito, something happened, and he gets very sick. But he certainly turns from being just a murderous, successful general, he's very ruthless, who kills, you know, anyone who gets in his way. But he starts becoming paranoid as well. And then there's an assassination attempt, isn't there? And an assassin nearly shoots him. The bullet, I think, kills his horse, but not him. And, he convinces himself that this is his son, Reza, the same man who killed Shatomasp and his son Abbas the third. Razor, who is himself a fairly ruthless figure, is hauled in and he is blinded by his father.

And his father then sort of realizes too late what he's done and loses it. Because Razor always denies it. He always denies it. No, ever does it. It was Razor at all. And Reza rubbed salt into the wounds. He suddenly has this gasp of like coming out of this murderous red mist. And Reyes, well, looks at him with these bloodied sockets where there were once eyes and says, you should know that by taking my eyes out, you have blinded yourself, you have destroyed your own life. And he's right. And Nadia then sort of weeps and breaks down and says, what is a father? What is a son? And then he goes, of course, on another killing spree. He crosses Central Asia. He conquers Samarkand and Tashkent.

Great victories. But his own people realize that they're there. leader is a complete psycho by this stage and has lost it. Well, he's a complete psycho who's built, and we haven't mentioned, he builds pyramids out of skulls of the people that he kills. In the Timor fashion. Yeah, he's turned into just sort of this caricature, nut job in charge. And it comes to a head on the 19th of June 1747, conspirators break into Natharum. And he wakes up.

He just about gets his hand to his sword, but he trips over something, carpet or something, and he falls on the floor. conspirators start hacking at him. They cut off his arm. They slash at him with sabers. And he begs to be spared only to be beheaded. And it then follows this scene of complete orgy, because in the camp is much of the loot he's brought back from Mogul India. And all the soldiers fall on this. And there are scenes of complete mayhem. And the peacock throne, the famous peacock throne, built by Shah Jahan at what was it six times the expense of the Taj Mahal. This studded sort of kiosk almost with solid gold, solid gems, the greatest jewels in the entire

Mogul treasury, where the Koenor originally was the eye of the peacock. And this night that is hacked apart by maddened drunken soldiers, hacking at it with daggers and trying to pull out chunks of gold and the best jewels. everyone is looking for the Coenor. It's actually with Nadeeshire's chief concubine who's called Chuky. She gives it in the morning to the man who will become the next great figure in Central Asian history. Amishar Abdali, who founds Afghanistan pretty much on its back. But again, look, more of that, go back to the Coenar episodes.

But we should actually just, with this terrible death of Nathashar, just reflect for a second on the scale of his conquests. I mean, he retook all Safavid territory, everything he took back. He sacked Delhi. Central Asia became his sort of piggy bank, pushed back the Russians, the Ottomans, much bigger forces than himself. And all from a humble shepherd boy. And Iranians are proud of him. I mean, they are, aren't they, to this day? You know, he's a divisive figure in India, hate him, but... One of his direct descendants is my neighbour here in Delhi, and she is from the Afshah line, and she is as imperious a figure as you can imagine Nader was.

I wouldn't cross her or her forebear for a minute. But yeah, they are remembered as great figures. But at the time, clearly, you know, it was a sad decline, and he just became a psycho who needed to be done away with by his own people. An ignominious end, yeah. Just very, very quickly before we say goodbye, just I mentioned that Napoleon was another chafin boy. And in 180, Napoleon goes on to sign.

a treaty with Persia's Fathali Shah. Who is the man with the most fabulous beard in Persian history. There's wonderful pictures of Fatt Ali Shah with his... Well, Google it. Yeah. And, you know, I mentioned at the top that Napoleon was an avid student of Persian history and really admired Nader Shah. That he does, in 1808, decide he's going to broker a treaty with Fathali Shah

because he wants to continue Nathar's dream in a way. He wants to push into the Asian subcontinent and Bill it is a French revolution in India, But anyway, look, story for another time, maybe. And what he wants to do, just to clarify is he wants to get to India and unhorsed the East India Company. He wants to use Persia as a corridor for taking the jewel in the crown. Anyway, more of that in the future. We're definitely coming back to India before long. Yeah, that was fun.

That was fun talking about murderous man like that. But anyway, listen, thank you very much again for listening. That is it from us. Till the next time, goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye from me, William Durempul.