The World полностью

In May 1722, Mahmud Hotak and 15,000 Afghans, armed with a Pashtun innovation, light cannon mounted on camels – zamburaks (wasplets) – invaded Iran. At Gulnabad, 50,000 splendid Persian troops blocked the way. ‘If you win, the treasure of Isfahan is your prize,’ Hotak told his Pashtuns. ‘If you fail, you’ve no retreat and will face death, embittered by disgrace.’ Thanks to their 100 zamburaks, they routed the Iranians, then laid siege to Isfahan, where 80,000 died of starvation. Taking the city, Mahmud declared himself shah, but he struggled to control Persia. Maddened by paranoia and projectile dysentery, he killed first most of the Safavis, then his own family. ‘His bowels were so disordered that he defecated excrement from his mouth,’ until he was strangled by his own nephew Ashraf. Persia disintegrated.

Only one Safavi prince, Tahmasp, survived, but his prospects were dire until he was rescued by an obscure warlord: Nader. Born in 1698, Nader, son of an Afshari Turkman goatherd, started as a brigand with feral charisma but soon commanded his own army: he knew the name of every officer and many troopers, who called him Baba Bazorg – Big Daddy. He now offered his 2,000 men to the beleaguered shah, but he had a rival, the khan of the Qajars, a Turkman clan from Caspian shores, Fath-Ali Khan. In 1726 Nader had him murdered, though later the Qajars would rule Iran. Now Nader retook ruined Isfahan. As Ashraf Hotak fled back to Afghanistan, Big Daddy restored Tahmasp, a drunken jackanapes. Then, deploying a semi-tribal, semi-regular army of horse archers, zamburaks and jacayerchi (musketeers), Iranians, Kurds, Turkmen, Afghans, Uzbeks, Nader seized back swathes of Iraq and the Caucasus. Tahmasp awarded him the title Tahmasp-Qoli – Tahmasp’s Slave – then regent. But Nader wanted more.

In 1731, Tahmasp lost Nader’s Caucasian gains. In Isfahan, Nader boozed with the fuddled shah until he collapsed then invited in the magnates to observe the stupefied shah whom he replaced with a baby, Abbas III. It was unthinkable for a ragged Turkman to replace the sacred Safavis, but by a process of momentous inevitability Nader was increasingly regarded as a contender for the throne. In four years, he defeated foreigners east and west, took the Gulf, Muscat and Bahrain, then convened 20,000 notables who proposed that he assume the crown. He graciously accepted. When the chief mullah privately asserted loyalty to the Safavis, Nader had him strangled, demanding total loyalty to himself and, radically, abandoning Shiism.

Proud of his base origins, he and his eldest son Reza Qoli married sisters of the shah – his Afghans merging with Safavis. Big Daddy’s pastime was drinking parties with his concubines, which could be dangerous for any loose-lipped companions: one who made a pun on Nader’s name was strangled on the spot. But his real pleasure was war.

In 1729, Nader crushed the Abdalis of Herat and recruited 12,000 of them as special forces. Just as the Persians had used Georgians to crush Afghans, now Nader used Afghans to crush Georgia. Nine years later, he swung eastwards into Afghanistan, expelling the Hotaks from Kandahar, which he gave to the Abdalis. He chose as his bodyguard their chieftain’s sixteen-year-old son Ahmad, later known as Durrani (Pearl), handsome, tough, genial.

When his Afghan enemies fled to Rangila, the Mughul emperor, Nader demanded their return. Rangila refused – and Nader had his pretext to attack India first, taking Lahore. In January 1739, he marched on Delhi, ready to channel Tamerlane against his descendants. Rangila summoned his veteran adviser, the Nizam, as Nader and 100,000 troops – including a Georgian unit commanded by a teenaged Georgian king, Hercules II, and his Afghans under Durrani – advanced towards his 300,000 men and 2,000 elephants. Nader’s zamburaks and jacayerchi scythed down the Mughals. The Nizam did not make it into battle at all, sipping coffee in his howdah atop his elephant, until afterwards he arranged the emperor’s submission.

Riding into Delhi – Shahjahanabad – with its 400,000 inhabitants, Nader, guarded by 20,000 cavalry, was received by Rangila, seated on the bejewelled Peacock Throne in the colossal Audience Chamber commissioned by Shahjahan with its inscription: ‘If there is paradise on earth, it is this, it is this!’ Nader banned looting, but as Iranians celebrated Nowruz, rumours spread that Nader had been assassinated and crowds began to attack his troops. Galloping to the Roshan ud-Daula Mosque, he climbed on to the roof. At 9 a.m. a shot was fired and Nader drew his sword, unleashing slaughter. By 3 p.m. some 25,000 lay dead. Rangila sent the old Nizam to Nader: He quoted Hafiz:

Oh king, you’ve killed so many

If you wish to kill more, bring them back to life.