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1739: History, Self, and Other in Afsharid Iran and Mughal India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Ernest Tucker
Ernest Tucker*
Affiliation:
Department of History, U.S. Naval Academy
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Extract

An important event in the early modern history of india was Nadir Shah's conquest, culminating in the battle of Karnal and the sack of Delhi in the spring of 1739. During this campaign, Nadir looted a huge part of the Mughal treasury, including the fabled Peacock Throne and the Kuh-i Nur diamond, and was responsible for the deaths of thousands of citizens of Delhi in a great slaughter carried out by his army. Historians of India have viewed this invasion as a crushing blow from which the Mughal dynasty never truly recovered, paving the way for European power to become established on the subcontinent in the next few decades. It has been remembered by some Iranian historians as Nadir's crowning military achievement, after which he denied his country the benefits of his victory, wasting away the final years of his reign in an orgy of terror and blood.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 2: Historiography and Representation in Safavid and Afsharid Iran , Spring 1998 , pp. 207 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1998

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References

1. Lockhart, Laurence Nadir Shah (London: Luzac, 1938), 150.Google Scholar

2. For a recent account of newly-discovered Dutch sources on Nadir's invasion, see Floor, Willem “New Facts on Nadir Shah's Indian Campaign,” in Eslami, Kambiz ed., Iran and Iranian Studies: Essays in Honor of Iraj Afshar (Princeton, New Jersey: Zagros Press, 1998), 198-219.Google Scholar

3. The identity of “Baqi Khan” is not clear. Perhaps Nijabat is referring to cAbd al-Baqi Khan Zanganah, one of Nadir's trusted associates, but never identified in Persian sources as his wazīr.

4. For a comprehensive discussion of these points, see Tucker, Ernest “Explaining Nadir Shah: Kingship and Royal Legitimacy in Muhammad Kazim Marvi's Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi Nādirī,” Iranian Studies 26 (1993): 95-115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Marvi, Muhammad Kazim Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi Nādirī, 3 vols. pag. as one, ed. Riyahi, Muhammad Amin (Tehran: Naqsh-i Jahan, 1364/1985), 563.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., 563-64.

7. Ibid., 637.

8. Ibid., 696.

9. Ibid., 749-52.

10. The following account of Sacadat Khan's life can be found in ibid., 701-8.

11. For a composite account of Sacadat Khan's life based on Indian sources, see Srivastava, Ashirbadi Lai The First Two Nawabs of Oudh (Lucknow: Upper India Publishing House, 1933), 1-3.Google Scholar

12. Marvi, Tārīkh-i, 728-29.

13. Alam, Muzaffar The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986), 279.Google Scholar

14. See, for example, Ali, Rustam “Tarikh-i Hindi,” in Elliot, H.M. ed., The History of India as told by its own Historians (London: Trubner and Sons, 1877), 8:63.Google Scholar

15. Anand Ram Mukhlis also apparently served as Zakariya Khan's representative in Delhi. See Islam, Riazul A Calendar of Documents on Indo-Persian Relations (1500-1750), 2 vols. (Tehran and Karachi: Iranian Culture Foundation and Institute of Central and West Asian Studies, 1361/ 1982), 2:67.Google Scholar

16. Mukhlis, Anand Ram “Tazkira,” trans. Perkins, Lieutenant in Elliot, H.M. ed., The History of India as told by its own Historians (London: Trubner and Sons, 1877), 8:84.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., 87.

18. Ibid., 86.

19. Ibid., 89.

20. Ibid., 90-92.

21. Ibid., 78.

22. Ibid., 97.

23. Nijabat, “Ballad on Nadir Shah's Invasion of India,” trans. Kaul, R.B. Journal of the Punjab Historical Society 6, no. 1 (1917):17.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., 49.

25. Ibid., 52.

26. Ibid., 54. Perhaps the exact figure of casualties, entirely fanciful of course, fit best in the line for the rhyme scheme of the poem.

27. Ibid., 65.

28. Ibid., 38.

29. Ibid., 64.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid., 22-25.

32. Ibid., 28.

33. Ibid., 29.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid., 30.

36. This is a very curious juxtaposition considering the degree to which Nadir admired and even modeled himself on Timur.

37. Ibid., 34-35.

38. Ibid., 33.

39. Tilok Das, Ḥālāt-i Nādir Shāh va Muḥammad Shāh in William Irvine (trans.), “Nadir Shah and Muhammad Shah, a Hindi poem by Tilok Das,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal 66, no. 1 (1897): 48.Google Scholar

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid., 49.

42. Ibid., 50.

43. Ibid., 51.

44. Ibid., 54.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid., 56.