This article examines the way in which Iran's eighteenth-century ruler Nader Shah was portrayed in contemporary Europe as well as in Iran, and how the resulting image—half national hero, half ruthless warlord—has resonated until today. In an age short on ‘great’ leaders, Nader spoke to the imagination like no other contemporary ruler, Western or Asian. Nader's subsequent record can be read as a palimpsest, a layered series of images of multiple world conquerors, from Alexander to Napoleon. The latter, who shared Nader's humble background and evoked a similar ambivalence, represented the closest analogue, turning him into the European Nader Shah. In the modern West, Nader no longer speaks to the imagination. Modern Iranians, by contrast, have come to see him as the Iranian Napoleon. While still ambivalent about him, they admire him as the ruler who regenerated the nation and ended foreign occupation, yet his undeniable cruelty and imperialism make him an awkward national hero.

This essay examines Nader Shah Afshar's attempts to legitimize his rule by dint of his Turkic background. Over the course of his rise to power and reign, Nader consistently argued that his Afshar and Turkman affiliations granted him the right to rule over Iranian territory as an equal to his Ottoman, Mughal, and Central Asian contemporaries. Aided by his chief secretary and court historian, Mīrzā Mahdī Astarābādī, Nader's assertions paralleled those found in popular narratives about the history of Oghuz Turks in Islamic lands. This element of Nader's political identity is often overlooked by historians because it did not outlive the brief Afsharid period, but it demonstrates how the Safavid collapse led to the circulation of dynamic new claims to Iranian and Islamic political power.

The East India Company’s presence and ongoing trade in Persia was reliant on the privileges outlined in the Farmān, granted after the capture of Hormuz in 1622. The relationship between these two powers was cemented in the rights enshrined in the Farmān, which was used by both to regulate their varying needs and expectations over the course of 125 years. This article explores the Company’s records of the Farmān and how changes to its terms were viewed from both sides. As a Persian document, the Farmān gives a clear view of the attitudes of native officials and rulers to the Company and how these terms were used as a means of control.