Gulf; but the Portuguese fleet which had promised to transport his
troops to Bahrein was defeated by the imam of Muscat and forced
to retreat to Goa.
The court of Isfahan had no sooner received tidings of this disaster than Mahmud, with a large army of Afghans, invaded Persia in the year 1721, seized Kermān, and in the following year advanced to within four days’ march of the city of Isfahan. The shah offered him a sum of money to return to Kandahar, but the Afghan answered by advancing Afghan invasion. to a place called Gulnabad, within 9 m. of the capital. The ill-disciplined Persian army, hastily collected, advanced to attack the rebels. Its centre was led by Sheikh ʽAli Khan, covered by twenty-four field-pieces. The wali of Arabia commanded the right, and the ʽitimadu’ d-daulah, or prime minister, the left wing. The whole force amounted to 50,000 men, while the Afghans could not count half that number.
On the 8th of March 1722 the richly dressed hosts of Persia appeared before the little band of Afghans, who were scorched and disfigured by their long marches. The wali of Arabia commenced the battle by attacking the left wing of the Afghans with great fury, routing it, and plundering their camp. The prime minister immediately afterwards attacked the enemy’s right wing, but was routed, and the Afghans, taking advantage of the confusion, captured the Persian guns and turned them on the Persian centre, who fled in confusion without striking a blow. The wali of Arabia escaped into Isfahan, and Mahmud the Afghan gained a complete victory. Fifteen thousand Persians remained dead on the field. A panic now seized on the surrounding inhabitants, and thousands of country people fled into the city. Isfahan was then one of the most magnificent cities in Asia, containing more than 600,000 inhabitants Mahmud seized on the Armenian suburb of Julfa, and invested the doomed city; but Ṭahmasp, son of the shah, had previously escaped into the mountains of Mazandaran. Famine soon began to press hard upon the besieged, and in September Shah Ḥosain offered to capitulate. Having been conducted to the Afghan camp, he fixed Mahmud’s Usurpation. the royal plume of feathers on the young rebel’s turban with his own hand; and 4000 Afghans were ordered to occupy the palace and gates of the city.[1] Mahmud entered Isfahan in triumph with the captive shah on his left hand, and, seating himself on the throne in the royal palace, he was saluted as sovereign of Persia by the unfortunate Ḥosain. When Ṭahmasp, the fugitive prince, received tidings of the abdication of his father, he at once assumed the title of shah at Kazvin.
Turkey and Russia were not slow to take advantage of the calamities of Persia. The Turks seized on Tiflis, Tabriz and Hamadan, while Peter the Great, whose aid had been sought by the friendless Ṭahmasp, fitted out a fleet on the Caspian.[2] The Russians occupied Shirvan, and the province of Gilan south-west of the Caspian;[3] and Peter made a treaty with Ṭahmasp II. in July 1722, by which he agreed to drive the Afghans out of Persia on condition that Darband (Derbend), Baku, Gilan, Mazandaran and Astarabad were ceded to Russia in perpetuity. These were all the richest and most important northern provinces of Persia.
Meanwhile the invader, in 1723, invited 300 of the principal Persian nobility to a banquet and massacred them. To prevent their children rising up in vengeance they were all murdered also. Then he proceeded to slaughter vast numbers of the citizens of Isfahan, until the place was nearly depopulated. Not content with this, in February 1725 he assembled all the captives of the royal family, except the shah, in the courtyard of the palace, and caused them all to be murdered, commencing the massacre with his own hand. The wretched Ḥosain was himself wounded in endeavouring vainly to save his infant son, only five years of age. All the males of the royal family, except Ḥosain himself, Ṭahmasp, and two children, are said to have perished. At length the inhuman miscreant Mahmud died, at the early age of twenty-seven, on the 22nd of April 1725 With scarcely any neck, he had round shoulders, a broad face with a flat nose, a thin beard, and squinting eyes, which were generally downcast.
Mahmud was succeeded by his first cousin, Ashraf, the son of Mir ʽAbdallah. He was a brave but cruel Afghan. He gave the dethroned shah a handsome allowance, and strove, by a mild policy, to acquire popularity. In 1727, after a short war, he signed a treaty with the Turks, acknowledging the sultan as chief of the Moslems. But the fortunate star of Ṭahmasp II. was now beginning to rise, and the days of Afghan usurpation were numbered. He had collected a small army in Mazandaran, and was supported by Fath ʽAli Khan, the powerful chief of the Kajar tribe. In 1727 the fugitive shah was joined by Nadir Kuli, a robber chief, who murdered Fath ʽAli, and, having easily appeased the shah, received Expulsion of Afghans. the command of the royal army. In 1729 Ashraf became alarmed, and led an Afghan army into Khorasan, where he was defeated by Nadir at Damghan, and forced to retreat. The Persian general followed close in his rear and again defeated him outside Isfahan in November of the same year. The Afghans fled through the town; and Ashraf, murdering the poor old shah Ḥosain on his way, hurried with the wreck of his army towards Shiraz. On the 16th of November the victorious Nadir entered Isfahan, and was soon followed by the young shah Ṭahmasp II., who burst into tears when he beheld the ruined palace of his ancestors. His mother, who had escaped the numerous massacres by disguising herself as a slave and performing the most degrading offices, now came forth and threw herself into his arms. Nadir did not give his enemies time to recover from their defeat. He followed them up, and again utterly routed them in January 1730. Ashraf tried to escape to Kandahar almost alone, but was murdered by a party of Baluch robbers; and thus, by the genius of Nadir, his native land was delivered from the terrible Afghan invaders.
The ambition of Nadir, however, was far greater than his loyalty. On pretext of incapacity, he dethroned Ṭahmasp II. in 1732, and sent him a prisoner into Khorasan, where he was murdered some years afterwards by Nadir’s son while the conqueror was absent on his Indian expedition. For a short time the wily usurper placed Ṭahmasp’s son on the Fall of Safawids. throne, a little child, with the title of ʽAbbas III., while he contented himself with the office of regent. Poor little ʽAbbas died at a very convenient time, in the year 1736, and Nadir then threw off the mask. He was proclaimed shah of Persia by a vast assemblage on the plain of Moghan.
By the fall of the Safawid dynasty Persia lost her race of national monarchs, considered not only in respect of origin and birthplace but in essence and in spirit. Ismaʽil, Ṭahmasp and ʽAbbas, whatever their faults and failings, were Persian and peculiar to Persians. Regarded in a sober English spirit, the reign of the great ʽAbbas is rendered mythical by crime. But something liberal in the philosophy of their progenitors threw an attractiveness over the earlier Safawid kings which was wanting in those who came after them. The fact is that, two centuries after Shah Ismaʽil’s accession to the throne, the Safawid race of kings was effete; and it became necessary to make room for a more vigorous if not a more lasting rule. Nadir was the strong man for the hour and occasion. He had been designated a “robber chief”; but his antecedents, like those of many others who have filled the position, have redeeming points of melodramatic interest.
A map attached to Krusinski’s volumes illustrates the extent of Persian territory in 1728, or one year before Ashraf was finally defeated by Nadir, and some eight years prior to the date on which Nadir was himself proclaimed king. It shows, during the reign of the Safawids, Tiflis, Erivan, Khoi and Bagdad to have been within the limits of Persia in 1728. Persia on the west, and in like manner Balkh and Kandahar to have been included within the eastern border. There is, however, also shown, as a result of the Afghan intrusion and the impotency of the later Safawid kings, a long broad strip of country to the west, including Tabriz and Hamadan, marked “conquests of the Turks,” and the whole west shore of the Caspian from Astrakan to Mazandaran marked “conquests of the czar of Muscovy”; Makran, written Mecran, is designated “a warlike independent nation.” If further allowance be made for the district held by the Afghan invaders as part of their own country, it will be seen how greatly the extent of Persia proper was reduced, and what a work Nadir had before him to restore the kingdom to its former proportions.
But the former proportions had been partly reverted to, and would doubtless have been in some respects exceeded, both in Afghanistan and the Ottoman dominions and on the shores of the Caspian, by the action of this indefatigable general, had not Ṭahmasp II. been led into a premature treaty with the Turks. Nadir’s anger and indignation had been great at this weak proceeding; indeed, he had made it the ostensible cause of the shah’s deposition. He had addressed letters to all the military chiefs of the country, calling upon them for support; he had sent an envoy to Constantinople insisting upon the sultan’s restoration of the Persian provinces still in his possession—that is,
- ↑ We have an account of the Afghan invasion and sack of Isfahan from an eye-witness, Father Krusinski, procurator of the Jesuits at that place, whose interesting work was translated into English in the last century.
- ↑ In 1721 Sultan Ḥosain sent an embassy to the Russians, seeking aid against the Afghans. In May 1722 a flotilla descended the Volga commanded by Tsar Peter and on the 19th of July the Russian flag first waved over the Caspian Gilan was occupied by 6000 men under General Matushkin.
- ↑ The Russians remained in Gilan until 1734, when they were obliged to evacuate it, owing to the unhealthiness of the climate.
