Highly ambitious and greedy as he was, he was not contented with the throne of Iran alone. He moved towards Afghanistan and stormed Kandahar and Ghazni and in 1738 defeated Mughal governor of Kabul. The riches of Indo-Gangetic plains being his main attraction he moved towards Punjab, where its Mughal governor bought his life from him for money and treachery and made his passage to Delhi a flower walk. At Karnal he defeated Mughal forces and in 1739 stormed Delhi’s Red Fort and compelled Muhammad Shah to buy his life for the Mughals’ entire wealth including the most precious and prestigious Peacock throne and the most invaluable and the world’s largest diamond Koh-i-noor, and the Mughal honour by not being able to resist his storming even the royal harem.
For five months he was in Delhi, one of the cruelest phases that the mankind had ever witnessed. He ordered indiscriminate slaughter of Delhi’s inhabitants, and plundering, raping and every kind of brutality. According to one estimate Delhi’s population was reduced to mere one-fourth in five months’ massacre. Nadir Shah left Delhi after five months but his name shook people of Delhi with horror till decades after. When way-back with immense booty, peacock throne and Koh-i-noor, and numerous manuscripts and art-works, bands of armed Sikhs, awaiting his return, attacked him and looted a lot of his possessions. When back in Iran, in 1747, one Muhammad Khan Qajar assassinated him and with it ended Nadir Shah’s rule and virtually his line, as thereafter Iran passed into the hands of Muhammad Khan Qajar and his descendants.
A visual record of Nadir Shah’s actual likeness has not been reported from anywhere so far. Artists, rendering his portraits, have resorted to historical details of his personality and have transformed the same into lines and colours. He was assassinated when yet young. Hence, his portraits paint him in his middle age. Alike, he has been visualised in most of his representations, which are hardly a few, as a man with medium height and a slender figure, having extra long beard, fearful eyes, a stern face reflecting terror and a tough body posture. Gold and stones being his passion, the artists, as here in this portrait, have conceived his throne, bolster, crown, covers and handles of swords, daggers and other weapons, and even costume, as studded with diamonds, rubies, pearls, emeralds, sapphires, topazes, and other precious stones revealing his unprecedented wealth and grandeur. His likeness in this portrait adequately adheres to the details of his personality as the pages of history record.
This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books.
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