Nadir Shah’s Invasion of Delhi 1739
The invasion of the Mughal Empire by the Persian ruler Nadir Shah in 1739 was the most catastrophic single military episode in the history of the later Mughals. In a campaign that lasted less than two months from the first crossing of the Indus, the Persian army defeated the imperial Mughal forces, occupied Delhi, and looted the imperial treasury, carrying off the Peacock Throne, the Koh-i-Noor and Darya-ye Noor diamonds, and an estimated sum equivalent to several years of imperial revenue. The shock of the invasion, financial as much as military, broke the residual credibility of the Mughal state and accelerated the territorial and political fragmentation of the eighteenth century. The wider context of the period is set out on the Mughal Empire overview, the decline of the Mughal Empire pillar, and the Later Mughals page.
Background of the Invasion
The invasion of 1739 was the consequence of a long-simmering conflict between the Mughal Empire and the rising power of the Safavid successor state in Iran. The Persian ruler Nadir Shah, who had come to power in 1736, had, over the previous three years, assembled a large and well-disciplined army, composed of Turkoman, Afghan, and Kurdish cavalry, and a substantial train of artillery. The pretext for the invasion was a dispute over the governorship of Kabul, but the underlying motivation was the wealth of the Mughal provinces to the east.
The Weakness of Muhammad Shah
The Mughal emperor at the time of the invasion was Muhammad Shah, who had come to the throne in 1719 at the age of seventeen and had reigned for nearly twenty years. The emperor was, by the standards of his predecessors, an intelligent and cultivated ruler, but the empire he had inherited was already in serious decline. The wars of succession that had attended the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 had left the political structure of the empire badly damaged, and the long financial crisis of the 1720s and 1730s had eroded the ability of the central government to maintain a large standing army.
The Sack of Delhi
The sack of Delhi began in early March 1739, after a series of incidents that culminated in a popular uprising in the city. The uprising was provoked by a relatively minor incident, the killing of a Persian soldier by a Mughal noble, and it quickly escalated into a general attack on the Persian occupation force. Nadir Shah responded with a systematic slaughter that, by the most cautious modern estimates, claimed at least 20,000 lives, and possibly many more.
The circumstances of the sack and its cultural and political consequences are examined on the later Mughals and the Mughal Empire overview pages. The wider context of the early eighteenth-century crisis is treated on the economic decline of the Mughals page, and the regional consequences of the invasion are examined on the Maratha-Mughal wars and the Third Battle of Panipat 1761 pages.
The Looting of the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor
The material losses of the invasion were enormous. The most famous items taken were the Peacock Throne, a celebrated construction of gold and precious stones that had been commissioned by Shah Jahan in the 1630s, and the Koh-i-Noor diamond, one of the largest and most famous diamonds in the world. The latter stone had been in Mughal possession since the sixteenth century, and its loss to Persia was a severe symbolic blow to the prestige of the dynasty.
The history of the Peacock Throne is examined in greater detail on the architecture and the Taj Mahal pages, in the context of Shah Jahan’s patronage. The wider cultural and material consequences of the invasion are treated on the Mughal culture and society and the Mughal art pages.
The Indemnity
In addition to the immediate looting, Nadir Shah imposed a substantial indemnity on the Mughal government. The indemnity included a large cash payment, the cession of certain provinces, and the surrender of various trophies of Mughal sovereignty. The financial impact of the indemnity contributed directly to the long fiscal crisis of the empire, and it set in motion a series of structural problems that would persist for the rest of the dynasty’s history.
Long-Term Impact
The long-term impact of the invasion was profound. The financial crisis of the late 1730s and 1740s contributed directly to the political crisis of the 1740s and 1750s, in which the empire was reduced to effective control of the city of Delhi and a small surrounding territory. The invasion also contributed to the rise of regional powers, particularly the Marathas and the Afghans, who would, within two decades, contest the control of North India at the Third Battle of Panipat 1761.
Sources
- J.F. Richards, “The Crisis of the Mughal Empire in the Early Eighteenth Century,” in The Mughal Empire (NCHI I.5, 1993), pp. 282–95.