Campaigns of Nader Shah

Significance

The Campaigns of Nader Shah, known as the Naderian Wars, were a series of interconnected conflicts fought across Central Eurasia in the early to mid-eighteenth century that arose directly from the Hotaki Afghan overthrow of the Safavid dynasty and the capture of Isfahan. The fragmentation of Iranian imperial power created the conditions under which the Safavid claimant Tahmasp II enlisted Nader into his service. Nader's subsequent subjugation of north-west Iran and neutralization of the Abdali Afghans to the east consolidated a base from which he could confront the Hotaki occupation of the rest of the country. In a sequence of decisive engagements, the Hotaki forces were decisively defeated and Tahmasp II was restored to the Safavid throne, reversing the dynastic collapse that had initiated the conflict. Within the long arc of the Ottoman–Persian Wars, the campaigns represented a critical reassertion of Iranian sovereignty and military capacity following a period of imperial collapse, restoring a centralized Persian political authority capable of contending with rival powers across the region.

Commanders (31)