Nadir Shah is said to have written to the emperor 'My coming to Cabul and possessing myself thereof was purely out of zeal for Islam and friendship f… - Nader Shah

The Persian ruler Nadir Shah, in his invasion of India in 1738, killed some 200,000 people and returned with a huge quantity of booty and a large number of slaves, including a few thousand beautiful girls. Alain Danielou (d. 1994), French scholar of Indian philosophy, religion, history and arts, described Nadir Shah’s assault of Delhi as follows: ‘…for a week his soldiers massacred everybody, ransacked everything, and razed the entire countryside, so that the survivors would have nothing to eat. He went back to Iran taking with him precious furniture, works of art, horses, the Kohinoor diamond, the famous Peacock throne, and 150 million rupees in gold.’

“No barbarities were left unpractised. The tax imposed was strictly exacted. What numbers destroyed themselves with their own hands.’

Nader Shah of Iran was the self-made military and political genius and empire-builder who dominated his native country, defeated the Mughal emperors and Ottoman sultans, conquered vast new territories, stole the Peacock Throne for himself, overthrew the Safavid dynasty to raise himself from enslaved orphan and freebooting bandit to the throne of King of Kings. But he sank into paranoid brutality, frenzied killing and finally the insanity that led to his murder. Known as 'the Second Alexander', he was the tragic and murderous 'Napoleon of Iran'.