The Hero of “the Noble Afshar People”: Reconsidering Nader Shah's Claims to Lineage and Legitimacy

Abstract

AbstractThis essay examines Nader Shah Afshar's attempts to legitimize his rule by dint of his Turkic background. Over the course of his rise to power and reign, Nader consistently argued that his Afshar and Turkman affiliations granted him the right to rule over Iranian territory as an equal to his Ottoman, Mughal, and Central Asian contemporaries. Aided by his chief secretary and court historian, Mīrzā Mahdī Astarābādī, Nader's assertions paralleled those found in popular narratives about the history of Oghuz Turks in Islamic lands. This element of Nader's political identity is often overlooked by historians because it did not outlive the brief Afsharid period, but it demonstrates how the Safavid collapse led to the circulation of dynamic new claims to Iranian and Islamic political power.