Nader Shah (The Sword of Persia)

Nader Shah Afshar was one of the most extraordinary tactical military geniuses in world history, often hailed as the 'Napoleon of Persia' or the 'Second Alexander'. Born to an impoverished nomadic Turkic Afshar herdsman in Khorasan, Nader rose through merit and raw martial cunning during the collapse of the Safavid Empire, expelling invading Afghan armies and driving back both Ottoman and Russian forces.

Crowning himself Shah of Iran in 1736 and founding the Afsharid Dynasty, Nader built a peerless standing army utilizing massed swiveling camel-mounted swivel guns (zamburak) and drilled musket-volleys. In 1739, after conquering Kandahar and Kabul, Nader invaded Mughal India. At the Battle of Karnal, his 50,000 veterans routed a 300,000-man Mughal army with three hundred war elephants in three hours. Entering Delhi, Nader plundered the unimaginable treasures accumulated by the Mughals over two centuries—including the jeweled Peacock Throne and the world's most famous diamonds, the Koh-i-Noor and the Daria-i-Noor—accumulating such wealth that he suspended all taxes in Iran for three years. His final years descended into paranoid cruelty before his assassination by his own officers.