Painted Tile. Iran. 19th Century CE.
Painted tile. Iran. 19th Century CE.
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.
More Posts from S-afshar and Others
The Fake Texts of Ancient Greek 'Historians': the Behistun Inscription, Ctesias, Diodorus Siculus, Darius I the Great, and Semiramis
In a previous article published under the title 'Aristotle as Historical Forgery, the Western World’s Fake History & Rotten Foundations, and Prof. Jin Canrong’s Astute Comments', I wholeheartedly supported the position taken by the prominent Chinese Prof. Jin Canrong about Aristotle and I explained why Aristotle never existed as he is known today and most of his texts were not written by him, but by the pseudo-Christian Benedictine monks of Western Europe for the purpose of the ferocious imperial and theological battle that Rome carried out against New Rome-Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire. You can find the table of contents and a link to the publication at the end of the present article.
Contents
Introduction
I. A fictional concept: the origin of the fraud
II. A construct based on posterior textual sources
III. The deceitful presentation
IV. 5th century BCE texts found in 15th c. CE manuscripts do not make 'History'.
V. Abundant evidence of lies and deliberate distortions attested in the manuscript transmission
VI. Darius I the Great, the Behistun inscription, and Ctesias
VII. The historical Assyrian Queen Shammuramat and the fictional Queen Semiramis of the 'Ancient Greek sources'
VIII. The malignant intentions of the Benedictine liars: from the historical Darius I the Great to the fictional Semiramis
IX. The vicious distortions of the Benedictine liars: from Ctesias to Herodotus
The Behistun inscription
Introduction
In the present article, I will offer a typical example of text falsification carried out by the Catholic monks, who did not 'copy and preserve' manuscripts of ancient Greek and Latin texts, as it has been mendaciously said by Western European and North American academics and lying scholars, but they purposefully falsified, distorted, concealed, destroyed and/or contrived numerous texts.
This enormous forgery took place in Western Europe between the 2nd half of the 8th century and the 1st half of the 15th century; the colonial era was launched exactly afterwards. For this reason, few manuscripts with Ancient Greek and Roman texts date before the 8th c.; in fact, most of them have been either distorted and replaced or hidden in the vast libraries still owned, controlled and administered that the anti-Christian Roman Catholic Church.
The purpose of this devious and evil effort was the fabrication of a fake narrative about the forged antiquity and the supposed importance of the Western Europeans according to the needs of world conquest, prevalence and preponderance of the pseudo-Christian Roman Catholic Church; this bogus-historical dogma, as direct opposition to and ultimate rejection of Orthodox Christianity, would be initially imposed as the 'scientific discipline of History' in Western Europe and subsequently projected onto the rest of the world by means of colonial invasion, indigenous identity destruction, moral integrity demolition, cultural heritage disintegration, educational subordination, economic exploitation, military subjugation, and socio-political domination.
In other words, the monastical scribes and copyists created an entirely fake Euro-centric past, which became the rotten foundation of Western Europe. This fallacy became known as Judeo-Christian world and Greco-Roman civilization. However, the decipherment of ancient languages (Egyptian hieroglyphic, Old Achaemenid Iranian, Assyrian-Babylonian, Sumerian, Hurrian, Hittite, Urartu, Ugaritic, etc) and the study of millions of original texts, which were not copies of earlier sources but contemporaneous to the events that they narrated, sounded the death knell of the era of history fabrication programs.
With the post-Soviet rise of the great continental powers (China, India, Russia, etc.), the economic-military-political-ideological-educational-academic-cultural tyranny of the Western World started being overthrown throughout the earlier colonized world. The historical forgery that the colonial rulers imposed collapsed, the falsehood of the Eurocentric dogma of World History started being revealed and rejected, and an overwhelming project of total de-Westernization appeared as a prerequisite for the liberation of the Mankind from the lies of the European Renaissance, the Western Humanities, the White Supremacism, the Western European colonialism and racism, as well as from the falsehood of numerous subsystems of the construct, such as Classicism, Hellenism, Orientalism, etc.
In our days, it is imperative for anti-colonial scholars to unveil the distortions applied to Ancient Greek and Latin texts by the medieval monks. Consequently, historians from all over the world have to work together in order to denounce and obliterate the Western fraud and the fake History of the Western Man, which consists in arbitrarily taking 14th c. CE manuscripts as authentic narratives of Ancient History.
I. A fictional concept: the origin of the fraud
Apparently, the present brief article cannot be an exhaustive presentation of the Western fraud, and of the historical forgery that the Western monks, manuscript copyists, collectors, academics and propagandists attempted to impose worldwide through colonial conquests, massacres and tyrannies. However, I can still enumerate the major founding myths of the Western World.
Two thematic circles of historical distortions and fraudulent claims made by the Western academia revolve around the following two entirely fabricated entities, which have conventionally but erroneously been called
a) "the Greco-Roman world" and
b) "Biblical Israel" and "Judeo-Christian civilization".
These ahistorical entities never existed. The original concept of those notions is purely fictional, and it therefore remains always unquestioned in the fraudulent Western universities. In this regard, the sources that the Western academics evoke to support their claims are posterior, untrustworthy, forged and therefore worthless.
At times, some of those texts represent merely ancient authors' misperceptions of earlier texts and authors; however, more often, the ancient texts have been tampered with. On other occasions, ancient texts that refute the lies of other historical sources are hidden from the general public and conventionally discussed among the Western academic accomplices.
II. A construct based on posterior textual sources
The entire construct hinges on the deceitful presentation of several types of material forged, collected, concealed, interpreted, contextualized, narrated, repeatedly but intentionally discussed, supposedly questioned, and selectively popularized; this was due to the fact that the said material was incessantly utilized for the colonial needs and targets of the Western European powers (England, France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, and more recently the US). In fact, the Western World's fake History was created as the ultimate support of all colonial claims.
This process happened within a system in which posterior textual sources (preserved in medieval manuscripts) have occupied the central position, whereas the ancient epigraphic material, which was contemporaneous to the historical events under study, has been deliberately disregarded.
All later discovered data and pieces of information were either adjusted to the construct or methodically hidden; this is how the original concept, pathetically believed almost as a religious dogma, remained totally unchallenged down to our days.
III. The deceitful presentation
The quintessence of the deceitful presentation involves a vicious trick; people (pupils and students, but also scholars and intellectuals, as well as the general public) are taught and made accustomed to care mainly about the absolutely insignificant dates of birth and death of historical persons (authors, rulers, etc.), and not about the dates of the manuscripts in which these individuals are mentioned as supposed authors; this situation turns readers, students and scholars into pathetic idiots.
Subsequently, we cannot seriously afford to describe Herodotus as a 5th c. BCE writer, because there is no manuscript with texts attributed to him, dating before the 10th c. CE. In addition, if we take into account the enormous number of other ancient authors decrying, denigrating and rejecting Herodotus' absurdities and malignancy, we have to permanently and irrevocably obliterate Herodotus from the History of Mankind and consider his false, paranoid and racist texts as a double Crime against the Mankind:
first, with respect to the original narrative (to which we don't have access as it was distorted by medieval monastical scribes and copyists) because the author attempted to disparage the superior Iranian civilization and the majestic Achaemenid universalist empire, while undeservedly praising the South Balkan barbarians, and
second, as regards the currently available text, which was forged as per the discriminatory intentions of the monks who altered and distorted it in their effort to fabricate the fake, modern divide (or dichotomy) East-West, and to offer a shred of historicity to it.
IV. 5th century BCE texts found in 15th c. CE manuscripts do not make 'History'.
People get therefore addicted to considering as a true and original 'work' (of an ancient author) the manuscript (or manuscripts) in which the specific treatise, essay or book was copied perhaps 10 or 15 centuries after the author composed it. Due to a long chain of intermediaries (namely library copyists, librarians, scholars, monks, collectors, purchasers and/or statesmen), the transmitted text may have been partly or totally changed.
There is absolutely no guarantee as regards the honesty, the good intentions, the unbiased attitude, and the benevolent character of the perhaps 5, 10, 20 or 50 persons who -living in different eras and without knowing one another- may have constituted the chain of (unknown to us) intermediaries between the hand of the author and that of the last copyist whose manuscript was preserved down to our times.
Example: very little matters today whether the ancient author Diodorus Siculus or Siceliotes (西西里的狄奧多羅斯) actually lived in the 1st c. BCE or in the 3rd c. CE; quite contrarily, what is important for history-writing is the fact that the earliest known manuscript of his famous 'Bibliotheca Historica' (世界史) dates back to the 10th c. CE.
Consequently, the first piece of information that should be stated after the name of any 'ancient' Anatolian, Macedonian, Thracian, Greek, Roman and other author is the date of the earliest extant manuscript of his works.
V. Abundant evidence of lies and deliberate distortions attested in the manuscript transmission
An extraordinarily high number of original sources excavated in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, Canaan, Iran and elsewhere, and subsequently deciphered, can be dated with accuracy; example: the Annals of great Assyrian emperor Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 BCE) were written during his reign. They are contemporaneous and therefore original.
However, in striking contrast to them, almost all the manuscripts with the works of ancient Greek and Roman authors whose texts have formed the backbone of the fraudulent historical dogma of the Western academia are not contemporaneous but posterior by, at times, 1500 or 2000 years.
Even worse, numerous ancient Greek authors' texts were not preserved through a manuscript tradition at all; they were saved as references in posterior authors' works. This concerns, for instance, Ctesias (克特西亞斯), an Ancient Carian (Anatolian) physician and erudite scholar, who lived and worked in the court of the Achaemenid Iranian emperor Artaxerxes II in the 5th c. BCE.
Later, willing to offer potential guidebooks to Iran and India for the use of various peripheral peoples and tribes of the Balkan region, Ctesias elaborated in Ancient Ionian (愛奧尼亞希臘語) two treatises to describe the state of things in Iran and in India. To the Western academic bibliography, his works are known (in Latin) as 'Persica' and 'Indica'.
These texts were not saved integrally in manuscripts copied for the purpose of preserving Ctesias' works, but they were preserved in Diodorus Siculus' 'Bibliotheca Historica'. Although he is not known through authentic and contemporaneous Iranian sources, we can deduce that Ctesias certainly spoke fluently the official language of the Empire and read Old Achaemenid cuneiform. Eventually, he may have also studied and learned Babylonian and Elamite cuneiform, namely two ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform languages and writings the use of which was maintained by Iranian scribes.
Apparently, Ctesias had a firsthand insight, as he lived for many years in Parsa (Persepolis), the capital of the Achaemenid Empire and he also traveled extensively along with the Iranian emperor. But, unfortunately, the following ordeal was produced.
VI. Darius I the Great, the Behistun inscription, and Ctesias
One century before Ctesias served Artaxerxes II, the empire of Iran was saved by Darius I the Great (大流士一世; reign: 522-486), who overthrew a usurper, namely the Mithraic (密特拉教祭司) magus Gaumata (高墨达), and by so doing, preserved on the throne a dynasty of faithful Zoroastrian (瑣羅亞斯德教徒) monarchs.
To commemorate his great victory and the consolidation of the his dynasty, Darius I the Great had an enormous rock relief and a monumental inscription (貝希斯敦銘文) engraved on the rocks of Mount Behistun (貝希斯頓山), at a distance of 150 km west of Hamadan (哈马丹; Ekbatana/埃克巴坦那) in Western Iran (15 m high by 25 m wide and 100 m up the cliff). As it can be easily understood, these events occurred after the assassination of Cambyses, at the very beginning of Darius I the Great's reign.
It goes without saying that the successors of Darius I the Great and the imperial Iranian administration knew perfectly well the historical details and were fully aware of the imperial inscription that immortalized the event, which had obviously become the cornerstone of the imperial education.
VII. The historical Assyrian Queen Shammuramat and the fictional Queen Semiramis of the 'Ancient Greek sources'
However, one century later, when Ctesias lived in Iran, served the Iranian Emperor, and spoke Old Achaemenid Iranian (and if not, he was surrounded by the Empire's top interpreters and advisers), something disastrously odd 'happened'.
According to Diodorus Siculus, who explicitly stated that he extensively quoted from Ctesias' text (Bibliotheca Historica, II 13), the imperial Carian physician and author appears to have attributed the Behistun inscription and the rock reliefs to none else than the Assyrian Queen Shammuramat (薩穆-拉瑪特), who was the queen consort of the Assyrian Emperor Shamshi Adad V (沙姆什·阿達德五世; reign: 824-811) and co-regent (811-805) during the first years of reign of her son Adad Nirari III (阿达德尼拉里三世; reign: 811-783)!
Furthermore, in the 'Ancient Greek' text of Diodorus Siculus, the monumental inscription was said to be written in Assyrian cuneiform (Συρίοις γράμμασιν)! Even worse, in the same text (as preserved today), it was also stated that, in the rock relief, there was also a representation of the Assyrian queen!
Ctesias' text, as preserved by Diodorus Siculus, is truly abundant in information, but it is historically impossible and therefore entirely forged. Due to this and many other texts, an enormous chasm was unnecessarily formed between
a) the historical queen Shammuramat of Assyria, whose historicity is firmly undeniable, due to the existence of several contemporaneous cuneiform sources excavated in Assyria, and subsequently deciphered and published,
and
b) the purely fictional Assyrian queen Semiramis (沙米拉姆) of the posterior Ancient Greek textual sources that were supposedly 'preserved' (but in reality deliberately distorted and forged) in the Benedictine manuscripts of Western Europe's monasteries.
However, if we examine closely the facts, we will surely understand what truly occurred in this case; then, we will be able to fathom how the fake History of the Western world was fabricated.
The Behistun inscription is trilingual, as it was written in Old Achaemenid Iranian (the earliest form of written Iranian languages), Babylonian, and Elamite; this was a very common practice during the Achaemenid times (550-330 BCE). The main figure of the associated rock relief is Darius I the Great, evidently the representation of a male royal.
One way or another, with respect to the Behistun inscription and rock relief, Ctesias certainly knew everything that we know today after the successive decipherments of the Old Achaemenid, Babylonian and Elamite cuneiform writings, or perhaps even more, due to the then extant oral tradition.
VIII. The malignant intentions of the Benedictine liars: from the historical Darius I the Great to the fictional Semiramis
The Behistun inscription is not Assyrian; the representation is not that of female royal; and the monument is totally unrelated to Shammuramat, who had lived 300 years before Darius I the Great and 400 years before Artaxerxes II's physician Ctesias. More importantly, by that time, the Assyrian Empire did not occupy the lands surrounding Behistun. Accompanied by Iranian imperial officers and his associates, Ctesias certainly learned all the details of the monumental inscription that we can now read in articles, courses, lectures, books and encyclopedias.
The narrative was a triumph for Darius I the Great and a spectacular rebuttal of the vicious Mithraic Magi who had supported the defeated evil sorcerer and villain Gaumata. Apparently, writing a guidebook for Iran to help marginal people of the Empire's Balkan periphery, Ctesias did not have any reason to say lies. Moreover, we don't have any reason to believe that Diodorus Siculus needed to distort the truth to that extent, when copying and thus preserving Ctesias' masterpiece for the posterity.
However, the transmission of the details about the Behistun inscription embarrassed the Benedictine copyists who wanted to denigrate Darius I the Great and to portray his great empire in a most derogatory manner. They had already proceeded in this manner, distorting other manuscripts, forging texts, and fabricating their pseudo-historical narratives at will.
That is why Ctesias' pertinent text, which had certainly been preserved in its original form within Diodorus Siculus' Bibliotheca Historica, was intentionally distorted by the Benedictine 'Holy Inquisition of Libraries', which fabricated the myths of today's Western world some time after the middle of the 8th c. CE. To be accurate, Ctesias' historical description was entirely replaced by a fictional and historically nonsensical account.
The unbelievable lies -invented and included in Diodorus Siculus' quotations from Ctesias- risked making of the fictional queen Semiramis a world ruler! Whereas the Assyrian Empire at the end of the 9th c. BCE did not control even the western half of today's Iranian territory, the unequivocally mythicized Semiramis had supposedly sent her armies up to India where those fictitious Assyrian soldiers were trampled by the elephants. This worthless narrative that replaced Ctesias' original text may very well have been invented as a 'historical' excuse for Alexander the Great's failure to advance deep inside India.
IX. The vicious distortions of the Benedictine liars: from Ctesias to Herodotus
But if the fictional Semiramis' Indian campaign is entirely false, so are then the preposterous narratives of Herodotus about Darius I the Great's and Xerxes I the Great's campaigns in the insignificant and barbarian circumference of South Balkans. These texts involved evil purposes, heinous anti-Iranian biases, fictional battles, racist discourses, vicious lies, incredibly large number of the Iranian armies, and absurdly high number of Iranian casualties.
The mendacious but idiotic Benedictine monks, who wrote those slander tales did not apparently expect that, sometime in the future, excavations would bring to light splendid Iranian antiquities, original cuneiform documentation, and trustworthy contemporaneous historical sources, whereas a systematic effort of decipherment would offer to people all over the world direct access to historical texts written in dead languages, thus irrevocably canceling Herodotus' nonsensical report and, even more importantly, the later distortions that the Benedictine monks made on their worthless manuscripts.
In any case, had those fictional campaigns against 'Greece' had a shred of truth to them, they would have certainly been documented one way or another in various Old Achaemenid, Babylonian, Elamite, Imperial Aramaic, Egyptian hieroglyphic or other sources; but they were not.
Even worse, the meaningless and ludicrous battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and their likes would have been commemorated by the Seleucids, the Ptolemies, and the Attalids all the way down to the Romans and the Eastern Romans. But we know quite well that the nonexistent, fictional past of the so-called Ancient Greek world was absolutely irrelevant to them: precisely because it had not yet been fabricated.
===================
Aristotle as Historical Forgery, the Western World’s Fake History & Rotten Foundations, and Prof. Jin Canrong’s Astute Comments
Contents
I. Aristotle: a Major Founding Myth of the Western World
II. When, where and by whom was the Myth of Aristotle fabricated?
III. The Myth of Aristotle and its first Byproducts: Scholasticism, East-West Schism, the Crusades & the Sack of Constantinople (1204)
IV. Aristotelization: First Stage of the Westernization and the Colonization of the World
V. Aristotelization as Foundation of all the Western Forgeries: the so-called Judeo-Christian Heritage and the Fraud of Greco-Roman Civilization
VI. The Modern Western World as Disruption of History
VII. The Myth of Aristotle and the Monstrosity of Western Colonialism
======================
Download the article in PDF:
Nefertum, god of the lotus and son of Ptah and Sekhmet.
Currently in love with Minoan offerings depicted in Egyptian tombs
A Babylonian student’s homework, circa 1900-1700 B.C., found in Iraq. Now in the British Museum.
Many round clay tablets such as this one have been left over from the ancient Babylonian period. On the side shown to us is four short lines written by the student, on the other side is a model text written by a more accomplished scribe for the student to follow or copy. When it came to learning about such things, the students had to learn how to make their own tablets and hold their stylus. From there they would learn basic cuneiform and after that they would actually practice proper writing of sentences and stories. The texts they copied or wrote were often traditional stories, myths, and historical records.
Some of these tablets often reveal what school life was like in ancient Babylon, and it was frankly very horrid. There seems to have been a consistency of underachievement but also teachers could beat their students and yell at them. Most if not all of the student body was male, girls either received some education at home or none at all. If a parent was dissatisfied with their child’s progress then they could invite the teacher over for a meal and bribe them with gifts and the child’s progress would “improve”.
Once their education was complete, the student would be a dubsar or scribe. They would go on to become priests, bureaucrats, or help merchants with keeping record of their stock and money. (x)
~Hasmonean
Michael Pasiakos (1959-2023): an Obituary
Ο Καλός μου Φίλος Μιχάλης Πασιάκος (1959-2023), οι Αχανείς Αναζητήσεις του, και η πάντοτε Άφθαστη για μένα Σαγιάδα
Краткое содержание на русском языке в конце / Deutsche Zusammenfassung am Ende / Résumé en français à la fin / English Summary at the end
Η γνωριμία μου με τον Μιχάλη άρχισε με μία ολότελα απρόσμενη πρόσκληση! Αυτή προερχόταν από μία χώρα από την οποία δεν είχα περάσει ούτε καν για μία φορά τα προηγούμενα δεκα οκτώ (18) χρόνια: την Ελλάδα. Από τον Ιούλιο του 2001, οπότε είχα φύγει, ούτε είχα σκεφθεί να επισκεφθώ κάποια περιοχή της χώρας, ούτε είχα επικοινωνήσει με κανένα, ούτε και μου είχε κάποιος γράψει.
Περιεχόμενα
Ι. Ο Πεπερασμένος Κόσμος μου από το Μαρόκο μέχρι την Κίνα και ο Απέραντος Κόσμος του Μιχάλη στην Σαγιάδα
ΙΙ. Περιστατικά της εξ αποστάσεως γνωριμίας μας
ΙΙΙ. Όταν η ανταλλαγή μηνυμάτων μετατράπηκε σε επικοινωνία με emails
ΙV. Όταν ο Μιχάλης αυτο-προσδιορίστηκε: Άθεος, Αναρχικός κι Αγρότης!
V. Οι τελευταίες επικοινωνίες μας
VΙ. Una furtiva lagrima ή ξηροῖς ἀκλαύτοις ὄμμασιν;
Επίμετρο
Краткое содержание / Zusammenfassung / Résumé / Summary
Ήταν Νοέμβριος του 2019 και, ως συνήθως, βρισκόμουν σε πολλά ταξείδια. Όλα άρχισαν με ένα μήνυμα που δέχθηκα στον λογαριασμό μου στο μεγάλο πόρταλ academia dot edu. Είχε αποσταλεί από τον Μιχάλη και ήδη με την πρώτη ανταλλαγή μηνυμάτων με προσκαλούσε να δώσω μία διάλεξη στους Φιλιάτες, μία μικρή πόλη της ΒΔ Θεσπρωτίας την οποία είχα πολύ παλιά επισκεφθεί για μόνον μισή ώρα, ένα απόγευμα του 1964, όταν πήγαινα ταξείδι με τους γονείς μου και ένα ζευγάρι θείων μου στην Κέρκυρα.
Ποτέ δεν ξέχασα εκείνη την βανίλια-υποβρύχιο που είχα απολαύσει σε ένα καφενείο της πλατείας απέναντι στην εκκλησία της κωμόπολης. Όπως και ποτέ δεν ξέχασα την αποτυχία μου να πείσω τον θείο μου να μας οδηγήσει από την Ηγουμενίτσα, όπου εφθάσαμε αργότερα και εβγάλαμε αρκετά νωρίς τα εισιτήρια για το φέρρυ μπωτ, στην κοντινή Σαγιάδα, εφόσον η απόσταση ήταν κοντινή και ούτως ή άλλως, θα περιμέναμε ακόμη για 45 λεπτά μέχρι τον απόπλου για την Κέρκυρα.
Όλα αυτά είχαν για πολλές δεκαετίες παραμείνει βαθειά στις χαράδρες της μνήμης μου αλλά αυτόματα ανασύρθηκαν στην επιφάνεια χάρη στο μήνυμα-πρόσκληση του μακαρίτη πλέον σήμερα Μιχάλη. Ωστόσο, μου είχε φανεί παράξενο να προσκληθώ να μιλήσω σε μία πόλη, την οποία εγνώριζα τόσο λίγο, για θέματα της ειδίκευσής μου, τα οποία τόσο ελάχιστα θα ενδιέφεραν το εν Φιλιάταις φιλομαθές κοινό. Με άλλα λόγια, τα τόσο αντιφατικά στοιχεία μιας τέτοιας πρόσκλησης ντε φάκτο με έκαναν να ενδιαφερθώ για τον μυστηριώδη αποστολέα.
Ι. Ο Πεπερασμένος Κόσμος μου από το Μαρόκο μέχρι την Κίνα και ο Απέραντος Κόσμος του Μιχάλη στην Σαγιάδα
Έτσι και εγώ, πριν απαντήσω, ανακάλυψα .... the United States of Σαγιάδα, ή για να είμαι πιο ακριβής, τον Μιχάλη ... dans tous ses états! Δηλαδή μυήθηκα στα ατελείωτα μυστικά και στα άγνωστα σε μένα πιο πριν αλλά ιδιαίτερα σημαντικά τοπία και μνημεία, περιστατικά και γεγονότα της περί την Σαγιάδα Θεσπρωτίας που τόσο θαυμάσια και τόσο πλουσιοπάροχα εκείνος αναπαριστούσε στο μπλογκ του.
Και σ' αυτή την τόσο απίθανη και τόσο ξεχωριστή ικανότητα του Μιχάλη οφείλονται οι παραπάνω όροι τους οποίους εδημιούργησα κάθε τόσο επισκεπτόμενος το -εξαιρετικό και βαθύπλουτο σε γνώσεις, στοιχεία, αναλύσεις, περιγραφές, τεκμήρια και ιστορικές φωτογραφίες- μπλογκ του, La Bastia (https://labastia.blogspot.com/), όπου εκείνος, με αναφορά στην παλαιότερη, ιταλική ονομάσία της Σαγιάδας, με πρωτοφανή συνέπεια, με ανεξάντλητη επινοητικότητα, και με υπερβατική αγάπη επέμενε να παρουσιάζει ακόμη και την τελευταία πέτρα της Θεσπρωτίας σε όλες της τις διαστάσεις.
Συνεχίστε στο PDF
---------------------------
Download the obituary in PDF:
Ausflüge in Ägypten mit deutschsprachigem Reiseleiter
Ausflüge in Ägypten mit deutschsprachigem Reiseleiter
Wenn du Ägypten besuchst, sind Ausflüge mit einem deutschsprachigen Reiseleiter eine hervorragende Möglichkeit, das Land zu entdecken. Ein solcher Guide hilft dir, die faszinierende Geschichte und Kultur Ägyptens besser zu verstehen. Egal, ob du die Pyramiden von Gizeh, das Tal der Könige oder die beeindruckenden Tempel in Luxor besuchst, du erhältst spannende Informationen direkt in deiner Sprache. So kannst du dich ganz auf die Erlebnisse konzentrieren und die Schönheit dieses einzigartigen Landes genießen.
Ausflüge in Ägypten mit deutschsprachigem Reiseleiter
~ Clay bulla with impression of a stamp seal depicting the Persian king spearing a Greek hoplite.
Place of origin: Near Eastern, Iranian
Culture: Persian
Period: Achaemenid
Date: 550–331 B.C.
Medium: Clay
From Jean Baptiste Duroselle (and his Book) to the Making (and Unmaking) of Europe to (the Rise of) the Final Empire in Russia
Several friends from different countries read with great interest and greater amusement my recent article about the Duroselle Affair back in 1990-1991:
Plea for Jean Baptiste Duroselle's Brilliant Book, Europe: A History of its Peoples
Most of them did not know either the late French academician or his book, let alone the ridiculous and ignominious reaction of the average Greeks and of the barbarian Modern Greek elite to the truths revealed in the book of the French academician.
Then, these friends of mine made their own research for some time; subsequently, they came back with plenty of questions as regards my wholehearted support for Jean Baptiste Duroselle and his book. Some of them asked me why I supported so fervently a book that does not reflect my approach and evaluation of the History of Europe. Others asked me at what point this affair stands in my progressive adhesion to Islam, because in reality 25-26 months after the moment I wrote the Plea, I took my final decision to become Muslim.
Their questions offer me therefore the opportunity of a retrospective view on my spiritual path, academic career, intellectual progress, and cultural development; they are therefore quite challenging for me as they force me to stand in front of the mirror of my life.
I - My view of Europe in the 1980s and now
Since my childhood, I have never been Euro-centric; I went to a French school during the primary and the secondary education, but this was not a reason for me to see France as the sole point of reference. I went to France for postgraduate studies, but this was only one of the countries where I pursued this level of studies. I spent my life's first 27 years in six European countries, also traveling to many other European states, but I was not Eurocentric at all. Until the end of 1983, my few travels to non-European lands were not the reason of my universalism. Certainly, this tendency must be attributed to aspects of inherent spirituality, to home culture and education, to my personal readings, and above all, to the fact that my parents and grandparents were -all- born in Anatolia, a major Asiatic land of civilization and eschatology.
Due to my strong European linguistic background (seven modern and two ancient European languages), I was well versed in European History; but I never viewed it as an autonomous historical knowledge, markedly delineated and clearly distinct from that about other lands or continents. In other words, I never felt and I never experienced, let alone accepted, the existence of borders; to me all borders are meaningless, useless and even profane. Therefore, I never considered Europe as a possibly standalone entity or land. My strong family connections with Turkey and Russia, my knowledge of these major European and Asiatic languages, and my intensive studies in Orientalist disciplines made me 'balance' and 'temper' what was absolute for many of the institutions that I frequented: the European culture and civilization.
This was my feeling at the time (and still is today): if you take off from Lisbon and land in Chelyabinsk, you will find an enormous cultural and behavioral difference; then you conclude that somewhere in-between there must be 'borders'. But in real terms, this is absolutely fictional. How can you understand that? If you travel by land, you will see the many similarities and the few dissimilarities that you will encounter every now and then from Lisbon to Valladolid, to Montauban and thence to Strasbourg, Dresden, Warsaw, Minsk, Moscow, Kazan, Ufa and Chelyabinsk. In reality, cultural continuity prevails over state borders.
My long years in the Middle East (where, while exploring the past, I extensively became acquainted with the local culture and the daily life of numerous nations and ethnic-religious groups) helped me shape my approach, corroborate my conclusions, and consolidate my conviction about the disappointing limits of the conventional modern scholarship (including my Greek, French, English, Belgian and German professors). Still, there was no systematic criticism of the European project of 'unification' from my side at the time; it simply did not interest me. Last, I did not express a straightforward rejection of the European colonial powers, of their deeds, and of the ensuing calamitous results back in the middle-late 1980s.
All the same; at the time, I did not approach the topic (History of Europe) in the same manner (as Jean Baptiste Duroselle did) either. To me, his approach was only one out of many possible approaches. I remember very well that at those days I was saying (as I do right now) that the History of Europe begins in Egypt and in Mesopotamia. This means automatically that I already did not accept either borders or continents.
II - Europe begins in Egypt and in Mesopotamia
There cannot be History of Europe without
- the Phoenician colonization of the Aegean Sea, South Balkans, and North Africa,
- the Carthaginian presence in Sicily, Sardinia and the Iberian Peninsula,
- the Scythians, the Cimmerians, the Celts and the Teutons, who are of Asiatic origin,
- the Egyptian priests of Isis, Horus, Anubis and Sarapis, who propagated their cults,
- the Mithraic pirates who imposed Mithraism in South Balkans and South Italy,
- the Mithraic priests, who revealed Mithras' mysteries throughout Europe,
- the Aramaean origin Emperor Elagabalus, for whom Syria was holier than Europe,
- the Edict of Caracalla that turned Syrians, Egyptians & Berbers to Roman citizens,
- the Chaldean Oracles & the Babylonian spiritual heritage that they brought in,
- the Manicheans, whose faith was preached by an Iranian mystic in Mesopotamia,
- the Huns and all the other Turanian or not invaders who settled in Europe,
- the Muslims of Andalusia, who turned their land into Europe's scientific center,
- the Volga Bulgars who were Islamized before the Kievan Rus were Christianized,
- the Tatars & the Mongols (Golden Horde), who are Russia's vertebral column, and
- the Ottomans, whose European lands were larger than any other European empire's except for Napoleon's momentary state, Russia, and the Roman Empire.
Still, all this was missing in Jean Baptiste Duroselle's book.
Certainly, an academic criticism of Duroselle's book could be founded, but any perspicacious scholar would instantly understand the purpose of that book: it was not a strictly educational material. It was written to become (as it really did) the cornerstone of the European unification. Today many people forget that, when Duroselle was writing his book, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact were still there. As educational material, it was meant to be that of at least one generation.
Then, why should one write an academic criticism of a book that has an exclusively political purpose and scope (except the scope is nefarious and destructive)?
I never believed that Duroselle's book was written with bad intentions. As member of the same elite, which sought to establish the European Union on sound and solid bases, Jean Baptiste Duroselle advanced, at the academic/educational level, in the same manner statesmen and legislators did at the political level: step by step. Or if you prefer, one step at a time! The European Coal and Steel Community had only six (6) member states in 1952; but the European Communities had twelve (12) member states when, 37 years later, in 1989, Duroselle was writing his book.
Then, I realized that in the elaboration of the (demanded by the Commission of the European Communities) book, Duroselle proceeded in the same manner. Most probably, if everything went well, another historian 25-30 years later would compose another «Europe: A History of its Peoples» to incorporate material, facts, cultures and nations that I suggested (as per above) and which Duroselle fully omitted. Then, a fully successful European Union would incorporate Turkey and Russia, thus transforming its nature and changing its name (once more) into Eurasiatic Union. This would be a most propitious development – not only for Europe but for the entire world.
As I saw the entire project as an open-ended effort, I did not feel the need to criticize Duroselle's book at the time, hoping that things would progress beneficially to all, with the elimination of narrow-minded approaches, discriminatory theories, and racist schemes which help raise fictional barriers and fake borders, turning peoples and nations to conflicting parts in a destructive game.
III - Many different plans for a Unified Europe
One should not associate Jean Baptiste Duroselle and his book with today's calamitous and anti-European leadership of the European Union and of many of its countries. Duroselle belonged to a totally different elite, which simply failed to keep the evil forces out.
It is also erroneous to think that the problem is due to a divide between forces that intend to establish and consolidate a Unified Europe and those who intend to plunge the countries of the European Union into endless strives, fraternal conflicts, and catastrophic wars. I don't mean that there are not forces acting to damage the European Union; they certainly exist and they deploy every possible effort to harm the European project.
However, the greatest trouble has been the existence of several parallel agendas providing for different versions of the European project. There were plans which equated the European unification, not only with the fall of the Soviet system but also, with the split and destruction of Russia. Duroselle was a close associate of Jean Monnet and a French Freemason. But their plans about Europe included also the split and destruction of Russia (then known as USSR). This became fully evident with Charles de Gaulle, who did not say the words «Union soviétique» (or U.R.S.S.) even once. He used to call it «Russie». So, de Gaulle spoke about a Europe «de Lisbonne aux Ourals», which means a de facto split of Russia.
I beg you not to misunderstand me! I do not equate Charles de Gaulle with all those who wanted to destroy Russia. His idea reflected the targets and the agenda of only one group. That group wanted (and still wants) to include European Russia into the European project. But there are other groups with other targets and very different agendas, as per which Russia must not be cut to just two parts, but to ten or fifteen pieces.
With the aforementioned, I don't mean recent but old groups, secret societies, and long enduring, evil plans providing for Russia's pulverization. To add further perplexity to the already confusing story, I must add that there is no unity of purpose even among those who intend to fully pulverize Russia. There are some who are very cheerful for the European unification project and have malicious intentions toward Russia; and there are others who want to see both, Europe and Russia, plunged in division, turned to endless battlefields, and mercilessly destroyed.
IV - Serious mistakes committed by past European leadership
And the forces that were in charge committed many mistakes. Things did not go out of control with the beginning of the Russian special operation in Ukraine in 2022; the real problems started at the time of Mitterrand (1916-1996), Kohl (1930-2017) and Gorbachev (1931-2022). The earliest form of these problems appeared in the minds of people like Jean Monnet (1888-1979), Pierre Renouvin (1893-1974), and Jean Baptiste Duroselle (1917-1994), who kept in their heads a pre-WW II image of the world. This fact prevented them from fully realizing that their project was in striking contrast with three different agendas:
- the Jesuit agenda providing for European unification and for Russia's division and subordination,
- the US-Zionist agenda implying US predominance in Europe, and Russia's final pulverization, and
- the UK-Fake Freemasonic agenda intending to cause conflict everywhere between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Of course, the existence of an agenda does not mean that it will be materialized, but for this to be done, mistakes must not be made. Unfortunately, the aforementioned three leaders made colossal mistakes. Their intention to advance in small steps only guaranteed that catastrophic errors would be produced in the process; they should have advanced in a very bold and most impulsive manner, which would change everything in the horizon so quickly that others would never be in a position to react. Many times, what does not change in a second, fails to evolve and, due to other changes occurred elsewhere, becomes obsolete.
Mitterrand, Kohl and Gorbachev should make an agreement as per which the termination of the Soviet/Russian presence in East Germany would imply the immediate termination of French/English/ American presence in West Germany.
UK and US should be kept out of every discussion pertaining to Germany and France. Gorbachev's agreement with Helmut Kohl dates back to July 1990 (during their meeting on 14th July); but the Warsaw Pact was dissolved one year later (July 1991). East Germany's exit from the Warsaw Pact should occur at the same moment as West Germany's exit from NATO. The momentous advent of a neutral, united Germany should be the sole and undisputed target of Mitterrand, Kohl and Gorbachev. With the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the leading states of the European Communities, namely France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, should withdraw from NATO to become militarily neutral countries – just like Germany and all the former Warsaw Pact member states.
European Communities should then immediately start discussions with Russia and other Eastern European states for the establishment of a new European organization of security and military cooperation.
All the other European Communities member states that had not withdrawn from NATO should be asked to either follow the example of the major states or cease to be part of the European project.
Specific legislation in the European Parliament should be voted to permanently block academic exchanges with US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (and with UK if the insular state did not withdraw from NATO), making it impossible for European students to ever study in US, Canadian, etc. universities. The relations between the European Communities and the US should be limited at the level of simple trade.
As a matter of fact, the mistakes of Mitterrand, Kohl and Gorbachev were those of their mentors, and the reason for them was the fact that they kept having a pre-WW II world view in a post-WW II world. This was preposterous. They failed to accurately assess the deep seated hatred that post-WW II American elites had of Europe, and which was superbly encapsulated in John Kennedy's silly words about France ('a country the size of Texas' having the pretension of 'grandeur' and 'universal relevance').
Example of typically American trash that is absolutely impermissible on European soil: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/france-united-states-iraq/
Post WW II America evolved from a supportive friend of Europe to an encumbering ally only to dare finally assert her claim to world supremacy. It goes without saying that the rise of an empire is achieved either in parity with another or with the collapse of another. In fact, after the end of what is conventionally called WW II, any truthful vision of a United Europe is that of an Empire, and it cannot be achieved within the concept of a Res Publica. Consequently and by definition, the US and the UK are the 'enemies' and all the states of Asia and Africa are the potential allies.
V – The rise of a self-destructive establishment in Europe
Failing to understand that America is the enemy and not the ally or partner of Europe was not the only mistake of the last representatives of the old guard of European statesmen and politicians. They failed to identify a series of challenges, to come up with their own responses to them, to spot groups using a perverse language to corrupt European ideals and principles, to outmaneuver them, to eliminate subversive theories like today's biased and fake multiculturalism, to find various alternatives to the supposed 'need' of cheap labor force (which in turn translates to unnecessary millions of 'refugees'), to examine worldwide threats, notably the case of Islamic extremism, to avert the existing dangers, to address all major issues (Food and Water, Energy, Labor, Worldwide Competitiveness, Security, Health, Education, Internet-Mobile Telephony-Disruptive Technology, and the inevitable termination of the Welfare State), and to envision common national and supranational survival in an exceptionally different future.
The old guard of European statesmen and politicians proved to be too small, too mean, and too conventional to possibly stand the exam. Their traditional practice to please all the important groups of power by means of endless compromises, their unconditional relativism, their tactics to promise everything to everyone, and their absurd aversion to fix strict limits to their concepts, principles and values made them look absolutely useless. This situation was exemplified by Jacques Chirac, who was foolish enough not to realize that, when you don't stand for your values, you get supplanted. Elasticity is not a virtue for emperors.
And this is what really happened in Europe; the old guard of European statesmen and politicians, provenly useless, got effectively supplanted by valueless aliens and enemies of the European culture, who can easily promote by means of lawless laws any sort of bestial and villainous absurdity to a supposed 'value', only thanks to the long lasting relativism that corrupted the European societies.
The rise of a self-destructive establishment in Europe did not and will not end up with its subordination to the US; this is so because the American society collapsed too due to the rise of similar chaotic and inhuman elements and groups. And this is exactly what the old guard of European statesmen and politicians (Reagan, Thatcher, Kohl and Chirac) failed to understand: it they put strict limits, stated their purposes clearly, and clashed with the disparate, corrupt and chaotic elements of the Evil Left, there would be a thunderous clash and they would eliminate the evilness, preventing the corruption from spreading across their societies. Their conformism, compromises and conventionalism (superbly described and decried by the perspicacious Pope Benedict XVI as 'relativism') did actually ensure calmness and placidity in their time only to bring about corruption, disintegration, and dissolution 20-30 years later.
Now, alas, it will take extreme brutality, foremost violence, and overwhelming totalitarianism to save the European Union; but what will be saved will have nothing to do with 'democracy', 'human rights', 'civil rights', and 'republican' states. It will come with dozens of millions of dead on European soil and -above all- with fierce countenance. Many expect it to be based in Eastern Europe; they believe that the land of Russia, east of Moscow, the confines of Volga Bulgaria, the periphery of the Tatars, and Sibir (Siberia), as far as Chelyabinsk, are the world's most blessed Earth as past covenant and future pledge. It may appear to be like the Jack of all trades; what Christianity and Islam failed to achieve with their interminable wars, Tengrism and Shamanism may eventually achieve. And who knows? Those who wanted for more than 100 years to consecrate Russia may see their urban state desecrated forever! I guess one would even call it orbital deformity!
What was then Duroselle's error? I would not call it like that; as a matter of fact, it was an oversight. Although he fortunately avoided referring to nonsensical lines of division of which others were fascinated, he did not explicitly state that in Eastern Europe the only possibly peaceful borders are those between Austria-Hungary, Imperial Germany, and Czarist Russia.
---------------------
Download the article in Word doc.:
____1312059____
Today, May 16th, we commemorate the Roma resistance against the Nazis in what is now remembered as the International Roma Resistance Day. Via Roma Antidiscrimination Network & Roma Center e.V. : "From the very beginning of World War II, Roma and Sinti fought against the deprivation of their rights and their racial classification. They protested against discriminatory regulations and attempted to secure the release of deported family members through petitions or personal intervention. They worked closely with resistance groups in the occupied territories. They played an important role in the national liberation movements, particularly in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. A large number of Roma and Sinti lost their lives in the armed struggle against National Socialism. Roma and Sinti also engaged in various forms of resistance in the concentration camps. A high point was the uprising in Section BIIe of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the "Z-Camp. On May 16, 1944, approximately 6,000 people—men, women, the elderly, and children—barricaded themselves in the barracks of the "Z-Familienlager." They had been informed by the resistance network within the camp that the camp was to be "liquidated" at night. Therefore, they decided to fight back. They confronted the SS with tools, stones, and, above all, with courage and determination when they came to take them to the gas chambers. Structural and legal discrimination against Roma is not a thing of the past. Even today, Roma around the world are still fighting for equal rights. More and more ethno-nationalists are using Roma as scapegoats for economic decline and all kinds of misfortune. Inspired by these people's resistance, we continue to fight. Today and tomorrow."
20 Μαρτίου 1739: Ο Τουρκμένος Ναντέρ Σάχης του Ιράν καταλαμβάνει το Δελχί, Βαθύπλουτη Πρωτεύουσα των Γκορκανιάν, Πανίσχυρων Μογγόλων της ‘Ινδίας’
March 20, 1739: The Turkmen Nader Shah of Iran occupies Delhi, the Opulent Capital of the Gorkanian, i.e. the Formidable Mongols of ‘India’
ΑΝΑΔΗΜΟΣΙΕΥΣΗ ΑΠΟ ΤΟ ΣΗΜΕΡΑ ΑΝΕΝΕΡΓΟ ΜΠΛΟΓΚ “ΟΙ ΡΩΜΙΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΑΝΑΤΟΛΗΣ”
Το κείμενο του κ. Νίκου Μπαϋρακτάρη είχε αρχικά δημοσιευθεί την 20η Μαρτίου 2019.
Στο κείμενό του αυτό, ο κ. Μπαϋρακτάρης ενσωματώνει τμήματα δύο ομιλιών μου, οι οποίες δόθηκαν τον Ιανουάριο του 2019 στο Πεκίνο σχετικά με την γεωστρατηγική του αφρο-ευρασιατικού χώρου, την πτώση των μεγάλων ιστορικών αυτοκρατοριών, και την δυναμική μιας αυτοκρατορικής-οικουμενιστικής επιστροφής στην Γη.
-----------------------------
https://greeksoftheorient.wordpress.com/2019/08/04/20-μαρτίου-1739-ο-τουρκμένος-ναντέρ-σάχης-το/ ====================
Οι Ρωμιοί της Ανατολής – Greeks of the Orient
Ρωμιοσύνη, Ρωμανία, Ανατολική Ρωμαϊκή Αυτοκρατορία
Μια φορά όταν είπαν στον Ναντέρ ότι δεν υπάρχει πόλεμος στον Παράδεισο, λέγεται ότι ρώτησε: “Μπορεί να υπάρχει ευχαρίστηση εκεί”;
Πριν από 280 χρόνια, το αδιανόητο έγινε γεγονός! Το (σιιτικό) Ιράν κατέλαβε την (σουνιτική) Ισλαμική Αυτοκρατορία των Μεγάλων Μογγόλων (Μουγάλ), η οποία ήταν ένα πολύ μεγαλύτερο, πολυπληθέστερο και πλουσιώτερο κράτος. Καμμιά χώρα στον κόσμο δεν είχε ποτέ κατακτήσει την Κοιλάδα του Γάγγη. Αλλά για τον Αφσάρ Τουρκμένο γεωργό – πολεμιστή Ναντέρ όλα ήταν δυνατά!
Οι Αχαιμενιδείς είχαν κατακτήσει όλες τις εκτάσεις από την Μακεδονία μέχρι την Κοιλάδα του Ινδού, από τα βόρεια παράλια της Μαύρης Θάλασσας μέχρι το Σουδάν, κι από την Κεντρική Ασία μέχρι το Ομάν. Αλλά εκεί που τελειώνει η Πενταποταμία (Παντζάμπ: ‘Πέντε Ποτάμια’ στα φαρσί και στα ουρντού) τερματίζονταν και τα ανατολικά όρια του Ιράν.
Ο Μέγας Αλέξανδρος που άτρομος διεξήγαγε και νικούσε σε μάχες έναντι συντριπτικά υπερτέρων δυνάμεων δεν κατέλαβε ‘πολλές’ χώρες! Αυτό είναι κάτι που πολλοί ξεχνούν στην Ελλάδα. Ουσιαστικά , ο Μέγας Αλέξανδρος κατέκτησε μία χώρα: το Ιράν. Απέραντη, τεράστια, με πολυπληθή στρατεύματα, ναι! Αλλά μία. Ο Μέγας Αλέξανδρος προχώρησε πέραν της Πενταποταμίας και νίκησε τον Πώρο, βασιλιά ενός βόρειου ινδικού βασιλείου. Και θα προχωούσε περισσότερο αλλά ξεσηκώθηκαν οι στρατιώτες του και τον απέτρεψαν.
Ι. Δεν υπάρχει ‘Ινδία’: είναι ένας ψεύτικος, αποικιοκρατικός, οριενταλιστικός όρος
Υπάρχει στο σημείο αυτό μια σύγχυση που δημιουργήθηκε από αρχαίους Έλληνες και Ρωμαίους συγγραφείς: προερχόμενος από το όνομα του Ινδού ποταμού, ο όρος ‘Ινδία’ (Χεντ και Σιντ) απέκτησε σιγά-σιγά μια τεράστια ασάφεια, ακριβώς επειδή η γνώση για εκτάσεις πέραν του ποταμού ήταν μικρή.
Τα βασίλεια ανατολικά του Ινδού αποτελούσαν βέβαια την Ινδία και ήταν εθνοφυλετικά συγγενή προς τους Πέρσες και τους Άρειους, αλλά πιο πέρα στα ανατολικά και στα νότια εκτείνονταν δραβιδικά βασίλεια που δεν είχαν καμμιά συγγένεια – εθνική, γλωσσική, πολιτισμική – με τους πραγματικούς Ινδούς των βασιλείων αμέσως ανατολικά του Ινδού. Οι Δραβίδες είναι τόσο διαφορετικοί από τους Ινδούς όσο οι Έλληνες από τους Κινέζους.
Στα χρόνια της Ύστερης Αρχαιότητας, ο αρχαιοελληνικός όρος ‘Ινδία’ απέκτησε τόση ασάφεια και γενίκευση όση κι ο όρος ‘Αιθιοπία’, ο οποίος περιέγραφε αρχικά το σημερινό Σουδάν (όχι την Αβησσυνία που σήμερα ψευδώς ονομάζεται Αιθιοπία). Οι δυο όροι τελικά αλληλο-επικαλύφθηκαν και ουσιαστικά κατάντησαν συνώνυμα του ‘Νότου’ κατά τους πρώτους χριστιανικούς αιώνες.
Όλα αυτά μας οδηγούν στο συμπέρασμα ότι σήμερα η χρήση της λέξης ‘Ινδίας’ – είτε για αναφορά στην Αρχαιότητα και στα Ισλαμικά Χρόνια, είτε για περιγραφή του συγχρόνου κράτους – είναι λαθεμένη και βεβαρυμένη με πολιτικές, αποικιοκρατικές κι οριενταλιστικές, σκοπιμότητες. Άλλωστε κι η περσική και ουρντού λέξη ‘Χιντουστάν’ σήμαινε και σημαίνει βασικά την περιοχή του Ινδού ποταμού, της Πενταποταμίας και ομόρων περιοχών.
Σχεδόν οι μισοί κάτοικοι του ψευτοκράτους ‘Ινδία’ είναι δραβιδικοί και δεν μιλούν ινδικά (χίντι). Η σημερινή Ινδία μπορεί να είναι μεγάλη αλλά αποτελεί κατ’ ουσίαν ένα νεο-αποικιακό ψευτοκράτος, όπως η Νιγηρία, η Αλγερία ή η Αίγυπτος, που δεν αποτελεί ‘έθνος’ αλλά απαρτίζεται από πολλά και διαφορετικά μεταξύ τους έθνη.
Κλείνω αυτή την αναφορά προσθέτοντας ότι η παραπάνω εθνοφυλετική και γεωγραφική διαφορά είναι ολότελα άσχετη από την θρησκευτική διαφορά Ισλάμ – ‘Ινδουϊσμού’ (μουσουλμάνων – ‘ινδουϊστών’), δεδομένου ότι μουσουλμάνοι υπάρχουν και ανάμεσα στους Ινδούς (: ‘ινδο-ευρωπαίους’) του Βορρά και ανάμεσα στους Δραβίδες του Ντεκάν, όπως είναι το όνομα του νότιου μισού της λεγόμενης ‘Ινδίας’.
Αν, τέλος, θέτω εντός εισαγωγικών τους όρους ‘Ινδουϊσμός’ και ‘ινδουϊστές’, αυτό οφείλεται στο γεγονός ότι είναι τόσο ψεύτικοι και λαθεμένοι όσο κι ο όρος ‘Ινδία’. Κατ’ ουσίαν δεν υπάρχει ‘ένας’ Ινδουϊσμός αλλά πολλοί (όπως κι η Χριστιανωσύνη δεν είναι μία, το Ισλάμ δεν είναι ένα, ο Βουδισμός δεν είναι ένας, κοκ). Κι επιπλέον υπάρχουν κι άλλες θρησκείες είτε στο Ντεκάν είτε στην βόρεια Ινδία. Γενικώτερα, στην ψευδή, αποικιοκρατική, οριενταλιστική Ιστορία της ‘Ινδίας’ θα επανέλθω με πολλά κείμενα.
Ό,τι ξέρει ο σημερινός κόσμος για την Ινδία είναι μια αγγλογαλλική παραχάραξη της Ιστορίας: για παράδειγμα, υπάρχουν αρχαιοελληνικά κείμενα του 1ου χριστιανικού αιώνα, όπως ο Περίπλους της Ερυθράς Θαλάσσης, που αναφέρουν τα πολλά και διαφορετικά κράτη, τα οποία βρίσκονταν τότε στον χώρο που στρεβλά σήμερα αποκαλούμε ‘Ινδία’, και όμως δεν τα αποκαλούν ‘ινδικά βασίλεια’, επειδή δεν ήταν ινδικά βασίλεια.
ΙΙ. Κοιλάδα του Ινδού, Πενταποταμία και Κοιλάδα του Γάγγη από τον Μεγάλο Αλέξανδρο στους Μεγάλους Μογγόλους Αυτοκράτορες
Μετά τον θάνατο του Μεγάλου Αλεξάνδρου και μέχρι τα χρόνια της μογγολικής κατάκτησης της Κοιλάδας του Ινδού και της Κοιλάδας του Γάγγη, καμμιά ξένη δύναμη δεν κατέκτησε εκτάσεις που σήμερα ανήκουν στην χώρα που συμβατικά ονομάζεται Ινδία. Μόνον οι Ιρανοί Σασανίδες (Σασανιάν: 224-651) έφθασαν τα ανατολικά σύνορά τους τόσο μακριά όσο οι Αχαιμενιδείς κι ο Μέγας Αλέξανδρος. Αλλά και εκείνοι σταμάτησαν εκεί.
Όταν οι Επίγονοι Σελευκιδείς και οι Πάρθες Αρσακιδείς (Ασκανιάν: η πιο μακραίωνη ιρανική δυναστεία – 250 π.Χ.-224 μ.Χ.) βρίσκονταν σε αδυναμία, πολλά αυτόνομα βασίλεια σχηματίζονταν από τα έθνη που κατοικούσαν στις ανατολικές επαρχίες τους, δηλαδή τον χώρο όπου σήμερα βρίσκονται το Πακιστάν, το Αφγανιστάν, το Ουζμπεκιστάν, το Τατζικιστάν, η Κιργιζία, οι ανατολικές εσχατιές του Ιράν και τα βορειοδυτικά άκρα της Ινδίας: η Σογδιανή, το ελληνιστικό κράτος της Βακτριανής, το ινδοπαρθικό κράτος, το ινδοσκυθικό κράτος, το κάποτε πανίσχυρο Κουσάν, οι Τόχαροι, και άλλα κεντρασιατικά τουρκόφωνα ή ινδοευρωπαϊκά κράτη.
Το τι αποκαλείται ‘αυτοκρατορία’ στην Αρχαία Ιστορία της ‘Ινδίας’, όπως την έχουν παρασκευάσει Άγγλοι, Γάλλοι, Ολλανδοί κι Αμερικανοί οριενταλιστές ‘Ινδολόγοι’, είναι βασικά μικρά κράτη (για τα μέτρα των Αχαιμενιδών, των Σελευκιδών και των Σασανιδών) που εκτείνονται κυρίως ανάμεσα στην Πενταποταμία και το Δέλτα του Γάγγη: το βασίλειο των Μαουρύα (322–185 π.Χ.) ή το βασίλειο των Γκούπτα (319-543 μ.Χ.). Αυτά ήταν όντως ινδικά – ινδοευρωπαϊκά βασίλεια. Όμως τα περισσότερα άλλα βασίλεια στα νότια δεν μπορούν να ονομασθούν ινδικά γιατί ήταν δραβιδικά. Και ήταν όλα πάντοτε μικρά τοπικά βασίλεια: όλη η Νότια Ασία ήταν κατά κανόνα πάντοτε κατακερματισμένη.
Οι πρώιμοι μουσουλμάνοι κι οι ισλαμικές στρατιές των μέσων του 7ου αιώνα που έφθασαν στο Πεντζάμπ και τα βορειοδυτικά άκρα της σημερινής Ινδίας ουσιαστικά επανέλαβαν την Ιστορία: εκμεταλλεύθηκαν κάτι το οποίο ‘είχαμε’ ξαναδεί! Όπως ο Μέγας Αλέξανδρος, καταλύοντας το αχαιμενιδικό Ιράν, βρέθηκε σχεδόν ‘αυτόματα’ κυρίαρχος των ανατολικών σατραπειών κι εκτάσεών του, έτσι κι οι ισλαμικές στρατιές μετά τις μάχες στην Καντισίγια (636), Νεχαβέντ (642) και Μερβ (651) βρέθηκαν κυρίαρχοι των ανατολικών σατραπειών κι εκτάσεων του σασανιδικού Ιράν.
Ανάποδα, η Ιστορία επαναλήφθηκε και πάλι λίγους αιώνες αργότερα: στους χρόνους της αργής παρακμής και βαθμιαίας αποδυνάμωσης του αβασιδικού χαλιφάτου της Βαγδάτης. Ό,τι χαρακτήρισε τους Σελευκιδείς και τους Αρσακιδείς, συνέβη και τότε: πολλά μικρότερα ισλαμικά βασίλεια ξεφύτρωσαν κι αλληλοδιαδέχθηκαν το ένα το άλλο στην περιοχή ανάμεσα το κεντρικό ιρανικό οροπέδιο, την Αράλη στην Κεντρική Ασία και την Πενταποταμία.
Η μογγολική κατάκτηση της σημερινής βόρειας Ινδίας πιστοποιεί διαχρονικά ότι όλος ο χώρος ανάμεσα στο Δέλτα του Ινδού και στο Δέλτα του Γάγγη καταλαμβάνεται πιο εύκολα από τον βορρά παρά από τα δυτικά. Και δεν αναφέρομαι σε στρατιωτικές κατακτήσεις μόνον. Από τον 8ο αιώνα, με την διάδοση του Ισλάμ στην Κεντρική Ασία, πολλά τοπικά τουρκόφωνα φύλα αποψιλώνονταν από τους πιο ικανούς πολεμιστές τους, οι οποίοι έβλεπαν ότι, αν αποδέχονταν το Ισλάμ, θα μπορούσαν να έχουν μια πολύ επιτυχημένη σταδιοδρομία ως στρατιωτικοί σε μια τεράστια αυτοκρατορία.
Έτσι, πολλοί ευχαρίστως προσέρχονταν για να προσλήφθούν ως δούλοι-πολεμιστές. Στο αβασιδικό χαλιφάτο υπήρχαν ήδη πολυάιθμοι και για όλους τους εχρησιμοποιείτο η αραβική λέξη ‘ιδιοκτησία’, διότι ως σκλάβοι αποτελούσαν την ιδιοκτησία (‘μαμλούκ’ / πληθυντικός: μαμαλίκ) των κυρίων τους. Αυτοί είναι οι Μαμελούκοι.
Μαμελούκοι υπήρχαν παντού: στην Κεντρική Ασία, στην Πενταποταμία, στις κεντρικές περιοχές του χαλιφάτου, στην Αίγυπτο, και στην βορειοδυτική Αφρική. Η κατά τόπους ιστορία τους είναι απλή: πρώτα ήταν σκλάβοι-πολεμιστές, έπειτα απελεύθεροι, ύστερα παράκλητοι ως εμπειροπόλεμοι, και τελικά κυρίαρχοι ηγεμόνες.
Αλλά δεν υπήρχε πουθενά ένας εθνικού χαρακτήρα συντονισμός. Και δεν μπορούσε να υπάρχει, επειδή οι ‘μαμελούκοι’ ανήκαν σε διαφορετικές τουρκόφωνες φυλές, μιλούσαν σχετικά διαφορετικές γλώσσες, κι ενθυμούνταν τις πάντοτε υπαρκτές ενδοτουρκικές εχθρότητες κι αντιπαλότητες. Όποιοι πετύχαιναν σε ένα κάποιο τόπο κυριαρχούσαν εκεί. Δεν υπήρχε δυναστεία Μαμελούκων μόνον στην Αίγυπτο, όπως είναι περισσότερο γνωστό στην Ελλάδα.
Υπήρχαν πολλές κατά τόπους δυναστείες Μαμελούκων που όλοι τους ήταν τουρκόφωνοι – αν κι αυτό δεν σημαίνει την ίδια γλώσσα, εφόσον άλλα τα Κιπτσάκ, άλλα τα Τσαγατάι, άλλα τα τουρκμενικά, άλλα τα των Ογούζων (ή Ούζων – Ουζμπέκων), κοκ.
Αλλά τα φαρσί ήταν πάντοτε η γλώσσα της λογοτεχνίας και της ιστορίας και τα αραβικά η γλώσσα της επιστήμης και της θρησκείας.
Μετά την πρώιμη ισλαμική επέλαση μέχρι την Κοιλάδα του Ινδού και την Πενταποταμία, η διάδοση του Ισλάμ στην Νότια Ασία (βόρεια Ινδία: ανάμεσα στο Δέλτα του Ινδού και στο Δέλτα του Γάγγη / Ντεκάν: το κατοικούμενο από μη Ινδούς, Δραβίδες, νότιο ήμισυ της σημερινής Ινδίας) δεν ήταν ποτέ θέμα του Ισλαμικού Χαλιφάτου της Δαμασκού (661-750) και της Βαγδάτης (750-1258), όπως συχνά σήμερα Ινδουϊστές εθνικιστές εσφαλμένα ισχυρίζονται.
Αντίθετα, ήταν υπόθεση πολέμου ανάμεσα σε ινδικά ινδουϊστικά βασίλεια της Κοιλάδας του Γάγγη και σε μικρότερα ισλαμικά βασίλεια που ξεφύτρωσαν κι αλληλοδιαδέχθηκαν το ένα το άλλο στην περιοχή ανάμεσα το κεντρικό ιρανικό οροπέδιο, την Αράλη στην Κεντρική Ασία και την Πενταποταμία, όπως προανέφερα, εξαιτίας της βαθμιαίας αποδυνάμωσης του αβασιδικού χαλιφάτου της Βαγδάτης.
Αυτά τα ισλαμικά βασίλεια, όπως οι Γαζνεβίδες (977–1186 / το Γαζνί βρίσκεται στο σημερινό Αφγανιστάν), είτε διέθεταν Μαμελούκους είτε είχαν συσταθεί από Μαμελούκους.
Οι πόλεμοι αυτών των βασιλείων με τα ινδικά ινδουϊστικά βασίλεια απέληξαν στην διάδοση του Ισλάμ στον ευρύτερο χώρο της Νότιας Ασίας.
Έτσι, αυτό που αποκαλούμε ‘Σουλτανάτο του Δελχί’, ουσιαστικά αποτελεί μια διαδοχή πέντε διαφορετικών δυναστειών που προέρχονται από Μαμελούκους, δηλαδή διάφορα τουρκόφωνα αλλά και άλλα κεντρασιατικά φύλα.
Αυτές οι πέντε ισλαμικές δυναστείες με βάση το Δελχί (: το Παλαιό Δελχί) διεξήγαγαν πολέμους με τα ινδικά και τα δραβιδικά βασίλεια είτε του χώρου ανάμεσα στο Δέλτα του Ινδού και στο Δέλτα του Γάγγη είτε του Ντεκάν.
Οι πέντε δυναστείες καλύπτουν ένα διάστημα άνω των τριών αιώνων: Μαμελούκοι (1206–1290), Χάλτζι (Khalji: 1290–1320), Τούγλακ (Tughlaq: 1320–1414), Σαγίντ (Sayyid: 1414–51), και Λόντι (Lodi: 1451–1526).
Αυτοί μάλιστα ήταν ικανοί να σταθούν με επιτυχία απέναντι στον Χουλάγκου και να αποκρούσουν τις πρώτες μογγολικές επελάσεις (1221-1327), ενώ η Βαγδάτη κατέρρευσε το 1258.
Τότε διαμορφώθηκε μια κοσμοπολίτικη και πολύ ανεκτική κοινωνική κατάσταση που προσέλκυσε Ιρανούς, Κεντρασιάτες, Τουρκόφωνους και Μογγόλους που ελάχιστη σημασία απέδιδαν σε θρησκευτικές διαφορές – σιίτες ή σουνίτες, μουσουλμάνους, χριστιανούς (Νεστοριανούς), μανιχεϊστές, βουδιστές ή ινδουϊστές.
Η εθνοφυλετική σύνθεση των Ινδο-Ευρωπαίων Ινδών του χώρου της σημερινής βόρειας Ινδίας άλλαξε ολότελα και δημιουργήθηκε ένα τουρκο-μογγολο-κεντρασιατο-ιρανο-ινδικό εθνογλωσσικό μείγμα, το οποίο φτάνει μέχρι τις μέρες μας: η επίσημη γλώσσα του Πακιστάν (ουρντού) είναι μια τουρκική λέξη (ordu) που σημαίνει ‘στρατός’.
Αυτή είναι μια μεικτή τουρκική (Turkic), περσική, αραβική κι ινδική γλώσσα, στην οποία το ινδικό λεξιλόγιο (που προέρχεται από αρχαίες ινδικές – ινδο-ευρωπαϊκές γλώσσες όπως τα σανσκριτικά και τα πρακριτικά) είναι σχετικά μικρό.
Η ίδια γλώσσα είναι επίσημη και στην Ινδία, πλην όμως εκεί λέγεται χίντι, γράφεται σε Ντεβαναγκάρι σύστημα (οφειλόμενο σε αρχαία Μπραχμί γραφή) και όχι σε φαρσί (όπως τα ουρντού που έχουν μερικά επιπλέον γράμματα για φθόγγους ανύπαρκτους στα φαρσί), και απλώς δεν έχει τους ισλαμικούς όρους που έχει κάθε γλώσσα μουσουλμάνων. Αλλά κατ’ ουσίαν ουρντού και χίντι είναι μία γλώσσα και με εκτεταμένο τουρκικό (Turkic) λεξιλόγιο.
Αν το Σουλτανάτο του Δελχί γλύτωσε από τον Τσενγκίζ Χαν, δεν απέφυγε τον Ταμερλάνο. Το 1398 ο στρατός του Τιμούρ Λενγκ κατέλαβε το Δελχί κι επακολούθησε μια απερίγραπτη λεηλασία και σφαγή. Η πόλη εκθεμελιώθηκε. Στην συνέχεια αναθεμελιώθηκε και το Σουλτανάτο συνεχίστηκε αν και ιδιαίτερα αποδυναμωμένο.
Το τέλος της τελευταίας δυναστείας του Δελχί δόθηκε από τον Μπαμπούρ (στα περσικά σημαίνει ‘Τίγρης’) απόγονο του Ταμερλάνου, ο οποίος ήταν γιος του κυβερνήτη της Φεργάνα του Τουρκεστάν (σήμερα στο ανατολικό Ουζμπεκιστάν).
Μετά από πολλές πολεμικές κατακτήσεις στην Κεντρική Ασία, στράφηκε στην Ινδία και μετά από τη νίκη στην μάχη του Πανιπάτ θεμελίωσε το 1526 την δυναστεία που αποκαλείται Μουγάλ (Mughal) στην διεθνή βιβλιογραφία.
Ουσιαστικά, ο όρος Μογγόλος σήμαινε στρατιωτική βαθμίδα στα Τσαγατάι τουρκικά, την σήμερα νεκρή πλέον γλώσσα του Ταμερλάνου. Το πραγματικό όνομα, με το οποίο οι ίδιοι οι Μεγάλοι Μογγόλοι αυτοκράτορες (‘σάχηδες’) αποκαλούσαν τους εαυτούς τους και το κράτος τους, ήταν η περσική λέξη Γκουρκανιάν που (στον πληθυντικό) σημαίνει ‘Γαμπροί’.
Ο όρος κατάγεται από πολεμικές – βασιλικές πρακτικές τουρκόφωνων φύλων από τα χρόνια του Τσενγκίζ Χαν (και ίσως και πιο πριν, αλλά τουλάχιστον τότε έγινε γνωστός στους Ιρανούς κι άρχισαν να τον χρησιμοποιούν).
Κατ’ αυτές τις πρακτικές, ένας πολύ γενναίος στρατιώτης – πολεμιστής από μια μάλλον κατώτερη τουρκόφωνη φυλή, αφού επιδείξει ανδρεία σε μια ή περισσότερες μάχες, ζητάει να παντρευτεί την κόρη ενός στρατιωτικού ηγέτη από μια άλλη, ανώτερη τουρκόφωνη φυλή, κι αφού αυτό γίνει, αποκτάει ο ίδιος μεγαλύτερη σημασία και κοινωνική, δηλαδή στρατιωτική, υπόσταση.
Μετά τον Μπαμπούρ (1504 – 1530), οι Γκορκανιάν κυριάρχησαν σε όλες τις εκτάσεις ανάμεσα στο Δέλτα του Ινδού και το Δέλτα του Γάγγη, επέκτάθηκαν τόσο προς Αφγανιστάν και Κεντρική Ασία (από όπου κατάγονταν) όσο και προς τα νότια στο Ντεκάν, κι αναγνωρίστηκαν ως σύμμαχοι από τους Ιρανούς Σαφεβίδες που δεν ήταν Πέρσες αλλά Τουρκμένοι.
Και έτσι δημιουργήθηκε μια εκπληκτική τουρκόφωνη κυριαρχία από την Αλγερία και την Δυτική Μεσόγειο μέχρι την Μυανμάρ, Ταϋλάνδη και την Κίνα, κατά την οποία τρεις τουρκόφωνοι μουσουλμάνοι αυτοκράτορες, ένας Οθωμανός, ένας Σαφεβίδης κι ένα Γκουρκανί, έλεγχαν το μεγαλύτερο τμήμα του τότε γνωστού κόσμου.
Η κοινή καταγωγή και η κοινή θρησκεία δεν εξασφάλισαν ωστόσο καμμία ενότητα.
Οι Σαφεβίδες θεμελίωσαν το πρώτο σιιτικό κράτος στην Παγκόσμια Ιστορία και κατασφάζονταν ασταμάτητα με τους σουνίτες Οθωμανούς από την σημερινή νότια Ρωσσία μέχρι το Ομάν, ενώ οι επίσης σουνίτες Μεγάλοι Μογγόλοι Γκουρκανιάν παρέμειναν ως επί το πλείστον ουδέτεροι.
Σάχης Ταχμάσπ Α’ του Ιράν, στα αριστερά, και Σάχης Χουμαγιούν των Γκορκανιάν (Μεγάλη Μογγολική Αυτοκρατορία της ‘Ινδίας’), στα δεξιά
Μάλιστα μερικές φορές οι Γκουρκανιάν είχαν και καλές σχέσεις με τους Σαφεβίδες, όπως τεκμηριώνει η επίσκεψη (1544) του Χουμαγιούν (γιου του Μπαμπούρ) στο Εσφαχάν του Ιράν και οι απίστευτες ευωχίες και συμπόσια που έλαβαν χώραν εκεί με τον Σάχη Ταχμάσπ Α’ (1524-1576), ο οποίος βοήθησε τον Μεγάλο Μογγόλο να εξαφανίσει την απειλή που ήταν για τον θρόνο του ο Σερ Σάχης Σουρί (Sher Shah Suri), ένας Παστούνος που είχε στήσει μια εξουσία στην Βεγγάλη.
Οι Μεγάλοι Μογγόλοι συσσώρευσαν τεράστιο πλούτο, τον οποίο όμως δεν χρησιμοποίησαν για κάτι το συγκεκριμένο. Μετά τον Αουράνγκζεμπ (1658-1707) άρχισε η παρακμή. Η κατάσταση στο Ιράν ήταν παράλληλη: το 1736 η σαφεβιδική δυναστεία έπαιρνε ένα τέλος.
Ήταν η ώρα για τον Δεύτερο Μεγαλέξανδρο, όπως τον αποκαλούσαν οι σύγχρονοί του Ιρανοί, Κεντρασιάτες, Οθωμανοί κι άλλοι ή τον Ναπολέοντα της Ασίας, όπως τον επονόμαζαν αργότερα Ευρωπαίοι συγγραφείς: τον Ναντέρ Σάχη. Γνωρίζουμε ότι στην εξορία του ο Ναπολέων διάβαζε συγγράμματα Ευρωπαίων που αναφέρονταν στους πολέμους και στις τακτικές του Ναντέρ Σάχη.
ΙΙΙ. Ο Ναντέρ Σάχης (1736-1747) κι η Κατάληψη του Δελχίου (1739)
Ο Ναντέρ Σάχης ήταν μια από τις πάμπολλες περιπτώσεις που πιστοποιούν την υπεροχή των γεωργών προ όλων των άλλων τομέων ανθρώπινης εργασίας και δραστηριότητας.
Μια από τις αναρίθμητες περιπτώσεις που βεβαιώνουν ότι οι άνθρωποι των πόλεων είναι καθοριστικά κι απόλυτα κατώτεροι από τους ανθρώπους που δουλεύουν την γη. Γεννήθηκε σε μια μικρή πόλη του Χορασάν (σήμερα ΒΑ Ιράν) σε μια φτωχή οικογένεια Τουρκμένων αγροτών της φυλής Αφσάρ (افشار / Afshar). Το όνομα αυτό απαντάται σήμερα ακόμη ως επώνυμο σχεδόν σε όλα τα μήκη και πλάτη του μουσουλμανικού κόσμου, ιδιαίτερα βέβαια από την Τουρκία μέχρι την Κίνα.
Αφού πέρασε μια παιδική και νεανική ζωή με πολλές δοκιμασίες (έχασε τον πατέρα του, αιχμαλωτίσθηκε με την μητέρα του, κλπ) κι αφού έγινε Κιζιλμπάσης (‘Ερυθρίνος’), συνέχισε να ζει μια απλή ζωή στρατιώτη μέχρι τα 30 του. Είχε έτσι πάρει ένα πολύ σπάνιο μάθημα από την ζωή, το μόνο απαραίτητο για να γίνει κάποιος άνθρωπος ένας πραγματικά κορυφαίος αυτοκράτορας: περιφρονούσε τα πλούτη, τα αξιώματα, την χλιδή και την πολυτέλεια των ανακτόρων. Ζούσε στα τελευταία σαφεβιδικά χρόνια.
Η αδύναμη εξουσία των τελευταίων σάχηδων του Εσφαχάν ήταν αιτία απόσχισης τοπικών κυβερνητών (στο Αφγανιστάν), ρωσσικών κατακτήσεων στον Καύκασο, οθωμανικής επιθετικότητας και γενικευμένου χάους από την απόπειρα των Αφγανών επαναστατών υπό τον Μαχμούντ Χοτακί να ανατρέψει τον Σουλτάν Χουσεΰν, τελευταίο Σαφεβίδη.
Από το 1722 μέχρι το 1736 (δηλαδή σε ηλικία 34-48 ετών), ο Ναντέρ πολέμησε σε πολλές μάχες για να καταστείλει την αφγανική εξέγερση, να εκδιώξει τους επαναστάτες από την πρωτεύουσα Εσφαχάν και να την αποδώσει στον νόμιμο σάχη Ταχμάσπ Β’, πριν οριστεί διοικητής των ανατολικών επαρχιών και συνενώσει όλες τις ανατολικές επαρχίες της χώρας.
Επίσης πολέμησε ενάντια στους Οθωμανούς, έσπευσε στο Αφγανιστάν για να καταστείλει νέα εξέγερση, υποχρέωσε τον Ταχμάσπ Β’ να παραιτηθεί, όταν ο ανήμπορος σάχης από ζήλεια είχε επιχειρήσει μόνος του μια αποτυχημένη εκστρατεία στον Καύκασο, κι ορίστηκε αντιβασιλέας του γιου του Ταχμάσπ Β’ Αμπάς Γ’.
Μετά από μια σειρά σημαντικών μαχών και νικών κατά των Οθωμανών στον Καύκασο και μετά την εκ μέρους του κατάληψη της Βαγδάτης, υποχρέωσε τους Οθωμανούς να παραχωρήσουν τα ιρανικά εδάφη που είχαν παλαιότερα κατακτήσει στον Καύκασο (Γεωργία και Αρμενία). Και στις 8 Μαρτίου 1736 στέφθηκε σάχης από μια γενική συνέλευση στρατιωτικών, ευγενών και κληρικών που καταλάβαιναν ότι ο μικρός Αμπάς Γ’ ήταν ανίκανος να βασιλεύσει.
Η εκπληκτική ικανότητα του Ναντέρ να ηγείται αριθμητικά μικρότερων στρατευμάτων και να σημειώνει σημαντικές νίκες εναντίον εχθρών – με υπέρτερες δυνάμεις χάρη σε εντυπωσιακούς αιφνιδιασμούς και τεχνικές, απατηλές κινήσεις και πλευροκοπήματα – χαρακτήρισε την περίοδο των έντεκα ετών κατά την οποία βασίλευσε. Σε μια εποχή χωρίς τανκς και μηχανοκίνητες μονάδες, στρατεύματα μετακινούνταν με εκπληκτικές ταχύτητες μέσα από πολύ δύσβατες και δυσπρόσιτες περιοχές, από τον Καύκασο στον Ινδό, από την Κεντρική Ασία στη Μεσοποταμία, κι από το Αφγανιστάν στον Περσικό Κόλπο.
Ο Ναντέρ Σάχης γεννήθηκε σε μια σιιτική οικογένεια αλλά σε μεγαλύτερη ηλικία έδειξε συμπάθεια προς το σουνιτικό Ισλάμ και προσπάθησε να οργανώσει μια σύνθεση και συνένωση των δύο θεολογιών.
Ως άτομο ήταν ίσως ο πιο ανεξίθρησκος ηγεμόνας του Ιράν και η φιλία του προς χριστιανικούς πληθυσμούς ήταν τέτοια που συμπεριέλαβε συχνά Γεωργιανούς κι Αρμένιους στο στράτευμά του.
Θα μπορούσε κανείς εύκολα να τον περιγράψει και ως ένα Κεμάλ Ατατούρκ πριν τον Κεμάλ Ατατούρκ, επειδή καμμιά στρατιωτική του επιχείρηση δεν είχε θρησκευτικά κίνητρα ή σκοπιμότητες.
Όπου έκρινε κι αποφάσιζε ο Ναντέρ Σάχης, η θρησκεία δεν είχε θέση κι όλοι οι άνθρωποι ήταν ίσοι και κρίνονταν με βάση τις ικανότητές τους.
Οι σιίτες μολάδες κι αγιατολάδες κι ο σεϊχουλισλάμης της Οθωμανικής Αυτοκρατορίας είχαν βρει τον μπελά τους μαζί του.
Η κατάκτηση του Δελχί κι η εκτεταμένη λαφυραγώγηση του πλουσιώτατου γείτονα του Ιράν δεν έγιναν ούτε με σκοπό το κέρδος ούτε για να προσπορισθεί ο Ναντέρ Σάχης φήμη και δόξα.
Απλώς του χρειάζονταν έσοδα για τους πολέμους κατά των Οθωμανών που προετοίμαζε στο μυαλό του.
Ο ετήσιος προϋπολογισμός του κράτους του Αουράνγκζεμπ μόλις 25 χρόνια πριν καταλάβει το Δελχί ο Ναντέρ Σάχης ήταν δεκαπλάσιος εκείνου της Γαλλίας του Λουδοβίκου ΙΔ’ (‘βασιλιά ήλιου’)!
Η στρατιωτική τεχνική του Ναντέρ Σάχη στην μάχη του Καρνάλ (13 Φλεβάρη 1739) ήταν εκπληκτική.
Και η λαφυραγώγηση των ανακτόρων των Μεγάλων Μογγόλων στο Δελχί ξεπερνάει κάθε ιστορική αναφορά και κάθε τρελή φαντασία.
——————————————–
Οι Ατελείωτες Μάχες του Ναντέρ Σάχη
Πρώτη εκστρατεία στο Αφγανιστάν – 1729
Η Μάχη στο Μαλαγιέρ, στην οροσειρά του Κεντρικού Ζάγρου, κατά των Οθωμανών – 1730
Η Μάχη στο Μπαγκαβάρντ του Καυκάσου κατά των Οθωμανών – 1735
Μάχη στα Στενά Χάυμπερ, στα βουνά μεταξύ των σημερινών Πακιστάν κι Αφγανιστάν, στην πορεία για κατάληψη του Δελχί – 1738. Πολέμησαν 10000 Ιρανοί υπό τον Ναντέρ Σάχη και νίκησαν 70000 στρατιώτες της Μογγολικής Αυτοκρατορίας των Γκορκανιάν της ‘Ινδίας’.
Η μάχη του Καρνάλ όπου ο Ναντέρ Σάχης πολέμησε εναντίον εξαπλασίων στρατευμάτων (55000 κατά 300000) και νικώντας τα εβάδισε εναντίον του Δελχί – 1739. Οι αντίπαλοι υποστηρίζονταν από 2000 εκπαιδευμένους για πόλεμο ελέφαντες και 3000 κανόνια.
Η μάχη του Καρς: 80000 Ιρανοί κατά 140000 Οθωμανών – 1745. Ιρανική νίκη με νεκρούς και τραυματισμένους 8000 Ιρανούς και Οθωμανούς 12000 νεκρούς, 18000 τραυματισμένους και 5000 αιχμαλώτους
———————————————
Κι όμως ο συνεχώς μάχιμος αυτός γεωργός – στρατιώτης – σάχης δεν θεώρησε αυτή την ιστορική νίκη γεγονός άξιο για να πανηγυρίσει κι αμέσως στράφηκε σε άλλους πολέμους.
Επιστρέφοντας όμως από το Δελχί πήρε τους στρατηγούς του (που ήταν όλοι τους Ιρανοί ευγενείς) και τους οδήγησε στο μικρό χωριό του Χορασάν όπου είχε γεννηθεί. Εκεί τους είπε:
– Βλέπετε σε τι ύψη εξυψώνει ο Μεγαλοδύναμος αυτούς που επιλέγει; Γι’ αυτό, ποτέ μην περιφρονείτε ένα άνθρωπο με ταπεινή καταγωγή και με ελάχιστη περιουσία!
Μετά από άλλα οκτώ χρόνια γεμάτα πολέμους κατά της Οθωμανικής Αυτοκρατορίας στην αραβική χερσόνησο, την Μεσοποταμία και τον Καύκασο, μετά από εκστρατείες στην Κεντρική Ασία και στα παράλια του Ομάν, ο Ναντέρ Σάχης είχε το τέλος που οι ήρωες αντιμετωπίζουν στα χέρια δειλών συνωμοτών (εκτός κι αν συνωμοσίες δεν υπάρχουν!).
Δολοφονήθηκε όταν κοιμόταν από δέκα πέντε συνωμότες την 20 η Ιουνίου 1747.
Στην συνέχεια θα βρείτε μια σειρά από διαφωτιστικές δημοσιεύσεις σχετικά με την ζωή, το έργο, τις στρατιωτικές κατακτήσεις και την κοσμοαντίληψη του πιο τρομερού Ιρανού της δεύτερης χιλιετίας.
Ο Σάχης Ναντέρ κάθεται στον Θρόνο του Παγωνιού, τον μυθικής αξίας χρυσοποίκιλτο κι εμβληματικό θρόνο των Μεγάλων Μογγόλων Αυτοκρατόρων Γκορκανιάν του Δελχί τον οποίο λαφυραγώγησε μαζί πολλά άλλα αμύθητα πλούτη και πετράδια.
Αποσπάσματα από Ιστορικά Κείμενα-Quotes
Afterwards Nadir Shah himself, with the Emperor of Hindustan, entered the fort of Delhi. It is said that he appointed a place on one side in the fort for the residence of Muhammad Shah and his dependents, and on the other side he chose the Diwan-i Khas, or, as some say, the Garden of Hayat Bakhsh, for his own accommodation. He sent to the Emperor of Hindustan, as to a prisoner, some food and wine from his own table.
One Friday his own name was read in the khutba, but on the next he ordered Muhammad Shah’s name to be read. It is related that one day a rumour spread in the city that Nadir Shah had been slain in the fort. This produced a general confusion, and the people of the city destroyed five thousand men of his camp. On hearing of this, Nadir Shah came of the fort, sat in the golden masjid which was built by Rashanu-d daula, and gave orders for a general massacre.
For nine hours an indiscriminate slaughter of all and of every degree was committed. It is said that the number of those who were slain amounted to one hundred thousand. The losses and calamities of the people of Delhi were exceedingly great….
After this violence and cruelty, Nadir Shah collected immense riches, which he began to send to his country laden on elephants and camels.
Tarikh-i Hindi
by Rustam ‘Ali
In: The History of India as Told by its own Historians
The Posthumous Papers of the Late Sir H. M. Elliot
John Dowson, ed. 1st ed. 1867. 2nd ed., Calcutta: Susil Gupta, 1956, vol. 22, pp. 37-67
When the Shah departed towards the close of the day, a false rumour was spread through the town that he had been severely wounded by a shot from a matchlock, and thus were sown the seeds from which murder and rapine were to spring. The bad characters within the town collected in great bodies, and, without distinction, commenced the work of plunder and destruction….
On the morning of the 11th an order went forth from the Persian Emperor for the slaughter of the inhabitants. The result may be imagined; one moment seemed to have sufficed for universal destruction. The Chandni chauk, the fruit market, the Daribah bazaar, and the buildings around the Masjid-i Jama’ were set fire to and reduced to ashes.
The inhabitants, one and all, were slaughtered. Here and there some opposition was offered, but in most places people were butchered unresistingly. The Persians laid violent hands on everything and everybody; cloth, jewels, dishes of gold and silver, were acceptable spoil….
But to return to the miserable inhabitants. The massacre lasted half the day, when the Persian Emperor ordered Haji Fulad Khan, the kotwal, to proceed through the streets accompanied by a body of Persian nasakchis, and proclaim an order for the soldiers to resist from carnage. By degrees the violence of the flames subsided, but the bloodshed, the devastation, and the ruin of families were irreparable. For a long time the streets remained strewn with corpses, as the walks of a garden with dead flowers and leaves.
The town was reduced to ashes, and had the appearance of a plain consumed with fire. All the regal jewels and property and the contents of the treasury were seized by the Persian conqueror in the citadel. He thus became possessed of treasure to the amount of sixty lacs of rupees and several thousand ashraf is… plate of gold to the value of one kror of rupees, and the jewels, many of which were unrivalled in beauty by any in the world, were valued at about fifty krors.
The peacock throne alone, constructed at great pains in the reign of Shah Jahan, had cost one kror of rupees. Elephants, horses, and precious stuffs, whatever pleased .the conqueror’s eye, more indeed than can be enumerated, became his spoil. In short, the accumulated wealth of 348 years changed masters in a moment.
About Shah’s sack of Delhi
Tazrikha by Anand Ram Mukhlis
A history of Nâdir Shah’s invasion of India
In The History of India as Told by its own Historians
The Posthumous Papers of the Late Sir H. M. Elliot.
John Dowson, ed. 1st ed. 1867. 2nd ed., Calcutta: Susil Gupta, 1956, vol. 22, pp. 74-98.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nader_Shah
Ανδριάντας του Ναντέρ Σάχη σήμερα στο Ιράν
Nāder Shah
Nāder Shah, ruler of Iran, 1736-47. He rose from obscurity to control an empire that briefly stretched across Iran, northern India, and parts of Central Asia. He developed a reputation as a skilled military commander and succeeded in battle against numerous opponents, including the Ottomans and the Mughals.
During Nāder’s campaign in India, and several years after he had replaced the last Safavid ruler on the Persian throne, the elimination of much of the Safavid family effectively ended any real possibility of a Safavid restoration. The decade of Nāder’s own tumultuous reign was marked by conflict, chaos, and oppressive rule. Nāder’s troops assassinated him in 1747, after he had come to be regarded as a cruel and capricious tyrant. His empire quickly collapsed, and the resulting fragmentation of Iran into several separate domains lasted until the rise of the Qajars decades later.
Born in November 1688 into a humble pastoral family, then at its winter camp in Darra Gaz in the mountains north of Mashad, Nāder belonged to a group of the Qirqlu branch of the Afšār Turkmen. Beginning in the 16th century, the Safavids had settled groups of Afšārs in northern Khorasan to defend Mashad against Uzbek incursions.
The first major international political event that directly affected Nāder’s career was the Afghan invasion of Iran in the summer of 1719 that resulted in the capture of Isfahan and deposition of Shah Solṭān Ḥosayn, the last Safavid monarch, by the autumn of 1722. After the fall of Isfahan, Safavid pretenders emerged all over Iran. One was Solṭān Ḥosayn’s son Ṭahmāsb, who escaped to Qazvin, where he was proclaimed Shah Ṭahmāsb II.
He led a resistance movement against the Afghans during the 1720s. The Russians and Ottomans saw the Afghan conquest as their own opportunity to acquire territory in Iran, so both invaded and occupied some land in 1723. The following year they signed a treaty in which they recognized each other’s territorial gains and agreed to support the restoration of Safavid rule.
Around this time, Nāder began his career in Abivard, an Afšār-controlled town just north of Mashad. He made himself so useful to the local ruler Bābā ʿAli Beg that he gave Nāder two of his daughters in marriage. Due to internal tribal rivalries, Nāder was not able to become Bābā ʿAli’s successor, so he vied for power with various upstart military chiefs in northeastern Iran who had emerged in the wake of the Afghan invasion.
In the mid 1720s, Nāder played an important role in defeating Malek Maḥmud Sistāni, one of that area’s main warlords, who had set himself up as the scion of the 9th-10th century Saffarid dynasty. Nāder was his ally for a while but soon turned against him. His role in suppressing this usurper brought him to Ṭahmāsb’s attention. Ṭahmāsb chose him as his principal military commander to replace Fatḥ ʿAli Khan Qajar (d. 1726), whose descendants (the founders of the Qajar dynasty) blamed Nāder for the murder of their ancestor.
With this promotion, Nāder assumed the title Ṭahmāsb-qoli (servant of Ṭahmāsb). His prestige steadily increased as he led Ṭahmāsb’s armies to numerous victories. He first defeated the Abdāli (later known as Dorrāni) Afghans near Herat in May 1729, then achieved victory over the Ḡilzi Afghans led by Ašraf at Mehmāndust on 29 September 1729.
After this battle, when Ašraf fled from Isfahan to Qandahar, Ṭahmāsb became finally established in Isfahan (with Nāder in actual control of affairs) by December 1729, marking the real end of Afghan rule in Iran. In the wake of Ašraf’s defeat, many Afghan soldiers joined Nāder’s army and proved helpful in many subsequent battles.
Three months before the Mehmāndust victory, Nāder had sent letters to the Ottoman Sultan Aḥmad III (r. 1703-30) to ask for help, since Ṭahmāsb “was made the legitimate successor of his esteemed father [Solṭān Ḥosayn]” (Nāṣeri, p. 210). Receiving no response, Nāder attacked the Ottomans as soon as Ašraf was defeated and Isfahan reoccupied. He waged a successful campaign during the spring and summer of 1730 and recaptured much territory that the Ottomans had taken in the previous decade.
But, just as the momentum of his offensive was building, news came from Mashad that the Abdāli Afghans had attacked Nāder’s brother Ebrāhim there and pinned him down inside the city’s walls. Nāder rushed to relieve him. (This distraction came at just the right time for the Ottomans, since in Istanbul the Patrona Halil rebellion, which led to the deposition of Aḥmad III, broke out in September 1730). Nāder arrived in Mashad in time to attend the wedding of his son Reżā-qoli to Ṭahmāsb’s sister Fāṭema Solṭān Begum.
Nāder spent the next fourteen months subduing Abdāli forces led by Allāh-Yār Khan. To commemorate his victory over them, he endowed in Mashad a waqf (pious foundation) at the shrine of Imam ʿAli al-Reżā (d. ca. 818). Nāder’s personal seal, preserved on the waqf deed of June 1732, showed his unremarkable Shiʿite loyalty at that time: Lā fatā illā ʿAli lā sayf illā Ḏu’l-Faqār / Nāder-e ʿaṣr-am ze loṭf-e Ḥaqq ḡolām-e hašt o čār (There is no youth more chivalrous than ʿAli, no sword except Ḏu’l-Faqār / I am the rarity of the age, and by the grace of God, the servant of the Eight and Four [i.e., the Twelve Imams].” (Šaʿbāni, p. 375; cf. Rabino, p. 53).
Ṭahmāsb took Nāder’s absence in Khorasan as his own chance to attack the Ottomans and pursued a disastrous campaign (January 1731–January 1732), in which the Ottomans actually reoccupied much of the territory recently lost to Nāder. Sultan Maḥmud I (r. 1730-54) negotiated with Ṭahmāsb a peace agreement that allowed the Ottomans to retain these lands, while returning Tabriz to avoid angering Nāder.
Three weeks later, Russia and Persia signed the Treaty of Rašt, in which Russia, trying to curry favor with Persia against the Ottomans, agreed to withdraw from most of the Iranian territory it had annexed in the 1720s.
When Nāder learned that Ṭahmāsb had relinquished substantial territory to the Ottomans, he quickly returned to Isfahan. He used the peace treaty as an excuse to remove Ṭahmāsb from the throne in August 1732 and replace him with Ṭahmāsb’s eight-month-old son, who was given the regnal name ʿAbbās III. Now regent, Nāder resumed hostilities against the Ottomans.
After a decisive round of victories, interspersed with short excursions to quell uprisings in Fārs and Baluchistan, he signed a new treaty in December 1733 with Aḥmad Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Baghdad. It marked an attempt to reinstate the provisions of the 1049/1639 Ottoman-Safavid Treaty of Qaṣr-e Širin (Ḏohāb), since it called for the restoration of the borders stipulated at that time, a prisoner exchange, and Ottoman protection for all Persian ḥajj pilgrims. The Ottoman sultan would not ratify it, because disputes persisted over control of parts of the Caucasus, and so intermittent hostilities continued.
In March 1734, Šāhroḵ was born to Reżā-qoli and Fāṭema Begum. Šāhroḵ thus formed a direct link between the lineages of Nāder and the Safavids—an important basis for Šāhroḵ’s eventual right to rule. The choice to name his grandson after Šāhroḵ b. Timur (r. 1409-47) revealed Nāder’s growing interest in emulating the conqueror Timur (r. 1369-1405).
There followed another series of Ottoman-Persian battles in the Caucasus, and Nāder’s capture of Ganja, during the siege of which Russian engineers provided assistance. Russia and Persia then signed a defensive alliance in March 1735 at Ganja. In the treaty, the Russians agreed to return most of the territory conquered in the 1720s.
This agreement shifted the regional diplomatic focus to a looming Ottoman-Russian confrontation over control of the Black Sea region and provided for Nāder a military respite on his western border.
By the end of 1735, Nāder felt that he had gained enough prestige through a series of victories and had secured the immediate military situation well enough to assume the throne himself. In Feburary 1736, he gathered the nomadic and sedentary leaders of the Safavid realm at a vast encampment on the Moḡān steppe.
He asked the assembly to choose either him or one of the Safavids to rule the country. When Nāder heard that the molla-bāši (chief cleric) Mirzā Abu’l-Ḥasan had remarked that “everyone is for the Safavid dynasty,” he was said to have had that cleric arrested and strangled the next day (Lockhart, p. 99). After several days of meetings, the assembly proclaimed Nāder as the legitimate monarch.
The newly appointed shah gave a speech to acknowledge the approval of those in attendance. He announced that, upon his accession to the throne, his subjects would abandon certain religious practices that had been introduced by Shah Esmāʿil I (r. 1501-24) and had plunged Iran into disorder, such as sabb (ritual cursing of the first three caliphs Abu Bakr, ʿOmar, and ʿOṯmān, termed “rightly guided” by the Sunnites) and rafż (denial of their right to rule the Muslim community).
Nāder decreed that Twelver Shiʿism would become known as the Jaʿfari madòhab (legal school) in honor of the sixth Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādeq (d. 765), who would be recognized as its central authority.
Nāder asked that this madòhab be treated exactly like the four traditionally recognized legal schools of Sunnite Islam. All those present at Moḡān were required to sign a document indicating their agreement with Nāder’s ideas.
Just before his actual coronation ceremony on 8 March 1736, Nāder specified five conditions for peace with the Ottoman empire (Astarābādi, p. 286), most of which he continued to seek over the next ten years.
They were:
(1) recognition of the Jaʿfari maḏhab as the fifth orthodox legal school of Sunnite Islam;
(2) designation of an official place (rokn) for a Jaʿfari imam in the courtyard of the Kaʿba [Perry, 1993, p. 854 and “Kaʿba,” in EI2 IV, p. 318 vs. Lockhart, p. 101] analogous to those of the Sunnite legal schools;
(3) appointment of a Persian pilgrimage leader (amir al-ḥajj);
(4) exchange of permanent ambassadors between Nāder and the Ottoman sultan; and
(5) exchange of prisoners of war and prohibition of their sale or purchase. In return, the new shah promised to prohibit Shiʿite practices objectionable to the Ottoman Sunnites.
Nāder tried to redefine religious and political legitimacy in Persia at symbolic and substantive levels.
One of his first acts as shah was to introduce a four-peaked hat (implicitly honoring the first four “rightly-guided” Sunni caliphs), which became known as the kolāh-e Nāderi, to replace the Qezelbāš turban cap, which was pieced with twelve gores (evocative of the twelve Shiʿite Imams).
Soon after his coronation, he sent an embassy to the Ottomans (Maḥmud I, r. 1730-54) carrying letters in which he explained his concept of the “Jaʿfari maḏhab” and recalled the common Turkmen origins of himself and the Ottomans as a basis for developing closer ties.
During this negotiation and subsequent ones, the Ottomans rejected all proposals related to Nāder’s Jaʿfari maḏhab concept but ultimately agreed to Nāder’s demands concerning recognition of a Persian amir al-ḥajj, exchange of ambassadors, and that of prisoners of war.
These demands paralleled the provisions of a long series of Ottoman-Safavid agreements, especially an accord, drawn up in 1727 but never signed, between the Ottoman sultan and Ašraf, the Ḡilzay Afghan ruler of Persia (r. 1725-29).
At the end of the 1148/1736 negotiations, both sides approved a document that mentioned only the issues of the ḥajj pilgrimage caravan, ambassadors, and prisoners because of disagreement over the Jaʿfari maḏhab concept.
Although no actual peace treaty was signed at that time, mutual acceptance of these other points became the basis for a working truce that lasted several years.
Nāder departed substantially from Safavid precedent by redefining Shiʿism as the Jaʿfari maḏhab of Sunni Islam and promoting the common Turkmen descent of the contemporary Muslim rulers as a basis for international relations.
Safavid legitimacy depended on the dynasty’s close connection to Twelver Shiʿism as an autonomous, self-contained tradition of Islamic jurisprudence as well as the Safavids’ alleged descent from the seventh Imam Musā al-Kāżem (died between 779 and 804). Nāder’s view of Twelver Shiʿism as a mere school of law within the greater Muslim community (umma)glossed over the entire complex structure of Shiʿite legal institutions, because his main goal was to limit the potential of Sunnite-Shiʿite conflict to interfere with his empire-building dreams.
The Jaʿfari maḏhab proposal also seems intended as tool to smooth relations between the Sunni and Shiʿite components of his own army. In addition, the proposal had economic implications, since control of a ḥajj caravan would have provided the shah with access to the revenue of the lucrative pilgrimage trade.
Nāder’s focus on common Turkmen descent likewise was designed to establish a broad political framework that could tie him, more closely than his Safavid predecessors, to both Ottomans and Mughals.
When describing Nāder’s coronation, Astarābādi called the assembly on the Moḡān steppe a quriltāy, evoking the practice of Mughal and Timurid conclaves that periodically met to select new khans. In various official documents, Nāder recalled how he, Ottomans, Uzbeks, and Mughals shared a common Turkmen heritage.
This concept for him resembled, in broad terms, the origin myths of 15th century Anatolian Turkmen dynasties. However, since he also addressed the Mughal emperor as a “Turkmen” ruler, Nāder implicitly extended the word “Turkmen” to refer, not only to progeny of the twenty-four Ḡozz tribes, but to Timur’s descendants as well.
Nāder’s novel concepts regarding the Jaʿfari maḏhab and common “Turkmen” descent were directed primarily at the Ottomans and Mughals. He may have perceived a need to unite disparate components of the omma against the expanding power of Europe at that time, however different his view of Muslim unity was from later concepts of it. But both ideas had less domestic importance.
On coins and seals, and in documents issued to his subjects, Nāder was more conservative in his claim to legitimacy. For example, the distich on one of his official seals focused only on the restoration of stability: Besmellāh – nagin-e dawlat-e din rafta bud čun az jā / be-nām-e Nāder Irān qarār dād Ḵodā (In the name of God – when the seal of state and religion had disappeared from Iran / God established there order in the name of Nāder; Rabino, p. 52).
In a proclamation sent to the ulamaof Isfahan soon after the coronation, the Jaʿfari maḏhab was depicted as nothing more than an attempt to keep peace between Sunnites and Shiʿites.
The document explained that ʿAli would continue to be venerated as one especially beloved by God, although henceforth the Shiʿite formula ʿAli wali Allāh (ʿAli is the deputy of God) would be prohibited.
In contrast to the shah’s letters to foreign rulers, this proclamation did not even mention the Safavids (Qoddusi, p. 540).
Nāder’s domestic policies introduced major economic, military, and social changes. He ordered a cadastral survey in order to produce the land registers known as raqabat-e Nāderi. Because of the establishment of the Jaʿfari maḏhab, the Safavid framework of pious foundations was suspended (Lambton, p. 131), although their revenues were the main source of financial support for important ulama.
Only in the last year of his reign did Nāder decree the resumption of pious foundations.
After his accession to the throne, Nāder claimed the ruler’s privilege to issue coinage in his name. His monetary policy linked the Persian currency system to the Mughal system, since he discontinued the Safavid silver ʿAbbāsi and minted a silver Nāderi whose weight standard corresponded with the Mughal rupee (Rabino, p. 52).
Nāder also attempted to promote fixed salaries for his soldiers and officials instead of revenues derived from land tenure. Continuing a shift that had begun in the late Safavid era, he increased substantially the number of soldiers directly under his command, while units under the command of provincial and tribal leaders became less important.
Finally, he continued and expanded the Safavid policy of a forced resettlement of tribal groups (Perry, 1975, pp. 208-10).
All these reforms can be viewed as attempts to address weaknesses that had emerged in the late Safavid era, but none solved the problems that were tied to larger trends in the world economy. Iran had suffered from a swift rise in the popularity of Indian silk in Europe during the last few decades of Safavid rule, a shift that dramatically reduced Iran’s foreign income and indirectly contributed to the draining of bullion away from Persian state treasuries (Matthee, pp. 13, 67-68, 203-06, 212-218).
This crisis, in turn, put more pressure on the provinces to produce tax revenue, which led provincial governors to take oppressive measures and fueled the Afghan revolt that had resulted in the Safavid collapse in the first place.
After his ascension to the throne Nāder’s main military task was the ultimate defeat of the remaining Afghan forces that had ended Safavid rule. After laying siege to Qandahar for almost a year, Nāder destroyed it in 1738—the last redoubt of the Ḡilzi, who were led by Shah Ḥosayn Solṭān, the brother of Shah Maḥmud, who had been the first Ḡilzay to rule Persia (1722-1725). On the site of his camp Nāder built a new city, Nāderābād, to which he transferred Qandahar’s population and Abdāli Afghans.
The destruction of Qandahar completed the reconquest of territory lost since the reign of Shah Solṭān Ḥosayn. Nāder’s career now entered a new phase: the invasion of foreign territory to pursue dreams of a world empire that could resemble the domains of Chinghis Khan (d. 1227) and Timur. After the fall of Qandahar, many Afghans joined his army.
His pursuit of Afghans who had fled across the Mughal frontier grew into an invasion of India when Nāder accused the Mughals of providing them with shelter and aid. Nāder had appointed Reżā-qoli as his deputy in Iran. While his father was away, Reżā-qoli feared a pro-Safavid revolt and had Moḥammad Ḥasan (the leader of the Qajars between 1726 and 1759) execute Ṭahmāsb and his sons.
After a successful offensive that culminated in the final defeat of the Mughal forces at the battle of Karnāl near Delhi in February 1739, Nāder made the Mughal emperor Moḥammad Šāh (r. 1719-48) his vassal and divested him of a large part of his fabulous riches, including the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor diamond. When the rumor spread that Nāder had been assassinated, the Indians attacked and killed his troops. In retaliation, Nāder gave his soldiers permission to plunder Delhi and massacre its inhabitants.
The peace treaty restored control of India to Moḥammad Šāh under Nāder’s distant suzerainty; it proclaimed Moḥammad Šāh’s legitimacy, citing the Turkmen lineage that he shared with Nāder (Astarābādi, p. 327). Nāder arranged a ceremony in which he placed the crown back on Moḥammad Shah’s head. To further emphasize Moḥammad Šāh’s subordinate status, he assumed the title šāhānšāh.
To further strengthen his ties to the Mughals, Nāder married his son Naṣr-Allāh to a great granddaughter of the Mughal emperor Awrangzēb (r. 1658-1707). His chroniclers represent his victory over Moḥammad Šāh as another sign of his similarity to Timur. The shah himself was so obsessed with emulating Timur that he moved, for a time, to Mashad (Lockhart, pp. 188-89, note 4).
While Nāder was invading India, Reżā-qoli was securing more territory for Nāder north of Balḵ and south of the Oxus river. His campaign aroused the ire of Ilbars, the khan of Khwarazm, and of Abu’l-Fayż (r. 1711-47), the Toqay-Timurid khan of Bukhara. When they threatened counterattacks, Nāder engaged in a swift campaign against them on his way back from India. He executed Ilbars and replaced him with a more compliant ruler, but this new vassal would soon be overthrown. Abu’l–Fayż, like the Mughal emperor, accepted his status as Nāder’s subordinate and married his daughter to Nāder’s nephew.
After the campaigns in India and Turkestan, particularly with acquisition of the Mughal treasury, Nāder found himself suddenly wealthy. He issued a decree canceling all taxes in Iran for three years and decided to press forward on several projects, such as creation of a new navy.
Nāder had sent his naval commanders at various times on expeditions in the Persian Gulf, particularly to Oman, but these missions were unsuccessful, in part because it was difficult to secure naval vessels of good quality and in adequate numbers. In the summer of 1741, Nāder began to build ships in Bušehr, arranging for lumber to be carried there from Māzāndarān at great trouble and expense. The project was not completed, but by 1745 he had amassed a fleet of about thirty ships purchased in India (Lockhart, p. 221, n. 3).
However, Nāder experienced several major setbacks after his return to Iran. In 1741-43 he launched a series of quixotic attacks in the Caucasus against the Dāḡestānis in retaliation for his brother’s death. In 1741, an attempt was made on Nāder’s life near Darband. When the would-be assassin claimed that he had been recruited by Reżā-qoli, the shah had his son blinded in retaliation, an act for which he later felt great remorse.
Marvi reported that Nāder began to manifest signs of physical deterioration and mental instability. Finally, the shah was forced to reinstate taxes due to insufficient funds, and the heavy levies sparked numerous rebellions.
In spite of mounting problems, in 1741 Nāder sent an embassy to the Ottomans to resubmit his 1736 proposal for a peace treaty. But Maḥmud I had just won wars against Russia and Austria and was not receptive.
The sultan rejected the shah’s claim to Iraq (a claim based on Timur’s earlier control of the province).
Then the Ottoman legal authority, the šayḵ al-Eslām, issued a fatwā (legal opinion) formally declaring the Jaʿfari maḏhab heretical.
In response, Nāder besieged several cities in Iraq in 1743, with no results, and in December of that year he signed a ceasefire with Aḥmad Pāšā, the Ottoman governor of Baghdad (d. 1747). Subsequently, Nāder convened a meeting of ulama from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia in Najaf at the shrine of ʿAli b. Abi Ṭāleb (d. 661), the fourth of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs and the first Imam.
After several days of lively debate on the question of the Jaʿfari maḏhab, the participants signed a document which recognized the Jaʿfari maḏhab as a legitimate legal school of Sunnite Islam.
The Ottoman sultan, however, remained unimpressed by this outcome.
Nāder soon had to leave Iraq to suppress several domestic rebellions.
The most serious of these began near Shiraz in January 1744 and was led by Moḥammad Taqi Khan Širāzi, the commander of Fārs province and one of Nāder’s favorites.
In June 1744, Nāder sacked Shiraz, and by winter he had crushed these revolts.
He resumed his war against the Ottomans and defeated them in August 1745 at Baḡāvard near Yerevan.
Although Nāder’s victory led to new negotiations, his bargaining position was not strong because of new, large-scale domestic uprisings.
The shah dropped his demands for territory and for recognition of the Jaʿfari maḏhab, and the final agreement was based only on the long mutually acceptable positions regarding frontiers, protection of pilgrims, treatment of prisoners, and exchange of ambassadors (Lockhart, p. 255).
The agreement recognized the shared Turkmen lineage and ostensibly proclaimed the conversion of Iran to Sunnism.
Yet the necessity to guarantee the safety of pilgrims to the Shiʿite shrines (ʿatabāt-e ʿāliya) in Iraq reveals the formal character of this concession.
The treaty was signed in September 1746 in Kordān, northwest of Tehran.
It made possible the official Ottoman recognition of Nāder’s rule, and the sultan dispatched an embassy with a huge assortment of gifts in the spring of 1747, although the shah did not live to receive it.
Nāder had spent the winter and spring of 1746 in Mashad, where he formulated a strategy to suppress the plethora of internal revolts. He also oversaw the construction of a treasure house for his Indian booty at nearby Kalāt-e Nāderi.
The building complex that Nāder constructed within this natural mountain fortress, near his birthplace in northern Khorasan, became his designated retreat, and he created there a secure showplace for his accomplishments.
Nāder followed the nomadic custom of not staying long in any permanent capital city, and Kalāt and Mashad (in, as he saw it. a complementary relationship) served as his main official sites in ways that resembled capital cities of other nomadic empires.
Under Nāder’s patronage, Mashad flourished at the midpoint of a trading route between India and Russia and grew in importance as a major pilgrimage center with its Emam Reẓā shrine complex.
In June 1747, a cabal of Afšār and Qajar officers succeeded in killing Nāder.
The succession struggle embroiled Persia in civil war for the next five years.
Two months before the assassination, Nāder’s nephew ʿAli-qoli, son of his brother Ebrāhim (d. 1738), had risen in revolt, and in July he followed his uncle on the throne as ʿĀdel Shah (r. 1747-48).
Nāder’s grandson Šāhroḵ, although blinded after an earlier coup attempt, finally secured the throne in Khorasan in 1748 as a vassal of the Afghan Aḥmad Shah Dorrāni (r. 1747-73).
This former deputy of Nāder founded the Dorrāni dynasty and is credited with being the first ruler of an independent Afghan state.
Šāhroḵ ruled for almost fifty years until 1795, when Āqā Moḥammad Khan Qajar (r. 1779-97) deposed him, marking the end of the rule of the Afsharids in Iran.
Text and bibliography in detail:
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nader-shah
-------------------------------------
Koh-i-Noor and Nadir Shah’s Delhi loot
The legendary treasure trove of Hindustan has changed hands en masse on two occasions, once in 1739, when it was taken by Nadir Shah, and then again in 1857, by the prize agents of the East India Company. Apart from these two conquests, a great many priceless gems and jewels were acquired by the early European traders in India and sold in Europe. Today, many of the world’s famous diamonds have been attributed conclusively to the 1739 sack of Delhi. The most well-known jewels and artifacts among them are listed below—the little compressed and crystallized charcoal that have wended their way through a labyrinth of mankind’s violent history.
During Nadir Shah’s homeward march from Delhi to Persia, he ordered all the acquired jewels to be decorated on a tent. The tent is described in great details by an eyewitness Abdul Kurreem, who accompanied Nadir Shah on his return journey, in his memoir:
“The outside was covered with fine scarlet broadcloth, the lining was of violet coloured satin, upon which were representations of all the birds and beasts in the creation, with trees and flowers, the whole made of pearls, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, amethysts, and other precious stones: and the tent poles were decorated in like manner.
On both sides of the Peacock Throne was a screen, upon which were the figures of two angels in precious stones. The roof of the tent consisted of seven pieces, and when it was transported to any place, two of these pieces packed in cotton, were put into a wooden chest, two of which were a sufficient load for an elephant; and the screen filled another chest.
The walls of the tent, the tent poles and the tent pins, which latter were of massy gold, loaded five more elephants; so that for the carriage of the whole required seven elephants. This magnificent tent was displayed on all festivals in the Dewan Khaneh at Heart, during the remainder of Nadir Shah’s reign. After his death, his nephew Adil Shah, and his grandson Shahrokh, whose territories were very limited, and expenses enormous, had the tent taken to pieces, and dissipated the produce.”
In the well-known book ‘The History of Nadir Shah’ published in the 18th century from London, James Fraser estimates that 70 crores of wealth was carried away by Nadir Shah from Delhi:
Jewels from emperors and amirs: 25 crores
Utensils and handles of weapons set with jewels, with the Peacock Throne, etc.: 9 crores
Money coined in gold and silver coins: 25 crores
Gold and silver plates which he melted into coins: 5 crores
Fine clothes and rich stuff, etc.: 2 crores
Household furniture and other commodities: 3 crores
Weapons, etc.: 1 crore
Peacock Throne
Ten years after Nadir Shah returned from India with unimaginable treasure in 1739, he was assassinated by his own guards. Immediately, the famed Peacock Throne was dismantled, and its gems and stones were cut out and dispersed in the world market, though the entire lot can never be accounted for.
The Peacock Throne or the Mayurasan has been described by many, including historians Abdul Hamid Lahori, Inayat Khan, and French travellers Bernier and Tavernier, but Tavernier’s account can be considered the most authentic as he was officially allowed to inspect it in the Mughal court by Aurangzeb.
Tavernier was a French gem merchant who travelled between Persia and India six times between 1630 and 1668. According to him, the throne was of almost the size of a bed, being 6 ft x 4 ft in dimension. There were four horizontal bars connecting its four legs, upon which 12 columns stand to hold a canopy. At the centre of each of the 12 columns, a cross design was made of a ruby surrounded by four emeralds.
There were 108 large rubies (100-200 carats), 116 large emeralds (30-60 carats), innumerable diamonds and gemstones studded in the throne made of solid gold. Its paraphernalia included cushions, swords, a mace, a round shield, and umbrellas—all studded with gemstones and pearls. The underside of the canopy was covered with pearls and diamonds. Besides, Abdul Lahori describes the throne and its well-known stones, including Koh-i-Noor, the Akbar Shah diamond, the Shah diamond, the Timur Ruby, and the Shah Jahan diamond.
Koh-i-Noor
This diamond—known as ‘Babur’s Diamond’ before 1739—was acquired from the Kakatiya dynasty by Allauddin Khilji. When Ibrahim Lodi was defeated by Babur, it was apparently handed over to Humayun by the mother of Ibrahim Lodi to guarantee the family’s safety. However, other sources say that it was gifted to Humayun by the Gwalior Royal Family.
Thereafter, it was presented by Humayun to the Persian Shah Tamasp (to garner his support to regain Hindustan), who then gave it to the Deccan Kingdom as a gift. It came back to the Mughals during Shah Jahan’s reign, via a Persian diamond dealer Mir Jumla, and remained with the Mughal emperors until 1739.
It is rumoured that Nadir Shah was tipped off that the emperor Muhammad Shah was hiding the diamond in his turban. Nadir Shah then invited the emperor to a customary turban-exchange ceremony to foster eternal supportive ties between the two empires. He could not believe his eyes when he found the diamond concealed within the layers of the turban, and exclaimed, ‘Koh-i-Noor!’ (‘Mountain of Light!’). Since then, it has been known by that name.
After Nadir Shah was assassinated, the diamond fell into the hands of Ahmad Shah Abdali of Kabul. After Abdali, it was ceded by the Afghans to Sikh King Ranjit Singh of Punjab. On his death-bed in 1839, Ranjit Singh willed the Koh-i-Noor to the Jagannath Temple at Puri. The British East India Company acquired it from his son (Duleep Singh) in 1843.
It is said that the diamond was kept by John Lawrence, who had absent-mindedly put the box in his coat pocket. When Governor General Dalhousie asked for it to be sent from Lahore to Mumbai, Lawrence asked his servant to find it; while rummaging through his wardrobe, the servant replied, “there is nothing here, Sahib, but a bit of glass!”
The Koh-i-Noor was transported to England aboard HMS Madea, with Dalhousie carrying it personally. It was cut and put in a crown by the crown jewellers Garrard & Co.; Queen Mary wore this crown to the Delhi Coronation Durbar in 1911.
The Orloff
Prior to 1739, this unusual half-egg shaped diamond was known as the Great Mogul. After Nadir Shah’s murder, one of his soldiers sold it to an Armenian merchant, and it was acquired subsequently by the Russian nobleman Grigorievich Orlov. The nobleman presented it to his lover, the Grand Duchess Catherine, who mounted it in the Imperial Sceptre during her reign between 1762 and 1796.
Another version of the diamond’s history states that it was one of the eyes in a temple in South India, which was stolen by a French army deserter who had converted to Hinduism solely to gain access to the sanctum sanctorum of the temple to steal the diamond.
The Shah Diamond
This diamond remained in Iran for nearly a century until 1829, when the Russian diplomat and writer, Alexandr Griboyedov, was murdered in Tehran. Fearing a backlash from Russia, the grandson of Shah visited Moscow and presented the diamond as a gift to Russian Tsar Nicholas I.
The Great Table Diamond
Jean Baptiste Tavernier, a French traveller to India, mentioned a huge diamond of more than 400 carats that was set in the Peacock Throne, and called it the Diamanta Grande Table.
After Nadir Shah’s murder, the diamond was cut many times and distributed throughout the world. Researchers are still trying to locate all the pieces of this diamond, but only three have been confirmed to date—Darya-i-Noor (Sea of Light), Noor-ul-Amin (Light of the Eye), and Shah Jahan Table Cut.
The former two are among the Iranian Crown Jewels, as confirmed by a Canadian team from the Royal Ontario Museum that conducted a study on Iranian Crown Jewels in 1965.
The Darya-i-Noor is the most celebrated diamond among the Iranian Crown Jewels, and has a status similar to that of the Koh-i-Noor in the British Crown Jewels. The Shah Jahan Table Cut appeared mysteriously at a Christie’s auction in 1985, and was acquired by H.H.Sheikh Naseer Al-Sabah of Kuwait. It is assumed that it was not sold thereafter and remains in his family.
Timur Ruby
After Nadir Shah, Ahmed Shah Abdali of Kabul acquired a huge ruby along with the Koh-i-noor diamond, and later the Afghans ceded it to the Sikh King Ranjit Singh.
The British later acquired this mammoth 361 carat ruby from Maharaja Duleep Singh of Punjab. The names and dates of its six original owners are inscribed on the stone, as follows—Timur, Akbar (1612), Jahangir (1628), Aurangzeb (1659), Farrukhsiyar (1713), and Ahmad Shah Durrani (1754).
The ruby may be the one that was mentioned in Jauhar-i-Samsam while describing its acquisition by Nadir Shah from Muhammad Shah as “his majesty bestowed on Nadir Shah, with his own munificent hand, as a parting present, the peacock throne, in which was set a ruby upwards of a girih (three fingers’ breadth) in width, and nearly two in length, which was commonly called khiraj-i-alam or the tribute of the world”.
Below is a list of those few translucent rocks that are sprinkled around the world, of whose heritage we know about, thanks to the researchers and historians.
Till date, these are the only jewels that could have been conclusively traced back to Nadir Shah’s sack of Delhi in 1739. An unknown vast majority of the precious stones that Nadir Shah took with him is simply untraceable and most are probably lost in the passage of time.
Few may be lying in private collections, and then also, it is doubtful if their historicity is known even to their owners.
In this context, it does not really matter in which museum, or which city of the world these are located and preserved.
The important thing is that they are well conserved by experts to be passed down to future generations to cherish and appreciate these priceless items.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/travel/destinations/koh-i-noor-and-nadir-shahs-delhi-loot/as49934879.cms
---------------------------------
Afsharid Dynasty (Nader Shah)
Nader Shah or King Nader (1688-1747), the founder of Afsharid Dynasty, an enigmatic figure in Iranian history ruled from 1736 – 1747 A.D.
Nader Shah, or Nader Qoli Beg was born in Kobhan, Iran, on October 22, 1688, into one of the Turkish tribes loyal to the Safavid shahs of Iran. He was the son of a poor peasant, who lived in Khorasan and died while Nader was still a child. Nader and his mother were carried off as slaves by the Ozbegs, but after death of his mother in captivity Nader managed to escape and became a soldier. Soon he attracted the attention of a chieftain of the Afshar in whose service Nader rapidly advanced. Eventually, the ambitious Nader fell out of favour. He became a rebel and gathered a substantial army.
In 1719 the Afghans had invaded Persia. They deposed the reigning Shah of the Safavid dynasty in 1722. Their ruler, Mahmoud Ghilzai (±1699-1725), murdered a large number of Safavid Princes, hacking many of them to death by his own hand. After he had invited the leading citizens of Esfahan to a feast and massacred them there, his own supporters assassinated Mahmoud in 1725. His cousin, Ashraf (±1700-1730), took over and married a Safavid princess.
At first, Nader fought with the Afghans against the Ozbegs until they withheld him further payment. In 1727 Nader offered his services to Tamasp II (±1704-1740), heir to the Safavid dynasty. Nader started the reconquest of Persia and drove the Afghans out of Khorasan. The Afghans suffered heavy losses, but before they fled Ashraf massacred an additional 3000 citizens of Esfahan. Most of the fleeing Afghans were soon overtaken and killed by Nader’s men, while others died in the desert. Ashraf himself was hunted down and murdered.
By 1729 Nader had freed Persia from the Afghans. Tamasp II was crowned Shah, although he was little more than a figurehead. While Nader was putting down a revolt in Khorasan, Tamasp moved against the Turks, losing Georgia and Armenia. Enraged, Nader deposed Tamasp in 1732 and installed Tamasp’s infant son, Abbas III (1732-1740), on the throne, naming himself regent. Within two years Nader recaptured the lost territory and extended the Empire at the expense of the Turks and the Russians.
In 1736 Nader evidently felt that his own position had been established so firmly that he no longer needed to hide behind a nominal Safavid Shah and ascended the throne himself. In 1738 he invaded Kandahar, captured Kabul and marched on to India. He seized and sacked Delhi and, after some disturbances, he killed 30000 of its citizens.
He plundered the Indian treasures of the Moghal Emperors, taking with him the famous jewel-encrusted Peacock Throne and the Koh-i Noor diamond. In 1740 Nader had Tamasp II and his two infant sons put to death. Then he invaded Transoxania. He resumed war with Turkey in 1743. In addition, he built a navy and conquered Oman.
Gradually Nader’s greedy and intolerant nature became more pronounced. The financial burden of his standing armies was more than the Persians could bear and Nader imposed the death penalty on those who failed to pay his taxes. He stored most of his loot for his own use and showed little if any concern for the general welfare of the country. Nader concentrated all power in his own hands.
He was a brilliant soldier and the founder of the Persian navy, but he was entirely lacking any interest in art and literature. Once, when Nader was told that there was no war in paradise, he was reported to have asked: “How can there be any delights there?”.
He moved the capital to Mashhad in Khorasan, close to his favourite mountain fortress. He tried to reconcile Sunnism with Shi’itism, because he needed people of both faiths in his army, but the reconciliation failed.
In his later years, revolts began to break out against his oppressive rule. Nader became increasingly harsh and exhibited signs of mental derangement following an assassination attempt.
He suspected his own son, Reza Qoli Mirza (1719-1747), of plotting against him and had him blinded. Soon he started executing the nobles who had witnessed his son’s blinding.
Towards the end, even his own tribesmen felt that he was too dangerous a man to be near. In 1747 a group of Afshar and Qajar chiefs decided “to breakfast off him where he should sup off them”. His own commanders surprised him in his sleep, but Nader managed to kill two of them before the assassins finished him off.
Nader was Persia’s most gifted military genius and is known as “The Second Alexander” and “The Napoleon of Persia”.
Although he restored national independence and effectively protected Iran’s territorial integrity at a dark moment of the country’s history, his obsessive suspicions and jealousies plunged Iran into political turmoil.
Little is known about Nader’s personal life. His grandiosity, his insatiable desire for more conquests and his egocentric behaviour suggest a narcissistic personality disorder and in his last years he seems to have developed some paranoid tendencies.
Nader was married four times and had 5 sons and 15 grandsons.
Afsharid Kings:
Nader Shah 1737 – 1747
Ali Gholi 1747 – 1748
Ebrahim 1748 – 1749
Shahrokh 1748 – 1749
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/afsharids/afsharids.php
-------------------------------
Nader Shah in Iranian Historiography
Warlord or National Hero?
By Rudolph Matthee · Published 2018
Western—European and North American—historiography generally portrays the years between the death of Louis XIV in 1715 and the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as having given birth to the modern world—a republican world founded on rational discourse and popular sovereignty, an empirically grounded, industrializing world built on progress and productivity, an aggressive, market-driven world espousing expansion as agenda and organizing principle.
In the traditional interpretation of Islamic Middle Eastern history, the “eighteenth century” projects an entirely different image. Rather than evoking energy and innovation, it conjures up stasis, decline and defeat. It speaks of exhausted, mismanaged empires that either succumbed to regional competitors or proved too weak to resist the juggernaut of European imperialism. Examples abound.
The state that had ruled Iran since the early sixteenth century, the Safavids, in 1722 collapsed under the onslaught of Afghan insurgents from the tribal periphery. The Ottomans, having failed to take Vienna in 1683, subsequently retreated against the Austrians and the Russians in the Balkans and later lost Egypt, first to the French and then to the Albanian warlord, Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha. In the Indian Subcontinent, meanwhile, the once mighty Mughal Empire disintegrated and was brought into the British orbit.
Iran was doubly disadvantaged in this process of “regression.” The Ottomans suffered defeat and lost territory yet maintained military, diplomatic and commercial contact with the nations of Western Europe, the source of most of what was new at the time. The so-called Tulip Period of the early eighteenth-century reflects a fascination with things European among the ruling classes of Istanbul.
The Mughal state became tributary to the English East India Company and then was absorbed into the expanding British Empire. Yet that same process caused its elite gradually to become familiar with the ways and means of the new colonizers, creating models and generating ideas that helped the country keep in touch with developments in the wider world.
Iran, by contrast, in this period not just fell precipitously from stability to chaos, but in the process it became disconnected from the world in ways not experienced by the other “gunpowder empires.” Until the late seventeenth century the Safavids had been roughly on par with the Ottomans and the Mughals in their projection of wealth, power and cultural prestige.
Sophisticated Europeans knew Iran as the legendary land of the Sophy, a term personified by the most dynamic ruler of the dynasty, Shah ‘Abbas I (r. 1587–1629). Shah ‘Abbas had connected his country to the world in unprecedented ways. After proclaiming Isfahan his capital and endowing it with a newly designed awe-inspiring center, he had turned this centrally located city into a nexus of trade links between Europe, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and India—and a favored destination for European traders and travelers, who saw in it a latter-day reflection of the Persian Empire as they imagined it from reading Herodotus, Strabo, and Pliny.
All this energy and efflorescence had come crashing down with the fall of Isfahan in 1722. The Afghan tribesmen who brought down the Safavid state failed to build their own on its ruins and were soon swept aside. What followed was seventy-five years of chaos and anarchy during which the Iranian plateau became remote and forbidding territory, run by warlords and mostly shunned by Westerners.
As the world was radically reconfigured in this period, Iranians continued to live in a rather self-congratulatory, inward-looking mode, secure in the knowledge that their country was, if no longer the center of the world, a place of consequence. In reality, Iran in this period rapidly “retreated” from the global scene as its ties with the outside world diminished in frequency and intensity. Iran’s short “eighteenth century,” the roughly seventy-five years that separate the fall of the Safavids from the rise of the Qajars, thus runs contrary to the perceived “global eighteenth century” and its presumed new level of (elite) connectivity.
This relative insularity was shattered in the early nineteenth century as the newly acceded Qajar regime (r. 1796–1925) with its largely tribally organized and poorly disciplined army suffered several terrible defeats against the well-equipped Russians, people the Iranians had always thought of and dismissed as bibulous, thick-skulled barbarians. As the Russians occupied large swaths of Iranian territory in the north—much of the southern Caucasus, comprising the modern countries of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan—the British intruded from the other side, the Persian Gulf.
Historians of late have turned away from this type of narrative with its focus on a golden age followed by decline and on great rulers and their deeds as organizing principles, to call for contingency, indeterminacy and attention to the common man. Yet, modern nationalism demands linearity and purposefulness, and shows little patience for revisionist complication.
Faced with the flux and reflux of history, nationalism likes to tell a story of loss and regeneration through resilience, of foreign-inflicted defeat followed by phoenix-like resurgence. It is therefore hardly surprising that modern Iranian historiography—and certainly the Iranian popular imagination—tends to portray the Safavids and the Qajars in starkly contrasting terms—the first symbolizing pride and glory, the second representing fecklessness and submissiveness.
Iranians have come to look back at the Safavid period nostalgically, as the last time their country was proud, independent, and the envy of the world. The Qajars, by contrast, the dynasty that would bring the country to the threshold of the modern age, count as spineless, corrupt rulers who blithely led the country into defeat and humiliation at the hand of foreigners, and who facilitated the country’s creeping incorporation into a Western-dominated imperialist network, preventing it from regaining its “natural” greatness.
The period in between is not so easily classified, for it seems neither a glorious moment in national history nor a century of potential splendor snatched away by foreign powers. Dark, seemingly directionless, and relatively short on written sources, the eighteenth century in Iranian history remains an awkward interlude.
Modern Iranian historians have nevertheless sought to weave this period into a continuous national narrative by adopting a Carlylean “great man” view of history, highlighting the stature of the two rulers who created identifiable albeit short-lived states and thus present a semblance of coherence and direction to Iranian history in an otherwise tumultuous period: Nader Shah (r. 1736–47) and Karim Khan Zand (r. 1763–69).
Both stand out, not just as the only two rulers who defied the period’s centrifugal forces, but as national heroes who revived Iran’s genius. The first, a brilliant warrior, redeemed the nation by restoring the honor it had lost with the fall of Isfahan to foreign tribesmen. The second represents the quintessentially Iranian search for justice.
The first also stirred the Western imagination in ways the second never did—especially after he marched into India in 1739, ransacked Delhi and returned home with fabulous treasures. Indeed, the reception of Nader Shah in eighteenth-century Europe was as swift and dramatic as it was complex. The image it created, half brutal warlord, half national liberator, would significantly contribute to the image modern Iranians would construct of him.
Nader Shah: Scourge of God or National Hero?
The portrayal of Nader in the eighteenth-century West was the combined outcome of eyewitness accounts, Persian-language sources, and Enlightenment anxieties. Europeans, still puzzled by the sudden fall of the Safavids, learned of him even before he took power in 1736 as the warrior who reconquered Isfahan from the Afghans in 1729.
The Mercure de France of November 1731 contained an “eyewitness report” that portrayed Tahmasp Quli Khan, as Nader Shah was still called at the time, as a savior, a man of valor and fidelity, brave and full of esprit. His stature as the dynamic warlord who might rescue his nation by liberating it from the barbarians who had invaded this old, sophisticated land—the Afghans, the Ottomans, and the Russians—only grew with time.
In 1738 a huge tome appeared in Germany depicting Nader as the divinely inspired savior of a collapsed nation. The notion of Nader the savior resonated with the political philosophy of the Enlightenment as articulated by Montesquieu, Diderot and Holbach, who distinguished between the legitimate right to defend and recover one’s home country, and illegitimate wars of conquest.
A rather different Nader burst onto the European scene soon thereafter, with his defeat of the Mughal Emperor Mohammad Shah at Karnal in 1739 and his subsequent sack of Delhi. News of these exploits spread quickly, carried by missionaries and agents of the European maritime companies, and soon gave rise to numerous pamphlets and books.
The earliest narrative about Nader’s Indian exploits seems to have been a report written in 1739 by Dutch East India Company agents in Bengal. Published in Holland in 1740, this report may have been the source of the anonymous two-volume work that came out in Amsterdam a year later as Histoire de Thamas Kouli-Kan Sophi de Perse, a text that subsequently was translated into English, Italian, and Spanish.
In the next few years the Asian warlord was the subject of a number of articles in the British press, some of which have plausibly been attributed to Samuel Johnson. Two years later the Anglo-Saxon world became thoroughly acquainted with Nader through James Fraser’s History of Nader Shah, which was mostly based on reports by William Cockell, an agent of the English India Company who had served in Iran while Nader was in power.
In the same year, 1742, James Spilman, a Russia Company merchant, published an account of a journey he had undertaken to Iran in 1739 and to which was appended a brief account of the rise of Nader Shah. In 1743 André de Claustre published Histoire de Thamas Kouli-Kan, roi de Perse. A generation later the French reading public was reminded of Nader through the translation the famous Orientalist William Jones made of a Persian chronicle written in Nader Shah’s orbit, Mirza Mohammad Mahdi Astarabadi’s Tarikh-e Naderi.
A fictionalized Nader quickly followed. The first novel—in which a young Swiss man sets out on an Asian adventure that includes his participation in Nader’s Indian campaign—appeared in 1754. A second, presented as the memoirs of Shah Tahmasp II, Nader’s protégé until he deposed him, followed in 1758.
Both reflect the spirit of a relatively pacific European age in search of a heroic cause in their portrayal of young, poor, and intelligent men who in Europe find no outlet for their martial inclinations. They also reflect the prevailing notion that the East, unfettered by feudal stratification, was open to talent. The same theme appears in the contemporaneous theatrical representation of Nader Shah in Holland, France, and Italy.
The way Nader was in Europe represented varied by context. In the Dutch setting, he became an emblem of republicanism, a “protagonist of lowly origins whose right to the throne sprang from his desire to serve his subjects.” Yet a more common theme in the earliest European references to him was the image of the disciplined warrior, the type Europe lacked until the appearance of Frederick the Great on the European scene in 1740.
As in the case of Alexander the Great, to whom he was sometimes likened, the more negative aspects of Nader’s career over time received ample attention as well. Several authors highlighted his rapaciousness and linked the vast treasure he bought back from India to the typical Oriental despot who plunders and hoards rather than builds.
Nader’s cruelty and growing madness, as the ultimate symbol of the descent into violence and cruelty of a land previously known for its humanism, tolerance and sophistication, did not go unnoticed either; the English merchant-traveler Jonas Hanway, for instance, who in 1743 had visited Nader’s army camp, at once presented the ruler’s appearance as punishment for Iranian sloth and dissolution and painted a lurid portrait of a usurper driven by greed and brutality.
Contemporary Iranian sources evince a similar ambivalence. The chroniclers writing in Nader Shah’s immediate orbit naturally hedge their bets and defuse the ruler’s obvious ruthlessness and gathering madness by turning a blind eye to these uncomfortable facts or by blaming the victims. They generally portray Nader as a ruler of military virtue and sound lineage, hail him as a strongman who had restored order, and defend him against the indictment of having usurped power. The afore-mentioned Astarabadi set the tone for an enduring narrative by lauding Nader for expelling all foreign occupiers from Iranian soil. At pains to rationalize the ruler’s growing craziness and cruelty, he claimed that Nader changed only after his expedition to the Caucasus, eventually bringing ruin to his country.
As a new dynasty of questionable roots and legitimacy, the Qajars had to expunge the legacy of those who came before them—other than the Safavids, to whom they paid allegiance on account of the Shi‘i credentials they themselves so sorely lacked. Nader Shah was one of those.
Agha Mohammad Khan, the founder of the Qajar dynasty and a ruthless warlord himself, chose to distance himself from Nader for having deviated from the Shi‘i foundations laid by the Safavids and invoked by Agha Mohammad Shah to buttress his own legitimacy.
Yet the first Qajar ruler must have been impressed by his forebear as well, for he had two figures added to the two huge battle scenes adorning the walls of the Chehel Sotun palace in Isfahan, one of which represents Nader’s defeat of the Mughal Emperor Mohammad Khan at Karnal in 1739. Nader also figured in the one of the main halls of the Golestan palace that was built in the newly chosen capital Tehran and renovated in 1806—in a pose of returning the crown of India to the Mughal king.
A More Complex Nader Shah
The early nineteenth century saw two developments that helped shape a new or at least a more complex image of Nader Shah. The first was the string of humiliating military defeats the Qajars suffered against their most formidable enemies, the Russians. The second was the meteoric rise of Napoleon followed by a career that affected the world from the East Coast of the United States to the shores of the Indian Ocean.
The military weakness of the Qajars against the Russians and the tremendous loss of land their defeats entailed quickly detracted from the new dynasty’s aura and made the Iranian public long for a success story. A direct relationship can be discerned between these defeats and the continuing, indeed growing popularity of Nader Shah among Iranians, as exemplified in the more than fourteen editions that appeared of Astarabadi’s popular account of Nader’s life and exploits, the Jahan-gosha-ye Naderi.
The relationship between the reputation of Napoleon and that of Nader Shah in Iran—and Europe—seems something like a dialogic engagement: Napoleon saw himself as a latter-day Nader. Iranians, in turn, came to admire Napoleon as the strongman they themselves so sorely missed in the nineteenth century. Nader in due time and in good Orientalist fashion became known, first in Europe, then in Iran, as the Asian or Persian Napoleon; and, completing the cycle in an anti-Orientalist manner, Napoleon is now often called the European Nader Shah.
All indications are that Napoleon was greatly impressed with Nader Shah. It is almost certain that, as a young man, Napoleon read about Nader’s exploits, and it is likely that he identified with the story of a lad of humble origins who had risen to great heights through sheer will power and energy.
His Asian dreams—his own search for a heroic cause—are neatly summed up in his famous exclamation before a group of bickering German princes in 1804 to the effect that Europe had no longer anything to offer ambitious men, that only in the Orient great prestige and wealth could be acquired.
That Napoleon greatly admired Nader emerges from the record of Amédée Jaubert, the French Orientalist who in 1807 visited Iran to conclude a Franco-Iranian alliance. Jaubert carried a letter from Napoleon with him in which the French emperor, somewhat injudiciously in front of the rather sedentary Fath ‘Ali Shah, praised Nader Shah as a “great warrior, who was “able to conquer a great power,” who “struck the insurgents with terror and was fearsome to his neighbors, while he “triumphed over his enemies and reigned gloriously.”
It is also surely no coincidence that ‘Askar Khan Afshar, Fath ‘Ali Shah’s envoy to Paris in 1808, presented a copy of the Jahangosha-ye Naderi to the Imperial Library in Paris when he came to Paris the following year. L’Histoire de Thamas Kouli-Kan, finally, was one of the books available to Napoleon during in years in exile on Saint Helena between 1815 and 1821.
Napoleon, in turn, made quite an impression in Iran—and a lasting one at that. He became and long remained a familiar figure in part because the country was part of his strategic vision, making him deal directly with its rulers by way of diplomacy. But the main reason for his enduring fame and popularity may have been the same as what made eighteenth-century Europeans look up to Nader Shah—because his strong character spoke to the imagination of the Iranians and projected something that they found missing in their own rulers. Mir ‘Abd al-Latif Khan Shushtari, an Iranian who seems to have imbibed some anti-French sentiments during his long stay in British India, nevertheless called Napoleon a leader who stood out for his organizational skills, his wisdom and his sophistication.
In Iran, meanwhile, the admiration for the French strongman was no less strong. John Malcolm, Britain’s first ambassador to Iran and the author of the first modern history of the country, relates how in 1810, Napoleon’s “name was familiar to numbers in Persia, and some few understood the character of his power.” An “old friend” of his, a poet and a philosopher, told Malcolm that, in his opinion, “this Buonaparte…is a wonderful man; he wields empires as if they were clubs.” Speculating that, after coming to terms with the Ottomans, this Western Chengiz Khan might take on Iran and Russia and then, “make use of both to overthrow your [British] power in India.”
Other Iranian officials were great admirers of Napoleon as well. ‘Abbas Mirza (1789–1833), crown prince, governor of Azerbaijan and Iran’s first modern reformer, was one. His newly constructed royal summer palace at Ujan near Soltaniya was decorated with four paintings, two of which represented the Russian Tsar, Alexander I, and Napoleon respectively.
Another one was Hajji Baba, a “prince” in Hamadan who, when Robert Cotton Money met him in 1824, “asked all about Napoleon,” and collected “all the anecdotes he could of him” because he seemed to adore his character. The third Qajar shah, Mohammad Shah (r. 1834-48) had his palace in Tehran “hung round with various prints of Napoleon, Prince Albert and Queen Victoria.”
Mohammad Shah is said to have been interested in acquiring a copy of the Life of Napoleon, with engravings of the emperor’s battles, and he ordered Mirza Reza Mohandes, who earlier had translated biographies of Peter I, Alexander the Great, and Charles XII into Persian, to produce a translation of a history of the French general, from an English rendering of an originally French work. Richard Khan, too, in 1869 translated A Brief History of Napoleon into Persian.
In the early twentieth century ‘Abbas Mirza Salar Lashkar, a.k.a. Nayeb al-Saltana, picked up a book titled Napoleon Ier et la Perse and decided to translate it into Persian.
As noted, the revised image of Nader, from usurper and brutal tyrant to savior of the nation, was greatly facilitated by widespread Iranian disappointment with the feeble Qajars, and further built, in a dialectical way, on the analogy with Napoleon. James Morier, British envoy and the author of the picaresque novel, Hajji Baba of Isfahan, in 1808 said about the Iranians that, “of Bonaparte, from the likeness of that of their own Nadir Shah, they have a very high idea.”
But the way in which the warlord was fashioned in the twentieth century was in some way a calque on the way Western authors and especially John Malcolm portrayed him. To Malcolm, Nader Shah was a force of nature, a brute who acted to purify the overripe, decadent civilization from which he himself sprang.
Where the Polish Jesuit Thadeusz Krusinski, an eyewitness to the fall of Isfahan in 1722, had seen the Afghans as barbarians who might be civilized by becoming acquainted with Persia’s superior culture, Malcolm saw in Nader Shah a volcanic force that had rejuvenated that same culture precisely by ridding it of Afghan primitivism. Malcolm saw Nader the way Edward Gibbon had seen Attila the Hun: as a great warrior and disciplinarian who had cleansed the land by liberating his people from the yoke of barbarians.
Full of admiration for Nader’s military prowess, Malcolm in a rather self-serving manner painted a redeeming portrait of the eighteenth-century empire builder, based on his anticipation of the unfolding of his own empire, that of the British. It is telling in this context that Malcolm did not dwell on the savagery that accompanied Nader’s subjugation of northern India and his sack of Delhi, thinking it greatly exaggerated. The bloodletting of the last few years of the warrior’s life he ascribed to creeping insanity.
Malcolm’s assessment would essentially offer the template for the later nationalist Iranian portrayal of Nader Shah. Of course, for this to have an impact on Iranian image making, Malcolm’s landmark book, A History of Persia (1815) first had to be translated into Persian.
This might have happened as early as the 1840s were it not for Naser al-Din Shah’s grand vizier and chief counselor Mirza Taqi Khan, better known as Amir Kabir who, wary of Malcolm’s less than flattering verdict on the Qajar dynasty, is said to have cautioned his master that “for Persians reading such a book is fatally poisonous.”
That does not seem to have deterred the monarch himself, for the shah apparently had A History of Persia read to him before going to sleep. At any rate, the acquaintance among the wider Iranian public with Malcolm’s take on Nader and Iranian history at large would have to wait until the 1870s, when a Persian translation of his book was undertaken.
Yet the work that resulted did not come out in Iran but in British-controlled Bombay and in the context of the new type of print culture that had developed in India under British auspices. Over time, this translation would become exceedingly popular.
Nader Shah in Modern Iranian Historiography
The fall of the Qajars in the 1920s and the rise of Reza Khan, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, inaugurated a new phase in the dialectical process of historiography with regard to Nader Shah. British foreign secretary Victor Mallet in 1925 insisted that Nader Shah was Reza Khan’s “great hero,” adding that he would not be surprised if the new ruler would model his career on that of Nader. The Iranian press at the time depicted the new ruler accordingly, as a national savior ready to rebuild the country and drive out the foreign intruders.
Just as the early Qajar historians had exorcised the previous regimes, including that of Nader, so the historians who came of age in the 1920s and 1930s followed the line of the new regime by decrying the stagnation and especially the loss of land their country had suffered because of the military weakness of the Qajars, which inevitably entailed a reevaluation of the last ruler who had stood for a strong and independent Iran—Nader Shah.
In the 1930s, as Reza Shah consolidated his power, military history and the single strong leader came to the fore to help create a usable past for a state increasingly built on authoritarian foundations. For historians writing in the reign of Reza Shah and his centralizing tendencies, Nader’s military career acquired a heightened significance for having reunified the nation—just like Iran’s current ruler.
In modern times, Nader has remained controversial in Iran. To some, he was just an uncultured tribal chieftain who delivered the coup de grace to the magnificent Safavid state. In modern Iran, where the great man, the one who keeps order and who can bring salvation by effecting the kind of change that no one else is willing to take responsibility for, continues to loom large, Nader Shah remains a hero.
“For many Iranians today, Nader’s military successes are justification in themselves and more than outweigh any brutalities that accompanied him.” Yet Nader remains an awkward fit for those who adhere to the dominant paradigm in modern Iranian history writing with its tendency to espouse a primordial nationalism that preaches an unbroken civilizational link between the Achaemenids and the Islamic Republic.
For some he remains the warrior who restored Iran’s pride by driving out the foreigners who had occupied the country, the Afghans, the Ottomans, and the Russians. Yet the deeply ingrained notion that Iranian civilization is one of “givers” is hard to reconcile with the sheer brutality and the outright imperialism culminating in Nader’s Indian campaign, which consequently, à la Malcolm, has to be presented as an aberration in an otherwise brilliant career.
Nader thus becomes the figure whose genius could have halted and even reversed the decline that had set in with the Afghan onslaught and the fall of the Safavids. In this scenario, after uniting Iran Nader could have done a lot to rebuild a great nation if he only he had cared about the welfare of the Iranian people. Instead, he lost his mind when he decided to invade India, and even the dividend of that campaign, a huge amount of treasure, was wasted.
A related yet slightly different interpretation connects Nader to the feeble awareness eighteenth-century Iranians evinced about the global changes and the sinister designs of foreigners on their country at the time. Nader, in this scenario, was too busy making war and thus did not take advantage of Western scientific and technological achievements and skills other than to seek European assistance in building a Persian-Gulf fleet—something the Safavids had never done.
For all his military brilliance, he also had no eye for the imperialist schemes of the Europeans. Indeed, to some, he even facilitated their imperialist project by offering the English East India Company reduced customs rates and seeking their assistance in building naval capacity. Even his Indian expedition benefited the British. By bringing home fabulous wealth from his Delhi campaign he acted as Trojan horse, increasing their business opportunities, and by opening up and weakening India he enabled the English to expand their long-term influence and domination in the subcontinent.
https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2018/matthee-nader-shah
----------------------------------
Further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nader_Shah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaigns_of_Nader_Shah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nader_Shah%27s_invasion_of_the_Mughal_Empire
-------------------------------------------------
Κατεβάστε την αναδημοσίευση σε Word doc.:
https://www.slideshare.net/MuhammadShamsaddinMe/20-1739
https://issuu.com/megalommatis/docs/nader_shah_of_iran_invades_delhi.docx
https://vk.com/doc429864789_621397394
https://www.docdroid.net/p9hXcQI/o-toyrkmenos-nanter-sakhis-toy-iran-katalamvanei-to-delkhi-docx
-
babsrosette reblogged this · 2 weeks ago -
fiataeterna reblogged this · 2 weeks ago -
memories-of-ancients liked this · 2 weeks ago -
stonedstonecollecter liked this · 3 weeks ago -
justcaio liked this · 3 weeks ago -
gaybrealdreamer55 liked this · 3 weeks ago -
queerhistorymajor reblogged this · 3 weeks ago -
jackmc812 liked this · 4 weeks ago -
oxymoronberlin liked this · 4 weeks ago
-
theworldismyoysterandiamthepearl reblogged this · 4 weeks ago -
enchantingcolortacogarden reblogged this · 4 weeks ago
-
cicer1 reblogged this · 4 weeks ago
-
the-order-of-release reblogged this · 4 weeks ago -
androqueen reblogged this · 1 month ago -
televangilista liked this · 1 month ago -
esse-est liked this · 1 month ago -
yayawantstodraw liked this · 1 month ago -
s-afshar reblogged this · 1 month ago -
s-afshar liked this · 1 month ago
-
salman1366 reblogged this · 1 month ago -
salman1366 liked this · 1 month ago
-
pinkloverdiplomatdragon reblogged this · 1 month ago -
divzadeh reblogged this · 1 month ago -
divzadeh liked this · 1 month ago
-
ceramisque reblogged this · 1 month ago -
ceramisque liked this · 1 month ago
-
totallytrucked reblogged this · 1 month ago -
bandit1a reblogged this · 1 month ago
-
bandit1a liked this · 1 month ago
-
01000100-01001000 liked this · 1 month ago -
lifeispeaceandlove liked this · 1 month ago -
eastcoastehyc reblogged this · 1 month ago -
stonemen liked this · 1 month ago
-
howeveragain reblogged this · 1 month ago
-
timothblr liked this · 1 month ago -
justherefortheaestheticandsuch reblogged this · 1 month ago -
corse2b liked this · 1 month ago -
mvat liked this · 1 month ago -
limitlesslfgt liked this · 1 month ago -
thomasfuchscreative liked this · 1 month ago -
augustcascade liked this · 1 month ago
-
1dusable liked this · 1 month ago
-
pacogabby liked this · 1 month ago -
darkpatrolwolf liked this · 1 month ago
-
enchantingcolortacogarden reblogged this · 1 month ago
-
enchantingcolortacogarden liked this · 1 month ago
-
glasswareceramicsvintagemodern reblogged this · 1 month ago -
glasswareceramicsvintagemodern reblogged this · 1 month ago
-
gantrouge liked this · 1 month ago
