Nadir Shah sacks Delhi and shatters Mughal power
- Date
- March 1739
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- Delhi and northern India
- Era
- Early Modern
- Significance
On 24 February 1739 the Persian conqueror Nadir Shah, founder of the Afsharid dynasty, routed the Mughal army at the Battle of Karnal, and on 20 March he entered Delhi.
After violence erupted in the city, Nadir ordered a massacre on 22 March in which an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants were killed in a single day, and a vast indemnity was extracted. He carried off the imperial treasury, the jewelled Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor and Darya-i-Noor diamonds back to Iran. The plunder was so immense that Nadir reportedly suspended taxation in Persia for years. The invasion exposed the hollowness of Mughal authority under Muhammad Shah and stripped the empire of prestige and wealth. Mughal decline, already underway, became terminal: provincial governors and rising powers such as the Marathas, the Sikhs and regional nawabs asserted autonomy, and within two decades the British East India Company would begin its conquest of a fragmenting India.
One piece of history in your inbox, weekly
New empires, events and features as they land. One good email a week. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Empires active in March 1739
- Spanish Empire1492 CE to 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE to 1999 CE
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE to 1912 CE
- Mughal Empire1526 CE to 1857 CE
- British Empire1583 CE to 1997 CE
- Russian Empire1721 CE to 1917 CE
Related military & conflict events
- Fall of Beijing and the Ming-Qing transition1644
- Defenestration of Prague and the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War23 May 1618
- Dahomey conquers Allada and Whydah on the Slave Coast1724 to 1727
- Qing conquest of the Dzungars and the creation of Xinjiang1755 to 1759
- Battle of Plassey and the rise of British power in Bengal23 June 1757
- Third Battle of Panipat checks Maratha expansion14 January 1761
Essential reading
- Qing conquest of the Dzungars and the creation of Xinjiang1755 to 1759
- Battle of Feyiase and the rise of the Asante Empire1701
- The Great Irish Famine1845 to 1852
- Emancipation of the serfs in Russia3 March 1861 (19 February O.S.)
Further reading
The wider story
The Mughal Empire
The standard scholarly survey (New Cambridge History of India).
Get it on Amazon →As an Amazon Associate, Human Saga earns from qualifying purchases.