Battle of Karnal (1739) and Nader Shah's Sack of Delhi

The Battle of Karnal, fought on 24 February 1739 north of Delhi, was a crushing victory for Nader Shah of Iran over the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah. In a few hours, a smaller and better-organised Persian army broke the Mughal host. Nader went on to occupy Delhi, where a massacre on 22 March killed tens of thousands, and he carried home treasure that included the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor diamond.

Background

By the 1730s the Mughal Empire had lost much of its strength. After Aurangzeb died in 1707, a series of short reigns and court conflicts weakened the centre. Under Muhammad Shah (r. 1719–1748), provincial governors such as Nizam-ul-Mulk in the Deccan and Saadat Khan in Awadh acted largely independently, while the Marathas raided as far as Delhi in 1737.

Nader Shah, crowned in Iran in 1736, had besieged and taken Kandahar from the Hotaki Afghans in March 1738. He complained that Afghan fugitives had found refuge in Mughal territory and that his envoys had been ignored. In 1738 he crossed the frontier, took Kabul, forced the Khyber Pass and advanced across the Punjab. Lahore submitted in January 1739.

The Mughal court reacted slowly. Factions around the emperor disagreed over who should command and how to pay for a campaign, and many believed the Persians would stop at the frontier. By the time the imperial army left Delhi, Nader was already in the Punjab.

Karnal lay on the main road from the Punjab to Delhi, about 120 kilometres north of the capital, in the plain west of the Yamuna river and north of the old battlefields of Panipat. The Mughal commanders chose to entrench there and wait for reinforcements rather than meet the invaders further north. The delay allowed Saadat Khan to arrive from Awadh with fresh troops, but it also gave Nader time to scout the ground and cut the Mughal supply lines.

The armies

Muhammad Shah marched north with his leading nobles and camped near Karnal on the Grand Trunk Road. The Mughal fighting force is often estimated at around 75,000 to 100,000 men, but with servants, traders and other followers the camp may have held several hundred thousand people. It included war elephants and heavy artillery that was hard to move.

Nader’s army is usually estimated at around 55,000 men. Many were mounted, and his infantry, the jazayerchis, carried heavy muskets. Nader also used light swivel guns mounted on camels (zamburaks).

Nader had spent more than a decade fighting Afghans, Ottomans and Caucasian peoples, and his officers and men were veterans used to fast manoeuvre. The Mughal army, by contrast, was a collection of contingents led by great nobles, each loyal first to his own commander, with no single plan of battle.

The battle

On 24 February 1739 Saadat Khan, who had just arrived with his contingent, rushed out of the fortified Mughal camp to attack Persian troops raiding his baggage. Khan-i-Dauran, the Mughal commander-in-chief, came to his support, while Nizam-ul-Mulk and much of the army stayed in the camp.

Nader drew the advancing Mughal forces into a trap. His cavalry feigned retreat and lured them towards massed musketeers and camel guns. War elephants panicked under the fire. Khan-i-Dauran was mortally wounded and Saadat Khan was captured. The fighting lasted only about three hours. Mughal losses ran into the thousands, according to most accounts, while Persian losses were much lighter.

Negotiations and the march on Delhi

After the battle the Mughal army was effectively besieged in its camp and short of food. Nizam-ul-Mulk negotiated with Nader and agreed on a large payment. Saadat Khan, angered that the Nizam had been named to the late Khan-i-Dauran’s post, is said to have urged Nader to demand far more and march on Delhi. Historians treat this story with some caution, but Nader did raise his demands. Saadat Khan died in Delhi shortly afterwards, in March 1739; later accounts claimed suicide, but the circumstances are uncertain.

Muhammad Shah came to Nader’s camp and was in effect his prisoner. He was treated with outward courtesy, as one ruler meeting another, but his army was disarmed in all but name and his nobles were held under Persian guard. The two rulers then travelled together to Delhi, which Nader entered on 20 March 1739. He took up residence in the Red Fort, the palace built by Shah Jahan.

The massacre in Delhi

On 21 March a rumour spread that Nader had been killed. Townspeople attacked Persian soldiers, and several hundred, perhaps a few thousand, were killed. The next morning, 22 March, Nader rode to the Sunehri Masjid (Golden Mosque) in Chandni Chowk and ordered his troops to kill the inhabitants of the districts where the attacks had taken place.

The killing went on for several hours, accompanied by looting and burning. The crowded districts around Chandni Chowk and the Jama Masjid suffered most, and fires spread through the narrow streets. Estimates of the dead usually range from about 20,000 to 30,000. It stopped only when Nader called off his troops after appeals, traditionally said to have come from Nizam-ul-Mulk and Muhammad Shah.

The plunder

Over the following weeks Nader’s officials collected the contents of the imperial treasury and extracted money from nobles and citizens. He took Shah Jahan’s jewelled Peacock Throne and famous gems including the Koh-i-Noor and the Darya-i-Noor diamonds. Contemporary estimates of the total value were in the hundreds of millions of rupees.

Nader also arranged a marriage between his son Nasrullah Mirza and a Mughal princess descended from Aurangzeb, linking his family to the Mughal dynasty. He left Delhi in May 1739. He restored Muhammad Shah as emperor but took all Mughal lands west of the Indus. The original Peacock Throne was broken up or lost after Nader’s death; the Koh-i-Noor passed through Afghan and Sikh rulers before being acquired by the British in 1849.

By the numbers

Consequences

The defeat destroyed what remained of Mughal military prestige. The loss of the treasury left the emperors short of money, and provincial rulers grew more independent. The Marathas expanded northwards, and Ahmad Shah Durrani, a former officer of Nader, invaded India repeatedly from 1748, culminating in the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761.

In Iran, the wealth of India allowed Nader to remit taxes for three years and fund further wars, but it did not secure his rule, which ended with his assassination in 1747.

The events of 1739 left a deep mark on the memory of Delhi. Poets lamented the ruin of the city, and the sack became a byword in north India for sudden, devastating plunder. Delhi suffered further attacks by Afghan and Maratha forces later in the 18th century, but the sack of 1739 remained the most remembered.

Timeline

• 1738, March: Nader Shah takes Kandahar.
• 1738, June: Kabul falls to Nader.
• 1739, January: Lahore submits.
• 1739, 24 February: Battle of Karnal.
• 1739, 20 March: Nader enters Delhi.
• 1739, 22 March: Massacre in Delhi following attacks on Persian soldiers.
• 1739, May: Nader leaves Delhi with the Mughal treasure.

Why it matters

Karnal and the sack of Delhi revealed to the world how hollow Mughal power had become. The loss of men, money and prestige accelerated the empire’s fragmentation and opened the way for Maratha, Afghan and eventually British dominance in India.