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Willem M Floor
Mage Publishers

The Rise and Fall of Nader Shah: Dutch East India Company Reports, 1730-1747

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AuthorWillem M Floor
PublisherMage Publishers
PublishedMay 15 2009
Book FormatPaperback
ISBN-139781933823324
Dimensions11 X 8.25 X 0.61 inches
Weight 1.46 pounds
BISAC
CategoriesBiography & Autobiography > General
LanguageEnglish

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Book Description

By any measure, Nader Shah-founder of the Afsharid Dynasty-ranks as a towering figure in Iranian history. Rising from the humblest of origins, he became a military commander of genius, restored an embattled Persia to imperial greatness, and proceeded to wield the power of the throne with a ruthlessness that approached derangement. Yet much about the man and his tumultuous times remains obscure. This book peers into the shadows by drawing on unusual source materials-unpublished letters and reports written by the staff of the Dutch East India Company, who watched in dismay as the tyrant sacrificed the nation's economic health (and Dutch hopes for trade) to feed his war machine. The book looks at his entire life: how a shepherd boy mastered fighting skills, assembled armies, reunited Iran and freed it from Afghan occupation, invaded and plundered both India and Ottoman Turkey, and crowned himself Nader Shah of Iran after usurping the Safavid throne in 1736. Because there are no other contemporary reports, published or unpublished, of this length and geographical scope, much of the information offered here is unique. Nader Shah, who not only ruined neighboring countries but also his own, is depicted in all his fury and bloodthirstiness-traits often glossed over by later court chroniclers. At times the Dutch observers are so sickened by his total disregard for the well-being of his country and for human life that they pray to God to release Iran from his hold. Release came in 1747, when he was taken by surprise in his bed and assassinated-but not before first killing two of the attackers. For the first time in English, The Rise and Fall of Nader Shah makes these primary-source eyewitness reports of an important period in Iranian history available to historians and students alike.

Author Bio

Dexter Filkins joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2011. He has written about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, the uprisings in Yemen, the crises in Syria and Lebanon, the Prime Minister of Turkey, and a troubled Iraq War veteran who tracked down the surviving members of a family that his unit had opened fire on.

Filkins worked at the Miami Herald and the Los Angeles Times, where he was the paper’s New Delhi bureau chief, before joining the New York Times, in 2000, reporting from New York, South Asia, and Iraq, where he was based from 2003 to 2006.

In 2009, he won a Pulitzer Prize as part of a team of Times journalists covering Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 2006, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and, from 2007 to 2008, he was a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

He has received numerous prizes, including two George Polk Awards and three Overseas Press Club Awards. His book, “The Forever War,” won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and was named a best book of the year by the Times, the Washington Post, Time, and the Boston Globe.

Source: The New Yorker

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