Nadir Shah

Nadir Quli was born in 1688 in Khorasan into a Turkmen family of shepherds, rose as a soldier, drove the Afghans from Persia and made himself Shah in 1736.

In 1738 he invaded India, crossed the Punjab and in February 1739 defeated the Mughal army at Karnal. He occupied Delhi, and after some of his soldiers were killed in a riot, ordered a massacre in which some twenty to thirty thousand people died in a single day. He carried off the Peacock Throne, the Koh-i-Noor diamond and the treasure of the Mughal empire.

On his way back through the Punjab, laden with plunder and captives, his army was harassed by the Sikhs, who attacked his rearguard and freed many captives. He is said to have asked Zakariya Khan who these people were, and to have been told that they lived on horseback and in the forests; he predicted they would one day rule. He was assassinated in 1747.