The campaigns of Nader Shah (Persian: لشکرکشیهای نادرشاه), or the Naderian Wars (Persian: جنگهای نادری), were a series of conflicts fought in the early to mid-eighteenth century throughout Central Eurasia primarily by the Iranian conqueror Nader Shah. His campaigns originated from the overthrow of the Iranian Safavid dynasty by the Hotaki Afghans. In the ensuing collapse and fragmentation of the empire after the capture of the Iranian capital of Isfahan by the Afghans, a claimant to the Safavid throne, Tahmasp II, accepted Nader (who was no more than a petty warlord in Khorasan) into his service. After having subdued north-west Iran as well as neutralising the Abdali Afghans to the east and turning Tahmasp II into a vassal, Nader marched against the Hotaki Afghans in occupation of the rest of the country. In a series of incredible victories the Afghans were decimated and Tahmasp II returned to the throne as a restored Safavid monarch.
In the aftermath of the Safavid restoration Nader campaigned in the western and northern reaches of the empire to regain territory lost to the Ottomans and Russians. After a bitter war lasting five years Nader had managed to restore the western frontier of Iran as well as reimposed Iranian suzerainty over most of the Caucasus. The legitimacy which his astonishing military achievements brought him allowed a bloodless coup against the Safavid monarchy in which he had the unanimous support of the Iranian ruling elite. Nader Shah's first campaign as the monarch of the newly established Afsharid dynasty was the subjugation of Afghanistan in its entirety. The result of the annexation of Afghanistan by Nader's empire was that he now had a direct path to the invasion of Mughal India. In one of his most extraordinary campaigns he crossed the Khyber pass with just 10,000 men and subsequently descended down into the Mughal heartland where he engaged the Mughal army and despite being outnumbered six to one, crushed his foes in little over three hours. After he had made the Mughal emperor his vassal and marched to Delhi he looted the city and massacred its population after they revolted against his occupation.
