monarchs-from-persia

"By the favor of Ahuramazda, these are the countries of which I was king; Media, Elam, Arachosia, Armenia, Drangiana, Parthia, Aria, Bactria, Sogdiana, Chorasmia, Babylonia, Assyria, Sattagydia, Sardis, Egypt, Ionians, those who dwell by the sea and those who dwell across the sea, men of Maka, Arabia, Gandara, Sind, Cappadocia, Dahae, Amyrgian Scythians, Pointed-Cap Scythians, Skudra, men of Akaufaka, Libyans, Carians, Ethiopians. ... When that I became king, there is among these countries which are inscribed above (one which) was in commotion. Afterwards Ahuramazda bore me aid; by the favor of Ahuramazda I smote that country and put it down in its place. ... And among these countries, there was (a place) where previously false gods Daevas were worshipped. Afterwards, by the favor of Ahuramazda, I destroyed that sanctuary of the demons, and I made proclamation, "The demons shall not be worshipped!" Where previously the demons were worshipped, there I worshipped Ahuramazda and Arta reverent(ly). And there was other (business) that had been done ill; that I made good. That which I did, all I did by the favor of Ahuramazda. Ahuramazda bore me aid until I completed the work. ... The man who has respect for that law which Ahuramazda has established, and worships Ahuramazda and Arta reverent(ly), he both becomes happy while living, and becomes blessed when dead."

"Shall I pass by and leave you lying there because of the expedition you led against Greece, or shall I set you up again because of your magnanimity and your virtues in other respects?"

"When I became king, there is among these countries one which was in rebellion. Afterwards Ahuramazda bore me aid. By the favor of Ahuramazda I smote that country and put it down in its place. And among these countries there was a place where previously daiva were worshiped. Afterwards, by the favor of Ahuramazda I destroyed that sanctuary of daiva, and I made proclamation: “The daiva shall not be worshiped!” Where previously the daiva were worshiped, there I worshiped Ahuramazda at the proper time and in the proper manner. And there was other business that had been done ill. That I made good. That which I did, all did by the favor of Ahuramazda. Ahuramazda bore me aid until I completed the work."

"And among these countries there was a place where previously daiva [demons] were worshiped. Afterwards, by the grace of Ahuramazda, I destroyed that sanctuary of daiva, and I proclaimed: The daiva shall not be worshipped!"

"... When I became king, I built much excellent (construction). What had been built by my father (Darius I), that I protected, and other building I added. What moreover I built, and what my father built, all that by the favor of Ahuramazda we built."

"The founders of the Persian Empire, Cyrus and Darius, were moderate and reasonable—powerful men, but not tyrants. Darius’s successor Xerxes, however, stands out among them from the vivid portrayal by the Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote from a victor’s viewpoint. His story portrays Xerxes as a sacrilegious monster and vastly exaggerates the power of the nation the Greeks defeated. Other sources only provide minor supplements to this hostile view of the Persian ruler."

"Tamerlane was a world conqueror, statesman and military commander of astonishing brilliance and brutal ferocity who built an empire stretching from India to Russia and the Mediterranean Sea. Never defeated in battle, the ultimate hero-monster, he ranks alongside Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great as one of the great conquerors of all time yet he left in his wake both pyramids of human skulls and the aesthetic beauty of his capital Samarkand."

"...In vain, I see, men worship Mahomet: My sword hath sent millions of Turks to hell, Slew all his priests, his kinsmen, and his friends, And yet I live untouch'd by Mahomet. There is a God, full of revenging wrath, From whom the thunder and the lightning breaks, Whose scourge I am, and him will I obey."

"But even in the deepest darkness light persists. Timur’s gruesome invasion had a silver lining. Hindus and Muslims all stood up to a man to fight him wherever he went. The days of Mahmud of Ghazni were a story of the past, and Timur met resistance everywhere. The people of India were known for their disunity in the face of a foreign invader. But they stood united against Timur. At Tulamba, Ajodhan, Deopalpur, Bhatnir, Meerut and Delhi—nay everywhere —the Hindus and Muslims fought shoulder to shoulder against the invader. Shaikh Sa’iduddin interceded with Timur on behalf of the Hindu chief of Bhatnir. At Meerut, Ilyas Afghan, a Muslim, burnt his womenfolk in the fire of jawhar. During Timur’s visitation the Hindus and Muslims learnt to sink their differences and stand united."

"A careful study of Timur’s invasion leads to the conclusion that it symbolises little more than the fulfilment of an ambition without a distinct object. After all why did he invade India? If conquest of the country was his object, he had certainly not achieved it."

"It was a day of blackest deed When Delhi streets of fame Did glitter well by cursed greed Of harsh Timoor the lame."

"This strange champion of Islam had come to deliver a stab in the back to the vanguard of Islam at the fringe of India. He was to adopt the same attitude toward the Ottoman Empire on the marches of Rumania."

"It is the Qur'an to which he continually appeals, the imams and Sufi] dervishes who prophesy his success [emphasis added]. His wars were to influence the character of the jihad, the Holy War, even when—as was almost always the case—he was fighting Muslims. He had only to accuse these Muslims of lukewarmness, whether the Jagataites of the Ili and Uiguria, whose conversion was so recent, or the Sultans of Delhi who…refrained from massacring their millions of Hindu subjects."

"Tamerlane's [Timur's] conquering activities were carried on from the Volga to Damascus, from Smyrna to the Ganges and the Yulduz, and his expeditions into these regions followed no geographical order. He sped from Tashkent to Shiraz, from Tabriz to Khodzhent, as enemy aggression dictated; a campaign in Russia occurred between two in Persia, an expedition into Central Asia between two raids into the Caucasus.…[Timur] at the end of every successful campaign left the country without making any dispositions for its control except Khwarizm and Persia, and even there not until the very end. It is true that he slaughtered all his enemies as thoroughly and conscientiously as the great Mongol, and the pyramids of human heads left behind him as a warning example tell their own tale. Yet the survivors forgot the lesson given them and soon resumed secret or overt attempts at rebellion, so that it was all to do again. It appears too, that these blood soaked pyramids diverted [Timur] from the essential objective. Baghdad, Brussa (Bursa), Sarai, Kara Shahr, and Delhi were all sacked by him, but he did not overcome the Ottoman Empire, the Golden Horde, the khanate of Mogholistan, or the Indian Sultanate; and even the Jelairs of Iraq Arabi rose up again as soon as he had passed. Thus he had to conquer Khwarizm three times, the Ili six or seven times (without ever managing to hold it for longer than the duration of the campaign), eastern Persia twice, western Persia at least three times, in addition to waging two campaigns in Russia.…[Timur's] campaigns “always had to be fought again,” and fight them again he did."

"It has been noted that the Jenghiz-Khanite Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century was less cruel, for the Mongols were mere barbarians who killed simply because for centuries this had been the instinctive behavior of nomad herdsmen toward sedentary farmers. To this ferocity Tamerlane [Timur] added a taste for religious murder. He killed from Qur'anic piety. He represents a synthesis, probably unprecedented in history, of Mongol barbarity and Muslim fanaticism, and symbolizes that advanced form of primitive slaughter which is murder committed for the sake of an abstract ideology, as a duty and a sacred mission."

"Tamerlane, who built the last great Empire in the Steppes of Central Asia, seems a worthy heir of Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan. He piled up the skulls of defeated enemies in monstrous pyramids and struck fear wherever he went. Yet he was a patron of learning who created an Empire that brought enormous benefits to his homeland. He made his capital Samarkand one of the greatest and most sophisticated cities in the Islamic world. He was a tyrant whos atrocities were carried out abroad rather than at home."

"Do you know that the Barbican Center Theater of London has censored , the drama written in 1587 by Christopher Marlowe? At a certain point of the drama, remember, Christopher Marlowe makes Tamburlaine burn the Koran. While the Koran burns, he also makes him challenge the Prophet by shouting: «Now, if you have the power, come down and make a miracle!». And, given the fact that these words and the Koran burning infuriated local Muslims, the Barbican Theater has cut off the whole scene."

"Their first conqueror was Tamerlane himself—more properly Timur-i-lang—a Turk who had accepted Islam as an admirable weapon, and had given himself a pedigree going back to Genghis Khan, in order to win the support of his Mongol horde. Having attained the throne of Samarkand and feeling the need of more gold, it dawned upon him that India was still full of infidels. His generals, mindful of Moslem courage, demurred, pointing out that the infidels who could be reached from Samarkand were already under Mohammedan rule. Mullahs learned in the Koran decided the matter by quoting an inspiring verse: “Oh Prophet, make war upon infidels and unbelievers, and treat them with severity.” Thereupon Timur crossed the Indus (1398), massacred or enslaved such of the inhabitants as could not flee from him, defeated the forces of Sultan Mahmud Tughlak, occupied Delhi, slew a hundred thousand prisoners in cold blood, plundered the city of all the wealth that the Afghan dynasty had gathered there, and carried it off to Samarkand with a multitude of women and slaves, leaving anarchy, famine and pestilence in his wake."

"The riches of India tempted him, and the weakness of the Delhi government provided him with a favorable opportunity. By invoking the propagation of the Islamic faith, he obtained the consent of his nobles. His invasion of India was the most ferocious that the country had ever known up to then."

"As specimens of those acts [atrocities] mention may be made of his massacre of the people of Sistan 1383–4, when he caused some two thousand prisoners to be built up into a wall; his cold-blooded slaughter of a hundred thousand captive Indians near Dihli [Delhi] (December, 1398); his burying alive of four thousand Armenians in 1400–1, and the twenty towers of skulls erected by him at Aleppo and Damascus in the same year; and his massacre of 70,000 of the inhabitants of Isfahan (November, 1387)."

"The Koran emphasizes that the highest dignity to which man may attain is to wage war in person upon the enemies of the Faith. This is why the great Tamerlane was always concerned to exterminate the infidels, as much to acquire merit as from love of glory."

"God, who was pleased to purge the world, made use of a medicine which was both sweet and bitter, to wit the clemency and the wrath of the incomparable Temur; and to that effect inspired in him an ambition to conquer all Asia and to expel the several tyrants thereof. He established peace and security in this part of the world so that a single man might carry a silver basin filled with gold from the east of Asia to the west. But yet he could not accomplish this great affair without bringing in some measure upon the places he conquered destruction, captivity and plunder, which are the concomitants of victory."

"The Alcoran says the highest dignity man can attain is that of making war in person against the enemies of his religion. Mahomet advises the same thing, according to the tradition of the Mussulman doctors: wherefore the great Temur always strove to exterminate the infidels, as much to acquire that glory, as to signalise himself by the greatness of his conquests."

"They met near a city called Augury, where they fought desperately. Weyasit had quite thirty thousand men of White Tartary, whom he placed in the van at the battle. They went over to Temerlin; then they had two encounters, but neither could overcome the other. Now Tämerlin had thirty-two trained elephants at the battle, and ordered, after mid-day, that they should be brought into the battle. This was done, and they attacked each other; but Weyasit took to flight, and went with at least one thousand horsemen to a mountain. Tamerlin surrounded the mountain so that he could not move, and took him."

"Those of the inhabitants who were left died (of famines and pestilence), while for two months not a bird moved wing in Delhi."

"[T]here arose in my heart the desire to lead an expedition against the infidels, and to become a ghází; for it had reached my ears that the slayer of infidels is a ghází, and if he is slain he becomes a martyr. It was on this account that I formed this resolution, but I was undetermined in my mind whether I should direct my expedition against the infidels of China or against the infidels and polytheists of India. In this matter I sought an omen from the Kurán, and the verse I opened upon was this, "O Prophet, make war upon infidels and unbelievers and treat them with severity.""

"It is good to go swiftly and break an enemy’s power, before he has mustered his full strength. No greater army should be taken than can be maintained on the way."

"It is better to be at the right place with ten men than absent with ten thousand."

"Timur left [India] prostrate and bleeding. There was utter confusion and misery throughout northern India. [India's] northwestern provinces, including northern tracts of Rajasthan and Delhi, were so thoroughly ravaged, plundered and even burnt that it took these parts many years, indeed, to recover their prosperity. Lakhs [hundreds of thousands] of men, and in some cases, many women and children, too, were butchered in cold blood. The rabi crops [grown in October–November, harvested around March, including barley, mustard, and wheat] standing in the field were completely destroyed for many miles on both sides of the invader's long and double route from the Indus to Delhi and back. Stores of grain were looted or destroyed. Trade, commerce and other signs of material prosperity disappeared. The city of Delhi was depopulated and ruined. It was without a master or a caretaker. There was scarcity and virulent famine in the capital and its suburbs. This was followed by a pestilence caused by the pollution of the air and water by thousands of uncared-for dead bodies."

"The citizens of the capital, headed by the ulema, waited on the conqueror and begged quarter. Timur agreed to spare the citizens; but, owing to the oppressive conduct of the soldiers of the invading force, the people of the city were obliged to offer resistance. Timur now ordered a general plunder and massacre which lasted for several days. Thousands of the citizens of Delhi were murdered and thousands were made prisoners. A historian writes: “High towers were built with the head of the Hindus, and their bodies became the food of ravenous beasts and birds…such of the inhabitants who escaped alive were made prisoners.”"

"My passions, from that hapless hour, Usurp’d a tyranny, which men Have deem’d, since I have reach’d to power My innate nature — be it so..."

"A ruthless killer, whose armies were responsible for unrivalled pillage and brutality, Tamerlane was equally a shrewd statesman, brilliant general and sophisticated patron of the arts. Revered in Uzbekistan to this day — his monument in Tashkent standing where Marx’s statue once presided — Tamerlane was buried in a beautiful simple tomb in Samarkand. Legend said that the disturber of his tomb would be cursed: in June 1941, a Soviet historian opened the tomb. Days later, Hitler attacked Soviet Russia."

"I don't care when I die, when you die, you die. What I don't want is to die in my bed. To be killed in an accident or to be shot is my preferred way to die."

"Carter didn't kill my brother with his own hand, but he overthrew him. If Nixon were President, my brother would still be on the throne."

"I don't need to pray. I have God in myside."

"You are very attractive, but the coat you're wearing makes me think you are either a very rich woman or a very rich man's mistress."

"Her eyes lit up and her resistance crumbled."

"Persia’s backward conditions were relics of social traditions ... and the women for that matter weren’t ready to exchange the protection they had traditionally enjoyed for the unknowns of a new social status."

"I found that many Americans did not even know that a country named Iran existed, let alone what it was like. Even among the diplomatic corps and among well-educated people, there was a vagueness about who the Iranians were or what the culture was, a tendency to confuse Iran with Iraq or to mistakenly assume that Iran is an Arab country simply because it is an Islamic nation. This fuzziness about the world outside is unique to America; among the intelligensia of European countries, for example, there is generally a higher level of awareness and information regarding cultures other than their own."

"As I flew over the Shahyad monument, I saw that one corner was completely dark. A moment later I realized this black mass was a mass of Iranian women, women who had achieved one of the highest levels of emancipation in the Middle East. Here they were in the mournful black their grandmother had worn. My god, I thought, is this how it ends?"

"It is equally obvious and it became clear ... that no ruler can legislate a social revolution. He can implement the outward form of social change, but he cannot legislate change in the minds of the people. Stable and lasting change has to evolve slowly and gradually over a period of many generations. What signaled the beginning of the end ... was the radical modernization program, which virtually affected every aspect of Iranian life ... [including] the sweeping emancipation of women, which moved as it were 13 centuries in the course of three decades."

"For some days after the massacre the streets of the doomed quarters of Dihli became impassable from the stench of the corpses filling the houses, wells and roadside, none venturing to approach them in fear."

"Nader Shah of Iran was the self-made military and political genius and empire-builder who dominated his native country, defeated the Mughal emperors and Ottoman sultans, conquered vast new territories, stole the Peacock Throne for himself, overthrew the Safavid dynasty to raise himself from enslaved orphan and freebooting bandit to the throne of King of Kings. But he sank into paranoid brutality, frenzied killing and finally the insanity that led to his murder. Known as 'the Second Alexander', he was the tragic and murderous 'Napoleon of Iran'."

"Nadir Shah is said to have written to the emperor 'My coming to Cabul and possessing myself thereof was purely out of zeal for Islam and friendship for you...my stay on this side of the Attock is with a view that when those infidels (the Marathas) move towards Hindustan, | may send an army of the victorious Kizzilbash to drive them to the abyss of hell'."

"The Persian ruler Nadir Shah, in his invasion of India in 1738, killed some 200,000 people and returned with a huge quantity of booty and a large number of slaves, including a few thousand beautiful girls. Alain Danielou (d. 1994), French scholar of Indian philosophy, religion, history and arts, described Nadir Shah’s assault of Delhi as follows: ‘…for a week his soldiers massacred everybody, ransacked everything, and razed the entire countryside, so that the survivors would have nothing to eat. He went back to Iran taking with him precious furniture, works of art, horses, the Kohinoor diamond, the famous Peacock throne, and 150 million rupees in gold.’"

"When the Shah departed towards the close of the day, a false rumour was spread through the town that he had been severely wounded by a shot from a matchlock, and thus were sown the seeds from which murder and rapine were to spring. The bad characters within the town collected in great bodies, and, without distinction, commenced the work of plunder and destruction.... On the morning of the 11th an order went forth from the Persian Emperor for the slaughter of the inhabitants. The result may be imagined; one moment seemed to have sufficed for universal destruction. The Chandni chauk, the fruit market, the Daribah bazaar, and the buildings around the Masjid-i Jama’ were set fire to and reduced to ashes. The inhabitants, one and all, were slaughtered. Here and there some opposition was offered, but in most places people were butchered unresistingly. The Persians laid violent hands on everything and everybody; cloth, jewels, dishes of gold and silver, were acceptable spoil.... But to return to the miserable inhabitants. The massacre lasted half the day, when the Persian Emperor ordered Haji Fulad Khan, the kotwal, to proceed through the streets accompanied by a body of Persian nasakchis, and proclaim an order for the soldiers to resist from carnage. By degrees the violence of the flames subsided, but the bloodshed, the devastation, and the ruin of families were irreparable. For a long time the streets remained strewn with corpses, as the walks of a garden with dead flowers and leaves. The town was reduced to ashes, and had the appearance of a plain consumed with fire. All the regal jewels and property and the contents of the treasury were seized by the Persian conqueror in the citadel. He thus became possessed of treasure to the amount of sixty lacs of rupees and several thousand ashrafis... plate of gold to the value of one kror of rupees, and the jewels, many of which were unrivalled in beauty by any in the world, were valued at about fifty krors. The peacock throne alone, constructed at great pains in the reign of Shah Jahan, had cost one kror of rupees. Elephants, horses, and precious stuffs, whatever pleased .the conqueror’s eye, more indeed than can be enumerated, became his spoil. In short, the accumulated wealth of 348 years changed masters in a moment."

"Afterwards Nadir Shah himself, with the Emperor of Hindustan, entered the fort of Delhi. It is said that he appointed a place on one side in the fort for the residence of Muhammad Shah and his dependents, and on the other side he chose the Diwan-i Khas, or, as some say, the Garden of Hayat Bakhsh, for his own accommodation. He sent to the Emperor of Hindustan, as to a prisoner, some food and wine from his own table. One Friday his own name was read in the khutba, but on the next he ordered Muhammad Shah's name to be read. It is related that one day a rumour spread in the city that Nadir Shah had been slain in the fort. This produced a general confusion, and the people of the city destroyed five thousand1 men of his camp. On hearing of this, Nadir Shah came of the fort, sat in the golden masjid which was built by Rashanu-d daula, and gave orders for a general massacre. For nine hours an indiscriminate slaughter of all and of every degree was committed. It is said that the number of those who were slain amounted to one hundred thousand. The losses and calamities of the people of Delhi were exceedingly great…. After this violence and cruelty, Nadir Shah collected immense riches, which he began to send to his country laden on elephants and camels."

"Once, when Nadir was told that there was no war in paradise, he was reported to have asked: "How can there be any delights there?"."

"“No barbarities were left unpractised. The tax imposed was strictly exacted. What numbers destroyed themselves with their own hands.’"

"May all the gods whom I settled in their sacred centers ask daily of Bêl and Nâbu that my days be long and may they intercede for my welfare. ... The people of Babylon blessed my kingship, and I settled all the lands in peaceful abodes."