this child of Georgia, a Persian satrapy for centuries, also identified with the Shahs. He named two monarchs as his ‘teachers’ in his own notes: one was Nadir Shah, the eighteenth-century Persian empire-builder of whom he wrote: ‘Nadir Khan. Teacher’. (He was also interested in another Shah, Abbas, who beheaded a father’s two sons and sent him their heads: ‘Am I like the Shah?’ he asked Beria.)
