Nadir Shah, from 1736 the ruler of Iran, had been born in 1688 into a poor Turkic family in Khorasan, a region where Iranian generals and Afghan chiefs were in conflict. Victories over Afghans, and his prowess as soldier and commander, had made the tall, powerfully-framed, black-bearded and sun-tanned Nadir Shah an Iranian hero and eventually, despite his being a Sunni, the king of Persia.
