Nader Shah, having seized power in Iran and driven out the Afghans and Ottomans, invaded the Mughal empire in 1738-39, destroyed Muhammad Shah's far larger army at Karnal in February 1739, and entered Delhi in March. A rumour of Nader's death provoked a riot in which several hundred of his soldiers were killed; on 22 March he ordered a general massacre, which continued through the day until the Mughal emperor's plea induced him to stop. Contemporary Persian and Mughal accounts put the dead variously between twenty and thirty thousand, with some later sources giving far higher figures; the killing was accompanied by looting, burning of quarters of the city and mass rape, and by the systematic extraction of the imperial treasure. Nader restored Muhammad Shah to a throne stripped of its wealth and of the territories west of the Indus, and withdrew with a plunder train that included the Peacock Throne. The blow is generally regarded as decisive in the disintegration of Mughal authority, opening the way to Maratha, Afghan and eventually British power in northern India.
Nader Shah of Iran defeated the Mughal army at Karnal, occupied Delhi, and ordered a general massacre of the city's inhabitants after a riot against his troops
No census exists. Estimates derived from the walled city's area, its ward structure and European travellers' accounts range from about 400,000 to 2 million, with recent work favouring the lower end. The massacre of 22 March 1739 is generally put at 20,000-30,000 killed in a single day.
The range is the one given in the contemporary Persian and Indo-Persian accounts of the massacre of 22 March 1739 and adopted in most modern narratives; higher figures appear in later chronicles and in colonial-era retellings and are not supported by the earlier sources. The dead were overwhelmingly civilians killed in a single day of ordered killing within the city.
The ordered massacre of the civilian population, the burning of quarters of the city, rape and the carrying off of women, children and craftsmen with the returning army are described in the Persian and Indo-Persian chronicles of the campaign and in eyewitness accounts collected shortly afterwards.
India, Iran