"دليل بلاد فارس، المجلد I ويشمل محافظات أستراباد، شاهرود-بوستان، خراسان، وسيستان" [و‎‎٢‎٨‎٧] (٧٢٢/٥٨٠)

named Adil Sliali. Under tins man s orders every son and grandson of the
family of Nadir Shall was put to death, excepting a boy named Shah Rukh,
who was only fourteen years of age. After some bloody struggles for the
throne, it appeared that Shah Rukh would succeed. He was a grandson of
hiadii Shah, with a double claim to the Persian crown j for his father was
the eldest son of Nadir Shah, whilst his mother was a daughter of Shah
Husain. But a religious outcry was raised against Shah Rukh. It was
asserted that he was a Sunni, like his grandfather, and that he would revive
the old persecution of the Shiahs. A son of the priest in charge of the
Shiah shrine of Imam Raza at Mashhad headed the rebellion, and Shah
Rukh was taken prisoner and his eyes put out. Other revolutions followed.
Meantime, Ahmad Shah Abdali, an Afghan soldier of fortune in the army
of the deceased Nadir Shah, had established himself as an independent
sovereign over the whole of Afghanistan, inclusive of Herat and Sistan.
Ahmad Shah seems to have perceived the advantage of making Khurasan a
huffer between his new empire and Persia proper. Accordingly he induced
the people of Khurasan to form that province into a separate principality
under the blind Shah Rukh, who henceforth ruled over Khurasan, under the
powerful guarantee of his Afghan neighbour. Indeed, for some years after
this arrangement Khurasan was virtually a part of Afghanistan.
hilst these bloody struggles for sovereignty were being carried on in
Khurasan, an old race-hatred was breaking out in the western provinces.
Prom time immemorial there have been three conflicting elements in the
population of Persia, which have been occasionally restrained by the strong
arm of a sovereign like Nadir Shah, but which have always taken advant
age of a time of disorder to commence disturbances. These are the Persian,
the Arab, and the Turkuman.
The Persian citizens and cultivators are not warlike; but as nearly
all the towns and villages are walled, their support is of considerable
importance to a rival chief during a civil war. The Arabs, again, have
lost the prestige in Persia, which they maintained under the glorious rule
of the early khalifat ; but they are still capable of giving much trouble.
They chiefly occupy the level country along the shore of the Persian Gulf;
and, whilst yielding more or less obedience to the Persian government,
have often maintained a rude independence. The real antagonism, how
ever, lies between the Persian nomad and the Turkuman nomad—the two
great military classes of the population. The Persian nomads are the
native tribes, who continue to live in tents and change their residence with
the season. Their dialects are different; but they all belong to the Pahlavi
stock. They inhabit the ranges of highlands, which stretch from the neigh
bourhood of the entrance to the Persian Gulf in a north-westerly direction
along the left bank of the Tigris as far as Armenia. This region thus
includes Karman, nearly ail Pars, a part of Irak, and the whole of Kurdistan.
The Turkumans, on the other hand, are of foreign extraction. They are
called indiscriminately Tartar and Turkish. At different periods they have
accompanied conquerors, from beyond the Oxus, from the banks of the
Volga, and from the plains of Syria, into Persian territory. Their habits
resemble those of the Persian nomads; but they speak a different language.
But the antagonism between the Persian nomad and the Turkoman nomad
is not to be ascribed to a mere difference of language. From the advent of
Islam to the death of Nadir Shah, the sovereign of Persia had always been
either Turkish or Arab; and no member of the Persian nomad tribes had ever