Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant

Shared faith, and common acknowledgement of the Sharia or Islamic law, helped make Ottoman rule acceptable in the Fertile Crescent, Egypt and North Africa, while the sultan’s role as Islam’s champion against the Christian infidel gave him a strong claim on the loyalty of the faithful.

Until well into the seventeenth century, the Ottoman sultans balanced their dependence on the political and military service of the Turkish aristocracy by recruiting a slave army of Muslim converts (perhaps seven or eight thousand a year) separated in childhood from their Christian parents. Devshirme recruitment obliterated the ties of kinship and

Islamic rule under the early khalifas (caliphs) depended on tribal garrisons watching over the unreliable townsmen. It was not a lasting solution. Under urban conditions, tribal unity weakened. There was no aristocracy to apply a feudal remedy, and the problem of government was control of the towns. The answer was found in recruiting military slave

Nizam ul-Mulk was an ingenious general but an even more talented statesman, using bribery and intrigue to achieve what his old-fashioned and outmoded Mughal armies could not. While breaking from the direct control of Delhi, he made a point of maintaining his nominal loyalty to the Mughal Emperor, and throughout the eighteenth century the people of