also taking with them thousands of elephants, horses, and camels, all loaded with the booty they had collected. The plunder seized from India was so rich that Nader stopped taxation in Persia for a period of three years following his return. On Nader's return to Iran, Sikhs fell upon Nader's army and seized a large amount of booty and freed the slaves in captivity. The Persian army marched north toward the Hindu Kush. An audience of governors was called by Nader from his newly acquired lands in northern India. All came bearing gifts and protestations of their loyalty to their new overlord except one. Khodayar Khan, governor of Sindh, had bargained on Nader being content with his enormous plunder and already considerable territorial acquisitions, and so he deemed himself safe from Nader. Khodayar Khan believed that Nader would not traverse the punishingly rugged terrain of the Hindu Kush mountains so late into the campaigning season. He was mistaken. The Maathir-ul-Umara states that Khudayar Khan answered: "We from the time of our forefathers were the servants of the King of India, if we had shown an inclination for you, you would not have believed us." Historic ramifications Nader Shah's victory against the crumbling Mughal Empire in the East meant that he could afford to turn to the West and face Persia's archrivals, the Ottomans, once again. The Ottoman Sultan Mahmud I initiated the Ottoman–Persian War (1743–1746) in which Muhammad Shah closely co-operated with the Ottomans, as well as after, until his death in 1748. Nader's Indian campaign alerted the British East India Company to the extreme weakness of the Mughal Empire and the possibility of expanding British imperialism to fill the power vacuum. As a result of the defeat of the Mughal Empire at Karnal, the already-declining Mughal dynasty was critically weakened to such an extent as to hasten its demise. According to Axworthy, it is also possible that without the ruinous effects of Nader's invasion of India, the European colonial takeover of the Indian subcontinent would have come in a different form or perhaps not at all, which would have fundamentally changed the history of the Indian Subcontinent. See also Military of the Afsharid dynasty of Persia Mughal dynasty Afsharid dynasty Battle of Khyber Pass Iranian Crown Jewels Nadir Shah's invasion of India Battle of Delhi (1737) Attack on Nadir Shah (1739) References Bibliography Cust, Edward, Annals of the wars