It speaks much for Nadir Shah's strong character that, having gained such distinction, he did not allow flatterers to find amid the obscurity of his birth the lost traces of great ancestors.

He never boasted a proud genealogy; on the contrary, he often spoke of his low birth, and we are told that even his flattering historian had to content himself with saying that the diamond has its value from its own lustre, and not from the rock in which it grows.

A characteristic story of this remarkable man is that on demanding a daughter of his vanquished enemy, Mahmud Shah, the Emperor of Delhi, in marriage for his son, Nasr-ullah, he was met with the answer that for alliance with a Princess of the Imperial house of Timor a genealogy of seven generations was required.

'Tell him,' said Nadir, 'that Nasr-ullah is the son of Nadir Shah, the son of the sword, the grandson of the sword, and so on till they have a descent of seventy, instead of seven generations.' Nadir, the man of action and blood and iron, had the greatest contempt for the weak, dissolute Mahmud Shah, who, according to the native historian of the time, was 'never without a mistress in his arms and a glass in his hand,' a debauchee of the lowest type, as well as a mere puppet King.

In the end the demon of suspicion poisoned the mind of Nadir to such an extent that he became madly murderous, and assassination ended his life.