At about the time of the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War, in the area now spread over parts of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the southern republics of the former Soviet Union and the north of India, cavalry armies could be found several times the size of those cruising the battlefields of Europe.

During the rule of Shah Hussain (1694-1722), the Glizay Afghan tribe rebelled in Kandahar against Persian rule and declared its independence. Mir Mahmoud, the Afghan leader, captured Kerman and Isfahan in 1722, overthrew Hussain, and proclaimed himself emperor of Persia, but his state soon fell apart. Using the weakness of Persia, Turkey captured parts of western Iran, and Russia took the western and southern shores of the Caspian Sea. The new Persian ruler, the capable and energetic Nadir Shah (1736-47), put the state in order and raised a disciplined army, consisting for the most part of cavalry. In a single thrust, he defeated first Turkey, then Russia, which left him free to deal with Afghanistan, whence a new threat was looming. In 1738, he launched a large military campaign from Isfahan, in which his army, over several years, covered 6,000 km/3,700 miles in constant battles and skirmishes. He captured Basra at the north of the Persian Gulf, Kerman on the Iranian plateau, Kandahar, entered Afghanistan and took Kabul. He went on to capture Lahore and Delhi, down the Ind valley to the Arabian Sea, then north, again by way of Kandahar, through Turkestan, and captured Buhara and Hiva.

On this huge campaign the Persian army consisted of mounted nobility, most of them members of the quizilbashes religious-military order, light nomadic cavalry, infantry and artillery. From the end of the seventeenth century, Persian infantry and artillery units had firearms and had been trained by European instructors. The tactics and equipment of the cavalry, however, had remained decidedly obsolescent, with only the quality and beauty of the armour, mail and sabres reaching their pinnacle in the eighteenth century. The basic weapons of upper-class Persians were the light lance, composite bow and sabre. They often carried a mace and short steel javelins in a case. The chair aina (four mirrors) armour was so named because it consisted of four plates: breastplate, backplate, and one under each arm, and it was worn over a fine mail shirt. Also part of the protective equipment was a helmet (sisak), traditionally ornamented with bird feathers, a round shield with four bosses, and a right-hand guard (majsur).

It is interesting that soldiers of the Grande Armée, in Napoleon’s march on Moscow in 1812, encountered horsemen from the southern border regions of Russia who wore mail shirts and armour of the type used in Persia several centuries earlier.