Later Mughals v2.c18.s8.2

v2.c18.s8.2

Nadir was not really a Persian, but a Turk of a tribe settled on the Persian soil for centuries past. His soldiers were Turks and other nomads (like the Kurds), and not Persians proper. He conversed with Muhammad Shah in Turkish. [Harcharan.] Indeed, the Persians themselves designated his army accurately by calling them Qizil-bashes or Red Caps,* from the scarlet broad-cloth caps worn by them,—the very caps which we see to-day on the heads of the Turks and their imitators in Egypt and India. The true Persians are an Aryan people, with a strong Semitic strain infused into them after the Muslim conquest, but they have little Turanian or Turkish racial admixture. Their language is not akin to Turkish, their manners are different from those of the Turks, and their