24 February 1739 – 16 Adar 5499
The army of Iranian ruler Nadir Shah defeated the forces of Mughal emperor of India, Muhammad Shah, at the Battle of Karnal. In 1746 Nadir Shah commanded forty of his Jewish subjects to move to his new capital city of Mashhad, as guardians of the Mughal treasure he’d brought back from India, despite the fact that they’d been previously been forbidden to live there. When Nadir Shah was assassinated the next year, these families were left at the mercy of Mashhad’s Muslim population. Only seventeen of them stayed, and in 1839 they were forced to convert to Islam, preserving their Jewish traditions only in secret.