Karim Khan Zand: A History of Iran, 1747-1779

By John R. Perry

A forward thinking and notably popular leader, Karim Khan Zand (1705-1779) was the founder of the Zand dynasty in Iran. In this insightful profile of a man before his time, esteemed academic John Perry shows how by opening up international trade, employing a fair fiscal system and showing respect for existing religious institutions, Karim Khan succeeded in creating a peaceful and prosperous state in a particularly turbulent epoch of history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Release date: May 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9780226661025

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JOHN R. PERRY is assistant professor of Persian language and civilization at the University of Chicago. He has translated Mikhail Naimy’s A New Year: Stories, Autobiography, and Poems from Arabic and is the author of many scholarly articles.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

©1979 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 1979

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Perry, John R

Karīm Khān Zand.

(Publications of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies ; no. 12)

Bibliography:   p.

Includes index.

1.   Iran—History—16th-18th centuries.   2. Karīm Khān Zand, Shah of Iran, d. 1779.   I.   Title.   II.   Series:   Chicago.   University.   Center for Middle Eastern Studies.   Publications ; no. 12.

DS295.P47      955'.03      78-26553

ISBN 0-226-66098-2

ISBN 978-0-226-66102-5 (e-book)

Karim Khan Zand

A History of Iran, 1747–1779

John R. Perry

Publications of the the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, No. 12

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

PUBLICATIONS OF THE CENTER FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES

Richard L. Chambers, General Editor

1 Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century

Edited by William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers

2 The Mosque in Early Ottoman Architecture

By Aptullah Kuran

3 Economic Development and Regional Cooperation: Kuwait

By Ragaei El Mallakh

4 Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt

By Gabriel Baer

5 Conflicts and Tensions in Islamic Jurisprudence

By Noel J. Coulson

6 The Modern Arabic Literary Language

By Jaroslav Stetkevych

7 Iran: Economic Development under Dualistic Conditions

By Jahangir Amuzegar and M. Ali Fekrat

8 The Economic History of Iran, 1800–1914

By Charles Issawi

9 The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture

By Nader Ardalan and Laleh Bakhtiar

10 The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier

By Andrew C. Hess

11 Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union: A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World

By Alexandre A. Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Abbreviations

Explanatory Notes

Prologue: The Historical Background

PART ONE: THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER IN WESTERN IRAN, 1747–63

1. The Bakhtyari-Zand Regency

2. Karim Khan as Vakil

3. Azad Khan Afghan

4. Mohammad Hasan Khan Qajar

5. Afghans and Afshars

PART TWO: CONSOLIDATION AND EXPANSION, 1763–79

6. Internal Dissension

7. Fars and the Central Provinces

8. Kerman and Yazd

9. The Qajar Revival

10. The Persian Gulf

11. The Siege of Basra

12. Kurdistan and the Occupation of Basra

PART THREE: IRAN UNDER KARIM KHAN

13. Government, Land, and People

14. Administration, Revenue, and Society

15. Trade and Foreign Relations

16. The Vakil at Home

Epilogue: Karim Khan’s Successors

Appendix: Survey and Assessment of the Sources

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Figures

1. Contemporary portrait of Karim Khan

2. Plan of Basra

3. Plan of Shiraz

4. The Royal Palace at Tehran

5. Hall of Audience at Shiraz

6. A Corner of the Arg, Shiraz

7. Karim Khan and Some of His Courtiers

Tables

1. Administration, Revenue, and Population under Karim Khan

2. Genealogical Table of the Zands

Preface

The fifty years between the death of Nader Shah and the establishment of the Qajar Dynasty is the first, and also the most obscure, period of modern Iranian history. Its claim to be the first is founded not on any single outstanding event, such as the French or American revolutions of the same era, but rather on a series of subtler and more gradual changes in the medieval Iran of the Great Sophy and of Nader Shah, the last great Asiatic conqueror. Among these were the final loss of the old imperial outposts of the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, and the first tentatives by Russia in the north and Britain in the south to establish their respective spheres of commercial (and later political) interest; the resumption of power by the Persian-speaking tribes of the central and southern Zagros to create a new Iranian intermezzo between the respective reigns of the Turkish Afshars and Qajars of the north; and the rejection of centralized despotism (whether theocratic or militaristic) in favor of a laissez faire coalition of interests. The results of all this remained to modify considerably the extent of the initial Qajar swing toward a new centralized imperium.

That it is the most obscure period is due not so much to a dearth of source material as to the need for a full-scale collation and exposition of the ample and heterogeneous documentation available. Both the preceding period of the later Safavids and Nader Shah and the succeeding age of the Qajars have been examined to a degree, but as yet the later Afsharids and the Zands have not been reprieved from their lengthy limbo. The present work, which has its origins in a doctoral dissertation submitted at the University of Cambridge in 1969, is an attempt to supply a part of this need. In the intervening years, additional materials have come to light, and old ones have demanded new perspectives. The purpose, however, remains unchanged—to illustrate the acquisition, administration, and forfeiture of Iranian empire by a man extraordinary for his ordinary humanity in an age of conventional tyrants. The extent to which he was the creator, catalyst, or creature of his age may then be more fairly assessed.

In pursuing this aim I have been aided and encouraged by so many people in Iran, Britain, and America (and several points in between) that it would be impossible to thank them all individually. Apart from those specifically acknowledged in footnotes, several friends, colleagues, and institutions merit particular mention here: Hamid Algar, who in conversation in Tehran first suggested the Zand period as a fruitful field of investigation; my supervisor Hubert Darke, Peter Avery, the late Laurence Lockhart, and the late Mojtaba Minovi, for help and guidance during the gestation of the original dissertation; members of the Middle East Centre, the Faculty of Oriental Studies, and Pembroke College at Cambridge University, of the British Institute of Persian Studies in Tehran and the Asia Institute of Pahlavi University in Shiraz, and my friends and colleagues at St. Andrews, Chicago, and elsewhere (notably Thomas Ricks) who have cheerfully given their time, material, and suggestions in the cause of Karim Khan; the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, for undertaking to publish the finished product; Judy Herder for typing the final copy, Christopher Müller-Wille for drafting the maps, and Rachel Lehr for help with the index. To all these and many others I extend my gratitude and hope that they will not think their efforts wasted.

To Frederika, Rahim, and Sonya, special thanks for a great deal more.

J.R.P.

Abbreviations

Explanatory Notes

Transliteration. The transliteration is rigorous only in the footnotes, bibliography, and index, where a modified form of the Library of Congress system (Persian) is used for words originally in Arabic script. In a specifically Arabic context, th and consonantal w replaces v; in Turkish words, treatment of vowels is more flexible. For well-known place names, the conventional English form is used. In the text, transliteration is consistent with this usage, though diacritics are generally dispensed with as superfluous for the specialist and irrelevant to the nonspecialist.

Chronology. The Islamic lunar calendar is used to express dates derived from Oriental sources; points in the Iranian solar year and the Turkish twelve-year cycle will be cited only for clarification. When a Hejri date is given, the corresponding Christian New Style date (Gregorian calendar) follows after an oblique stroke. Dates cited in footnote references to Russian sources and to East India Company sources before 14 September 1752 are Old Style (Julian calendar) and are adjusted to New Style by the addition of eleven days before appearing in context.

Toponymy. Generally, contemporary place names (i.e., Safavid to Qajar) are employed, with present-day equivalents noted where applicable. Partial exceptions are the use of Khuzestan for ʾArabestan (except in the title Vali-ye ʾArabestan) and Hamadan for Qalamraw ʾAli Shakar (both terms appear in eighteenth-century texts). I have retained the useful designation Persian Iraq (’Eraq-e ʾAjam) for that area of western central Iran bounded to the north by Azerbaijan, to the south by Fars, to the west by the Zagros, and to the east by the Salt Desert, since no convenient modern term exists for it. For the area known variously as Transcaucasia, northern Azerbaijan, or the eastern Caucasus, I have chosen the unashamedly Iranocentric Transaraxia. Other regions and districts will be defined briefly in the footnotes or index.

Weights and Measures. Distances are usually stated in miles; kilometers are used if derived from a map or gazetteer (such as FJI), and farsakhs if from a chronicle. The valuable term farsakh (parasang) has been retained, especially in the context of a military operation, in order to emphasize movement against time. Ideally the distance one can travel on foot over level ground in an hour, the farsakh is naturally at the mercy of regional and subjective fluctuation: estimates of its length vary from less than 3.5 to more than 4 miles. I have taken one farsakh as equivalent to roughly 3.75 miles or 6 km. (cf. Houtum Schindler in Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society: 58–88).

Currency. No attempt has been made to estimate present-day values for the tuman or other units of currency in terms of either metal content or purchasing power. It appears from contemporary accounts that the tuman depreciated steadily as against sterling between late Safavid and mid-Qajar times: from £3 in Tavernier’s time (1650s) it fell to 15 (Bombay) rupees or 37/6d. (£1,875) in 1760–70, to £1 about the turn of the century and nine shillings (£0.45) in the 1850s. The tuman also varied in value from place to place within Iran and at Basra. For the purpose of relating sums quoted in sterling, rupees or rubles to the tuman during 1750–80, the following approximate scale has been applied: 1 tuman = £1.875 = 15 rupees = 18.75 rubles (based on information in Binning I, 277; Robert Stevens, 94–95; Parsons, 158; Kelly, 44; Amin, 9; Markova, 114).

Fig. 1. A contemporary portrait said to be of Karim Khan Zand (No. 1 in British Library MS Or. 4938, a collection of drawings, principally of royal personages and statesmen of the Persian court). By permission of the Trustees of the British Library.

Prologue: The Historical Background

Iran today is essentially the creation of the Safavid shahs. Broadly speaking, the geographical, religious, and political lines laid down by Shah Esma’il and his successors, notably Shah ʾAbbas (1588–1629), defined and directed the national ethos at least until the increasing influence of the West from mid-Qajar times on forced certain substantial revisions. Obviously few detailed analogies can seriously be drawn between the Iran of ʾAbbas the Great and that of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi; but the tenacity of the Safavid Weltanschauung can clearly be seen during the intervening ages. It is impossible to appreciate the Afsharid, Zand, and early Qajar periods without an overall appreciation of, and constant appeal to, a background of Safavid concepts and institutions.¹

This is all the more surprising when one remembers that for the last half-century of its political existence, the Safavid state was little more than a hollow corpse, devoured by contrasting excesses of debauchery and piety, cruelty and pacifism, propped up only by the monumental achievements of its founders;² that a violent Afghan invasion and occupation, along with Russian and Turkish incursions, swept away this corpse and caused the country to be partitioned in the 1720s; and that first Nader Shah deliberately, then Karim Khan incidentally, created a state that was in many ways fundamentally at odds with the surviving Safavid spirit.³

This survival was manifested first of all politically, in the incredible series of Safavid pretenders—at least a dozen—who appeared over the following fifty years.⁴ Some were undoubtedly genuine, some had their causes espoused by strong aspirants to power, and four—Tahmasb II and ʾAbbas III under Nader’s tutelage, Solayman II in concert with the emirs of Mashhad, and Esma’il III under Karim Khan—were in fact raised to the throne. Nader Shah’s usurpation of the monarchy merely interrupted this sequence; his attempt to substitute a form of the Sunni for the Shi’i faith (which had been one of the main ingredients of the Safavid formula of state) failed to overcome popular repugnance and Ottoman mistrust; and his military conquests, which briefly transformed the essentially conservative Safavid state into an extensive Asiatic empire modeled on that of Timur, were nullified by his death.⁵

The phenomenon of the spiritual Safavid survival, as it was reasserted on Nader’s assassination and ultimately assimilated and dissolved by Karim Khan, will perhaps become clearer from part 3 of the history that follows. The Qajars, the last of the Qizilbash, though chronologically furthest removed, were spiritually the real inheritors of the Safavid estate. While Nader Shah’s reign was a hostile interlude and Karim Khan’s regency a rejection of both previous forms of despotism for a nonideological, pragmatic approach to government, the Qajars revived the theory and practice of dynastic absolutism by divine right. Agha Mohammad and Fath ʾAli Shah were the political reincarnations of Shah Esma’il and ʾAbbas I, whatever the difference in personalities. But this theme is beyond the scope of the present work. One period must still be considered before approaching the Zands: that of Nader’s immediate successors in Khorasan, the heartland of his empire, which was automatically relegated on his death to the position of a peripheral province of the new Iran—becoming for the space of a generation a protectorate of the even newer Afghanistan.

The extortionate taxation and other cruel excesses of Nader’s last years turned him into a feared and odious tyrant in the eyes of the subjects who had once admired him. Revolts sprang up all over his empire.⁶ In Sistan the conqueror’s nephew, ʾAli Qoli Khan, who had been sent to quell an insurrection, realized that he too had become an object of suspicion to the unbalanced ruler, and made common cause with the rebellious Sistanis, Baluchis, and Afghans he had been fighting. The discontent of many years had at last found a focus. The rebel army moved on Khorasan, reaching Herat in Rabi’ II 1160/April 1747, while Nader Shah was still on his way back from crushing opposition in western Iran. On reaching Mashhad, Nader was faced with the more immediate danger of a rising by the Kurds of Khabushan (now known as Quchan) and at once marched against them. On the eve of the fateful 11 Jomada 11/20 June, his army of sixteen thousand camped at Fathabad, two hours from the rebels’ fortress.

The traditional hostility between Qizilbash and Afghan/Uzbek, which Nader had sought to submerge in his composite army, was again pushed to the surface. Fearing that he could no longer trust his Iranian officers, the conqueror summoned Ahmad Khan Abdali and other Afghan leaders, whose rise in his favor had been largely the cause of their Iranian colleagues’ alienation, and instructed them to arrest the principal Iranian chiefs on the following day and to kill any who might resist. This was reported by a spy to the prospective victims who, led by Saleh Khan Qirqlu Afshar and Mohammad Khan Qajar of Erivan, resolved to slay the tyrant that same night. Their nervous approach alerted their intended victim, but he was cut down by Saleh Khan before he could raise the alarm. His head was cut off by Mohammad Khan and sent to ʾAli Qoli with an invitation to ascend the throne. The conqueror’s tents were looted, but his womenfolk were not molested; two of his chief ministers were killed and one, Hasan ʾAli Beg Mo’ayyer ol-Mamalek, who may have been privy to the plot, was spared. Iranian pickets were set up to prevent anybody—particularly the Afghans—leaving their posts.

Despite these precautions, the four thousand-strong Afghan cavalry under Ahmad Khan had learned of the coup by dawn. Had the rest of the army retained cohesion, the detested Afghans would certainly have shared their master’s fate; but whereas the Iranians, conscious of their freedom, had begun to relax discipline by morning, Ahmad Khan gathered his men together for a fighting retreat. According to Ahmad’s biographer, the Afghans captured the whole of the army’s artillery, took several prisoners, and fought their way out of the camp in good order. Striking due south to avoid Mashhad and Herat, now in the hands of ʾAli Qoli Khan, Ahmad Khan led his small band via Torbat-e Haydariya, Tun, and Qa’en—whence ʾAli Qoli’s garrison fled after a token resistance—to Qandahar, where he seized a treasure convoy bound from India to Nader’s camp. In October of 1747 the young Abdali chieftain was elected shah of the Afghans and, taking the title Dorr-e Dorran (Pearl of Pearls), founded the Dorrani dynasty and modern Afghanistan.⁷

Nader’s camp completely disintegrated the morning after his murder. At Mashhad, where the main flood of officials, troops, and camp followers directed their uncertain steps, the Afghan garrison was prudently allowed to withdraw by the civil governor, Mir Sayyed Mohammad, superintendent (motavalli) of the shrine of the Imam ʾAli Reza. He refused admittance to Nader’s eldest sons, Nasrollah Mirza and Emam Qoli Mirza, and invited ʾAli Qoli Khan to take over the capital. Upon arriving with his large army, ʾAli Qoli confirmed the Sayyed in his position, distributed largesse among the troops and officials to secure support, and sent a Bakhtyari force under his Georgian gholam Sohrab Khan to reduce the impregnable natural fortress of Kalat, where Nader’s sons were sheltering. This was taken when the garrison, by accident or design, left a ladder against the cliff face. All Nader’s issue were seized and butchered; even those of Nader’s widows and concubines thought to be with child were disemboweled. The only child spared was Shahrokh, the tyrant’s fourteen-year-old grandson by a daughter of Shah Soltan Hosayn, since he might prove useful as a puppet ruler should the populace prefer a Safavid scion to ʾAli Qoli. On 27 Jomada II 1160/6 July 1747, ʾAli Qoli ascended the throne under the name of ʾAdel Shah.⁸

The Dutch diarist at Bandar ʾAbbas spoke for all, Iranian and foreigner alike, in observing that with the murder of Nader Shah there was renewed hope that the kingdom would at last find peace.⁹ But despite his personal popularity, enhanced by largesses and the proclamation of a three-year remission of taxes, the new king soon showed that he was not decisive enough in character to pull together his uncle’s sprawling and largely ruined empire. Though urgently advised to march immediately to secure the old Safavid center of Isfahan, he appointed his younger brother Ebrahim as sardar (military governor) of that city and province while he remained for several months in Mashhad, carousing with his unpopular favorite Sohrab Khan, and his large army reduced the city and its environs to a state of famine.¹⁰ Once more the Khabushan Kurds were ordered to open their granaries to supply the capital but were as reluctant to comply as they had been under Nader. ʾAdel Shah marched against them in the autumn of 1747, stormed their fortress, and put the garrison to the sword. On his return to Mashhad he executed several of his chief supporters on suspicion of conspiracy, notably Mohammad Khan Qajar, who had been one of the murderers of Nader Shah.

By now the various tribal contingents attached to Nader’s field army or transported to defend the frontiers of Khorasan were, like the Abdali Afghans, seizing their chance to head homeward. The large Bakhtyari contingent under ʾAli Mardan Khan requested permission from the shah, when he still showed no signs of setting off for Isfahan, to make their own way to its mountain hinterland; but ʾAdel, anxious to retain a strong standing army, refused. Nevertheless, the whole contingent set off quietly late in 1747 and had already put ten farsakhs behind them when their absence was discovered. Enraged, the shah sent Sohrab Khan in pursuit with a strong force. Two days later the Georgian caught up with them and, without pausing to form up properly, charged headlong. The veteran Bakhtyari, obviously prepared for such an eventuality, routed their rash opponents and calmly continued on their way. Sohrab Khan and the remnants of his force returned to Mashhad, collecting the heads of Bakhtyari stragglers and anyone else they met on the way to mollify their frustration and qualify for the bounty promised by ʾAdel Shah on each head brought back. On arrival they decapitated the Lurs left in the city to make up a respectable total.¹¹

Meanwhile Ebrahim Mirza was consolidating his hold over Persian Iraq, requisitioning supplies for his army from Saleh Khan Bayat in Shiraz and perhaps already in secret correspondence with his future ally Amir Aslan Khan, Nader’s sardar of Azerbaijan, who had so far withheld allegiance from the new shah. It seems to have been suspicion of his brother’s intentions that finally prompted ʾAdel Shah on 8 December to leave the accumulated treasures and creature comforts of Mashhad for Isfahan. Marching into Mazandaran, he set up a base at Ashraf (now called Behshahr) and, apparently to secure his communications between Mashhad and Isfahan, spent the next five months in desultory operations against the Qajars under Mohammad Hasan Khan, long a fugitive from Nader.¹²

On his way back from a skirmish with a Qajar-Turkman force on the banks of the Simbar, ʾAdel Shah captured Mohammad Hasan’s four-year-old son Mohammad and had him castrated. He was unable, however, either to capture or to lure into his power the Qajar himself and in the spring of 1748 continued his way westward.

Both Ebrahim Mirza and Amir Aslan Khan continued to ignore ʾAdel Shah’s summonses to court and finally revealed themselves openly in revolt: Amir Aslan killed the shah’s envoys, and Ebrahim had the detested Sohrab Khan assassinated when the shah sent him ahead to Isfahan as his emissary and spy.¹³ Ebrahim next sent against Kermanshah a strong force that plundered the town, though it could make no impression on the nearby fortress—Nader’s western bastion and arsenal—which was a key point for the control of Persian Iraq. But the garrison commanders Mirza Mohammad Taqi Golestana and Amir Khan ʾArab Mishmast judged it expedient to make their submission to Ebrahim. The rebel army had now attracted almost every fragment of Nader’s forces, both Iranian and Afghan-Uzbek, in western Iran; with this estimated force of twenty to thirty thousand men Ebrahim Mirza marched north to effect a junction with Amir Aslan Khan.

’Adel Shah at last roused himself and, hastening from Gilan to the Khamsa region, stationed himself with his numerically superior army between the two rebel forces, somewhere between Zanjan and Soltaniya. His brother’s force approached early in Jomada II 1161/June 1748, and so many of ʾAdel Shah’s officers fled or went over with their men at the first onslaught that Ebrahim gained a complete victory without even a major engagement. ʾAdel Shah fled to Tehran, but was handed over to this brother by the governor and blinded. He had reigned less than one year.¹⁴

Amir Aslan Khan now proved a dubious ally; after suffering defeat near Maragha, he was handed over to Ebrahim by Kazem Khan Qaraja-daghi, to whom he had fled for refuge, and was executed. With all opposition apparently eliminated, Ebrahim marched into Tabriz and on 17 Zu’l-Hejja 1161/8 December 1748 was proclaimed shah. But the pattern once set was to be repeated. Nine weeks previously, on 8 Shawwal/1 October, neglected Khorasan had reasserted itself: the young Shahrokh Mirza was elevated to the throne by a junta of those officers, chiefly Kurdish and Bayat tribesmen, who had stayed in Mashhad.¹⁵

Anticipating this, Ebrahim had sent to Mashhad before his own accession to invite Shahrokh to proceed to Isfahan for his coronation. This obvious trap was refused. After spending a few months in Tabriz to consolidate his position in Azerbaijan and augment his army, Ebrahim marched next spring against Mashhad. He left his heavy baggage and prisoners at Qom, in the care of Mir Sayyed Mohammad (who had been taken by ʾAdel Shah along with his army) and a mixed Iranian and Afghan-Uzbek garrison, and in Jomada II 1162/June—July 1749 reached the village of Sorkha, near Semnan. Although Shahrokh’s army was still at Astarabad, 150 miles distant, the forces of disunity latent in Ebrahim’s motley army burst into the open: Amir Khan Tupchi-bashi, who had joined the rebel army from Kermanshah, was marching one day ahead with the artillery and, electing to side with Shahrokh, turned his guns on the rest of the army, which promptly disintegrated. Ebrahim fled back to Qom but was denied entry by the motavalli, who on receiving news of the defeat had organized the Iranian troops to eject the Afghans and Uzbeks and defend the town. Deserted even by his Afghan companions, Ebrahim finally took refuge in a fortress near Qazvin, where the garrison handed him over to Shahrokh’s agents. He was blinded and sent in chains, together with his own former prisoner ʾAdel Shah, to Mashhad; the latter was tortured to death on arrival, but Ebrahim did not even survive the journey.

The youth and popularity of the new shah at first gave hopes of a stable reign. Despite continued advice to set up the capital at Isfahan, his self-appointed guardians preferred to keep him at Mashhad, where they could comfortably use both the king and Nader’s treasury for their own advancement. A considerable proportion of the treasure, army, and prisoners left from the debacle of both ʾAdel Shah and Ebrahim was still at Qom in the charge of Mir Sayyed Mohammad, who himself, as a grandson of the Safavid Shah Solayman and an influential figure in both Qom and Mashhad, was a political danger whom it would be well to have under surveillance and, if possible, to eliminate. Accordingly, he was invited, with assurances of safe conduct, to bring his charges to Mashhad and assist in the government.¹⁶

The Sayyed had already been urged by Safavid partisans to proclaim himself shah in Isfahan with their support but had refused. He now professed loyalty to Shahrokh Shah and, with the whole paraphernalia of the preceding Afsharids, set off from Qom to Yazd and thence across the desert to Mashhad. Here he was welcomed with every appearance of sincerity; after paying his respects at the shrine, he attended a somewhat strained reception in the palace gardens, at which both he and Shahrokh apparently knew that only the arrival of an enthusiastic contingent of the Sayyed’s old shrine guards and his obvious popularity at large saved him from some prearranged mishap. The motavalli continued to consolidate his influence and, despite his biographers’ constant eulogy of his piety and integrity, may already have been planning a coup, if only in self-defense.

An attempt by fifty gholams to penetrate the shrine precinct, obviously on orders from Shahrokh, failed; the young shah then tried to bribe a trusted officer, Behbud Khan Ataki, to kill the Sayyed and on his refusal found a pretext to imprison the khan. This provoked a general mutiny among the emirs who had so far supported Shahrokh and who now found him growing dangerously independent of them. A deputation led by Mir ʾAlam Khan ʾArab-e Khozayma stormed out of the palace to the shrine, gathering an enthusiastic crowd that bore the Sayyed—despite his protests, whether real or feigned—in triumph toward the palace. Shahrokh fled into the andarun, where he killed the five younger brothers of ʾAdel and Ebrahim who still lived. The Sayyed rejected a universal call for his execution and merely imprisoned him. That same day, 20 Moharram 1163/30 December 1749, Mir Sayyed Mohammad was securely in power and a fortnight later, on 5 Safar, was crowned as Shah Solayman II Safavi.

The new shah’s principal supporters—or, as precedent had given them good cause to regard themselves, partners—were confirmed in the chief offices of state; the ranks of parasitical courtiers were swelled by Safavid relatives and retainers, and the now customary decree of a three years’ tax exemption necessitated further inroads into Nader’s dwindling treasury. Diplomas were sent out to all the rulers and governors who theoretically owed allegiance, but it was now evident that Nader’s unwieldy empire had irreparably broken up and there could be no further question of the shah’s proceeding to the former capital of Isfahan. The most immediate threat now came from the east, where Ahmad Shah Dorrani had occupied Herat. Shah Solayman sent envoys to Qandahar with a patronizing and peremptory letter that invoked the long-lost relationship of the Safavid monarch to his Afghan vassals and ordered Ahmad Khan Saduza’i to hand over Herat to Behbud Khan Ataki, sardar of Khorasan. The Afghan king’s reply was to have Herat fortified for war. Solayman’s bravado seemed at first to be justified, for Ahmad was not yet ready to launch an army against Khorasan. Behbud Khan and his lieutenants took Herat after a short siege, allowing the Afghan garrison to flee unharmed to Qandahar.

His capital and home province now apparently secure, Solayman judged it safe to relax with a few days’ hunting on the spring pastures at Radkan. But no sooner had he left Mashhad than the tensions already evident between this capable man and his ambitious lieutenants came into the open: Mir ʾAlam Khan, the vakil ol-dawla (viceroy) seized this chance to insure himself against an Afsharid counterrevolution by blinding Shahrokh. Solayman immediately returned to Mashhad and remained closeted for three days, threatening to abdicate, until Mir ʾAlam Khan and his associates humbly begged forgiveness and were first dismissed and then reinstated. The shah could no more dispense with their support than they with his; and it was the opposing faction, the Naderite freebooters dismayed at the Sayyed’s expenditure of the last of Nader’s treasury, his protection of vaqf property confiscated by Nader for the army, and his refusal to sanction the customary requisitions and extortion during the tax amnesty, who engineered the feared Afsharid countercoup.

Shahrokh’s wife secretly approached these elements, notably Yusef ʾAli Khan Jalayer, reproaching them for their ingratitude to their old master and his issue and convincing them that Shahrokh had not really been blinded after all. A conspiracy was formed that included many of the key officers of the palace garrison. On 11 Rabi’ II 1163/20 March 1750, the conspirators and their men infiltrated strategic positions in the palace precinct and took over. Yusef ʾAli Khan himself led the rush into the shah’s room and gouged out his eyes on the spot. The rebels then rescued Shahrokh from his andarun prison, only to find that he was indeed as blind as their recent victim. There was no going back: the populace was informed that the young prince had been found safe and sighted. Mir ʾAlam Khan and his officers, after a vain attempt to rally their men and storm the palace, variously made terms or fled the city. After an eventful reign of some eighty days, the Sayyed was led a sightless prisoner into the andarun, from which the blind Shahrokh was now hauled for a second term of office.

Yusef ʾAli Khan and his henchmen soon realized that with a restless populace, an unreliable army, and an almost empty treasury, political power in Khorasan was a thankless burden to be avoided rather than sought. Accordingly, the Jalayer khan removed the remaining jewels from the treasury and absconded to Kalat. Outside the fortress, however, he was intercepted and captured by Mir ʾAlam Khan, who took him and his accomplices back to Mashhad before butchering them. ʾAlam Khan resumed control of Mashhad through an uneasy compromise with his former victim, Shahrokh Shah, and alliances with the powerful Kurdish tribes of Khorasan. But Ahmad Shah was now prepared to invade the province and late in 1750 besieged and recaptured Herat.¹⁷

Despite the approach of winter, the Afghan army continued to Mashhad, where the walls were too stout to hold out hopes of a swift victory. Wary courtesies were exchanged with Shahrokh, and the Afghan king, convinced that Mashhad could not raise a force large enough to endanger his rear, marched on and laid siege to Nishapur in January 1751. The city put up a heroic defense under Ja’far Khan Bayat and, when he was killed, his seventeen-year-old son ʾAbbas Qoli; the Afghan army, reduced to half its original number by an unexpectedly bloody siege and chilled by the mid-winter winds, struggled back to their solitary gain of Herat.¹⁸

For the next three years Ahmad Shah was occupied in his Indian domains, and Mir ʾAlam maintained his rule in Khorasan by force alone. In the spring of 1754 he had begun to invest Nishapur, which still refused to open its gates to any of the would-be conquerors of Khorasan, when Ahmad Shah launched a second offensive via Qa’en and Tabas. ʾAlam Khan’s Kurdish troops demobilized themselves as soon as the alert was sounded, and he was forced to flee to Sabzavar. Ahmad Shah, having won over the Kurds and other dissident elements in the province, sent a detachment that successfully demanded ʾAlam Khan’s extradition from Sabzavar and handed him over to the Kurds for execution. In July the Afghan king again laid siege to Mashhad.

The capital was starved into surrender five months later. Shahrokh and his emirs and the populace at large were treated with exemplary generosity, and when Ahmad set out to reduce Nishapur the following spring, he formally reinvested Shahrokh as ruler of Khorasan under his tutelage, leaving an Afghan viceroy with a small garrison.¹⁹

On his way westward Ahmad Shah dispatched a force under Shahpasand Khan Eshaqzai to intercept the considerable numbers of fugitives—tribal groups, rich citizens of Nishapur and Sabzavar, former supporters of ʾAlam Khan such as Ebrahim Khan Boghayeri—who were reported to be fleeing to the sanctuary offered at Astarabad by the Qajar chief Mohammad Hasan Khan. This provoked an incident, which, in the Qajar annals at least, is magnified into the sole reason for Ahmad Shah’s retreat from his second Khorasan campaign and hence the salvation of western Iran from a second Afghan occupation. At all events it was the last clash between the eastern and the western portions of Nader’s empire, which were by this time as clearly delineated as they were to remain until Khorasan was recovered by Mohammad Hasan Khan’s eunuch son more than forty years later. Near Mazinan, some fifty miles west of Sabzavar, Shahpasand’s men suddenly came upon what they took to be a helpless band of fugitives and charged, to find too late that they had run into a Qajar army under Hosayn Khan Develu Qajar, sent by Mohammad Hasan to forestall this pursuit. After what appears to have been a short, sharp skirmish between the few hundred cavalry of the two vanguards, the Afghan force was routed with considerable loss and fled back to Nishapur.²⁰

This Afghan defeat encouraged the men of Nishapur, who had at first prudently submitted to Ahmad Shah, to rebel; the insurrection was put down with great slaughter and the town given over to pillage, but the Afghan shah nevertheless took heed of these warnings, as of a revolt at Khwaf, which threatened his communications, and knew it was time to beat a dignified retreat. In the autumn of 1755, having appointed his frontier ally Amir Khan Qara’i as sardar of Khorasan, he returned via Herat to Qandahar.²¹

It seems unlikely that Ahmad Shah seriously contemplated a march on Isfahan, despite the wild rumors circulating in war-torn western Iran at this time (see 13.1). The expeditions to Sabzavar and Mazinan may be regarded as a reconnaissance of the natural frontiers of Khorasan, which, as his treatment of Shahrokh would indicate, he intended to preserve as a buffer between his nascent empire and the chaos still reigning to the west. When the Dorrani monarch next found time to reassert his authority in Khorasan, twelve years later, Karim Khan was firmly in control of western Iran.

We may therefore dispense with a survey of the plight of Khorasan during the next half century, a depressing story of the intrigues and extortions of the blind Shahrokh Shah, his officers and favorites, and his rival sons Nasrollah and Nader Mirza, culminating in the reconquest of the ruined province and the torture and murder of the aging Shahrokh in 1210/1796 by Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar. Fortunately, a more constructive period was beginning in western Iran.

Part One

The Struggle for Power in Western Iran, 1747–63

1

The Bakhtyari-Zand Regency

1.1   THE GENERAL SITUATION

While the Afsharid kingdom lingered on in Khorasan, its self-inflicted agony in no way alleviated by the visitations of Ahmad Shah, new patterns of power were emerging in the remaining fragments of Nader’s empire. At the height of the conqueror’s rule, all of Iran’s western provinces could justly be viewed as a series of segments radiating from Mashhad at their geographical and political apex: from Azerbaijan through Kurdistan, Luristan, Fars, Lar, and Sistan, the peripheral mountain provinces and their dependencies on the plains of both sides were linked through the Caspian littoral and Gorgan, the Tehran-Damghan-Sabzavar road, the Yazd-Tabas desert route and the Quhestan massif to Nader’s capital, the qebla of their religious and national consciousness. The foundations of this alignment had been laid by the Safavid shahs themselves in their promotion of Mashhad as a primary center of Shi’i pilgrimage in compensation for the loss of Najaf and Karbala to the hostile Ottoman Turks. Nader’s magnetism strengthened these bonds to such an extent that for several years after his death the western provinces remained oriented toward Mashhad in their involvement with the vacillating fortunes of his successors. Yet throughout this time there remained as a natural concomitant of the tenacious Safavid ethos an undercurrent of resistance to this innovation; and as it gradually became obvious that none of Nader’s would-be successors possessed the same imperious magnetism, the western provinces sullenly shifted back into the old alignment—that of an axis running along the Zagros from Tabriz to Bandar ʾAbbas, with its center of gravity at Isfahan, and already subject to the clockwise torque imparted by the future capitals of Shiraz and Tehran.

Of the provinces peripheral to this axis, Sistan had effectively fallen away from Iran under the Brahoi chief, Nasir Khan Baluch, to enjoy a considerable measure of independence in Ahmad Shah’s sphere of influence.¹ The vicissitudes of Kerman and Yazd, which have no direct bearing on the events to be recounted here, may be left to a later chapter, as also those of the Persian Gulf littoral and Khuzestan. At the other end of the country, Gilan and Mazandaran had fallen to Mohammad Hasan Khan Qajar, while the southern Caucasus and Azerbaijan furnish the background to the rise of Azad Khan Afghan, both of whom will be introduced in greater detail below. It was in the heartland of western Iran, the Zagros provinces of Persian Iraq between Kurdistan and Fars (the present day ostan-e panjom), where the struggle for mastery of the largest portion of Nader’s empire began.

On Nader’s death, the urban centers played a conservative, waiting game, as in Khorasan, resolved from behind closed gates to accord only nominal loyalty to the marauding elements of the Afsharid army until it should become clear who was to prevail. At any rate, the exhilaration produced by news of the tyrant’s downfall meant that few towns could be held by an unpopular Naderite appointee. In Isfahan Mir Hasan Khan Khorasani, Nader’s former quartermaster-general (darugha-ye bazar-e ordu), had recently been commissioned to wring more taxes from the province. On the news of his master’s death he imprisoned the governor Mirza Sayyed Reza Khan (a marriage relation of Shah Soltan Hosayn Safavi) and secured the city with his own troops. He is depicted in the Gombroon Diary as drunken, arrogant, and extortionate and as aiming at the throne himself. He did, however, save the city from a horde of Afghans under Allahyar Khan.

Allahyar Khan had been attached to Amir Aslan Khan Qirqlu Afshar in Azerbaijan and was at Qazvin when news arrived of Nader’s death. He decided to head for Kurdistan to join forces with the Afghans under Mirza Mohammad Taqi but was met en route by the same Afghans under Ashraf Soltan, who informed him that Mohammad Taqi had retired to Kermanshah and left them to make their own way home. By now all the townsmen who had suffered so long under Nader’s alien garrisons were rising to wreak vengeance; Afghans in Hamadan, among other towns on their route, had already been slaughtered. Allahyar decided to retaliate and deliver a warning to others contemplating revenge. For three days his force of some ten thousand men besieged Hamadan, then stormed in on a Friday and slew, burned, and plundered for two days.² They then continued to Isfahan, killing and looting on the way. Mir Hasan had only a hundred gholams with which to defend the city; but by collecting and firing off all available guns, accompanied by shouts, drums and trumpets, he scared off the invaders, who ravaged the outlying regions and went on to devastate Qom and Kashan.³ Soon afterwards, however, a popular rising in favor of ʾAdel Shah eliminated Mir Hasan Khan and his accomplices, and by October Ebrahim Mirza had arrived to secure the city in his brother’s name.⁴

With two Afshar generals now in control of western Iran—Amir Aslan Khan Qirqlu at Tabriz and Ebrahim Mirza at Isfahan—their armies became a rallying point for the Afshar, Afghan, Uzbek, and Baluch troops left by Nader to garrison and ransack the region. From Fars came companies totalling seven thousand under Mohammad Reza Khan Qirqlu, Karam Khan Hotaki Afghan, and ʾAta’ollah Khan Uzbek to join Ebrahim at Isfahan; ʾAta’ollah left his forces there and himself rode post haste to Mazandaran to offer his services to ʾAdel Shah.⁵ Meanwhile, as part of his policy of surreptitious opposition to his brother, Ebrahim canvassed local tribal support and when he openly rebelled in the spring of 1748 and marched on Azerbaijan, he left Abu’l-Fath Khan of the Haft Lang Bakhtyari as his viceroy in Isfahan. On the subsequent debacle of both ʾAdel and Ebrahim, the Bakhtyari leader was confirmed in this post by Shahrokh Shah.⁶

Another of Nader’s officers, the minbashi Sarafraz Beg Khodabandalu, used his detachment of a thousand horse to secure Hamadan, and won over another three thousand Shahiseven tribesmen. After seven months of fruitless warfare against the Qaraguzlu in an attempt to extend his sway he was finally defeated, captured, and killed, and his army melted away. Borujerd was threatened by an obscure bandit called Ka’id Kalb ʾAli, who terrorized the countryside and collected an army of ten or twelve thousand before he met a like fate at the hands of Salim Khan Qirqlu Afshar, Ebrahim’s sardar of Persian Iraq.⁷

1.2   KERMANSHAH AND THE KURDISH FRONTIER

Kermanshah was second only to Isfahan as a political and military center because of the importance of its fortress. Situated at a distance of one farsakh from the town, this fortress had been Nader’s outpost, arsenal, and supply depot on the western front and the base for his campaigns against the Turks; its stocks of ordnance and powder would be a godsend to any aspirant to power. Furthermore, its strategic site, at the intersection of the east-west route from the border of Arabian Iraq to the heart of Persian Iraq and of the north-south road from Azerbaijan through Sanandaj to Khorramabad and the Khuzestan plain, gave it an enviable command of communications throughout the area. On the death of Nader the town was seized by a court usher or marshal (chavosh-bashi), Hosayn Khan of the Hajj section of the Zangana tribe, who according to Golestana had already been blinded by Nader on suspicion of treason. Having raised an army of about fifteen thousand from his own and from the Vand tribes, confiscated the wealth of the town’s merchants, and availed himself of the artillery, he made an abortive move on Hamadan and on his return to Kermanshah was faced with a new challenge.

Mirza Mohammad Taqi Khan, the uncle of our historian, was at Sanandaj with an escort of five thousand of Nader’s Afghans, collecting taxes from his diplomatically cordial host Sobhan Verdi Khan, the hereditary governor (vail) of Ardalan, when the news arrived of his master’s murder. Dismissing his now unreliable escort, he set off with his personal servants and baggage to Kermanshah, where he had formerly held the post of treasurer. He narrowly escaped an attack by a party of Zand tribesmen allegedly instigated by Sobhan Verdi and arrived at Kermanshah to a welcome of dubious sincerity from Hosayn Khan Zangana. When ʾAdel Shah’s appointed commandant of the fortress, Amir Khan Tupchi-bashi, was reported to have reached Bisutun with a force of eight thousand cavalry, he was eagerly welcomed by Mohammad Taqi, Hosayn Khan, whose seasonal army of hill tribesmen had now apparently demobilized themselves, took to flight and threw in his lot with Ebrahim Mirza at Isfahan, perhaps guessing the extent of this prince’s ambitions. Having gained the appointment as governor of Kermanshah for a protégé kinsman, Hosayn Khan joined forces with some four or five thousand of his tribesmen at Hamadan and marched on Kermanshah again. Amir Khan sent seven thousand men with four guns to intercept him, but the Zangana army shut themselves in the fortress of Oshtoran near Hamadan and beat them off. Amir Khan was now joined by his grandson ʾAbd ol-’Ali Khan, and with Mohammad Taqi they coordinated the town’s defenses. To vindicate the claims of his Zangana nominees, Ebrahim Mirza sent a force that heavily defeated Amir Khan’s troops and only withdrew after a three weeks’ siege.

At this crucial point Amir Khan’s colleagues realized that they might irrevocably forfeit their future prospects, if not their lives, should they omit to go over to Ebrahim now that he seemed to have every chance of deposing his brother ʾAdel. Accordingly, Amir Khan was reluctantly persuaded to make obeissance at Isfahan. Ironically enough, his fellow officers bound him as their prisoner as soon as they set off, in order to present their own case in a more favorable light; but Ebrahim knew Amir Khan’s value and employed him as his artillery officer for the march on ʾAdel Shah. Defenseless Kermanshah was, of course, occupied immediately by the Zangana chief. He maintained a friendly demeanor toward the two wardens of the qal’a but Mohammad Taqi, evidently fearing the consequences if Ebrahim Mirza should in fact win the empire, fled his post under the pretext of escorting a prominent Razavi sayyed, who was returning from the pilgrimage, to his home town of Hamadan. Plying his spurs, Mohammad Taqi bypassed Hamadan and made directly for Isfahan, where through the intercession of his old friend Salim Khan Qirqlu, fresh from his victory over Ka’id Kalb ʾAli, he complained of Hosayn Khan’s misdeeds and persuaded Ebrahim to authorize him together with Salim Khan to oust the Zangana from Kermanshah.

The last act of this almost Mashhad-like comedy of musical chairs was soon over: Hosayn Khan advanced to meet Salim Khan with a force of five or six thousand men, but the Afshar general eluded him and occupied Kermanshah behind him. He then tricked the Zangana chief into returning, assuring him that he was still in Ebrahim’s good graces, cajoled him into a false sense of security, and, when his tribesmen had departed, treacherously killed him and reinstated Mohammad Taqi Khan.⁸ Here the latter remained with ʾAbd ol-’Ali Khan into the reign of Shahrokh Shah, when all links with Khorasan had been broken and a more determined local enemy was to demand control of the Kermanshah fortress.

1.3   THE ZANDS

The active element in the chaos of the first few years after Nader’s death was embodied in the various sections of his army of Khabushan and the forces employed in garrison duty in the provinces or in frontier defense. Their confidence, cohesion, and indeed their very raison d’etre went with their master; suspicious of their former comrades-in-arms who were now equally conscious of their ethnic or tribal identities and denied entry to the towns by a justifiably nervous urban populace to whom Nader’s army had become no more than an organization for terror and extortion, these units formed tight little bands around their own trusted leaders and headed homeward to seek their fortunes in a more familiar and friendly environment. Such were the Abdali of Ahmad Shah and the Bakhtyari of ʾAli Mardan Khan, whose exodus from Khorasan has already been noted.

Such, too, was the Zand tribe, a minor pastoral people of the Zagros foothills centered on the villages of Pari and Kamazan, in the vicinity of Malayer.⁹ They are generally said to be a branch of the Lak tribes, which also include the Kalhor, Zangana,