Afsharid dynasty

Afsharid dynasty

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Afsharid dynasty

The Afsharids () were an Iranian dynasty of Turkic descent from Khorasan that ruled the Persian Empire in the 18th century. At this time, the empire reached its greatest extent since Sassanid Empire.

Persian Empire under Afsharid dynasty at 1747.

The dynasty was born with Nader Shah, who proclaimed himself the Shah of Iran in 1736. Soon afterwards he waged a war against the Afghans (Pashtuns) and captured Kandahar. In 1738, he invaded India, massacred most of the population of Delhi and in a single campaign captured an incredible wealth, including the legendary Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor diamond. The plunder seized from India was so rich that Nadir stopped taxation in Iran for a period of three years, following his triumphant return. Nader partially restored lands lost to the Ottomans in the downfall of the Safavid Empire. He made the Shia holy city of Mashhad his capital but also was very tolerant towards his minority Sunni subjects in the Shia Persia.

A despotic ruler, he was assassinated in 1747. There was in essence a three-sided struggle between the descendants of Nader Shah, the Zand dynasty and the Qajars. For much of the time, Shahrokh, grandson both of Nader and Shah Hossein, remained nominally on the throne at Mashhad, but, blinded and intermittently imprisoned, he exercised no effective power.

List of Afsharid Monarchs
See also
References
External links

List of Afsharid Monarchs

Nadir Shah (1736-1747)
Adil Shah (1747-1748)
Ebrahim (1748)
Shah Rukh (1748-1796)

References

M. Ismail Marcinkowski, Persian Historiography and Geography: Bertold Spuler on Major Works Produced in Iran, the Caucasus, Central Asia, India and Early Ottoman Turkey, with a foreword by Professor Clifford Edmund Bosworth, member of the British Academy, Singapore: Pustaka Nasional, 2003, ISBN 9971-77-488-7.