Afsharid Iran

The Guarded Domains of Iran, known as the Afsharid Empire or Afsharid Persia, was the Iranian empire founded by the Turkoman Afshar tribe of Khorasan in the middle of the eighteenth century, when Nader Shah deposed the last Safavid and proclaimed himself shah in 1736. The dynasty took its name from the Afshar, who had migrated from Turkestan to Azerbaijan and were moved in large numbers to Khorasan under Abbas the Great to guard the north-eastern frontier; Nader belonged to their Qereqlu branch and rose from a sold slave to the commander who saved the Safavid throne, set Tahmasp II aside and took it. Under him Iran reached its greatest extent since Sasanian times, holding modern Iran, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and much of Central Asia, with campaigns into Arabia, the Indian subcontinent, Iraq and Turkey, and the sack of Delhi in 1739. Nader's religious policy towards the Shia and his taxation brought recurrent risings, and he was assassinated in Khorasan in 1747. After his death the empire split among the Zands, the Durranis and the khanate of Kalat, leaving the Afsharids a small state in Khorasan under puppet rulers, until Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar conquered it and put Shahrokh to death in 1796.