Ahmad Shāh Durrānī, also known as Ahmad Shāh Abdālī, was the founder of the Durrani Empire and is regarded as the founder of the modern Afghanistan. In June 1747, Ahmad Shah was appointed as King of the Afghans by a loya jirga in Kandahar, where he set up his capital. Primarily with the support of the Pashtun tribes, Ahmad Shah pushed east towards the Mughal and Maratha Empires of India, west towards the disintegrating Afsharid Empire of Iran, and north towards the Khanate of Bukhara of Turkestan. Within a few years, he extended his control from Khorasan in the west to North India in the east, and from the Amu Darya in the north to the Arabian Sea in the south.
Greater Khorāsān, or Khorāsān is a historical eastern region in the Iranian Plateau between Western and Central Asia. The name Khorāsān is Persian meaning "where the sun arrives from" or "the Eastern Province". The name was first given to the eastern province of Persia during the Sasanian Empire and was used from the late Middle Ages in distinction to neighbouring Transoxiana. Greater Khorasan is today sometimes used to distinguish the larger historical region from the former Khorasan Province of Iran (1906–2004), which roughly encompassed the western portion of the historical Greater Khorasan.
The Battle of Damghan or Battle of Mehmandoost was fought on September 29 to October 5, 1729, near the city of Damghan. It resulted in an overwhelming victory for Nader Shah and the Safavid cause he had taken up, though by itself it did not end Ashraf's rule in Iran, it was a significant triumph which led to further successes in the following engagements of the campaign to restore Tahmasp II to the throne. The battle was followed by another one in Murcheh-Khort, a village near Isfahan. Nader's forces were victorious in both battles, which led him to remove the Ghilzai Afghan dynasty from their short stay on the Persian throne. The Hotakis were forced back to their territory in what is now southern Afghanistan.
Abbas III was a son of Shah Tahmasp II and Shahpari Begum of the Safavid dynasty and reigned from 1732 to 1736. After the deposition of his father by Nader Khan the infant Abbas was appointed nominal ruler of Iran on 7 September 1732. Nader Khan, who was the real ruler of the country, assumed the positions of deputy of state and viceroy. Abbas III was deposed in March 1736, when Nader Khan had himself crowned as Nader Shah. This marked the official end of the Safavid dynasty. Abbas was sent to join his father in prison in Sabzevar, Khorasan.
Shāh Mahmūd Hotak,, or Shāh Mahmūd Ghiljī, also known by his epithet, The Conqueror, was the ruler of the Hotak dynasty who overthrew Safavid dynasty to become the king of Persia from 1722 until his death in 1725.
Nader Shah Afshar was the founder of the Afsharid dynasty of Iran and one of the most powerful rulers in Iranian history, ruling as shah of Iran (Persia) from 1736 to 1747, when he was assassinated during a rebellion. He fought numerous campaigns throughout the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and South Asia, such as the battles of Herat, Mihmandust, Murche-Khort, Kirkuk, Yeghevārd, Khyber Pass, Karnal, and Kars. Because of his military genius, some historians have described him as the Napoleon of Persia, the Sword of Persia, or the Second Alexander. Nader belonged to the Turkoman Afshars, a semi-nomadic tribe settled in Khorasan in northeastern Iran, which had supplied military power to the Safavid dynasty since the time of Shah Ismail I.
The siege of Kandahar began when Nader Shah's Afsharid army invaded southern Afghanistan to topple the last Hotaki stronghold of Loy Kandahar, which was held by Hussain Hotaki. It took place in the Old Kandahar area of the modern city of Kandahar in Afghanistan and lasted until March 24, 1738, when the Hotaki Afghans were defeated by the Persian army.
The Ottoman–Persian War was a conflict between the forces of the Safavid Empire and those of the Ottoman Empire from 1730 to 1735. After Ottoman support had failed to keep the Ghilzai Afghan invaders on the Persian throne, the Ottoman possessions in western Persia, which were granted to them by the Hotaki dynasty, came under risk of re-incorporation into the newly resurgent Persian Empire. The talented Safavid general, Nader, gave the Ottomans an ultimatum to withdraw, which the Ottomans chose to ignore. A series of campaigns followed, with each side gaining the upper hand in a succession of tumultuous events that spanned half a decade. Finally, the Persian victory at Yeghevard made the Ottomans sue for peace and recognize Persian territorial integrity and Persian hegemony over the Caucasus.
The campaigns of Nader Shah, or the Naderian Wars, were a series of conflicts fought in the early to mid-eighteenth century throughout Central Eurasia primarily by the Iranian conqueror Nader Shah. His campaigns originated from the overthrow of the Iranian Safavid dynasty by the Hotaki Afghans. In the ensuing collapse and fragmentation of the empire after the capture of the Iranian capital of Isfahan by the Afghans, a claimant to the Safavid throne, Tahmasp II, accepted Nader into his service. After having subdued north-west Iran as well as neutralising the Abdali Afghans to the east as well as turning Tahmasp II into a vassal, Nader marched against the Hotaki Afghans in occupation of the rest of the country. In a series of incredible victories the Afghans were decimated and Tahmasp II returned to the throne as a restored Safavid monarch.
The siege of Isfahan was a six-month-long siege of Isfahan, the capital of the Safavid dynasty of Iran, by the Hotaki-led Afghan army. It lasted from March to October 1722 and resulted in the city's fall and the beginning of the end of the Safavid dynasty.
The conquest of Khorasan by Safavid loyalist forces against separatists in Khorasan was Nader Shah's first major military campaign which he waged on behalf of the new Safavid pretender to the throne, Tahmasp II. It would propel him into the centre of the political landscape of war torn early eighteenth century Persia.
The Battle of Sangan was an engagement involving the Loyalist forces of Tahmasp II of Safavid Iran led by Nader and the Abdali Afghan Tribes in and further beyond southern Khorasan in the autumn of 1727. This armed struggle was one of the initial battles between the resurgent Safavid cause and that of the Afghans. The engagement technically ended in a Safavid victory.
The Campaign of Herat consisted of a series of intermittent and fluid engagements culminating in the finale of Nader's military operations against the Abdali Pashtuns. Nader having recently concluded a successful campaign against his own monarch and prince, the badly humiliated Tahmasp II, set out from Mashad on 4 May 1729, making sure that the Shah also accompanied him on this journey where he could be kept under close supervision.
The Battle of Kafer Qal'eh was a series of clashes which decided the outcome to the Herat Campaign. In its culminating stage the battle bears some resemblances to the battle of Sangan although it was both preceded and succeeded by numerous other minor skirmishes and engagements.
The restoration of Tahmasp II to the Safavid throne took place in the latter part of 1729 by a series of battles fought between Nader, Tahmasp's commander-in-chief and Ashraf Hotaki. Despite nominally bringing Tahmasp to the seat of power, true authority still rested with Nader who had ever since the debacle in northern Khorasan managed to seize Tahmasp II as his vassal. Hotak was defeated. As for Afghan rule, the Ghilzai Afghans were ejected from the Iranian Plateau permanently and in the following years were re-annexed by Nader whence they were once again absorbed into the Persian empire. The Safavids under Tahmsap II were restored.
Nader's Western Persia campaign of 1730 was his first against perhaps his most formidable of adversaries, namely the Ottomans, where he proved triumphant in conquest. The great successes of his expedition, however, were rendered null when Shah Tahmasp II decided to take personal command of the theatre in Nader's absence, forcing a furious Nader to return and rectify the situation after forcing Tahmasp's abdication in favour of his infant son Abbas III.
The campaign of 1731 was a failed attempt by Tahmasp II of the Safavid dynasty to launch an offensive into Ottoman held Caucasus which ended in a disastrous defeat with all of Nader's gains during the previous year being lost. The result of this particular military catastrophe was still overturned with Nader's return from the east but would have much more significant impact on the Safavid dynasty itself as Tahmasp II sealed his own fate by initiating this ill fated expedition.
The Herat Campaign of 1731 took place when Nader Shah who had already successfully driven the Ottomans from western Iran and southern Azerbaijan had to cut his campaign short to deal with the revolt of the Abdalis of Herat who were provoked into bearing arms against their Persian overlords by Hussein Hotaki of Qandahar. The conflict resulted in the re-establishment of Persian rule over Herat.
The military forces of the Afsharid dynasty of Iran had their origins in the relatively obscure yet bloody inter-factional violence in Khorasan during the collapse of the Safavid state. The small band of warriors under local warlord Nader Qoli of the Turkoman Afshar tribe in north-east Iran were no more than a few hundred men. Yet at the height of Nader's power as the king of kings, Shahanshah, he commanded an army of 375,000 fighting men which, according to Axworthy, constituted the single most powerful military force of its time, led by one of the most talented and successful military leaders of history.
Afsharid Iran, also referred as the Afsharid Empire, was an Iranian empire established by the Turkoman Afshar tribe in Iran's north-eastern province of Khorasan, ruling Iran (Persia). The state was ruled by the Afsharid dynasty in the mid-eighteenth century. The dynasty was founded in 1736 by the brilliant military commander Nader Shah, who deposed the last member of the Safavid dynasty and proclaimed himself as the Shah of Iran.
Safavid dynasty