Fall of Isfahan (1722): The Afghan Siege Ends Safavid Power

The fall of Isfahan in 1722 brought the Safavid dynasty, which had ruled Iran since 1501, to a sudden collapse. An Afghan army led by Mahmud Hotaki routed the Safavid forces at Gulnabad in March 1722 and then besieged the capital for about seven months, until famine forced Shah Sultan Husayn to surrender in October. The siege was one of the great catastrophes of Iranian history and opened decades of war and foreign invasion.

Background

Under Shah Abbas the Great (r. 1588–1629), Isfahan had become one of the largest and richest cities in the world. By the reign of Shah Sultan Husayn (r. 1694–1722) the state was in difficulty. Revenues were falling, the army was neglected, and powerful court factions competed for influence. Pressure on Sunni subjects in frontier provinces such as Afghanistan and Daghestan bred resentment.

Historians used to explain the decline mainly by the character of Shah Sultan Husayn, portrayed by European observers as pious, gentle and easily led by clerics and eunuchs. Modern studies, especially Rudi Matthee’s, place more weight on long-term problems: an outflow of silver, falling trade revenues, the costs of defending long frontiers and the shrinking of the standing army after a long peace with the Ottomans since 1639.

In 1709 Mir Wais Hotak, a leader of the Ghilzai Pashtuns, killed the Safavid governor of Kandahar, the Georgian prince Gurgin Khan (George XI of Kartli), and made the city independent. Safavid attempts to retake it failed. After Mir Wais died in 1715, his son Mahmud seized power around 1717 and began raiding deep into Iran, taking Kerman in 1719 and attacking it again in 1721.

The Battle of Gulnabad

Early in 1722 Mahmud marched on Isfahan with a relatively small army, often estimated at about 10,000 to 20,000 men. The Safavid army that met him at Gulnabad, some 30 kilometres east of the capital, on 8 March 1722 was much larger, perhaps twice the size, and included artillery.

The Safavid commanders, however, were divided and failed to coordinate. Afghan cavalry broke through, Safavid troops fled and the guns were captured. The defeat left Isfahan open, and Mahmud’s forces soon surrounded the city.

Some advisers urged the shah to leave the capital and organise resistance in the provinces, where fresh troops could be raised. He chose to stay. The decision, which kept the court and most of the leadership inside the walls, proved fatal once the blockade was complete.

The siege

The Afghans lacked siege artillery and could not storm the walls. Instead they blockaded the city, cutting it off from the surrounding villages and the bridges across the Zayandeh River. Mahmud also took the suburb of New Julfa, home of the Armenian merchant community, and demanded heavy payments from it.

Isfahan was then one of the largest cities in western Asia, with a population often estimated at several hundred thousand, swollen further by refugees from the countryside. Its size made it almost impossible to feed once supplies from outside were cut. The Afghans also lacked the numbers to storm such a large city, so the siege became a contest of endurance.

Inside the city the shah hesitated, and attempts to break the blockade failed. In June the crown prince Tahmasp slipped out of Isfahan to raise troops and went to Qazvin; after the city fell he proclaimed himself shah there as Tahmasp II. No relief army arrived.

Through the summer, food ran out. Eyewitnesses, including the Polish Jesuit Judasz Tadeusz Krusiński, described people eating animals, leather and tree bark. Food prices rose to many times their normal level, and bodies lay unburied in the streets and in the river. The employees of the Dutch and English East India Companies, who kept diaries in the city, recorded similar scenes. Famine and disease killed vast numbers; contemporary estimates of the dead ran to around 80,000, though no reliable figure exists.

Surrender

On 23 October 1722 Shah Sultan Husayn rode out to Mahmud’s camp at Farahabad and handed over his crown. Mahmud entered Isfahan and was proclaimed shah. The former shah was kept prisoner in the city.

Mahmud’s rule rested on a small Afghan force in a huge, hostile country. At first he kept many Safavid officials in their posts and tried to win over the population, but resistance continued in many provinces, and an attempt to take Qazvin in 1723 ended with an uprising that drove the Afghans out of the city. In 1725 he had many Safavid princes and nobles killed, and he died the same year. His cousin Ashraf succeeded him and had Shah Sultan Husayn executed, usually dated to 1726.

Invasion from north and west

The collapse of central authority invited Iran’s neighbours. Peter the Great of Russia launched his Persian campaign in 1722 and by 1723 had taken Derbent, Baku and the Caspian province of Gilan. The Ottomans, then in their Tulip Period, invaded in 1723 and over the next two years occupied Tabriz, Hamadan and much of western Iran. In 1724 Russia and the Ottoman Empire agreed to divide Iran’s north-western provinces between them.

The Afghans controlled only Isfahan and the centre and south. Ashraf defeated an Ottoman army in 1726 and won recognition as shah in a treaty with Istanbul in 1727, but much of Iran was in the hands of local leaders and foreign powers.

Recovery and legacy

Tahmasp II found an able commander in Nader Qoli, an Afshar Turkmen from Khorasan. In 1729 Nader defeated Ashraf at Mihmandust near Damghan and then at Murchakhort, north of Isfahan, retaking the capital in November 1729. Ashraf was killed while fleeing. Nader went on to expel the Ottomans and Russians and in 1736 made himself shah, as Nader Shah, formally ending the Safavid dynasty.

Isfahan never fully recovered. Its population fell sharply, and later dynasties ruled from Shiraz and then Tehran. For historians, the fall of Isfahan has become a classic case of how an apparently powerful state can be undone by internal weakness and a determined small army.

Key people

• Mahmud Hotaki (c. 1697–1725): Ghilzai Afghan leader who conquered Isfahan and ruled as shah from 1722 to 1725.
• Shah Sultan Husayn (r. 1694–1722): the last effective Safavid shah, known for his piety and indecision.
• Tahmasp II: the shah’s son, who escaped the siege and later regained the throne with Nader’s help.
• Ashraf Hotaki: Mahmud’s cousin and successor, defeated by Nader in 1729.
• Judasz Tadeusz Krusiński: Polish Jesuit in Isfahan whose eyewitness account became a major European source on the siege.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1709, April: Mir Wais Hotak takes Kandahar from Safavid control.
• 1719: Mahmud Hotaki first invades Iran and takes Kerman.
• 1722, 8 March: Afghan victory at the Battle of Gulnabad.
• 1722, March: The siege of Isfahan begins.
• 1722, June: Prince Tahmasp escapes to Qazvin, where he later proclaims himself shah.
• 1722, 23 October: Shah Sultan Husayn surrenders and abdicates.
• 1725, April: Mahmud dies and Ashraf takes power.
• 1729, November: Nader Qoli retakes Isfahan for Tahmasp II.

Why it matters

The fall of Isfahan ended more than two centuries of Safavid power and the era in which Isfahan was the heart of Iran. The chaos that followed brought Russian and Ottoman invasions and the rise of Nader Shah, and it shaped Iran’s political map for the rest of the 18th century.