The Successors of Kareem Khan and Rise of Qajars

Kareem Khan lacked the futuristic view of educating a good heir. When he died in 1779, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Abol Fath Khan. This son was not a sharp and courageous ruler like his father, but rather lazy and weak. His whole reign was over shadowed by his powerful uncle, Zakki Khan. Zakki Khan, half brother of Kareem Khan, was a symbol of corruption and political mischief. His administration as the chancellor of the And territories led to the anarchy of next 20 years.

Abol Fath Khan died of a heart attack. He was succeeded by three of his cousins and also his brother. These four rulers governed the country on and off for twenty years. It seemed almost like the Zand dynasty has ran out of brave and wise rulers, until Lotf Ali Khan came along.

Lotf Ali Khan, grandson of Kareem Khan’s youngest brother, Sadegh Khan, was a very brave, patriotic and handsome warrior. There are countless number of accounts about his looks. He was also very brave and master of fighting arts. One thing that he lacked was political knowledge. Unlike his granduncle, he did not became the ruler as a result of his own hard work, he just inherited it! He was brave, but he did not know how to get close to his subjects and be friendly to them, a gift that Kareem Khan was master of.

Lotf Ali Khan faced a great problem when he became Vakil Ol Melle. This problem was called Agha Mohammad Khan. It was not a form of rare disease like cancer, or any kind of epidemic, but it was equally life threatening. Agha Mohammad Khan was the eldest son of Mohammad Hassan Khan Qajar, murdered chief of Qajars and Kareem Khan’s sweared enemy. When his father died, he and his younger brother Hossein Gholi Khan were sent to Kareem Khan’s court as hostages to ensure peace. Agha Mohammad Khan was castrated when he was very young, possibly by Aadel Shah Afshar, who was of course mad! In that time, seemed like he has no chance of re-gaining his fathers lands, but Agha Mohammad Khan never stopped planning. He counted seconds for the time of Kareem Khan’s death, and when he died, he fled Shiraz and did not stop until he reached Estar-Aabad, his birth place and traditional seat of Qajars. His brother, Hossein Gholi Khan was murdered earlier when he was sent to Ghoochan as the governor.

When Agha Mohammad Khan got to his hometown, the first thing he did was to gather all of his brothers (there were quite a few of them) and the remainder of his father’s army. Qajars were so excited that they did not notice Agha Mohammad Khan’s lack of, well...manhood! He invaded Mazandaran in the first month of his arrival, then continued to the south and captured Qazvin and Tehran. His brother, Abbas Gholi Khan conquered Gilan, and this was when he noticed the obvious, why not he himself as the chief? Why should it be Agha Mohammad Khan? He began a rebellion against his older brother, and god knows that Agha Mohammad Khan never wasted anytime in calming rebellions. The result of this “calming” was around 50 corpses, one of them Abbas Gholi khan’s. With the help of his now faithful remaining brothers, notably Jafar Gholi Khan, a tall, fierce, and dumb commander who was famous for cutting horses in half! Agha Mohammad Khan conquered most of northern Iran and came as far south as Isphahan.

This was where he faced Lotf Ali Khan. They fought, as you can say, not once, but close to ten battles. The last of them just outside the gates of Shiraz. Here, Lotf Ali Khan got the dagger in the back. He did not make sure of whom he is living in charge inside the city, and the person he left was not a big icon of faithfulness. This person, called Ebrahim Khan Kalantar, drew the conclusion that his master would loose the battle to the Qajar Khan, so he just did not open the gates when Lotf Ali Khan tried to come back to the city to get re-enforcement. Lotf Ali Khan did not have time to fight two enemies, so he and twenty of his followers went to Kerman, around 300 Km east of Shiraz. Agha Mohammad Khan of course followed him, and when he captured Kerman, he did some of the cruelest things in the history of humankind. He arrested the Zand Khan, after several street fights in which all of Lotf Ali Khan’s followers got killed. He ordered some unspeakable things to be done to him, and then he killed him. After this, he ordered each of his soldiers to bring him the eyeballs of twenty Kermani citizens. With this, he put his name up in the list with some of other famous evil guys such as Ghenghis Khan, Teymour, and Alexander. Kerman was known four years as the city of blinds.