Mohammad Khan Qajar - Reign

Reign

Agha Muhammad restored Persia to a unity it had not had since the fall of the Safavid dynasty. He was, however, a man of extreme violence who killed almost all who could threaten his hold on power. In 1795 he ravaged Georgia, a kingdom to the north of Persia, which was formerly part of the Safavid empire. In the same year he also captured Khorasan. Shah Rukh, ruler of Khorasan and grandson of Nadir Shah, was tortured to death because Agha Muhammad thought that he knew of Nadir's legendary treasures.

In 1796, Agha Muhammad moved his capital from Sari in his home province of Mazandaran to Tehran. He was the first Persian ruler to make Tehran—the successor to the great city of Rayy, his capital, although both the Safavids and the Zands had expanded the town and built palaces in there. He was crowned in 1796 and founded the dynasty.

Although the Russians took Derbent and briefly occupied Baku during the Persian Expedition of 1796, he successfully expanded Persian influence into the Caucasus, reasserting Iranian sovereignty over its former dependencies in the region. He was, however, a notoriously cruel ruler, who reduced Tbilisi to ashes and massacred its Christian population, as he had done with his Muslim subjects. He based his strenght on tribal manpower of Ghengis Khan, Teimur and Nader Shah.