Subscriber Essay: The Brief History of the Zand Dynasty

After the collapse of the Safavid Dynasty in the early 18th century, Iran came under the control of Nader Shah, a warlord and leader of the Afshar tribe, one of the largest of the Safavids’ Turkic Qizilbash tribes. He founded the very short-lived Afsharid dynasty that briefly ruled but then lost Iran in the mid 18th century. Later of course Iran came un…