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| 1726 |
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| Completion of Tadhkirat al-Muluk, a manual of Safavid administration that detailed the power of the vezir as chief minister and the influence of the harem over rulers. The work also described the more than 50 royal guilds that produced articles for the rulers, such as clothing, books for the royal library, and weaponry for the army. Expensive silk textiles and carpets for export to Europe and India were also produced for the shah, who received the profits from this trade. | 1 |
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| 1726–36 |
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| RECONQUEST OF IRAN BY NADIR KHAN. An able general from the Turkoman tribe of Afshar, Nadir Khan (Nadir Quli) assembled an army in northern Iran and began the reconsolidation of the country under his control. He became the de facto ruler of Iran, although he acknowledged Tahmasp II, the son of Sultan Husayn, as Safavid shah until 1732, then Tahmasp's infant son Abbas III until 1736, at which time he declared himself shah. Nadir expelled the Afghans by 1730; reconquered the northwestern provinces of Iran from the Ottomans in 1730; and had the lands occupied by the Russians restored in 1735. | 2 |
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| 1736–47 |
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| NADIR SHAH. After years of building his power under the nominal rule of puppet Safavid princes, Nadir proclaimed himself shah. He transferred the capital to Mashhad in eastern Iran and continued his spectacular career of military conquest beyond Iran's frontiers, although his extensive empire disintegrated after his assassination in 1747. To finance his numerous campaigns he made enormous tax demands that added to the economic hardships of the population. | 3 |
| Nadir made an unsuccessful attempt to return Iran to the Sunni fold by proposing the integration of Shi’ism into Sunnism as the fifth of the already extant four Sunni schools of law (to be called the Ja'fari school). The scheme, which may have been political in purpose, failed to win support. | 4 |
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| 1736 |
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| Capture of Herat by Nadir Shah. | 5 |
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| 1736–44 |
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| Iranian occupation of Oman. | 6 |
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| 1738 |
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| Nadir Shah occupied Qandahar, Ghazna, Kabul, and Peshawar. | 7 |
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| 1739 |
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| Nadir Shah invaded India and sacked the Mughal capital of Delhi. | 8 |
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| 1740 |
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| Nadir Shah attacked the Uzbeks, invaded Bukhara and Khiva, and annexed the lands up to the Oxus River. | 9 |
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| 1750–96 |
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| SHAHRUKH SHAH. After Nadir Shah's assassination in 1747, his family proved unable to maintain the Afshar dynasty as rulers of Iran. One of them, the blind Shahrukh, continued to hold Mashhad and the province of Khurasan, ruling under the suzerainty of the Afghan Durrani dynasty that occupied eastern Iran. Most of the rest of the country fell to Karim Khan Zand. | 10 |
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| 1751–79 |
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| KARIM KHAN ZAND. A soldier in Nadir Shah's army and a member of the Persian Zand tribe, Karim Khan established himself as ruler in western Iran, making Shiraz his capital. He took the title of wakil (deputy or representative) rather than shah and reversed Nadir Shah's anti-Shi’ite policy. His dynasty proved short-lived: after his death in 1779 Zand princes continued to rule, but only until 1794. Conditions became increasingly turbulent, and the Qajar leader Agha Khan steadily took control of the country. | 11 |
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| 1763, July 2 |
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| Agreement with the English East India Company, allowing its agents to establish a commercial base in the port of Bushire, after the company's trading outpost in Bandar Abbas was destroyed by the French (1759). Bushire served as a headquarters of British commercial and political activity in the Persian Gulf region into the 20th century. | 12 |
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| 1792 |
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| Death of Vahid Bihbahani, the religious scholar responsible for the final Usuli victory over the Akhbari position in Shi'ism. Bihbahani's treatises defined the Usuli Shi’ite system of jurisprudence and established the authority of mujtahids, as supreme religious authorities, to issue opinions in all matters of faith and law. It became obligatory for all Shi’ite believers to obey these men and the precedents they set. This approach established the structure of religious authority in Iran current in the 19th and 20th centuries. | 13 |
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