The Afshars

In I736 Nader himself assumed the title of Shah, immediately upon which he waged a war against the Afghans and captured Kandahar, the home of the Ghilizai Afghans. In I 738 he invaded India, and in a single campaign captured an incredible wealth, including the legendary Peacock Throne and the Kuh-e Nur diamond. He seems to have continued a career of conquest for lack of anything better to do. He made Mash had his capital and - apparently for the sake of concthe Afghans -favored his Sunnisubjects at the expense of the Shiites.
Being a despotic ruler, he was assassinated in 1747, and for the next fifty years Iranian history is well nigh unintelligible. There was in essence a three-sided struggle between the descendants of Nader Shah, the Zand family and the Qajars. For much of the time Shahrokh, grandson both of Nader and Shah Hossein, remained nominally on the throne at Mash had, but, blinded and intermittently imprisoned, he exercised no effective power.