Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar

Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar (Persian: آقا محمد خان قاجار, romanized: Âqâ Mohammad Xân-e Qâjâr; 14 March 1742 – 17 June 1797), also known by his regnal name of Agha Mohammad Shah (آقامحمد شاه), was the founder of the Qajar dynasty of Iran, ruling as Shah from 1789 to 1797.

He was the son of Mohammad Hasan Khan, a chieftain of the Quwanlu branch of the Qajar tribe who vied for the throne of Iran after the death of Nader Shah. As a child, he was captured by Nader's successor Adel Shah and castrated. His father was killed in 1759, and in 1763 he was captured by Karim Khan Zand, Iran's new overlord. He spent the next sixteen years as a hostage at Karim Khan's court in Shiraz; after the latter's death, he escaped to northern Iran, where he spent nearly a decade campaigning to consolidate his rule, struggling with his brothers and several Zand pretenders. He took control of all northern Iran and in 1786 made Tehran his capital; it has since remained the country's capital.

Agha Mohammad Khan was enthroned as the king of Iran in 1789 (but not yet crowned), and in 1794 he defeated his last major competitor, the Zand prince Lotf Ali Khan, inflicting immense destruction on the city of Kerman after taking it. In 1796, he campaigned to reassert Iranian rule north of the Aras River, where he forced the local khanates into submission and brutally sacked the Georgian city of Tiflis (Tbilisi). He was then crowned shāhanshāh (King of Kings) in 1796. On 17 June 1797, during a second campaign in the South Caucasus, he was assassinated by two of his servants whom he had condemned to death. He was succeeded by his nephew and designated heir, Fath-Ali, whose descendants ruled Iran until 1925.