Power and State-Making in Iran’s Transitional Era (1722–1797): A Historical-Sociological Study Using Sociobiology as a Heuristic

This study examines the acquisition, consolidation, and transfer of political power in Iran after the collapse of the Safavid order, from 1722 to 1797, and asks why Nader Shah Afshar, Karim Khan Zand, and Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar developed different patterns of state-making despite operating within a shared historical setting marked by weakened central authority, armed rivalry, fragmented resources, and unstable succession. The central research question concerns the constraints and opportunities created by the post-Safavid crisis and the extent to which differences in territorial control, resource mobilization, management of rivals, legitimacy, and succession affected the durability of political order. The study is situated primarily within the historical sociology of the state. It draws on Charles Tilly’s discussion of war making, extraction, coercion, and state formation, as well as Max Weber’s analysis of legitimacy, personal authority, and the routinization of political rule. Sociobiology is used in a limited heuristic capacity. Concepts such as territorial competition, rivalry, and the preservation of group continuity help organize selected comparisons, while the explanation of human political action remains grounded in institutions, political calculation, kinship, military organization, legitimacy, and succession.

The research uses a qualitative comparative-historical method. The three cases were selected purposively because all three rulers confronted the problem of rebuilding central authority after the Safavid collapse, yet differed in their use of war, their treatment of rivals, their sources of political acceptance, and their approaches to the continuation of power after the founder’s death. The evidence is drawn from primary historical materials, including Jahangoshā-ye Nāderi, Tārikh-e Giti-Goshā, Tārikh-e Negārestān, and Carsten Niebuhr’s travel account, together with major modern studies of the Afsharid, Zand, and early Qajar periods. The units of observation consist of documented political and military decisions and actions, whereas the unit of analysis is the pattern of state-making associated with each reign. The evidence is organized around four comparative dimensions: control of territory and resources, management of rivals, legitimacy, and continuity of power. Reports of large-scale violence are treated cautiously, especially when numerical claims derive from chronicles whose rhetorical purposes may have shaped their accounts.

The findings indicate that Nader Shah was highly successful in rapidly concentrating military power, recovering territory, defeating major competitors, and mobilizing resources on a large scale. His political system, however, remained strongly dependent on personal military authority and a war-centered structure of extraction and command. The crisis surrounding Reza Qoli Mirza and the absence of a broadly accepted mechanism of succession weakened the capacity of the Afsharid order to reproduce itself after Nader’s death. The rapid fragmentation that followed reveals a clear gap between the capacity to acquire and concentrate power and the capacity to transfer it in an orderly manner.

Karim Khan followed a different pattern. He continued to rely on military force when necessary, but gave greater attention to internal security, administration, trade, urban reconstruction, and relative economic stability. Contemporary and later sources also associate his rule with reduced taxation in some areas, public works, and the political language of the title vakil rather than shah. These policies helped create a more stable medium-term order and reduced the government’s dependence on continuous external conquest. Yet the Zand system remained closely tied to Karim Khan’s personal authority. Rivals could be contained while he was alive, but no durable rule of succession emerged. After his death, competition within the Zand family and renewed activity by outside claimants quickly exposed the weakness of the arrangements that had sustained stability during his lifetime.

Agha Mohammad Khan’s strategy combined territorial reintegration with the weakening of major political competitors and the use of Qajar kinship networks to support dynastic continuity. His campaigns were directed largely toward eliminating autonomous centers of power and reconnecting major regions to a central authority. The severe treatment of opponents, including the final struggle with Lotf Ali Khan Zand and the punishment of Kerman, formed part of a broader strategy of deterrence and consolidation. The continuity of Qajar rule cannot be attributed to coercion alone. Kinship organization, the position of Qajar relatives, the weakening of Zand rivals, territorial concentration, and the availability of a dynastic successor also contributed to the transfer of authority to Fath Ali Shah after Agha Mohammad Khan’s assassination in 1797.

The comparison demonstrates that the intensity of coercion by itself does not adequately explain political durability. Nader Shah used extraordinary military force but left a fragile succession structure; Karim Khan created greater internal stability but failed to institutionalize succession; Agha Mohammad Khan combined coercive concentration with dynastic organization in a way that made the initial transfer of power more manageable. Political durability in this transitional period therefore depended on the interaction of military concentration, resource control, management of rivals, legitimacy, and arrangements that allowed authority to survive the death of the founder. Sociobiological comparison remains useful only at the level of limited heuristic analogy. The decisive explanatory factors are historical and social. State-making in post-Safavid Iran is best understood as a process in which structural crisis, strategic political choices, and the gradual separation of authority from the individual ruler shaped the prospects for continuity.