10 Iranian Empire and Caucasian Borderlandsgan to emerge as Aqa Mohammad steadily whittled away at the do-
mains of the last important Zand, Lotf 'Ali, Karim's grandnephew.
Finally, in 1794, Lotf 'Ali's last stronghold, Kerman, fell to Aqa Mo-
hammad, who punished the city dwellers for their support of his rival
by killing, blinding, or enslaving thousands of their number. Lotf 'Ali
was captured and killed soon after. Aqa Mohammad was then master
of most of Iran. He chose Tehran as his capital because, among other
reasons, it was well situated as a center for operations against the two
most important areas that remained outside his control—Khorasan
and the eastern Caucasus. He attempted but failed to subjugate these
areas in the last three years of his life. In Khorasan the separatist
forces were on the wane, but in the Caucasus he was opposed by local
rulers who wanted to preserve their independence and by Russia,
which had its own imperial designs on the region. His campaign there
in 1795 marked the beginning of a generation of fierce competition
for hegemony.
The disputed borderlands extended from Georgia and Yerevan east
to the Caspian Sea and from the southern slopes of the Caucasus to
the Aras (Araxes) and Kura rivers, although along the coast the zone
exceeded these limits in both directions, from Derbent in the north
to Talesh in the south. The region could be subdivided into three
broad zones: Georgia, Iranian Armenia (Ganjeh, Qarabagh, Yerevan,
and Nakhjavan), and the Shirvani successor states (Shirvan, Shakki,
Derbent-Qobbeh, and Baku). The small principality of Talesh on the
Caspian coast belongs in a category by itself.
Georgia had been at the apogee of its power in the late twelfth and
early thirteenth centuries, but its fortunes declined after that period.
In the fifteenth century, it broke apart. The western principalities
soon came under Ottoman suzerainty, but the eastern ones were the
object of a prolonged power struggle. The eastern area was subject to
Iran for the last century of Safavi rule. As the province of Gorjestan
(Georgia), it was ruled by its own kings of the ancient Bagration dy-
nasty, who were simultaneously members of the Safavi administra-
tion as valis (governor-generals). The second quarter of the eighteenth
century saw Georgia under Ottoman and then Iranian control once
more, but for the rest of the century neither could enforce its claim.
King Erekle (who ruled from 1762 until 1798) profited from the
power vacuum and dominated the affairs of several neighboring prin-
cipalities. At the height of Erekle's power, Georgia's position was still
far from secure, being weakened internally by rivalries within the
royal family and threatened from without by raids from tribes of the
high Caucasus as well as the possibility of reconquest by the Ottomans