Karim Khan Zand

The founder of the Zand Dynasty, which ruled from 1751 to 1779, was Karim Khan Zand. He was in charge of all of Iran (Persia), excluding Khorasan. He also held power over a portion of the Caucasian region and lived in Basra for a while.

Iran rebounded from the wreckage of 40 years of war under Karim's leadership, giving the war-torn nation a restored feeling of tranquility, security, peace, and prosperity. The height of Zand rule was between 1765 and Karim Khan's death in 1779. He enabled the East India Company to establish a commercial base in southern Iran and repaired relations with Britain. Shiraz became his capital, and he commissioned the construction of numerous buildings there. "Karim Khan Zand maintains an enduring reputation as the most merciful Iranian monarch of the Islamic era," according to The Oxford Dictionary of Islam. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the residents of Shiraz refused to rename the city's two main streets, one of which being the Karim Khan Zand Street, because the names of Iran's former rulers had become taboo (the other one being the Lotf Ali Khan Zand Street).

After Karim Khan's passing, a new civil war broke out, and none of his descendants could govern the nation as successfully as he had. Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, the last of these ancestors and the first to rule Iran alone, put to death Lotf Ali Khan.