The 1804-1813 Russo-Persian War, one of the many wars between the Persian Empire and Imperial Russia, began like many wars as a territorial dispute. The Persian king, Fath Ali Shah Qajar, wanted to consolidate the northernmost reaches of his Qajar dynasty by securing land near the Caspian Sea's southwestern coast (modern Azerbaijan) and the Transcaucasus (modern Georgia and Armenia). Like his Persian counterpart, the Russian czar Alexander I was ...
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The 1804-1813 Russo-Persian War, one of the many wars between the Persian Empire and Imperial Russia, began like many wars as a territorial dispute. The Persian king, Fath Ali Shah Qajar, wanted to consolidate the northernmost reaches of his Qajar dynasty by securing land near the Caspian Sea's southwestern coast (modern Azerbaijan) and the Transcaucasus (modern Georgia and Armenia). Like his Persian counterpart, the Russian czar Alexander I was also new to the throne and equally determined to control the disputed territories.
In 1779, following the death of Karim Khan, the Zand dynasty ruler of southern Persia, Agha Mohammad Khan (reigned 1779-97), a leader of the Turkmen Qajar tribe, set out to reunify Persia. By 1794 he had eliminated all his rivals, including Lotf Ali Khan, the last of the Zand dynasty, and had reasserted Persian sovereignty over the former Persian territories in Georgia and the Caucasus. In 1796 he was formally crowned as shah (Persian for emperor). Agha Mohammad...
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