page_title: Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar
section_title: Family and youth
hierarchical_section_title: Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar / Early life (1742–1779) / Family and youth
caption_attribution_description: English: Nature of Ziyarat Village, Gorgan County, Golestan Province of Iran.
context_page_description: Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, also known by his regnal name of Agha Mohammad Shah, was the founder of the Qajar dynasty of Iran, ruling from 1789 to 1797 as king. Originally chieftain of the Qoyunlu branch of the Qajar tribe, Agha Mohammad Khan was enthroned as the king of Iran in 1789, but was not officially crowned until March 1796, having deposed Lotf Ali Khan of the Zand dynasty in 1794. Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar was famously the eunuch Monarch, being castrated as a young adult upon his capture by Adel Shah Afshar, and hence was childless. He was assassinated on 17 June 1797, and was succeeded by his nephew, Fath-Ali Shah Qajar.
  Agha Mohammad Khan's reign is noted for the return of a centralized and unified Iran and, for relocating the capital to Tehran, where it still stands today. He is also noted for his cruel and rapacious behavior, particularly during the re-subjugation of Georgia. He sacked the capital Tbilisi, massacred many of its inhabitants, and moved some 15,000 Georgian captives back to mainland Iran.
context_section_description: Agha Mohammad Khan was born in Astarabad around 1742. He belonged to the Qoyunlu (also spelled Qawanlu) branch of the Qajar tribe. The Qajars were one of the original Turkoman Qizilbash tribes that emerged and spread in Asia Minor around tenth and eleventh centuries. They later supplied power to the Safavids since the dynasty's earliest days. The tribe had several other branches, one of the most prominent ones being the Develu, which often fought against the Qoyunlu. Agha Mohammad Khan was the eldest son of the chieftain of the Qoyunlu clan, Mohammad Hasan Khan Qajar, and the grandson of Fath-Ali Khan Qajar, a prominent aristocrat executed by the orders of Shah Tahmasp II (possibly compelled by Nader Qoli Beg, who came to be known as Nader Shah after usurping the throne of Iran in 1736, marking the foundation of the Afsharid dynasty). Agha Mohammad Khan had several half-brothers and full-brothers: Hossein Qoli Khan, Morteza Qoli Khan, Mostafa Qoli Khan, Reza Qoli Khan, Jafar Qoli Khan, Mehdi Qoli Khan, Abbas Qoli Khan and Ali Qoli Khan.
  When Nader Shah died in 1747, the Afsharid rule of Iran fell apart, which gave Mohammad Hasan an opportunity to seize Astarabad for himself, leading Nader Shah's nephew Adel Shah to march from Mashhad to the city in order to capture him. Although he failed to capture Hasan, Adel Shah managed to capture Agha Mohammad Khan, whom he planned to kill. He later chose to spare Agha Mohammad Khan's life and instead had him castrated and thereafter freed. While the common spelling of "Agha" (آقا) is usually used as a title roughly translated to "Sir" or "Mister", Agha Mohammad Khan's title is differently spelled (آغا), which is a common one among eunuchs who served at the court.
caption: The landscape of Astarabad, the birthplace of Agha Mohammad Khan.
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