sentences:  Suffering from mental illnesses and fearing a revolt by his subjects, Mahmud invited his Persian ministers and nobles to a meeting under false pretences and had them slaughtered.He also executed up to 3,000 of the Persian royal guards.At the same time the Persian arch rivals, Ottomans, and the Russians took advantage of the chaos in Persia to seize land for themselves, limiting the amount of territory under Mahmud's control.