vi. THE HERAT QUESTION From the middle of the 18th century,
following Nāder Shah’s assassination in 1747, Herat became the
focus of a century-long power struggle and regional rivalry that
came to an end only with Persia renouncing its sovereignty over
the city in 1857. Early Qajar shahs were committed to the
preservation of Herat as an inseparable part of “The Guarded
Domains of Iran” (mamālek-e maḥrusa-ye Irān), treating it mostly
as a frontier vassalage that had to be protected, if necessary,
by military means. Memories of the city as the capital of the
late Timurid empire and the second capital of the Safavids,
known by the epithet dār-al-Salṭana, were fresh in the minds of
the Qajar rulers, whose grand strategy was to reconstitute the
Safavid empire. Moreover, at the turn of the 19th century, Herat
was a city of major strategic importance, with fertile
hinterlands, an abundant water-supply, and secure defenses.
Herat’s population, estimated at about 100,000, consisted mostly
of Persian-speakers from vario