Zands eventually defeated Fath-Ali Khan and took Shiraz on 29 November 1754, marking the reversal of Azad's fortunes. By June 1757, he had lost Isfahan, Tabriz, and Urmia to the resurgent Qajars of Mazandaran under Mohammad Hasan Khan. Azad fled to Baghdad and, following a failed attempt at comeback, took refuge at the court of Erekle II in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1760. In 1762, he surrendered himself to victorious Karim Khan, by that time the master of all of northern Iran, and ended his days as Karim's honored pensioner in Shiraz. Azad died in 1781 and, in accordance with his will, was interred in his native lands, in Kabul, many hundreds of miles to the east. Legacy J. R. Perry explains that Azad was viewed as "brave and chivalrous". He seems to have nurtured the idea to create a neo-Safavid, or perhaps even neo-Ghilzay, Iranian empire. However, unlike his rival contenders, Azad was "an alien without any lasting source of support in western Iran—a Sunni Afghan with no urban or tribal-territorial base, and who was never able to acquire a Safavid scion to legitimize his authority". The power of the Ghilzay tribe in Afghanistan had been destroyed earlier by Nader Shah and they were in turn replaced in the 1750s by the Abdali (later known as Durrani). During Azad's exile at Baghdad, in 1758-59, most of his Ghilzay followers in Iran, consisting of both troops and non-combatant settlers, were massacred by the Qajar governor of Mazandaran and then by the Zands. References Further reading External links Hukm by Azad Khan Afghan (assignment by Azad Khan Afghan), original assignment and English translation. Pashtun people 1781 deaths Afghan Sunni Muslims Afghan tribal leaders Year of birth unknown Prisoners and detainees of the Zand dynasty 18th-century monarchs in the Middle East