Russo-Persian War (1722–1723)

Before the war, the nominal Russian border was the Terek River. South of that, the Khanates of Dagestan were nominal vassals of Iran. The ultimate cause of the war was Russia's desire to expand to the southeast and the temporary weakness of Iran. At the start of the war, the Iranian capital was under siege. The formal pretext was the grave damage inflicted to the many Russian merchants who inhabited the Safavid Iranian city of Shamakhi. In 1721, rebellious Lezgins, from within the declining Safavid Empire, had sacked and looted the city, killing many of its inhabitants including several Russian merchants.[10][11] Artemy Volynsky, Russia's ambassador to Safavid Iran reported on the great damage done to the Russian merchants, to then incumbent Tsar Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725).[12][11] The report stipulated that the 1721 event was a clear violation of the 1717 Russo-Iranian trade treaty, by which the latter guaranteed to ensure the protection of Russian nationals within the Safavid domains.[12] With Safavid Iran in chaos, and the Safavid ruler in no possible way able to safeguard the provisions of the treaty, Volynsky urged Peter to take advantage of the situation, and to invade Iran, on the pretext of restoring order as an ally of the Safavid king.[12][11] Indeed, Russia shortly after used the attack on its merchants in Shamakhi as the pretext to launch the war.[13][14]

Between 1714 and 1720, several Russian sailors had mapped the Caspian Sea. On 15 July 1722, Peter issued a manifesto in several local languages justifying the invasion, drawn up by Dimitrie Cantemir. Peter gathered 22,000 infantry, 9,000 dragoons and 70,000 Cossacks, Tatars and Kalmyks. For transport, he created the Caspian Flotilla at Astrakhan under Fyodor Apraksin. The infantry, artillery and stores were to be shipped by sea to the mouth of the Sulak River while the cavalry went overland from Tsaritsyn and Mozdok. By the time Peter was assembling his forces for the attack, the Safavid state had already entered the final stages of collapse.[15]

All dates old style used in Russian accounts of the time, followed by the new style (N.S.) modern equivalent, 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar.

The war was a costly war for both sides in different measures. Iran had lost swaths of its territories, while Russia had suffered large human losses. The campaign proved costly; of the 61,039 men who took part, 36,663 did not return.[8] Grave damage was inflicted by the Russians on the occupied areas.[8] Thus, in Gilan, one of the consequences of the occupation was the rapid decline of sericulture, as many of those involved in it fled.[8] It took years for the industry to revive.[8]

Peter was determined to keep the newly conquered Iranian territories in the Caucasus and northern mainland Iran. However, he was concerned about their safety and thus ordered the fortifications at Derbent and Holy Cross to be strengthened.[8] He was determined to attach Gilan and Mazandaran to Russia.[8] In May 1724, the Tsar wrote to Matiushkin, Russian commander in Rasht, that he should invite "Armenians and other Christians, if there are such, to Gilan and Mazandaran and settle them, while Muslims should be very quietly, so that they would not know it, diminished in number as much as possible."[8]

In 1732, on the eve of the Russo-Turkish War, the government of Empress Anna Ioannovna, Peter's successor, returned many of the annexed territories to Iran as a part of the Treaty of Resht, to construct an alliance with the Safavids against the Ottoman Empire.[17] By the 1735 Treaty of Ganja, the remaining territories were returned, including Derbent, Baku and Tarki, and Iran was again in full possession of its territories in the North and South Caucasus and in contemporary northern Iran. The Russian troops nevertheless had not evacuated from the Iranian provinces until 1734.[18]

As The Cambridge History of Iran adds, "perhaps the only long-term consequence was the consciousness on the part of Russia's rulers that their armies had once marched beyond the Caucasus, that the Russian flag had flown over the southern shore of the Caspian Sea."

However, the sequel was additionally disastrous for the Georgian rulers who had supported Peter's venture. In eastern Georgia, Vakhtang VI of Kartli lost his throne and sought protection of the Russian court in 1724. In western Georgia, Alexander V of Imereti had to accept an Ottoman suzerainty on more stringent terms. The Ottomans, further, alarmed by the Russian intervention, strengthened their hold along the Caucasian coastline.[19]

• Treaty of Constantinople (1724)
• Russo-Persian Wars
• History of the Russo-Turkish wars

• Atkin, Muriel (1980). Russia and Iran, 1780–1828. U of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0816656974.
• Axworthy, Michael (2010). The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-0857721938.
• Fisher, William Bayne; Avery, P.; Hambly, G. R. G; Melville, C. (1991). The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521200950.
• Matthee, Rudolph P. (2005). The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500–1900. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691118550.
• Sicker, Martin (2001). The Islamic World in Decline: From the Treaty of Karlowitz to the Disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0275968915.
• Great Soviet Encyclopedia (in Russian)
• The Armenian Rebellion of the 1720s and the Threat of Genocidal Reprisal
• Dunlop, John B. (1998), Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521636191.