Ardabil and Moghan under Russian and Ottoman occupation

In Chapter Two, I related Krusinski's account of the failure of the ‘Shahsevan’ to respond to Tahmasp Mirza's appeal from Qazvin in 1722, arguing that this was probably not an appeal such as those issued by Soltan Mohammad and Shah 'Abbas some 150 years earlier, but rather a general appeal to a provincial militia of former Qizilbash chiefs and their followers.

If the Shahsevan of Ardabil and Moghan were included in this appeal, and we may assume they were, it is not surprising if they were unwilling to leave their homeland. The previous year, in response to Shi'i maltreatment of the Sunnis in Shamakhi, just to the north of Moghan, Sunni Lazgi tribesmen from Daghestan had raided that city, and had sought and obtained protection from the Ottomans, who appointed a Governor there. During the raids, Russian property in Shamakhi had suffered, thus providing Peter the Great – nominally Shah Soltan Hosein's ally, and freed that year from his military involvements with Sweden – with a pretext for sending an expedition into Iranian territory. So, late in the summer of 1722, at the very time when Tahmasp's appeals from Qazvin would have been arriving, the tribes in Moghan and Ardabil must have been more than apprehensive for themselves and their own lands, menaced by both Ottoman supporters in Shamakhi and the great Russian army which was steadily making its way down the west coast of the Caspian.