Instead, with no serious external enemies, the Safavid rulers paid less att ention to governance, and the resultant neglect left the dynasty less able to deal with problems from drought, lower agricultural productivity, disease, internal dissent, and nomadic raiders. The succession of bad leaders began with Abbas’s successor, Safi I (r. 1629–42), who killed potential rivals to his throne as well as most of the generals, officers, and councilors he inherited from his father. In the wake of this cruelty, court politics became even more intense and selfi sh as the Qizilbash actively tried to regain their power and infl uence. Nearly all of the later Safavid shahs had numerous shortcomings, including a disruptive religious zeal by one and addictions to drink, drugs, and general profl igacy among the others. As each year passed, Persia’s tribes and neighbors challenged the Safavids, and the prestige and authority of the central state weakened with each setback.
Through the end of the seventeenth century the Uzbeks and the Mughals from India encroached on and captured Safavid territory and cities in the east. In 1664 the Russian czar Alexis sent Cossacks on a raid deep into Iran, where they caused considerable damage before withdrawing. The Afghans began to push into the empire in the early eighteenth century, meeting little resistance from Safavid forces, which were undermined by dissension between the Turkman and Persian levies. Sensing the Safavids’ weakness, the Afghans occupied Khorasan in 1717. When Shah Sultan Hussein (r. 1694–1722) tried to convert his Afghan subjects in eastern Iran from Sunni to Shia Islam, one Afghan chief rebelled and pushed the Safavid army out of Kandahar and most of Afghanistan. In 1722, the chief ’s son, Mahmud, went to war with the Safavids, marching west to besiege and capture Esfahan, the Safavid capital since 1598.