Ali-qoli khan is the eldest son of Nader's brother, Ebrahim Khan.

Nader had appointed him governor of Mashad in 1737.

In the same year he married Princess Ketevan, daughter of the Georgian king Teimuraz II, Nader's ally.

In 1740 he was also married to a daughter of Abu'l-Fayz, ruler of the recently subdued Bukhara.

From 1743 to 1747, Ali-qoli khan has commanded Nader's troops against the Yazidis of Kurdistan, the Karakalpaks and Uzbeks of Khwarazm and in Sistan.

He had then run in trouble with his increasingly suspicious uncle over the latter's decision to levy one hundred thousand tomans on him.

In April 1747, in conjunction with the rebels of Sistan, Ali-qoli khan had occupied Herat and had induced the Kurds to enter into a rebellion.

On arriving at Mashad, Ali-qoli sends a loyal force to the fortress of Kalat, where they kill all of Nader's issue with the exception of his fourteen-year-old grandson Shahrukh.

On July 6, 1747, Ali-qoli is declared the shah under the name of Adil Shah, "the just king".

Adil Shah had sent his brother Ebrahim Mirza as a governor to Isfahan, while he remained in Mashad with his unpopular Georgian favorite, Sohrab Khan.

Later this year, he defeats his erstwhile Kurdish allies, who had refused to supply grain for his famine-stricken army and capital, and has several of his supporters put to death on suspicion of conspiracy.

The collapse of Afsharid rule over Iran with the death of Nader Shah has given the chieftain of the Qoyunlu clan, Mohammad Hasan Qajar, the opportunity to try to seize Astarabad, capital of Mazandaran, for himself.

Adil Shah now marches against Mazandaran in a futile attempt to bend the Qajar tribe into submission.

Although he fails to capture Mohammad Hasan, he manages to capture the latter's eldest son, five-year-old Mohammad Khan, whom at first he plans to kill, but whose life he later chooses to spare and instead has him castrated and thereafter freed, which is why he is known by the title of "Agha", a common title among eunuchs who serve at the court.

Adil flees to Tehran, but a local governor surrenders Adil to Ebrahim, who has him blinded on July 6, 1748.

Ebrahim is soon proclaimed shah, but his reign is quickly terminated by a coup fomented by his own troops.

Ebrahim, blinded on September 24, 1748, soon dies, while ...

...Adil is sent in chains to Mashad, where he is tortured to death.

Shahrukh, as the teenage son of Reza Gholi Mirza and Nader Shah's grandson, is elected by the nobles following the assassination of Ebrahim Afshar, and is enthroned at Mashhad in October 1748.

Shahrukh is a contemporary of Mir Sayyed Mohammad Marashi, the son of a daughter of the late Safavid Shah Suleiman I and a clergyman, who is in charge of the affairs of the Holy Shrine in Mashhad.

Encouraged by the nobles, Mir Sayyed Mohammad comes to believe he is the true heir to the throne.

Thus he captures and blinds Shahrukh, capitalizing on the popular dissatisfaction with Shahrukh's rule, partly owing to the conduct of his Georgian favorite Rasul Beg, who has scandalized Mashad by making free with the harem of his master.

Mohammad Hasan Khan, leader of the Qajar tribe, had been driven from Astarabad in the early 1740s, but after the death of Nader Shah in 1747, he appears to have joined Shahrukh Afshar and been appointed beglerbeg of Astarabad and leader of all the nomadic groups in the province by Suleiman II; after the latter is deposed, Mohammad Hasan becomes virtually independent and extends his power to Mazandaran and Gilan.

Azad, born in Andar town in the east of Ghazni, Afghanistan, into the Sulaimankhel clan of the Ghilji confederacy, had joined Nader Shah's army around 1738 and had taken part in his campaigns in India and Iran.

At the time of Nader's murder, he was second-in-command to Amir Aslan Khan Qerglu Afshar, the governor of Azerbaijan.

Azad had played a prominent role in the power struggle that followed the death of Nader, quickly defecting from Aslan Khan to Nader's nephew and would-be successor, Ebrahim Mirza, and earning for himself the title of khan.

When Ebrahim was himself defeated by Nader's grandson, Shahrukh Shah, Azad Khan had attached himself and his Afghan cavalry to Mīr Sayyed Moḥammad, the superintendent of the shrine at Mashhad, following whose orders he had withdrawn to the western marches of Iran.

Azad has continued to be involved in the unrest in Iran and, through a series of alliance with local Kurd and Turkish chieftains and a policy of compromise with the Georgian ruler Erekle II, Azad rises to control all the territory between Ardabil and Urmia by 1752.