Large parts of Dagestan have been part of the Iranian Safavid Empire since the sixteenth century.

Following the slow disintegration of the Safavid state at the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were uprisings in the Northeast Caucasus against the Persian rule.

The Russian and Ottoman Empire, both imperial rivals of the Persians, had exploited these.

Peter the Great declared war on Persia in 1722 and started the Russo-Persian War, in which the Russians for the first time make an expedition for the capture of Derbent and beyond down to the Caucasus.

During and before the occupation of Derbent by Peter I, the naib of city had been Imam Quli Khan and was naturally a Shiite like the rest of the Safavid Empire.

He offered the Russian emperor the keys to the city gates.

Peter I had reappointed Imam Quli Khan as the head of Derbent and its "native" troops by assigning him the rank of Major-General.

Following the Treaty of Saint Petersburg, the Safavid Shah Sultan Husayn, whose empire was for years already in disarray and crumbling, had in September 1723 been forced to cede Derbent alongside the many other Iranian territories in the Caucasus.

However, some years later in connection with the aggravation of Russian-Turkish relations, and the new rise of Persia now led by the brilliant military general Nader Shah, Russia had found itself forced to cede all territories back by March 1735 in the Treaty of Ganja in order to deter itself from a costly war against Persia, and to construct an alliance against the common neighboring foe; the Ottoman Empire.

Most of the other territories had already been given back in the Treaty of Resht in 1732 for similar reasons.

After the death of Nadir Shah in 1747 his huge empire disintegrates and the former Persian provinces in the Caucasus (Beylerbeyis) form two dozen semi-independent and dependent khanates, one of which is the Derbent Khanate.

Starting from 1747 with the title of Khan, the first ruler of the Derbent Khanate is the son of Imam Kuli Khan, Muhammad Hassan (also mentioned as Magomed-Hussein or Mohammed Hussein).

Heraclius, born in Telavi, the center of Kakheti region of Georgia, is a son Teimuraz II of Kakheti and his wife Tamar, daughter of Vakhtang VI of Kartli.

His childhood and early teens coincided with the occupation of Kakheti by the Ottomans from 1732 until 1735, when they were ousted from Georgia by Nader Shah of Iran, in his two successive campaigns of 1734 and 1735, by which the latter had quickly reestablished Persian rule over Georgia.

Teimuraz had sided with the Persians and was installed as a Persian wali (governor) in neighboring Kartli.

Teimuraz and Heraclius had remained loyal to the shah, partly in order to prevent the comeback of the rival Mukhrani branch, whose fall early in the 1720s had opened the way to Teimuraz's accession in Kartli.

From 1737 to 1739, Heraclius had commanded a Georgian auxiliary force during Nader’s expedition in India and gained a reputation of an able military commander.

He then served as a lieutenant to his father and assumed the regency when Teimuraz was briefly summoned for consultations in the Persian capital of Isfahan in 1744.

During his father's absence, Heraclius defeated a coup attempt by the rival Georgian prince Abdullah Beg of the Mukhrani dynasty, and helped Teimuraz suppress the aristocratic opposition to the Persian hegemony led by Givi Amilakhvari.

As a reward, Nader had granted the kingship of Kartli to Teimuraz and of Kakheti to Heraclius in 1744, and arranged the marriage of his nephew Ali-Qoli Khan, who eventually would succeed him as Adil Shah, to Teimuraz’s daughter Kethevan, yet, both Georgian kingdoms had remained under heavy Persian tribute until Nader was assassinated in 1747.

Teimuraz and Heraclius tske advantage of the ensuing political instability in Persia to assert their independence and expel Persian garrisons from all key positions in Georgia, including Tbilisi.

In close cooperation with one another, they manage to prevent a new revolt by the Mukhranian supporters fomented by Ebrahim Khan, brother of Adil Shah, in 1748.

They conclude an anti-Persian alliance with the khans of Azerbaijan, who are particularly vulnerable to the aggression from Persian warlords and agree to recognize Heraclius's supremacy in eastern Transcaucasia.

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.

Heraclius occupies Yerevan in 1749, and in June 1751 defeats a large army commanded by a pretender to the Persian throne and his former ally, Azad-Khan in the Battle of Kirkhbulakh.

The renegade city-states return to Georgian authority, while Azad-Khan chooses friendship with his northwestern neighbor.

King Heraclius can now focus on addressing his losses in his previous war with Haji Chalabi as well as preventing incursions of Avars from Dagestan and putting an end to unstable inner politics.

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.

Teimuraz II and Heraclius II between 1750 to 1755 have thrice successfully repulsed a large coalition of the Dagestani clans led by the Avar khan Nursal Bek.