Russo-Persian War (1722–23)

Russo-Persian War, 1722–1723, known in Russian historiography as the Persian campaign of Peter the Great, was a war between Russia and Persia (Safavid Iran), triggered by the tsar's attempt to expand Russian influence in the Caspian and South Caucasus regions and to prevent its rival, Ottoman Empire, from territorial gains in the region at the expense of the declining Safavid Persia.

Prior to the campaign, Peter I of Russia secured an alliance with a Georgian king Vakhtang VI of Kartli and with Catholicos of Armenia Asdvadzadur. These Christian rulers were seeking Russian aid in their conflicts with Persia and the expansionist Ottoman Empire.

In July 1722, the Russian army and Cossacks, numbering about 22,000 men, embarked on ships of the newly built Caspian Flotilla led by admiral Fyodor Apraksin from Astrakhan. They were joined later by about 22,000 cavalry and the Cossacks marching overland from Tsaritsyn. On August 23, 1722 the Russian army captured Derbent in southern Dagestan. However, in the autumn of this year storms on the Caspian Sea forced Peter the Great to return to Astrakhan leaving Russian garrisons at Derbent and Svyatoy Krest. In September 1722, Vakhtang VI encamped at Ganja with a combined Georgian-Armenian army of 40,000 to join the advancing Russian expedition, but after receiving news about Peter I's departure returned to Tbilisi in November.

In December 1722 the Russian army and navy, under major general Mikhail Matyushkin, seized Rasht and in July 1723 proceeded to capture Baku. Russian military success and the Turkish invasion of Persian possessions in the Southern Caucasus in the spring of 1723, forced the government of Tahmasp II to sign a peace treaty at Saint Petersburg, which surrendered Derbent, Baku, and the Persian provinces of Shirvan, Gilan, Mazandaran, and Astrabad to the Russians on September 12, 1723.

In 1732, on the eve of the Russo-Turkish War, the government of Empress Anna Ioannovna returned all the annexed territories to Persia as a part of the Treaty of Resht, to construct an alliance with the Safavids against the Ottoman Empire.