an Afghan ruler of the Hotak dynasty who overthrew the heavily declined Safavid dynasty to briefly become the king of Persia from 1722 until his death in 1725. He was the eldest son of Mirwais Hotak, the chief of the Ghilji Pashtun tribe of Afghanistan, who had made the Kandahar region independent from Persian rule in 1709. When Mirwais died in 1715, he was succeeded by his brother, Abdul Aziz, but the Ghilji Afghans persuaded Mahmud to seize power for himself and in 1717 he overthrew and killed his uncle.
