Tomb and Museum of Nader Shah Afshar Mashhad

One of the most prominent tourist attractions in Mashhad, belonging to the founder of the Afsharid dynasty, is the Tomb of Nader Shah Afshar. This tomb was built in 1963 and has taken its current form. The tomb is located within the Naderi Garden of Mashhad, which is close to the holy shrine of Imam Reza (AS). After the fall of the Safavid dynasty, Nader Shah Afshar rose from the Khorasan region and was able to overcome local claimants, the Ottoman Empire, and the Afghans, and then in 1727 declared himself the king of Iran in the Moghan plain. At the beginning of his reign, he ordered the construction of a magnificent tomb in the city of Mashhad, which at that time was introduced as the capital of Iran. After returning from a prosperous trip to India, Nader Shah decided to build another tomb for himself. In his last years, he constructed another building called the Sun Mansion, which was intended as a family tomb, but his body was not buried in any of them. Nader Shah Afshar was assassinated in 1739, his head was taken to Herat, and his body was temporarily buried in one of those tombs. With the beginning of the Qajar era, by order of Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, his body was transferred to Tehran. In the late Qajar period, in 1875, Qavam al-Saltaneh decided to renovate one of the three tombs built by Nader Shah himself and to build a tomb worthy of his status.

The Tomb of Nader Shah Afshar stood for many years, and during the Pahlavi era, with the efforts of the Iranian National Heritage Society and engineer Hooshang Seyhoun, another tomb was built in 1963.