In 1749, Ebrahim was himself defeated by Nader's grandson, Shahrokh Shah, Azad Khan attached himself and his Afghan cavalry to Mīr Sayyed Moḥammad, the superintendent of the shrine at Mashhad, following whose orders he withdrew to the western marches of Iran.

He continued to be involved in the unrest in Iran and, through a series of alliances with local Kurdish and Turkic chieftains and a policy of compromise with the Georgian ruler Erekle II, Azad rose to control all the territory between Ardabil and Urmia by 1752.

[2] Azad, defeated in the battle of Kirkhbulakh, failed to gain the lands north of the Aras due to the Georgian power, but succeeded, in 1753, to annex the central Zagros provinces.

However, unlike his rival contenders, Azad was "an alien without any lasting source of support in western Iran—a Sunni Afghan with no urban or tribal-territorial base, and who was never able to acquire a Safavid scion to legitimize his authority".

During Azad's exile at Baghdad, in 1758-59, most of his Ghilzay followers in Iran, consisting of both troops and non-combatant settlers, were massacred by the Qajar governor of Mazandaran and then by the Zands.