Vakhushti Khan
safavid official and royal gholam (-1660s)
Vakhushti Khan (d. 1667/69) was a Safavid official and royal gholam from the Georgian Orbeliani clan, who served as the governor (hakem) of Shushtar from September 1632 up to his death in 1667 or 1669. His descendants continued to flourish in Shushtar well into Nader Shah's era (r. 1736–1747).
Vakhushti was a son of the Georgian nobleman Aslamaz and had at least two other brothers named Otar (Zu al-Faqār) and Gorjasbi (Mansur), who held prominent positions as well. According to Alexander Orbeliani (1802–1869), he had one more brother named Kaykhosrow. He was a close relative of Rodam, the wife of King Vakhtang V (Shah Navaz Khan).
His name Vakhushti derives from Old Iranian vahišta- ("paradise", superlative of veh "good", i.e., "superb, excellent"). Its equivalent in Middle Persian is wahišt and in New Persian behešt.
Vakhusti's second son, Aslamas (also known as Aslan), served as commander of the élite gholam corps (qollar-aghasi) in 1693–1695, and as governor (beglarbeg) of Qandahar in 1694–95, or 1696–1697.
“Vakhushti Khan” enters the record as safavid official and royal gholam (-1660s). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Vakhushti, Khan and safavid can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vakhushti Khan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.