The Sack of Shamakhi took place in 1721, when rebellious Sunni Lezgins from within the Safavid Empire, which by then was already in a state of heavy decline, attacked Shamakhi, the capital of the Shirvan province, during the reign of king Sultan Husayn (r. 1694–1722). It resulted in the sack and looting of the city, the massacre of thousands of the Shia inhabitants of Shamakhi, as well as the robbing of the property of its Christian inhabitants and foreign nationals, of which the latter were mostly the many Russian merchants. Several Russian merchants were killed as well by the rebels. The harm done to the Russians in Shamakhi by the rebels was shortly afterwards used by Imperial Russia, then under the reign of Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725), as one of the pretexts to launch the Russo-Pers