Quṣdār

Khuzdar occupies a narrow upland valley in the Jhalawan country of Balochistan. Its incorporation into the expanding state of Kalat belonged to the reign of Mir Ahmad, who took power in 1666–1667. The district gazetteer records Khuzdar among his conquests, together with Baghwana, Karkh and Chaku. These acquisitions helped join southern districts to the Ahmadzai dynasty's political centre at Kalat.

The eighteenth-century khanate was itself drawn into larger contests of power. Nader Shah's campaigns and, after his assassination in 1747, the ascendancy of Ahmad Shah Abdali placed Kalat's rulers within an Iranian-Afghan political arena. Mir Nasir Khan's long rule enlarged the khanate, while his death in 1795 opened a period of decline. Khuzdar's early modern setting was thus the formation and changing fortunes of Kalat's southern territory, where a local valley settlement became part of a wider khanate rather than a separate provincial capital of those larger empires.