The Ilkhanid ruler Öljaitü converted to Twelver Shiʻism in the 13th century. Two years later in 1587, the massive invasion of Khorasan by the Uzbeks proved the occasion whereby Murshid Quli Khan would make a play for supremacy in Qazvin. According to the Encyclopædia Iranica, for Tahmasp, the background of this initiation and eventual composition that would be only finalized under Shah Abbas I, circled around the military tribal elite of the empire, the Qizilbash, who believed that physical proximity to and control of a member of the immediate Safavid family guaranteed spiritual advantages, political fortune, and material advancement. The Safavids‎ > ‎ Religion (Shah Ismail) From 1500-2 Ismail became king of the Safavid Empire and proclaimed himself the hidden Imam and a manifestation of divinity. Poetry stagnated under the Safavids; the great medieval ghazal form languished in over-the-top lyricism. Martha's mother Theodora—better known as Despina Khatun[40]—was a Pontic Greek princess, the daughter of the Grand Komnenos John IV of Trebizond. Eventually Abbas became frustrated with Spain, as he did with the Holy Roman Empire, which wanted him to make his over 400,000 Armenian subjects swear allegiance to the Pope but did not trouble to inform the shah when the Emperor Rudolf signed a peace treaty with the Ottomans. Ismail's decisive victory over the Uzbeks, who had occupied most of Khorasan, ensured Iran's eastern borders, and the Uzbeks never since expanded beyond the Hindukush. Each element constituted 20 percent of the crop production, and if, for instance, the farmer provided the labour force and the animals, he would be entitled to 40 percent of the earnings. In the east Murshid Quli Khan, of the Ustajlu tribe, managed to snatch Abbas away from the Shamlus. [215] In 1602, Shah Abbas I drove the Portuguese out of Bahrain, but he needed naval assistance from the newly arrived British East India Company to finally expel them from the Strait of Hormuz and regain control of this trading route. The Ottomans soon reacted with a large-scale incursion into Eastern Anatolia by Safavid ghazis under Nūr-ʿAlī Ḵalīfa. [111], What effectively fully severed Abbas's dependence on the Qizilbash, however, was how he constituted this new army. He then went on to completely reduce the number of Qizilbash provincial governorships and systematically moved qizilbash governors to other districts, thus disrupting their ties with the local community, and reducing their power. The Safavid state was one of checks and balance, both within the government and on a local level. Peter Charanis. The series of campaigns that Tahmāsp subsequently waged after realising this in the wider Caucasus between 1540 and 1554 were meant to uphold the morale and the fighting efficiency of the Qizilbash military,[170] but they brought home large numbers (over 70,000)[171] of Christian Georgian, Circassian and Armenian slaves as its main objective, and would be the basis of this third force; the new (Caucasian) layer in society. [118] Ultimately forming an alliance, the two sought refuge with the Ottoman forces in Ottoman ruled Imereti. Even though Safavids were not the first Shi'a rulers in Iran, they played a crucial role in making Shi'ism the official religion in Iran. Tasmāsp at the same time removed his son Ismail from his Qizilbash followers and imprisoned him at Qahqaha. [198] Shah Abbas I intended to decrease the power of the Qizilbash by bringing some of these provinces into his direct control, creating so called Crown Provinces (Khassa). Thus, Shi'ite Islam became the state religion of what evolved into the Safavid Empire, making the empire technically a theocracy. The reason Ismail was so determined to convert Iran into a Shi'i country was because he wanted Iran and Safavid lands to have a unique identity opposed to their enemy who were Sunnis: the Ottoman Empire. He also reduced the taxes of districts that were traditionally Shiʻi, regulated services in mosques and engaged Shiʻi propagandists and spies. [45] Ismāʻil was of mixed Turkoman, Kurdish, Pontic Greek and Georgian descent, and was a direct descendant of Kurdish mystic Sheikh Safi al-Din. Their religion But the stumbling block of Hormuz remained, a vassal kingdom that had fallen into the hands of the Spanish Habsburgs when the King of Spain inherited the throne of Portugal in 1580. [182], It achieved its greatest influence in the late Safavid and early post-Safavid era, when it dominated Twelver Shiʻi Islam. Savory, R, Iran under the Safavids, p. 66. Soleymān agreed to permit Safavid Shi’a pilgrims to make pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina as well as tombs of imams in Iraq and Arabia on condition that the shah would abolish the taburru, the cursing of the first three Rashidun caliphs. Peace of Amasya, singed between Shah Tahmasp and Suleiman the Magnificent, ends Ottoman–Safavid War and gives most of Iraq, including Baghdad, to the Ottoman Empire, while the Persians retain north-western territories in the Caucasus The Europeans began to be fascinated by the Iranians and their culture — Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (1601–02), for example, makes two references (at II.5 and III.4) to 'the Sophy', then the English term for the Shahs of Iran. Richard Tapper. They swear to a good fight and shake hands. [73] Under the Peace, the Ottomans agreed to restore Yerevan, Karabakh and Nakhjuwan to the Safavids and in turn would retain Mesopotamia (Iraq) and eastern Anatolia. Though Nimatullah was apparently Sunni, the Ni’matullahi order soon declared his order to be Shiʻi after the rise of the Safavid dynasty. The Judge is seated at one end of the room having a writer and a man of law by his side. Early on, the Safavids were at a disadvantage to the better-armed Ottomans, but they soon closed the arms gap. It is estimated that during Abbas' reign alone some 130,000–200,000 Georgians,[177][121][120][178] tens of thousands of Circassians, and around 300,000 Armenians[179][180] had been deported and imported from the Caucasus to mainland Iran, all obtaining functions and roles as part of the newly created layer in society, such as within the highest positions of the state, or as farmers, soldiers, craftspeople, as part of the Royal harem, the Court, and peasantry, amongst others. In 1527 Tahmāsp demonstrated his desire by shooting an arrow at Div Soltān before the assembled court. These cities were later inherited by his Abdali Afghan military commander, Ahmad Shah Durrani, who would go on to found the Durrani Empire in 1747. Religious poetry from Safi al-Din, written in the Old Azari language[39]—a now-extinct Northwestern Iranian language—and accompanied by a paraphrase in Persian that helps its understanding, has survived to this day and has linguistic importance.[39]. Most sources agree that the Ottoman army was at least double the size of that of Ismāʻil;[44] however, the Ottomans had the advantage of artillery, which the Safavid army lacked. Cambridge University Press. When the second Persian vakil was placed in command of a Safavid army in Transoxiana, the Qizilbash, considering it a dishonor to be obliged to serve under him, deserted him on the battlefield with the result that he was slain. But the reverse seems not to have been true. The tribal Afghans rode roughshod over their conquered territory for seven years but were prevented from making further gains by Nader Shah, a former slave who had risen to military leadership within the Afshar tribe in Khorasan, a vassal state of the Safavids. John R. Perry, "Turkic-Iranian contacts", a war with Iran that would last until 1590, conquered the Hotaki's last stronghold in Kandahar, Al-Hikma al-muta‘aliya fi-l-asfar al-‘aqliyya al-arba‘a, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, "Chronicling a Dynasty on the Make: New Light on the Early Ṣafavids in Ḥayātī Tabrīzī's, "Islamic Culture and Literature in Iran and Central Asia in the early modern period", "BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI v. Military slavery in Islamic Iran", The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600–1730, "18 Iran, Armenia and Georgia – Rise of a Shiʻi State in Iran and New Orientation in Islamic Thought and Culture", "The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors", "Georgians in the Safavid administration", Artistic and cultural history of the Safavids from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On these occasions the royal edicts were drawn up and sealed. It was also requested from them that they appoint a lawyer (vakil) to the Court who would inform them on matters pertaining to the provincial affairs. He intended to convert Iran, where most of the Persian population was Sunni, into a predominantly Shi'i population. [240] According to Professor Roger Savory:[241][242]. During the first 30 years of his long reign, he was able to suppress the internal divisions by exerting control over a strengthened central military force. While the imams and judges of law applied civil law in their practice, urf was primarily exercised by the local commissioners, who inspected the villages on behalf of the Shah, and by the Minister of Justice (Divanbegi). According to Donald Struesand, "[a]lthough the Safavid unification of the eastern and western halves of the Iranian plateau and imposition of Twelver Shiʻi Islam on the region created a recognizable precursor of modern Iran, the Safavid polity itself was neither distinctively Iranian nor national. The Shah had the absolute power over the state - and complex system of bureaucracy and rules was established so they can prevent any type of fraud. One of Tahmāsp's sisters married a Circassian, who would use his court office to team up with Tahmāsp's daughter, Pari Khān Khānum to assert themselves in succession matters after Tahmāsp's death. Shah Ismail I was the first of the Safavids to try to establish once again an alliance against the common Ottoman enemy through the earlier stages of the Habsburg–Persian alliance, but this also proved to be largely unfruitful during his reign. One result of the resolution of this conflict was the rise in importance of the concept of ijtihad and the position of the mujtahid (as opposed to other ulama) in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The next most important mount, when traveling through Iran, was the mule. The school reached its apogee with that of the Iranian philosopher Mulla Sadra who is arguably the most significant Islamic philosopher after Avicenna. [72] Temporary terms were followed by the Peace of Amasya in June 1555, ending the war with the Ottomans for the next two decades. Introduction. [61] The Qizilbash, which still suffered under the legacy of the battle of Chaldiran, was engulfed in internal rivalries. But it was Shah Safi, under influence by his Prime Minister, Saru Taqi, that initiated the program of trying to increase the royal revenues by buying land from the governors and putting in place local commissioners. "Iran and Pre-Independence Lebanon" in Houchang Esfandiar Chehabi. When Shaykh Junayd, the son of Ibrāhim, assumed the leadership of the Safaviyya in 1447, the history of the Safavid movement was radically changed. Regarding the usage of Georgian, Circassian and Armenian at the Royal Court, David Blow states,[196]. [202], Criminal justice was entirely separate from civil law and was judged upon common law administered through the Minister of Justice, local governors and the Court minister (the Nazir). Using traditional forms and materials, Reza Abbasi (1565–1635) introduced new subjects to Persian painting—semi-nude women, youth, lovers. Last but by no means least there were the palace eunuchs who were also ghulams – "white" eunuchs largely from the Caucasus, and "black" eunuchs from India and Africa. Increasingly, members of the religious class, particularly the mujtahids and the seyyeds, gained full ownership of these lands, and, according to contemporary historian Iskandar Munshi, Iran started to witness the emergence of a new and significant group of landowners. During the expansion of the empire, the Safavid regime closely resembled the Aqquyunlu and Timurid regimes that it supplanted. Abbas I also supported direct trade with Europe, particularly England and The Netherlands which sought Persian carpet, silk and textiles. Rosemary Stanfield Johnson, "Sunni Survival in Safavid Iran: Anti-Sunni Activities during the Reign of Tahmasp I,", Abolala Soudavar, "The Patronage of Vizier Mirza Salman,", harvnb error: no target: CITEREFSavory1980 (, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFBomatiNahavandi1998 (, sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFBlow2009 (, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFAsat'ianiBendianachvili1997 (. The name "Iran" disappeared from official records of the Saffarids, Samanids, Buyids, Saljuqs and their successor. Chardin was present at some feasts in Isfahan were there were more than fifty different kinds of fruit. The epic Shahnameh ("Book of Kings"), a stellar example of manuscript illumination and calligraphy, was made during Shah Tahmasp's reign. The Shah had stables in all the principal towns, and Shah Abbas was said to have about 30,000 horses in studs around the country. Power was shifting to the new class of Caucasian deportees and imports, many of the hundreds of thousands ethnic Georgians, Circassians, and Armenians. The other consisted of people from the Christian north of the empire. The revenue came not so much from exports, as from the custom charges and transit dues levied on goods passing through the country. [168] Shah Tahmasp introduced a change to this, when he, and the other Safavid rulers who succeeded him, sought to blur the formerly defined lines between the two linguistic groups, by taking the sons of Turkic-speaking officers into the royal household for their education in the Persian language. The latter was the final appeal in civil and criminal cases, and his office stood next to the main entrance to the Ali Qapu palace. Both corps of musketeers and artillerymen totaled 12,000 men. His painting and calligraphic style influenced Iranian artists for much of the Safavid period, which came to be known as the Isfahan school. In addition the shah's personal bodyguard, made up exclusively of Caucasian ghulāms, was dramatically increased to 3,000. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. The first two years of Tahmāsp's reign was consumed with Div Sultān’s efforts to eliminate Ustajlu from power. At the fourth invasion in 1553, it was now clear that Tahmāsp followed a policy of annexation and resettlement as he gained control over Tbilisi (Tiflis) and the region of Kartli while physically transplanting more than 30,000 people to the central Iranian heartlands. Ismāʻil exploited the first element to seize power in Iran. The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughals were all explosive realms. Thus came the term "Turk and Tajik", which was used by native Iranians for many generations to describe the Persianate, or Turko-Persian, nature of many dynasties which ruled over Greater Iran between the 12th and 20th centuries, in that these dynasties promoted and helped continue the dominant Persian linguistic and cultural identity of their states, although the dynasties themselves were of non-Persian (e.g. Whether Abbas had fully formed his strategy at the onset, at least in retrospect his method of restoring the shah's authority involved three phases: (1) restoration of internal security and law and order; (2) recovery of the eastern territories from the Uzbeks; and (3) recovery of the western territories from the Ottomans. The two wrestlers were covered in grease. Shah Abbas ordered a general massacre in Beradost and Mukriyan (Mahabad, reported by Eskandar Beg Monshi, Safavid Historian (1557–1642), in "Alam Ara Abbasi") and resettled the Turkic Afshar tribe in the region while deporting many Kurdish tribes to Khorasan. (This book was written by Ferdousi in 1000 AD for Sultan Mahmood Ghaznawi) Another manuscript is the Khamsa by Nizami executed 1539–1543 by Aqa Mirak and his school in Isfahan. George Lenczowski, "Iran under the Pahlavis", Hoover Institution Press, 1978, p. 79: "Ismail Safavi, descendant of the pious Shaykh Ishaq Safi al-Din (d. 1334), seized Tabriz assuming the title of Shahanshah-e-Iran". (1986). Although the Safavids are of Iranian origin, they claimed they were descended from the prophet Muhammad. However, a mutiny among his officers who refused to spend the winter at Tabriz forced him to withdraw across territory laid waste by the Safavid forces, eight days later". Stanford Jay Shaw. They were the continuers of the classical tradition of Islamic thought, which after Averroes died in the Arab west. Safavid dynasty, (1501–1736), ruling dynasty of Iran whose establishment of Twelver Shiʿism as the state religion of Iran was a major factor in the emergence of a unified national consciousness among the various ethnic and linguistic elements of the country. [92] Mohammad would rule for 10 years, and his sister at first dominated the court, but she fell in the first of many intrigues which continued even though the Uzbeks and Ottomans again used the opportunity to threaten Safavid territory. With the Safavid state and its territories secured, in 1738 Nader conquered the Hotaki's last stronghold in Kandahar; in the same year, in need of fortune to aid his military careers against his Ottoman and Russian imperial rivals, he started his invasion of the wealthy but weak Mughal Empire accompanied by his Georgian subject Erekle II,[152] occupying Ghazni, Kabul, Lahore, and as far as Delhi, in India, when he completely humiliated and looted the militarily inferior Mughals. [198], In 16th and 17th century Iran, there existed a considerable number of local democratic institutions. They give up war against the Ottomans and are unable to … In 1511, the Şahkulu rebellion was a widespread pro-Shia and pro-Safavid uprising directed against the Ottoman Empire from within the empire. The Safavid Empire was driven and inspired by religious faith, but rapidly built the foundations of strong central secular government and administration. What remained unchanged, however, was the constant threat of local disaffection with the weak central authority. Clothes that became soiled in any way were changed immediately. The Safavid dynasty under Shah Ismail (961/1501) adopted Persian and the Shiʻite form of Islam as the national language and religion. In the midst of these foreign perils, rebellion broke out in Khorasan fomented by (or on behalf of) Mohammad's son, Abbas. [101] The following year the loyal Qizilbash forces (the Turkmen and Takkalu who controlled Qazvin), with vizier Mirza Salman and crown prince Sultan Hamza Mirza at their head, confronted the rebelling Ustajlu-Shamlu coalition which had assumed control of Khorasan under the nominal rule of young Abbas. After Uzun Hassan's death, his son Ya'qub felt threatened by the growing Safavid religious influence. Savory, Roger: Iran under the Safavids, pp. In the 16th century, the Turcophone Safavid family of Ardabil in Azerbaijan, probably of Turkicized Iranian, origin, conquered Iran and established Turkic, the language of the court and the military, as a high-status vernacular and a widespread contact language, influencing spoken Persian, while written Persian, the language of high literature and civil administration, remained virtually unaffected in status and content. Savory, Roger M.; Karamustafa, Ahmet T. (1998), "Empire" as a description of foreign policy, This page was last edited on 31 December 2020, at 20:49. [119][120][121][122] After fully securing the region, he executed the rebellious Luarsab II of Kartli and later had the Georgian queen Ketevan, who had been sent to the shah as negotiator, tortured to death when she refused to renounce Christianity, in an act of revenge for the recalcitrance of Teimuraz. Abbas I first fought the Uzbeks, recapturing Herat and Mashhad in 1598. Also the [30] His relationships with his Qizilbash followers were also fundamentally altered. The Safavids launched a vigorous campaign to convert what was then a predominantly Sunni population by persuasion and by force. From this time the state began to take on a more Persian character. The Iran Safavid Empire and Shi’ism. Valerie Ramirez Economy Religion Subtitle Economy The Safavid spent money one thing exspecially, that was gun powder. "[243] Rudolph Matthee concluded that "[t]hough not a nation-state, Safavid Iran contained the elements that would later spawn one by generating many enduring bureaucratic features and by initiating a polity of overlapping religious and territorial boundaries. The army of Christian northerners were modeled after Ottoman janissaries, shown in Despite being based on urf, it relied upon certain sets of legal principles. The crown prince (the vizier's son-in-law) meekly turned him over, and the Qizilbash executed him and confiscated his property. From 1500-2 Ismail became king of the Safavid Empire and proclaimed himself the hidden Imam and a manifestation of divinity. [210], Under the governance of the strong shahs, especially during the first half of the 17th century, traveling through Iran was easy because of good roads and the caravanserais, that were strategically placed along the route. [153] There were large Shiʻi communities in some cities like Qom and Sabzevar as early as the 8th century. Along with the Mughal Empire in India, they were two of the three “Gunpowder Empires.” Muslim traditions influenced both empires. Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire: Abisaab, Rula: Amazon.nl Selecteer uw cookievoorkeuren We gebruiken cookies en vergelijkbare tools om uw winkelervaring te verbeteren, onze services aan te bieden, te begrijpen hoe klanten onze services gebruiken zodat we verbeteringen kunnen aanbrengen, en om advertenties weer te geven. The language chiefly used by the Safavid court and military establishment was Azerbaijani. [107] Before he could begin to embark on the first stage, he needed relief from the most serious threat to the empire: the military pressure from the Ottomans. Later that year, when the shah summoned them to join him on a hunting expedition in Mazandaran, they didn't show up due to the fear they would be either imprisoned or killed. Dabashi, H. (1996) 'Mir Damad and the Founding of the School of Isfahan', in SH Nasr and O. Leaman (eds) History of Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, ch. [197], On a local level, the government was divided into public land and royal possessions. By 1595, Allahverdi Khan, a Georgian, became one of the most powerful men in the Safavid state, when he was appointed the Governor-General of Fars, one of the richest provinces in Iran. V. Minorsky, "The Poetry of Shāh Ismā‘īl I". History of the Ottoman Empire. But the Portuguese ambassador to the Safavids, De Gouvea, still mentions the Council of State[189] in his records, which perhaps was a term for governmental gatherings of the time. The second most senior appointment was the Grand Steward (Ichik Agasi bashi), who would always accompany the Shah and was easily recognizable because of the great baton that he carried with him. Although already by the early years of king Abbas' reign (r. 1588–1629) they were no longer controlling the state, the Turkoman Qizilbash continued to provide many of the senior army officers and to fill important administrative and ceremonial offices in the royal household. That condition would not change (and in fact it would worsen) until Tahmāsp's grandson, Abbas I, assumed the throne. [80] Their formation, implementation, and usage was very much alike to the janissaries of the neighbouring Ottoman Empire. A separate official, the Commander-in-Chief, was appointed to be the head of these officials. [233], The Safavids by the time of their rise were Azerbaijani-speaking although they also used Persian as a second language. [79], Tahmāsp also planted the seeds that would, unintentionally, produce change much later. The Iran Safavid Empire was founded in 1501 by Ismail. But the decade of civil war had exposed the empire to foreign danger and Tahmāsp had to turn his attention to the repeated raids by the Uzbeks. According to William Cleveland and Martin Bunton,[222] the establishment of Isfahan as the Great capital of Iran and the material splendor of the city attracted intellectual's from all corners of the world, which contributed to the city's rich cultural life. After Safī al-Dīn, the leadership of the Safaviyya passed to Sadr al-Dīn Mūsā († 794/1391–92). They in turn would be replaced by the Shamlu, whose amir, Husain Khan, became the chief adviser. Although the Arabic language was still the medium for religious scholastic expression, it was precisely under the Safavids that hadith complications and doctrinal works of all sorts were being translated to Persian. The writer Ṛūmlu documented the most important of them in his history. Thus, the majority of the people suffered from rapacity and corruption carried out in the name of the Shah. However, the brief puppet regime of Ismail III ended in 1760 when Karim Khan felt strong enough to take nominal power of the country as well and officially end the Safavid dynasty. Sign in|Recent Site Activity|Report Abuse|Print Page|Powered By Google Sites. The growth of Safavid economy was fuelled by the stability which allowed the agriculture to thrive, as well as trade, due to Iran's position between the burgeoning civilizations of Europe to its west and India and Islamic Central Asia to its east and north. 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