Safavids: Encyclopedia II - Safavids - Rise of the Safavid state

Safavids - Rise of the Safavid state

Safavids - Beginnings

During the 15th century, the Ottomans expanded across Anatolia and centralized control by prosecuting Shi'ism. They outlawed it at the turn of the century. In 1501, various disaffected militia from Azerbaijan and eastern Anatolia collectively called the Kizilbash (Azeri for "red heads" due to their red headgear) united with the Ardabil Safaviyeh to capture Tabriz from the then ruling Sunni Turkmen alliance known as Ak Koyunlu (The White Sheep Emirate) under Alwand's leadership.

The Safiviyeh was headed by a fifteen-year old, Ismail I. He was Junayd's grandson and a descendant, on his father's side of Sheikh Safi Al-Din, and, on his mother's side, the grandson of Uzun Hasan, the founder of the Ak Koyunlu. To establish political provenance, the Safavid rulers claimed to be descended from Imam Ali and his wife Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, through the seventh Imam Musa al-Kazim. To further legitimize his power, Ismail I also added claims of royal Sassanian heritage after becoming Shah.

With the capture of Tabriz, the Safavid dynasty began. In May 1501, Ismail I declared Tabriz his capital and himself Shah of Azerbaijan. Ismail I continued to expand his base in northwestern Iran. He was declared Shah of Iran in 1502. Throughout the rest of the decade Ismail I fended off attacks from the Ottomans, stamped out the remnants of the Ak Koyunlu and continued to expand his territory — Hamadan in 1503, Shiraz and Kerman in 1504, Najaf and Karbala in 1507, Van in 1508, Baghdad in 1509, Khorasan and Herat in 1510. By 1511 the Uzbeks in the north-east were driven across the Oxus River where they captured Samarkand establishing the Shaibanid dynasty, and from which they would continue to attack the Safavids. During his reign, the official language at the royal court was Azeri.

In the meantime, the navy-less Safavids lost the island of Hormuz to the Portuguese in 1507.

In 1514, the Ottoman Sultan Selim I invaded western Armenia causing the under-prepared Safavid army to retreat. The Safavids were armed with swords and bows while the Ottomans had muskets and artillery. The Ottomans pushed further and on August 23, 1514 managed to engage the Safavids in the Battle of Chaldiran west of Tabriz. The Safavids were defeated and, as the Ottoman force moved on Tabriz, engaged in scorched-earth combat. Tabriz was taken but the Ottoman army refused to follow the Safavids into the Persian highlands and by winter retreated from Tabriz. This warfare pattern repeated itself under Shah Tahmasp I and Sultan Suleiman I.

Safavids - Establishment of Shi'ism as the state religion

Ismail I embraced Shi'a Islam, which he made mandatory for the whole nation upon penalty of death. Ismail forced conversion of the local population to Shi'ism. The Sunni Ulama, the religious authority, were either killed or exiled. Ismail brought in Shi'a religious leaders, granted them land and money in return for loyalty — in effect making them a religious aristocracy and an extension of the government. Despite Safavid's origins, even unofficial Sufi groups were prohibited. This was the first time since the fall of the Fatimid Caliphate in 1171 that this sect had attained such high levels of power in the Islamic world. In the following centuries, this religious schism would both cement both Iran's internal cohesion and nationalistic separateness and provoke attacks by its Sunni neighbors.

Iran became a feudal theocracy: there was no separation of religion and state; the Shah was held to be divinely ordained head of both. The Qizilbashi chiefs were assigned the position of Vakil, offices in charge of the provincial administrative. Initially, the Safavids had only indirect control over the provinces, however throughout the sixteenth century the Qizilbash solidified their dominion over the provinces and vied with the Shah for power. The Qizilbashi tribes were essential to the military of Iran and during weak shahs, the vakils were able to elbow more influence and participate in court intrigues (assassinating Shah Ismail II for example). Constant wars with the Ottomans made Shah Tahmasp I move the capital from Tabriz, which was chronically being captured by the Ottoman troops, into the interior city of Qazvin in 1548. Later, Shah Abbas I moved the capital even deeper into central Iranian city of Isfahan, building a new city next to the ancient Persian one. From this time the state began to take on a more Persian character. The Safavids ultimately succeeded in establishing a new Persian national monarchy.

Safavids - Shah Abbas

The greatest of the Safavid monarchs, Shah Abbas I (1587–1629) came to power in 1587 aged 16 following the forced abdication of his father, Shah Muhammad Khudābanda, and having survived Qizilbashi court intrigues and murders. He recognized the ineffectualness of his army which was consistently being defeated by the Ottomans who had captured Georgia and Armenia and by Uzbeks who had captured Mashhad and Sistan in the east. First he sued for peace in 1590 with the Ottomans giving away territory in the north-west. Then an English general, Robert Sherley, helped Abbas I to reorganize the Shah's soldiers into an officer-paid and well-trained standing army similar to a European model (which the Ottomans had already adopted). He wholeheartedly adopted the use of gunpowder. The army divisions were: Ghulams ('crown servants or slaves' usually conscripted from Armenian, Georgian and Circassian lands), Tofongchis (musketeers), and Topchis (artillery-men).

Abbas I first fought the Uzbeks, recapturing Herat and Mashhad in 1598. Then he turned against the Ottomans recapturing Baghdad, eastern Iraq and the Caucasian provinces by 1622. He also used his new force to dislodge the Portuguese from Bahrain (1602) and, with English navy, from Hormuz (1622) in the Persian Gulf (a vital link in Portuguese trade with India). He expanded commercial links with the English East India Company and the Dutch East India Company. Thus Abbas I was able to break the dependence on the Qizilbash for military might and centralize control.

The Ottoman Turks and Safavids fought over the fertile plains of Iraq for more than 150 years. The capture of Baghdad by Ismail I in 1509 was only followed by its loss to the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I in 1534. After subsequent campaigns, the Safavids recaptured Baghdad in 1623 yet lost it again to Murad IV in 1638. Henceforth a treaty, signed in Qasr-e Shirin, was established delineating a border between Iran and Turkey in 1639, a border which still stands in northwest Iran/southeast Turkey. The more than century of tug-of-war accentuated the Sunni and Shi'a rift in Iraq.

In 1609-1610, a long battle broke out between Kurds and Safavid Empire. It took place around a fortress called "Dimdim" located in Beradost region around Lake Urmia in north western Iran. In 1609, the ruined structure was rebuilt by "Emîr Xan Lepzêrîn" (Golden Hand Khan), ruler of Beradost, who sought to maintain the independence of his expanding principality in the face of both Ottoman and Safavid penetration into the region. Rebuilding of Dimdim was considered a move toward independence that could threaten Safavid power in the northwest. Many Kurds, including the rulers of Mukriyan (Mahabad), rallied around Amir Khan. After a long and bloody siege led by the Safavid grand vizier Hatem Beg, which lasted from November 1609 to the summer of 1610, Dimdim was captured. Shah Abbas ordered a general massacre in Beradost and Mukriyan(Mahabad) (Reported by Eskandar Beg Monshi, Safavid Historian (1557-1642) in the Book "Alam Ara Abbasi") and resettled the Turkish Afshar tribe in the region while deporting many Kurdish tribes to Khorasan. (see [1] and [2]). Also see " O. Dzh. Dzhalilov, Kurdski geroicheski epos Zlatoruki Khan" (The Kurdish heroic epic Gold-hand Khan), Moscow, 1967. Nowadays There is a community of nearly 1.7 million people who are descendants of the tribes deported from Kurdistan to Khurasan (Northeastern Iran) by the Safavids. For a map of these areas see [3].

Due to his obsessive fear of assassination, Shah Abbas either put to death or blinded any member of his family who aroused his suspicion. In this way one of his sons was executed and two blinded. Since two other sons had predeceased him, the result was personal tragedy for Shah Abbas. When he died on 19 January 1629, he had no son capable of succeeding him. ( see Encyclopaedia Iranica at [4] under "Abbas I the Great", page 75). The beginning of the 17th century saw the power of the Qizilbash decline, the original militia that had helped Ismail I capture Tabriz and which over the century had insinuated themselves as entitled bureaucrats in the administration. Power was shifting to a new class of merchants, many of them ethnic Armenians, Georgians and Indians.

At its zenith, during the long reign of Shah Abbas I the empire's reach comprised Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Safavids - Conflict between Turkmens and Persians during the Safavid Period

A major problem faced by Ismail I after the establishment of the Safavid state was how to bridge the gap between the two major ethnic groups in that state: the Qezelbash Turkmens, the "men of the sword" of classical Islamic society whose military prowess had brought him to power, and the Persian elements, the "men of the pen," who filled the ranks of the bureaucracy and the religious establishment in the Safavid state as they had done for centuries under previous rulers of Persia, be they Arabs, Turkic, Mongols, or Turkmens. As Minorsky put it, friction between these two groups was inevitable, because the Qezelbash "were no party to the national Persian tradition". Between 1508 and 1524, the year of Ismail's death, the shah appointed five successive Persians to the office of vakil. When the second Persian "vakil" was placed in command of a Safavid army in Transoxiana, the Qezelbash, considering it a dishonor to be obliged to serve under him, deserted him on the battlefield with the result that he was slain. The fourth vakil was murdered by the Qezelbash, and the fifth was put to death by them.(see Encyclopedia Iranica)

Safavids - Economy

What fueled the growth of Safavid economy was Iran's position between the burgeoning civilizations of Europe to its west and India and Islamic Central Asia to its east and north. The Silk Road which led through northern Iran to India revived in the 16th century. Abbas I also supported direct trade with Europe, particularly England and The Netherlands which sought Iranian carpets, silk and textiles. Other exports were horses, goat hair, pearls and an inedible bitter almond hadam-talka used as specie in India. The main imports were specie, textiles (woolens from Europe, cottons from Gujarat), spices, metals, coffee and sugar.

Safavids - Culture

Culture flourished under Safavid patronage. Shah Ismail I himself wrote poems in Azeri, as well as in Persian and Arabic, while Shah Tahmasp was a painter. Shah Abbas recognized the commercial benefit of promoting the arts - artisan products provided much of Iran's foreign trade.

In this period, handicrafts such as tilemaking, pottery and textiles developed and great advances were made in miniature painting, bookbinding, decoration and calligraphy. In the sixteenth century, carpet weaving evolved from a nomadic and peasant craft to a well-executed industry with specialization of design and manufacturing. Tabriz was the center of this industry. The carpets of Ardebil were commissioned to commemorate the Safavid dynasty. The elegantly baroque yet famously misnamed 'Polonaise' carpets were made in Iran during the seventeenth century.

Using traditional forms and materials, Reza Abbasi (1565–1635) introduced new subjects to Persian painting — semi-nude women, youth, lovers. His painting and calligraphic style influenced Iranian artists for much of the Safavid period, which came to be known as the Isfahan school. Increased contact with distant cultures in the 17th century, especially Europe, provided a boost of inspiration to Iranian artists who adopted modeling, foreshortening, spatial recession, and the medium of oil painting (Shah Abbas II sent Zaman to study in Rome). The epic Shahnameh (Book of Kings), a stellar example of manuscript illumination and calligraphy, was made during Shah Tahmasp's reign. Another manuscript is the Khamsa by Nezami executed 1539-43 by Aqa Mirak and his school in Isfahan.

Isfahan bears the most prominent samples of the Safavid architecture, all constructed in the years after Shah Abbas I permanently moved the capital there in 1598: the Imperial Mosque, Masjid-e Shah, completed in 1630, the Imami Mosque,Masjid-e Imami, the Lutfullah Mosque and the Royal Palace.

Poetry stagnated under the Safavids; the great medieval ghazal form languished in over-the-top lyricism. Poetry lacked the royal patronage of other arts and was hemmed in by religious prescriptions.

One of the most renowned Muslim philosophers, Mulla Sadra, lived during Shah Abbas I's reign and wrote the Asfar, a meditation on what he called 'metaphilosophy' which brought to a synthesis the philosophical mysticism of Sufism, the theology of Shi'ism, and the Peripatetic and Illuminationist philosophies of Avicenna and Suhrawardi. Iskander Beg Monshi’s History of Shah Abbas the Great written a few years after its subject's death, achieved a nuanced depth of history and character.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Rise of the Safavid state", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki