Turkic origins. Of these various movements, the Safavid Qizilbash was the most politically resilient, and due to its success Shah Ismail I gained political prominence in 1501. 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,[155] occupying Ghazni, Kabul, Lahore, and as far as Delhi, in India, when he completely humiliated and looted the militarily inferior Mughals. [218] 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. Those who joined Mughal service were enrolled as mansabdars - an individual who holds a mansab, meaning a position or rank. Alien shrines were vandalised, and Sufi mystic groups forbidden. [194] As a result of Abbas' reforms, they held high offices in the army, the administration and the royal household. 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 Imam Mosque (Masjid-e Imami) the Lutfallah Mosque and the Royal Palace. In 1726 an Afghan group destroyed the ruling dynasty. But the reverse seems not to have been true. He thought that there was nothing like it in France or Italy:[208]. Moreover, he began to strengthen Shii practice by such things as forbidding in the new capital of Qazvin poetry and music which did not esteem Ali and the Twelve Imams. Chardin was present at some feasts in Isfahan were there were more than fifty different kinds of fruit. Stefan Sperl, C. Shackle, Nicholas Awde, "Qasida poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa", Brill Academic Pub; Set Only edition (February 1996), p. 193: "Like Shah Ni'mat Allah-i Vali he hosted distinguished visitors among them Ismail Safavi, who had proclaimed himself Shahanshah of Iran in 1501 after having taken Tabriz, the symbolic and political capital of Iran". [212], Horses were the most important of all the beasts of burden, and the best were brought in from Arabia and Central-Asia. PORTRAIT OF A SUFI SAINT MUGHAL INDIA, FIRST HALF 17TH CENTURY Painting 3 1. Anthony Bryer. Abbas I first fought the Uzbeks, recapturing Herat and Mashhad in 1598. Thus, the majority of the people suffered from rapacity and corruption carried out in the name of the Shah. Savory, Roger M.; Karamustafa, Ahmet T. (1998), This page was last edited on 6 April 2023, at 01:37. It was the Safavids who made Iran the spiritual bastion of Shiism, and the repository of Persian cultural traditions and self-awareness of Iranianhood, acting as a bridge to modern Iran. The Safavids were descended from Sheikh af al-Dn (12531334) of Ardabl, head of the Sufi order of afaviyyeh (afawiyyah). The dependence of Abbas on the Qizilbash (which provided the only military force) was further reinforced by the precarious situation of the empire, in the vice of Ottoman and Uzbek territorial plunder. In the 10th and 11th centuries the Buwayhids, who were of the Zaidiyyah branch of Shia Islam, ruled in Fars, Isfahan and Baghdad. The Safavid dynasty had its origin in the Safavid order of Sufism, which was established in the city of Ardabil in the Iranian Azerbaijan region. The Safavids ruled from 1501 to 1722 (experiencing a brief restoration from 1729 to 1736 and 1750 to 1773) and, at their height, they controlled all of what is now Iran, Republic of Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Armenia, eastern Georgia, parts of the North Caucasus including Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, as well as parts of Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Economically robust and politically stable, this period saw a flourishing growth of theological sciences. He also used his new force to dislodge the Portuguese from Bahrain (1602) and, with English help, from Hormuz (1622), in the Persian Gulf (a vital link in Portuguese trade with India). Roemer, The Safavid Period, in Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. There is some indication that Mirza Salman was the chief conspirator. [2] The Safavid Empire of Persia - ThoughtCo Go to the primary resource. In any event, he was ultimately killed (according to some accounts) by his Circassian half-sister, Pari Khn Khnum, who championed him over Haydar. The Safavids ruled from 1501 to 1722 (experiencing a brief restoration from 1729 to 1736 and 1750 to 1773) and, at their height, they controlled all of what is now Iran, Republic of Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Armenia, eastern Georgia, parts of the North Caucasus including Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, as well as parts of Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. [122][123][124][125] 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. Ismil was known as a brave and charismatic youth, zealous with regards to his faith in Sha Islam, and believed himself to be of divine descentpractically worshipped by his Qizilbash followers. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. The Safavid and Ottoman empires are usually compared because of the wars that broke . No act of the Shah was valid without the counter seal of the Prime Minister. State criminals were subjected to the karkan, a triangular wooden collar placed around the neck. As part of its completion, he greatly expanded the ghulam military corps from just a few hundred during Tahmsp's era, to 15,000 highly trained cavalrymen,[174] as part of a whole army division of 40,000 Caucasian ghulams. This led to power being exercised through the highest officials of the ulama, the Ayatollahs. [180], The Akhbari movement "crystalized" as a "separate movement" with the writings of Muhammad Amin al-Astarabadi (died 1627 AD). 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. Majlisi's works emphasized his desire to purge Twelver Shiism of the influences of mysticism and philosophy, and to propagate an ideal of strict adherence to the Islamic law (sharia). just another region to be gained and lost according to geopolitical circumstances and military strength or weakness. [158], Nevertheless, the Iranian society during the Safavids was that of a hierarchy, with the Shah at the apex of the hierarchical pyramid, the common people, merchants and peasants at the base, and the aristocrats in between. When he reached the capital with Abbas a public demonstration in the boy's favor decided the issue, and Shah Mohammad voluntarily handed over the insignia of kingship to his son, who was crowned Abbas I on October 1, 1588. [149] The end of the reign of Abbas II, 1666, thus marked the beginning of the end of the Safavid dynasty. Thus Div Soltn emerged victorious in the first palace struggle, but he fell victim to Chuha Sultn of the Takkalu, who turned Tahmsp against his first mentor. As the scale and frequency of Ottoman military successes declined, however, the proportion of slaves on the Ottoman market supplied by the Tatars increased. In 1500, Ismil I invaded neighboring Shirvan to avenge the death of his father, Sheik Haydar, who had been murdered in 1488 by the ruling Shirvanshah, Farrukh Yassar. It seems likely that most, if not all, of the Turkoman grandees at the court also spoke Persian, which was the language of the administration and culture, as well as of the majority of the population. In 1598, when Shah Abbas decided to move the capital of his Iranian empire from the north-western city of Qazvin to the central city of Isfahan, he initiated what would become one of the greatest programmes in Iranian history; the complete remaking of the city. Almost simultaneously with the emergence of the Safavid Empire, the Mughal Empire, founded by the Timurid heir Babur, was developing in South-Asia. [197], In 16th and 17th century Iran, there existed a considerable number of local democratic institutions. Extortion, intimidation and harassment were practiced against Sunnis.[88]. The majority were deported to Iran, while some were slaughtered. Polemics and Confessional Ambiguity | The Caliph and the Imam: The But the decade of civil war had exposed the empire to foreign danger and Tahmsp had to turn his attention to the repeated raids by the Uzbeks. These three empires all had military strength, Sovereign Pride, Religious commitment, and Aesthetic sophistication in common to varying degrees. [3][5], The Safavid Kings themselves claimed to be sayyids,[16] family descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, although many scholars have cast doubt on this claim. 5 Pages. Their patronage, which included opening royal workshops for artists, created a favourable climate for the development of art. For art to succeed at this scale, patronage had to come from the top. To promote Shi'ism the Safavids brought in scholars from Shi'ite countries to form a new religious elite. to Iran, especially those from Jabal Amel in Lebanon, led to the strength of the theoretical and intellectual foundation of the Shiite government of Safavids. He returned to Kartli, and in two punitive campaigns he devastated Tbilisi, killed 6070,000 Kakheti Georgian peasants, and deported between 130,000 and 200,000 Georgian captives to mainland Iran. Moreover, Shah Abbas's conversion to a ghulam-based military, though expedient in the short term, had, over the course of a century, weakened the country's strength by requiring heavy taxation and control over the provinces. And since agriculture accounted for by far largest share of tax revenue, he took measures to expand it. The language chiefly used by the Safavid court and military establishment was Azerbaijani. The Russo-Persian War of 1651-1653 was an armed conflict in the North Caucasus fought between the Safavid Empire and the Tsardom of Russia, associated with the Safavid plans to strengthen its position in the region and to exclude Russia. What were some of the strengths of the Ottoman Empire? [116] This force of well-trained Caucasian ghulams under Abbas amounted to a total of near 40,000 soldiers paid for and beholden to the Shah. As a result, Iran was cut off from overseas links to East Africa, the Arabian peninsula, and South Asia. Founded by Shah Ismail I, the empire stretched . Religious poetry from Safi al-Din, written in the Old Azari language[42]a now-extinct Northwestern Iranian languageand accompanied by a paraphrase in Persian that helps its understanding, has survived to this day and has linguistic importance.[42]. The name "Iran" disappeared from official records of the Saffarids, Samanids, Buyids, Saljuqs and their successor. [16], c Court,[17][18][19] religious dignitaries, military,[15][20][21][22] mother tongue,[15] poetry. Quickly making a name as a military genius both feared and respected amongst the empire's friends and enemies (including Iran's archrival the Ottoman Empire, and Russia; both empires Nader would deal with soon afterwards), Nader Shah easily defeated the Afghan Hotaki forces in the 1729 Battle of Damghan. With their major enemy keeping quiet, the Safavid Shahs became complacent, and then corrupt and decadent. Due to the great spiritual charisma of Safi al-Din, the order was later known as the Safaviyya. The latter were all secular functionaries working on behalf of the Shah.[200]. The Ottoman Empire was motivated by an interest in spreading their religion which is Islam. Anthony Bryer. During his reign he had realized while both looking to his own empire and that of the neighboring Ottomans, that there were dangerous rivalling factions and internal family rivalries that were a threat to the heads of state. Abbas was unable to comply. In earlier times, the Shah had been closely involved in judicial proceedings, but this part of the royal duty was neglected by Shah Safi and the later kings. The Spanish demanded Abbas break off relations with the English before they would consider relinquishing the town. Turkic) origins. [83] Despite that Tahmsp could nullify and neglect some of his consternations regarding potential issues related to his family by having his close direct male relatives such as his brothers and sons routinely transferred around to various governorships in the empire, he understood and realized that any long-term solutions would mainly involve minimizing the political and military presence of the Qezelb as a whole. 1007 Words. It became a military group as well as a religious one in the 15th century. The Safavid and Ottoman empires are usually compared because of the wars that broke . A Study of the Migration of Shii Works from Arab Regions to Iran at the Early Safavid Era. The two parties with their witnesses pleaded their respective cases, usually without any counsel, and the judge would pass his judgment after the first or second hearing. In 1585 two events occurred that would combine to break the impasse among the Qizilbash. [67] In the absence of a charismatic, messianic rallying figure like the young Ismail, the tribal leaders reclaimed their traditional prerogative and threatened to return to the time of local warlords. And the Naqsh-e Jahan Square ("Examplar of the World"). In addition to fighting its perennial enemies, their archrival the Ottomans and the Uzbeks as the 17th century progressed, Iran had to contend with the rise of new neighbors. Realizing the limits of his military strength, Abbs made peace with the Ottomans on unfavourable terms in 1590 and directed his onslaughts against the Uzbeks. A year after his victory in Tabriz, Ismil I claimed most of Iran as part of his territory,[31] and within 10 years established a complete control over all of it. Abbs I, byname Abbs the Great, (born Jan. 27, 1571died Jan. 19, 1629), shah of Persia from 1588 to 1629, who strengthened the Safavid dynasty by expelling Ottoman and Uzbek troops from Persian soil and by creating a standing army. This meant that even the Prime Minister, who held the highest office in the state, had to work in association with the Nazir when it came to managing those transactions that directly related to the Shah.[190]. The judge (qazi) was informed of relevant points involved and would decide whether or not to take up the case. In order not to favor one Turkic tribe over another and to avoid inflaming the Turk-Persian enmity, he recruited his army from the "third force", a policy that had been implemented in its baby-steps since the reign of Tahmasp Ithe Circassian, Georgian and to a lesser extent Armenian ghulms (slaves) which (after conversion to Islam) were trained for the military or some branch of the civil or military administration. 1. 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". 1977, p. 77. The Qizilbash were a wide variety of Shii Muslims (ghult) and mostly Turcoman militant groups who helped found the Safavid Empire. After Uzun Hassan's death, his son Ya'qub felt threatened by the growing Safavid religious influence. [90] Shortly after the installation of Ismail II on August 22, 1576, Haydar was beheaded. [31] Junayd sought refuge with the rival of Kara Koyunlu Jahan Shah, the Aq Qoyunlu (White Sheep Turkomans) Khan Uzun Hassan, and cemented his relationship by marrying Uzun Hassan's sister, Khadija Begum. The consequences of the defeat at Chaldiran were also psychological for Ismil: the defeat destroyed Ismil's belief in his invincibility, based on his claimed divine status. The people of the Empire soon embraced the new faith with enthusiasm, celebrating Shi'ite festivals with great piety. It was a grading system used by the Mughals to fix rank, salary and military responsibilities. Women from the provinces and slaves pierced their left nostrils with rings, but well-born Persian women would not do this. [91] While the murderous actions of Ismail might be explained by political prudence (Ottoman sultans occasionally purged the bloodline to prevent succession rivals[92]), his actions against Shia suggest retaliation against his father, who saw himself as a pious practitioner. The Safavid dynasty was one of Iran's most powerful ruling families, ruling from 1501 to 1736. In 1732 by the Treaty of Resht and in 1735 Treaty of Ganja, he negotiated an agreement with the government of Empress Anna Ioanovna that resulted in the return of the recently annexed Iranian territories, making most of the Caucasus fall back into Iranian hands, while establishing an Irano-Russian alliance against the common neighbouring Ottoman enemy. "[93] His conduct might also be explained by his drug use. Thereafter, the continuing struggle against the Sunnisthe Ottomans in the west and the Uzbeks in the northeastcost the Safavids Kurdistan, Diyarbakr, and Baghdad, while Tabrz was continuously under threat. In addition the shah's personal bodyguard, made up exclusively of Caucasian ghulms, was dramatically increased to 3,000. The moment was grave for the empire, with the Ottomans deep in Iranian territory in the west and north and the Uzbeks in possession of half of Khorasan in the east.[107]. [110] 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. Show More. Civilian and Military Power (Ottoman Empire) | International The Portuguese Empire and the discovery of the trading route around the Cape of Good Hope in 1487 not only hit a death blow to Venice as a trading nation, but it also hurt the trade that was going on along the Silk Road and especially the Persian Gulf. "They were granted control over land and . They also reduced the importance of the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), replacing it with pilgrimage to Shi'ite shrines. In 700/1301, Safi al-Din assumed the leadership of the Zahediyeh, a significant Sufi order in Gilan, from his spiritual master and father-in-law Zahed Gilani. [148], The Dutch and English were still able to drain the Iranian government of much of its precious metal supplies. Numbers of Red Heads, Safavid followers because of their red headgear increased. [50] As such, he was the last in the line of hereditary Grand Masters of the Safaviyeh order, prior to its ascent to a ruling dynasty. 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 Muhammad Zaman to study in Rome). [128], Teimuraz returned to eastern Georgia in 1615 and defeated a Safavid force. Daggers were worn at the waist. Everything is either over-simplified or reduced to a wearisome incomprehensibility. The Safavid Empire also differed from the Ottoman and Mughal Empires because it was an official Shi'ite empire. These series of wars were the result of expansionism and the desire for control of the Middle East by both sides, specifically the threat that the Safavids posed to Ottoman territory. 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. A leisurely form of amusement was to be found in the cabarets, particularly in certain districts, like those near the mausoleum of Harun-e Velayat. 1867. Usually neither Persian nor European authors mention in which language people communicated with each other. [30] The Safavid Shh Ism'l I established the Twelver denomination of Sha Islam as the official religion of the empire, marking one of the most important turning points in the history of Islam. Safavid culture is often admired for the large-scale city planning and architecture, achievements made during the reign of later shahs, but the arts of persian miniature, book-binding and calligraphy, in fact, never received as much attention as they did during his time. The Ilkhanid ruler ljait converted to Twelver Shiism in the 13th century. Safavids - Islamic Studies - Oxford Bibliographies - obo Trade with the West and industry expanded, communications improved. For instance, the Qajar dynasty (1789-1925), the first major dynasty to succeed the Safavids, continued the tradition of Safavid book arts, painting, and architecture. Indeed, one of the greatest legacies of the Safavids is the architecture. In the 15th century the brotherhood became more militarily aggressive, and waged a jihad (Islamic holy war) against parts of what are now modern Turkey and Georgia. Although already by the early years of king Abbas' reign (r. 15881629) 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. Safavid Empire - History, Information & Facts - Iran Safar Travel [95] 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. Subsequently, the shah marched upon Grem, the capital of Imereti, and punished its peoples for harbouring his defected subjects. Traditional pre-1501 Safavid manuscripts trace the lineage of the Safavids to the Kurdish dignitary, Firuz-Shah Zarrin-Kolah. This layer would be solely composed of hundreds of thousands of deported, imported, and to a lesser extent voluntarily migrated ethnic Circassians, Georgians, and Armenians. [182] However, shortly thereafter Muhammad Baqir Behbahani (died 1792), along with other Usuli mujtahids, crushed the Akhbari movement. The capture of Baghdad by Ismail I in 1509 was only followed by its loss to the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I in 1534. The ulama developed a theory that only a Mujtahid - one deeply learned in the Sharia (Qur'anic law) and one who has had a blameless life, could rule. [83] Although the first slave soldiers would not be organized until the reign of Abbas I, during Tahmasp's reign, Caucasians already became important members of the royal household, Harem and in the civil and military administration,[86][87] and were on their way of becoming an integral part of society. The longest-lasting of the Gunpowder Empires, the Ottoman Empire in Turkey was first established in 1299, but it fell to the conquering armies of Timur the Lame (better known as Tamerlane, 1336-1405) in 1402. So absolute was his power, that the French merchant, and later ambassador to Iran, Jean Chardin thought the Safavid Shahs ruled their land with an iron fist and often in a despotic manner. The Safavid Empire (1501-1722) . The lesser officials were the qazi, corresponding a civil lieutenant, who ranked under the local governors and functioned as judges in the provinces. In Esposito, John L. [49] According to Arnold J. Toynbee,[245], In the heyday of the Mughal, Safawi, and Ottoman regimes New Persian was being patronized as the language of litterae humaniores by the ruling element over the whole of this huge realm, while it was also being employed as the official language of administration in those two-thirds of its realm that lay within the Safawi and the Mughal frontiers. Wars of the Ottomans and Safavids | History Forum "[194] Lastly, due to the large amount of Georgians, Circassians, and Armenians at the Safavid court (the gholams and in the harem), the Georgian, Circassian and Armenian languages were spoken as well, since these were their mother tongues. [58] The Ottoman sultans addressed him as the king of Iranian lands and the heir to Jamshid and Kai Khosrow.[59]. The Safavid Empire was strengthened by important Shi'a soldiers from the Ottoman army who had fled from persecution. From the beginning of the polity in 1501 until the Ottoman Sultan Selim (r. 1512-1520) defeated the founder of the Safavid polity, Shah Ismail I (r. 1501-1524) at Chaldiran in 1514, the Safavid army was a tribal army. Crown prince Hamza Mirza, now 21 years old and director of Safavid affairs, led a force to confront the Ottomans, but in 1586 was murdered under mysterious circumstances. 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 HabsburgPersian alliance, but this also proved to be largely unfruitful during his reign. BBC 2014 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. [73] Nevertheless, given the insecurity in Iraq and its northwest territory, Tahmsp moved his court from Tabriz to Qazvin. [106] The siege of Herat thus ended in 1583 without Ali Quli Khan's surrender, and Khorasan was in a state of open rebellion. This system avoided an entrenched aristocracy or a caste society. 34, 597634. [199], In Safavid Iran there was little distinction between theology and jurisprudence, or between divine justice and human justice, and it all went under Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). [1] One feature of the battle was that the Ottoman army used guns and cannons to defeat the cavalry corps. [197] In time, this proved to become a burden to the people that were under the direct rule of the Shah, as these commissioners, unlike the former governors, had little knowledge about the local communities that they controlled and were primarily interested in increasing the income of the Shah. GIMME SOME TRUTH. This was not entirely for love of beauty. Thanks in large part to their acquisition of muskets, the Ottoman rulers were able to drive out the Timurids and reestablish their control of Turkey in 1414. The mansabdar's military responsibilities required him to maintain a specified number of sawar or cavalrymen. The highest level in the legal system was the Minister of Justice, and the law officers were divided into senior appointments, such as the magistrate (darughah), inspector (visir), and recorder (vakanevis). Abbas's tolerance towards Christians was part of his policy of establishing diplomatic links with European powers to try to enlist their help in the fight against their common enemy, the Ottoman Empire.

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