The Rise of the Safavid Empire

THE ISLAMIC WORLD HIST 1301 | History The Rise of the Safavid Empire The Safavids originated as the hereditary chiefs of a Sufi order centred in Ardabil, a city in modern-day northwest Iran, rather than as a political dynasty. The Sufi teacher Zahed Gilani established the Ardabil order in the thirteenth century, although little is known about its early rituals and beliefs. We do know that Zahed upset his family and some of his supporters when he named his son-in-law and pupil Safi al-Din Ardabili as his successor. The organisation was renamed Safaviyya after Safi al-Din, who also implemented other changes that transformed it from a local order to a religious movement that attracted adherents from all across Iran and its neighbouring nations. Though Safi al-Din's exact roots are unknown to history, it is widely accepted—though not without controversy—that he sprang from a family of Kurds who spoke Azeri. (Turkic languages include Azeri.) Later, the Safavid family said that Safi al-Din was descended from the Prophet via son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib and Muhammad's daughter Fatima. Most likely, during Shah Ismail I's rule in the sixteenth century, court historians created this genealogy. Some academics, however, took it a step farther and traced the lineage of the family back to the biblical Adam. Originally, the Safavids were predominantly Sunni Muslims, much like the majority of Iranians. Their philosophy, like that of many Sufi orders, combined aspects of Shia and Sunni ideologies in order to provide a universal message and draw adherents from both religions. But Junayd, the great-grandson of Safi alDin, altered the philosophy of the order in a number of ways, embracing notions that were particularly Shia. Junayd felt Shia ideology better suited the Safavids' agenda, and he thought they should exploit their popular religious mandate to seize military and political power for themselves. Haydar, the son of Junayd, established a strong military and political structure by instituting the Qizilbash, a Safavid military order named for their characteristic red caps (qizil means "red" in Azeri). Haydar, united with his foes, the Shirvanshahs, had to cross their country in order to reach the Christian population of the Caucasus, against whom he began a holy war. The Shirvanshahs, already anxious about Haydar's increasing strength, used his eventual attack on one of their cities as a pretext to declare war on the Safavids, despite the fact that at first he was able to arrange safe passage for his army. In 1488, Haydar was slain in combat. Ali Mirza, his son, succeeded him, but his foes overran his capital city of Ardabil in a few of years. In addition, Ali Mirza was slain, and his younger brother Ismail was banished. The twelve-year-old Ismail, who had been given sanctuary by supporters, broke out of exile in 1499, proclaiming himself to be the messiah or Mahdi, and he started organising the Qizilbash soldiers who had defended his brother and father. They started a war, winning battle after battle, until in July 1501, Ismail invaded Tabriz, the capital of Shirvanshah, and proclaimed himself the shah, or emperor, of all of Iran. He was the only ruler of Azerbaijan and a portion of the Caucasus at the time. But by 1511, Ismail's army had forced the Uzbek people to cross the Oxus River, drawing what is now modern Iran's eastern boundaries. In addition, the Safavids made raids into eastern Anatolia, which set off a war with the Ottoman Empire that lasted the whole Safavid dynasty. In addition to seizing control of the empire's frontier cities, Ismail had started enlisting members of the ethnic Turkish tribes in eastern Anatolia and inciting the Shia Muslims living under Ottoman authority to rebel against their Sunni overlords. In retaliation, the Shi'ites of Bayezid II's dominion were exiled from Anatolia to distant parts of his empire where they would not be able to hear the Safavid summons. Selim I, the son of Bayezid, invaded Iranian Azerbaijan in response to the Safavids' ongoing westward advance into Ottoman territory. In 1514, he destroyed Tabriz and made an effort to wipe out the Qizilbash. Shah Ismail's reputation among his own army suffered greatly after he lost his capital city of Tabriz to the enemy—and to a Sunni Muslim at that—and was further damaged by the fact that he had claimed to be unbeatable due to his invented semidivine origin. Ten years of internal conflict ensued after Ismail's death in 1524 as competing Qizilbash groups strove for supremacy and the right to govern Ismail's ten-year-old son Tahmasp. Tahmasp went on to become the Safavid king with the longest reign. He started utilising enslaved Christians from Circassia and Georgia in the royal administration and civil services instead of Qizilbash members, dissatisfied with his experience navigating the disputes among the Qizilbash. But Tahmasp encountered a number of difficulties both domestically and overseas. The Uzbeks remained a menace to the east even after he successfully rejected their attempt to conquer northern Iran, and when Suleiman's army invaded Iran in the middle of the 1530s, war with the Ottomans broke out shortly after. Tahmasp allied himself with the Habsburg Empire, a rising European force, in order to counter the threat posed by the Turks. Concerned by the Ottomans' advance into Vienna, the Habsburg ruler Charles V initially sought Ismail and later Tahmasp over a possible partnership. In order to weaken the Ottoman army by splitting it between two fronts of war, the Safavids agreed to attack the Ottomans whenever the Ottomans fought the Habsburgs. The Ottomans established a formal alliance in 1536 with the French monarch, who was the Habsburgs' adversary and dispatched a military advisor to assist Sultan Suleiman over his impending battle with Iran in 1547. But after two decades of conflict, Tahmasp turned to the Ottomans for peace, severely straining Iran's finances. The Ottomans acquired authority over Iraq and access to the Persian Gulf, while Iran was assured sovereignty over Azerbaijan, as a result of the 1555 Peace of Amasya, which partitioned Armenia and Georgia between the two empires. Additionally, Tahmasp relocated his capital from Tabriz to Qazvin, which is nearer the Caspian Sea and less vulnerable to Ottoman armies' capture or siege. In the end, the two states put down their weapons and proclaimed a truce that lasted for more than thirty years. But it didn't endure forever. At the conclusion of Tahmasp's rule, Iran's frontiers remained safe, but his son and grandson were incompetent leaders who could not prevent the Qizilbash rivalries from causing instability once more. As a result, Ottoman and Uzbek armies continued to invade Iran. Abbas I, the grandson of Tahmasp and often regarded as the most powerful Safavid shah and one of the greatest kings in Iranian history, was forced to return to combat. The Safavid state attained its pinnacle of political, military, and economic dominance under his rule. In addition to building Isfahan, the capital city that is now regarded as one of the pinnacles of Persian Islamic art and architecture, Abbas I also reorganised the armed forces and the civil service. Iran was in disarray by the time seventeen-year-old Abbas was anointed monarch in 1588. Abbas came to the realisation that battling the Ottomans in a nation in upheaval would be almost difficult after conducting war against the Uzbeks. Consequently, he signed a peace deal with the Ottomans in 1590, ceding over half of his land, including the old city of Tabriz. Abbas then turned back to the task his grandfather had begun: subduing the Qizilbash, whose disagreements had sparked civil war in Iran that had twice almost resulted in the collapse of the nation. Having seen that his grandfather had amassed more than thirty thousand slaves working as palace administrators and civil workers, Abbas turned his attention once more to the Caucasus and chose to establish an enslaved army corps modelled after the Ottoman Janissaries. With the support of his newly formed army, Abbas set out to retake the lands that the Ottomans and Uzbeks had taken. After swiftly retaking Khorasan from the Uzbeks, the Safavid army advanced to Azerbaijan. In 1612, the Ottomans lost the Caucasus to the Iranians in exchange for a peace suit. The Ottomans suffered a devastating defeat in their effort to retake the area in 1618. Iran achieved unprecedented artistic and economic heights during this time, while being in a state of near-constant conflict. Abbas relocated his capital from Qazvin to Isfahan in the central plateau of Iran in 1598, seeking to be closer to the Persian Gulf and the newly arrived traders of the British and Dutch East India Companies, as well as away from the Ottomans and Uzbeks, whose boundaries were always changing. The massive Naqsh-e Jahan ("Exemplar of the world") Square served as the opening location for public markets and governmental buildings when the city was constructed as a showcase. There was something special about the city centre. There, people from all social classes could mingle: foreign dignitaries, military personnel, merchants, commoners, and members of the royal court, whose pavilion overlooked the area. The Shi'ite clerics had a mosque at the southern end of the square. Free food was given away by a soup kitchen to the poor, and the area was periodically emptied for festivals, polo matches, and official events. Abbas commanded the settlement of a number of diverse ethnicities in his new city, including Circassians, Armenians, Jews, and other Caucasian peoples—many of whom had been uprooted from their homes during his fight against the Ottomans. The Armenian Christians in Isfahan are still served by the cathedral that Abbas had constructed for them. Following Abbas's passing, the Georgian kingdom of Kakheti posed a new internal challenge to the Safavid realm. Abbas sent Oghuz Turks (Turcomen) to settle the region after ordering the wholesale deportation of Georgians to central Iran; the remaining local populace, however, refused to allow them to do so and organised a military insurrection. The Safavids never recovered the degree of power they had before, despite being able to regain power in the end. Iran was still subject to external threats. Under Tsar Peter the Great's rule, Russia started to assert its authority in the Caucasus and invade the northern Caspian Sea coasts in the early eighteenth century. In the Russo-Persian conflict of 1722–1723, Peter the Great's army captured the Caucasus, while the Ottomans retook control of northwest Iran. Iran's direct connection to South Asia and Africa was largely cut off when European ships began to participate in the Indian Ocean trade. Nader Afshar was a Safavid vassal who rose to prominence as a powerful military leader during the 1730s. Although he was able to undo a large number of Iran's geographical losses to the Russians and Ottomans, he showed no inclination to cede control. The Safavid Empire came to an end in 1736 when Nader overthrew the young Abbas III and anointed himself king. The Afsharid dynasty, however brief, was then established.