[65] This court intrigue lead directly to tribal conflict. 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. The Safavid dynasty had its origins in a long established Sufi order, called the Safaviyeh, which had flourished in Azarbaijan since the early fourteenth century. The Middle Ages had seen a series of invasions of Iran by Turks, Mongols, and others. This agreement concisted of five elements: land, water, plough-animals, seed and labour. 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. 2205. Henceforth a treaty, signed in Qasr-e Shirin known as the Treaty of Zuhab was established delineating a border between Iran and Turkey in 1639, a border which still stands in northwest Iran/southeast Turkey. [16], An Iranian dynasty rooted in the Sufi Safavid order[32] founded by Kurdish sheikhs,[33] it heavily intermarried with Turkoman,[34] Georgian,[35] Circassian,[36][37] and Pontic Greek[38] dignitaries and was Turkish-speaking and Turkified. They in turn would be replaced by the Shamlu, whose amir, Husain Khan, became the chief adviser. The Safavid Empire was formed in 1501 and ended by the invasion of Afghans in 1722. The revenue came not so much from exports, as from the custom charges and transit dues levied on goods passing through the country. Restoring Persia as a major center of political power and cultural creativity, they also established one of the strongest and most enduring centers of Shi'ism within the Islamic world. 900901, tr. 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. His descriptions of the public appearance, clothes and customs are corroborated by the miniatures, drawings and paintings from that time which have survived. When the young Shah Tahmsp took the throne, Iran was in a dire state. [167][failed verification].mw-parser-output .ambox{border:1px solid #a2a9b1;border-left:10px solid #36c;background-color:#fbfbfb;box-sizing:border-box}.mw-parser-output .ambox+link+.ambox,.mw-parser-output .ambox+link+style+.ambox,.mw-parser-output .ambox+link+link+.ambox,.mw-parser-output .ambox+.mw-empty-elt+link+.ambox,.mw-parser-output .ambox+.mw-empty-elt+link+style+.ambox,.mw-parser-output .ambox+.mw-empty-elt+link+link+.ambox{margin-top:-1px}html body.mediawiki .mw-parser-output .ambox.mbox-small-left{margin:4px 1em 4px 0;overflow:hidden;width:238px;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:88%;line-height:1.25em}.mw-parser-output .ambox-speedy{border-left:10px solid #b32424;background-color:#fee7e6}.mw-parser-output .ambox-delete{border-left:10px solid #b32424}.mw-parser-output .ambox-content{border-left:10px solid #f28500}.mw-parser-output .ambox-style{border-left:10px solid #fc3}.mw-parser-output .ambox-move{border-left:10px solid #9932cc}.mw-parser-output .ambox-protection{border-left:10px solid #a2a9b1}.mw-parser-output .ambox .mbox-text{border:none;padding:0.25em 0.5em;width:100%}.mw-parser-output .ambox .mbox-image{border:none;padding:2px 0 2px 0.5em;text-align:center}.mw-parser-output .ambox .mbox-imageright{border:none;padding:2px 0.5em 2px 0;text-align:center}.mw-parser-output .ambox .mbox-empty-cell{border:none;padding:0;width:1px}.mw-parser-output .ambox .mbox-image-div{width:52px}html.client-js body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .mbox-text-span{margin-left:23px!important}@media(min-width:720px){.mw-parser-output .ambox{margin:0 10%}}, 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. Then he turned against the Ottomans, recapturing Baghdad, eastern Iraq, and the Caucasian provinces, by 1622. In this way, one of his sons was executed and two were blinded. The carpets of Ardabil were commissioned to commemorate the Safavid dynasty. The founder of the dynasty, Shah Isma'il, adopted the title of "King of Iran" (Pdiah- rn), with its implicit notion of an Iranian state stretching from Khorasan as far as Euphrates, and from the Oxus to the southern Territories of the Persian Gulf. Each town had their own troop of wrestlers, called Pahlavans. Blow, D; Shah Abbas: The ruthless king who became an Iranian legend; pp. Tobacco grew all over the country and was as strong as that grown in Brazil. 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. [153][154] In the OttomanIranian War (173035), he retook all territories lost by the Ottoman invasion of the 1720s, as well as beyond. [216] The Italian traveler Pietro Della Valle was impressed by an encounter with one of these road guards:[217]. It rejected the use of reasoning in deriving verdicts and believed that only the Quran, hadith, (prophetic sayings and recorded opinions of the Imams) and consensus should be used as sources to derive verdicts (fatw). With the capture of Tabriz, the Safavid dynasty officially began. Abbas was unable to comply. As well as wrestling, what gathered the masses was fencing, tightrope dancers, puppet-players and acrobats, performing in large squares, such as the Royal square. The Safavid order soon gained great influence in the city of Ardabil, and Hamdullah Mustaufi noted that most of the people of Ardabil were followers of Safi al-Din. Roemer, The Safavid Period, in Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. "Shahsevan in Safavid Persia". 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. History of the Safavids from Iran Chamber, Artistic and cultural history of the Safavids from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Safavid_Empire&oldid=1092454, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. In 1619 he appointed the loyal Simon II (or Semayun Khan) on the symbolic throne of Kakheti, while placing a series of his own governors to rule of districts where rebellious inhabitants were mostly located. Thus, the majority of the people suffered from rapacity and corruption carried out in the name of the Shah. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-was-the-safavid-empire-195397 (accessed January 18, 2023). In between were nobles, rich merchants, and city people. Shortly afterwards, Bayezid was killed by agents sent by his own father.[81]. He had removed them from power and banished them from Iran by 1729. On extraordinary occasions when the Shah took justice into his own hand, he would dress himself up in red for the importance of the event, according to ancient tradition.[200]. [83] While Persians continued to fill their historical role as administrators and clerical elites under Tahmsp, little had been done so far to minimize the military role of the Qezelb. [97] Pari Khn Khnum could master strong support among the Qizilbash, and her uncle, Shamkhal Sultan, was a prominent Circassian who held a high official position. Safavid, like other Empires had a long standing hierarchy. R. Matthee. The shah used that occasion to proclaim the 11-year-old Sultan Hamza Mirza (Mahd-i Uly's favorite) crown-prince. It was perhaps this sort of attitude towards the rest of the world that accounted for the ignorance of Persians regarding other countries of the world. The fourth vakil was murdered by the Qizilbash, and the fifth was put to death by them. Second to the Prime Minister post were the General of the Revenues (mostoufi-ye mamalek), or finance minister,[189] and the Divanbegi, Minister of Justice. Roemer, H. R. (1986). The Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires were very powerful and well respected in their time. [194] There were the Persians who still dominated the bureaucracy and under Abbas held the two highest government offices of Grand Vizier and Comptroller-General of the Revenues (mostoufi-ye mamalek), which was the nearest thing to a finance minister. The idea of such an anti-Ottoman alliance was not a new oneover a century before, Uzun Hassan, then ruler of part of Iran, had asked the Venetians for military aidbut none of the Safavids had made diplomatic overtures to Europe. [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. To establish political provenance, the Safavid rulers claimed to be descended from Imam Ali, the cousin of the Prophet Muhammad and his wife Fatimah, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, through the seventh Imam Musa al-Kazim. After becoming the Safaviyeh leader in 1447, Sheikh Junayda descendant of Sheikh Safi Al-Dintransformed it into a revolutionary Shi'a movement with the goal of seizing power in Iran. 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. Throughout the rest of the decade, Ismail I fended off attacks from the Ottomans, stamped out the remnants of a rival faction, called the Ak Koyunlu, and continued to expand his territoryHamadan in 1503, Shiraz and Kerman in 1504, Najaf and Karbala in 1507, Van in 1508, Baghdad in 1509, Khorasan and Herat in 1510. Islamic philosophy[237] flourished in the Safavid era in what scholars commonly refer to the School of Isfahan. [235] The ingenuity of the square, or Maidn, was that, by building it, Shah Abbas would gather the three main components of power in Iran in his own backyard; the power of the clergy, represented by the Masjed-e Shah, the power of the merchants, represented by the Imperial Bazaar, and of course, the power of the Shah himself, residing in the Ali Qapu Palace. But his responsibilities also included that of being the treasurer of the Shah's properties. Astrakhan came under Russian rule, nearing the Safavid possessions in Dagestan. The Safavid empire had a strong social structure with kings and royals at the top and peasants at the bottom. The Gunpowder Empires: Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal, Biography of Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, The Spread of Islam in Asia From 632 to Present, Twelver Shiites and the Cult of Martyrdom, Rulers of the Persian Empire: Expansionism of Cyrus and Darius, J.D., University of Washington School of Law, B.A., History, Western Washington University. [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. [201], 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). Sultan Hosein tried to forcibly convert his Afghan subjects in Qandahar from Sunni to Twelverism. However, strategically it remained inconclusive. He expanded commercial links with the English East India Company and the Dutch East India Company. Safavids (1501-1736), the dynasty that took control of Persia in the early 16th century, is often considered the beginning of modern Persian history. Every office had a deputy or superintendent, whose job was to keep records of all actions of the state officials and report directly to the Shah. In the first years of the 16th century, the Safavids founded a dynasty that conquered what is now IRAN. Contacts with the Pope, Poland and Moscow were no more fruitful. In 1738, Nadir Shah reconquered Afghanistan starting with the city of Kandahar. Abbas was able to begin gradually transforming the empire from a tribal confederation to a modern imperial government by transferring provinces from mamalik (provincial) rule governed by a Qizilbash chief and the revenue of which mostly supported local Qizilbash administration and forces to khass (central) rule presided over by a court appointee and the revenue of which reverted to the court. [228], By the end of the 17th century, the Dutch had become dominant in the trade that went via the Persian Gulf, having won most trade agreements, and managed to strike deals before the British or French were able to. The Mughal and Safavid Empires featured an important variety of political power. [222] The Persians complied, and thousands of Persians emigrated to the Deccan during the 16th and 17th centuries, continuing a process that already began under the Bahmani Sultanate of the Deccan. What are the religious beliefs of the Safavid Empire? [194] Under Abbas, the eunuchs became an increasingly important element at the court. [164], As noted before, a key aspect of the Persian character was its love of luxury, particularly on keeping up appearances. The Safavids were members of a Sufi tariqa (path of spiritual journey) founded in the 7th/ 13th century by Shaykh Safi al-Din Ardabili. ThoughtCo. Related Questions This freed him of his dependence on Qizilbash warriors loyal to local tribal chiefs. Both corps of musketeers and artillerymen totaled 12,000 men. Omissions? This warfare pattern repeated itself under Shah Tahmasp I and Sultan Suleiman I. They are present on the level ground, and a small drum is always playing during the contest for excitement. [215] Caravanserais were designed especially to benefit poorer travelers, as they could stay there for as long as they wished, without payment for lodging. Although no one could have bristled more at the power grab of his "mentor" Murshid Quli Khan, he rounded up the leaders of a plot to assassinate the wakl and had them executed. Portuguese EmpireType of GovernmentOne of the most powerful of the European colonial empires, the Portuguese Empire was ruled by an absolute monarch. His History of Shah Abbas the Great written a few years after its subject's death, achieved a nuanced depth of history and character. Consequently, they were slowly able to take on administrative jobs in areas which had hitherto been the exclusive preserve of the ethnic Persians.[168]. This gives a convincing explanation as to why the Turkic Azerbaijani language became so important in a land with an overwhelming Persian-speaking majority. The Safavid Empire was established in an Iran that had been long fragmented. [149] The end of the reign of Abbas II, 1666, thus marked the beginning of the end of the Safavid dynasty. In the previous century, Russia Muscovy had deposed two western Asian khanates of the Golden Horde and expanded its influence into the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia. Using traditional forms and materials, Reza Abbasi (15651635) introduced new subjects to Persian paintingsemi-nude women, youths, lovers. First, he bargained for peace with the Ottomans in 1590, giving away territory in the north-west. This new layer of society would continue to play a vital role in Iranian history up to and including the fall of the Qajar dynasty, some 300 years after Abbas' death. Richard Tapper. Despite the Safavid dynasty's Sufi origins, most Sunni or Shi'a Sufi groups were prohibited by the Nimatullahi order. [99] He may have believed that he would rule once their enemy was disposed of, but Mahd-i Uly proved the stronger of the two. [3] The paternal line of the dynasty's heritage was mainly thought to be Persian,[4] starting with the Persian mystic Sheikh Safi al-Din Is'hq Ardabeli, who himself claimed descent from Firz Shh Zarrnkoll, a local ruler in Persian Kurdistan. According to historian Roger Savory, "Salim's plan was to winter at Tabriz and complete the conquest of Persia the following spring. The Safavid empire had a strong social structure with kings and royals at the top and peasants at the bottom. As the former represented the "people of the sword" and the latter, "the people of the pen", high-level official posts would naturally be reserved for the Persians. But the reverse seems not to have been true. Also, there were the quazi-religious fraternities called futuvva, which were run by local dervishes. 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