148

The Ṣafawids

907–1135/1501–1722, thereafter as fainéants and pretenders until 1179/1765

Persia

The origins of the Ṣafawids are obscure, and their elucidation is not helped by the production, by at least the first half of the sixteenth century, of an ‘official’ version of Ṣafawid genealogy and early history. It does, however, seem probable that they hailed from Persian Kurdistan, and, as Turkish speakers, they seem to be part of the Türkmen resurgence of post-Mongol times. The family headed a Ṣūfi order, the Ṣafawiyya, based on Ardabīl in Azerbaijan, originally orthodox Sunnī in complexion, but in the mid-fifteenth century the leader of the order, Shaykh Junayd, embarked on a campaign for material power in addition to spiritual authority. In the atmosphere of heterodoxy and Shī‘ī sympathies among the Türkmen of Anatolia and Azerbaijan, the Safawiyya gradually became Shī‘ī in emphasis.

The political ambitions of the first Ṣafawids brought them up against the other Türkmen powers of eastern Anatolia, Iraq and Persia, but in 905/1501 Ismā‘īl I defeated the Aq Qoyunlu (see above, no. 146), seized Azerbaijan and brought the whole of Persia under his control during the ensuing ten years, and thus established the Ṣafawid theocracy, for not only did Ismā‘īl and his successors claim to be lineal descendants of ‘Alī through the Seventh Imām Mūsā al-Kāẓim, but Ismā‘īl, at least, on the evidence of his poetry, also claimed divine status in the extremist Shī‘I ghulāt tradition. Their Türkmen tribal followers, the so-called Qïzïl Bash or ‘red heads’ (from the red caps which they wore) thus owed a spiritual as well as a political allegiance. Shī‘ism was imposed as the state religion on a country which up until then had been, at least officially, predominantly Sunnī. The Ṣafawid period is thus of supreme importance in Persian history because of this consolidation of Shī‘ism there; in the process, Persia acquired a new sense of solidarity and nationhood which enabled her to survive into modern times with her national spirit and the integrity of Persian territory substantially unimpaired.

Militarily, the early Safawids had to face the strenuous hostility of their Sunnī neighbours, the Ottomans in the west and the Özbegs in the north-east. On the north-eastern frontier, the Shāhs just managed to hold their own, with cities like Herat, Mashhad and Sarakhs frequently changing hands; but Türkmen incursions for plunder and slaves continued well into the nineteenth century. The Ottomans were especially dangerous, being at the peak of their military strength in the sixteenth century. Sultan Selīm I’s victory over the Ṣafawids at Chāldirān in 920/1514 was a triumph of logistics and superior firepower for the Ottomans (like the Mamlūks of Egypt, the Ṣafawids were slow to adopt artillery and handguns), and also impaired the Ṣafawids’ supporters’ beliefs in the divine invincibility of their masters. Soon afterwards, Kurdistan, Diyār Bakr and Baghdad passed into Ottoman hands, and Azerbaijan was frequently invaded; later, the Ṣafawid capital was moved from vulnerable Tabriz to Qazwīn and then to Iṣfahān.

The reign of Shāh ‘Abbās I, near-contemporary of such great rulers as Elizabeth I of England, Philip II of Spain, Ivan IV (‘The Terrible’) of Russia and the Mughal emperor Akbar, marks the apex of Ṣafawid military power and also Ṣafawid culture and civilisation, some of whose manifestations are visible in the architectural glories of Iṣfahān. During his reign, the Ottomans were ejected from Azerbaijan, and Persian control over the Caucasus and the Gulf strengthened. Diplomatic contacts with Europe were established (although a Ṣafawid-Euro-pean grand alliance against the Ottomans never materialised), and commercial and cultural contacts grew. In order to counteract the influence in the state of the Qïzïl Bash, ‘Abbās recruited Georgian and Circassian converts as slave guards, and favoured the formation of a group of Türkmen owing allegiance to himself personally and not to the tribal chiefs (the Shāh seven or ‘Lovers of the Shāh’).

After the death of Shāh ‘Abbās II in 1077/1666, there was a perceptible decline in the personal qualities of the rulers. Ṣafawid authority had at times stretched as far as eastern Afghanistan, but Sunnī Afghan sentiment was opposed to the strongly Shī‘ī policies of the Shāhs, and in the early eighteenth century the governor for the Ṣafawids there, Mīr Uways, declared himself independent. In 1135/1722, his son Maḥmūd invaded Persia; Ṣafawid resistance collapsed, and for several years until the rise of Nādir Shāh Afshār (see below, no. 149), the Ghilzay Afghans occupied much of Persia. The subsequent holders of power in Persia at times felt a need to nominate Ṣafawid descendants or claimants as puppet rulers, but the effective rule of the dynasty disappeared with Ṭahmāsp II.

Justi, 479; Lane-Poole, 255–9; Zambaur, 261–2; Abum, 54–7.

EI² ‘Ṣafawids. 1. Dynastic, political and military history’ (R. M. Savory).

J. R. Perry, ‘The last Ṣafavids, 1722–1773’, Iran, JBIPS, 9 (1971), 59–69.

Roger Savory, Iran under the Safavids, Cambridge 1980.

H. R. Roemer, ‘The Safavid period’, in The Cambridge History of Iran, VI, 189–350.