[70] Decentralized control over Uzbek forces was largely responsible for the inability of the Uzbeks to make territorial inroads into Khorasan. "[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. Eskandar Beg, pp. 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. [153][154] In the OttomanIranian War (173035), he retook all territories lost by the Ottoman invasion of the 1720s, as well as beyond. Because of the relative insecurity of property ownership in Iran, many private landowners secured their lands by donating them to the clergy as so called vaqf. The Middle Ages had seen a series of invasions of Iran by Turks, Mongols, and others. But it was Shah Safi, under influence by his Prime Minister, Saru Taqi, that initiated the program of trying to increase the royal revenues by buying land from the governors and putting in place local commissioners. Iranian rule had been fully restored over eastern Georgia, but the Georgian territories would continue to produce resistance to Safavid enroachments from 1624 until Abbas' death. This layer would become the "third force" in Iranian society, alongside the other two forces, the Turkomans and Persians. Pari Khn Khnum, sister of Ismail and Mohammad, hoped to act as regent for any of the three (including her older brother, who was nearly blind). Safavid, like other Empires had a long standing hierarchy. But it was not the Turkish of Istanbul. [83] According to Encyclopdia Iranica, this would be the starting point for the corps of the olmn-e a-ye-e arifa, or royal slaves, who would dominate the Safavid military for most of the empire's length. [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. [192], The only field within medicine where some progress were made was pharmacology, with the compilement of the "Tibb-e Shifai" in 1556. 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. They finally arrived at the court of Philip III of Spain in 1602. Russian Empire, historical empire founded on November 2 (October 22, Old Style), 1721, when the Russian Senate conferred the title of emperor (imperator) of all the Russias upon Peter I. And since the Safavid society was meritocratic, and successions seldom were made on the basis of heritage, this meant that government offices constantly felt the pressure of being under surveillance and had to make sure they governed in the best interest of their leader, and not merely their own. The Uzbeks struck in the Spring of 1578 but were repelled by Murtaza Quli Sultan, governor of Mashhad. [138], The shah had set great store on an alliance with Spain, the chief opponent of the Ottomans in Europe. [96], The amirs demanded that she be removed, and Mahd-i Ulya was strangled in the harem in July 1579 on the ground of an alleged affair with the brother of the Crimean khan, Adil Giray,[96] who was captured during the 15781590 Ottoman war and held captive in the capital, Qazvin. The Europeans began to be fascinated by the Iranians and their culture Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (160102), for example, makes two references (at II.5 and III.4) to 'the Sophy', then the English term for the Shahs of Iran. The dynasty was very powerful and its members belonged to a very unique Sufi infused Shia Islam called the Safaviyya. In day-to-day affairs, the language chiefly used at the Safavid court and by the great military and political officers, as well as the religious dignitaries, was Turkish, not Persian; and the last class of persons wrote their religious works mainly in Arabic. 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. [140] The English at sea, represented by the English East India Company, also began to take an interest in Iran, and in 1622 four of its ships helped Abbas retake Hormuz from the Portuguese in the Capture of Ormuz (1622). 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. Sons of nobles were considered for the succession of their fathers as a mark of respect, but they had to prove themselves worthy of the position. It was certainly not homogenousmaybe it was an Azerbaijanian-Ottoman mixed language, as Beltadze (1967:161) states for a translation of the gospels in Georgian script from the 18th century. A Study of the Migration of Shii Works from Arab Regions to Iran at the Early Safavid Era. Who were Safavids? At its height, the Safavid Dynasty controlled not only the entirety of what is now Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, but also most of Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, and the Caucasus, and parts of Turkey, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan. Roemer, H.R. Summary. In 1738, Nadir Shah reconquered Afghanistan starting with the city of Kandahar. According to Willem Floor and Hasan Javadi,[250]. According to Donald Struesand, "although the Safavid unification of the eastern and western halves of the Iranian plateau and imposition of Twelver Shii Islam on the region created a recognizable precursor of modern Iran, the Safavid polity itself was neither distinctively Iranian nor national. Thus, Abbas I was able to break the dependence on the Qizilbash for military might and centralized control. The 16-year-old Abbas I was installed as nominal shah in 1588, but the real power was intended to remain in the hands of his "mentor," Murshid Quli Khan, who reorganized court offices and principal governorships among the Qizilbash[108] and took the title of wakl for himself. In between were nobles, rich merchants, and city people. [102] More seriously the Ottomans ended the Peace of Amasya and commenced a war with Iran that would last until 1590 by invading Iran's territories of Georgia and Shirvan. The treaty was the first formal diplomatic recognition of the Safavid Empire by the Ottomans. Women with slender waists were regarded as more attractive than those with larger figures. [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. Turkic) origins. In 1599, Abbas sent his first diplomatic mission to Europe. Ismil exploited the first element to seize power in Iran. Although the expedition never managed to return to Iran, being shipwrecked on the journey around Africa, it marked an important new step in contacts between Iran and Europe. Although Turkish was widely spoken in Safavid Iran this fact is rarely mentioned. Sir E. Denison Ross, Sir Anthony Sherley and his Persian Adventure, pp. [48] His background is disputed: the language he used is not identical with that of his "race" or "nationality" and he was bilingual from birth. It was certainly not an oligarchy, nor was it an aristocracy. The Safavid Period, 1501-1732", "18 Iran, Armenia and Georgia Rise of a Shii State in Iran and New Orientation in Islamic Thought and Culture", "The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors", "Georgians in the Safavid administration", Artistic and cultural history of the Safavids from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among these, the founder of one of the most successful f orders, Shh Ni'matullh Wal (d. 1431), traced his descent from the first Isml Imam, Muhammad ibn Isml, as evidenced in a poem as well as another unpublished literary composition. The greatest Safavid ruler was Shah Abbas I (r. 1587 - 1629), who modernized the Persian military, adding musketeers and artillery-men; moved the capital city deeper into the Persian heartland; and established a policy of tolerance towards Christians in the empire. Ya'qub allied himself with the Shirvanshah and killed Haydar in 1488. [171], Following the full implementation of this policy by Abbas I, the women (only Circassian and Georgian) now very often came to occupy prominent positions in the harems of the Safavid elite, while the men who became part of the ghulam "class" as part of the powerful third force were given special training on completion of which they were either enrolled in one of the newly created ghilman regiments, or employed in the royal household. Despite the Safavid dynasty's Sufi origins, most Sunni or Shi'a Sufi groups were prohibited by the Nimatullahi order. First, in the west, the Ottomans, seeing the disarray of the warriors, pressed deep into Safavid territory and occupied the old capital of Tabriz. The relationship between the Turkic-speaking 'Turks' and Persian-speaking 'Tajiks' was symbiotic, yet some form of rivalry did exist between the two. Geographical discoveries, in general, and bypassing the Cape of Good Hope, in particular, in South Africa, changed traditional trade routes in Iran's international trade. In the 16th century, the Turcophone Safavid family of Ardabil in Azerbaijan, probably of Turkicized Iranian, origin, conquered Iran and established Turkic, the language of the court and the military, as a high-status vernacular and a widespread contact language, influencing spoken Persian, while written Persian, the language of high literature and civil administration, remained virtually unaffected in status and content. He did so by taking the humiliating step of coming to peace terms with the Ottomans by making, for now, permanent their territorial gains in Iraq and the territories in the north, including Azerbaijan, Qarabagh, Ganja, eastern Georgia (comprising the Kingdom of Kartli and Kakheti), Dagestan, and Kurdistan. In this period, handicrafts such as tile making, pottery and textiles developed and great advances were made in miniature painting, bookbinding, decoration and calligraphy. [175] Thus, starting from the reign of Tahmsp I but only fully implemented and completed by Shah Abbas, this new group solely composed of ethnic Caucasians eventually came to constitute a powerful "third force" within the state as a new layer in society, alongside the Persians and the Qizilbash Turks, and it only goes to prove the meritocratic society of the Safavids. Then he turned against Iran's archrival, the Ottomans, recapturing Baghdad, eastern Iraq and the Caucasian provinces by 1616, all through the 16031618, marking the first grand Safavid pitched victory over the Ottomans. The Takkalu replaced the Rumlu as the dominant tribe. Tabriz was taken but the Ottoman army refused to follow the Safavids into the Persian highlands and by winter, retreated from Tabriz. In the year 1500, Esma'il the thirteen-year-old son of a killed Safavid leader, Sheikh Heydar, set out to conquer territories and avenge death of his father. Furthermore, the Safavids maintained a sizeable sphere of influence overseas, particularly in the Deccan region of India. When Tahmsp died in 984/1576, Iran was calm domestically, with secure borders and no imminent threat from either the Uzbeks or the Ottomans. 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]. During the Safavid period Azerbaijani Turkish, or, as it was also referred to at that time, Qizilbash Turkish, occupied an important place in society, and it was spoken both atcourt and by the common people. The dynasty began as a Sufi order but evolved into a major gunpowder empire. The empire's rulers, like the Ottoman rulers, were Muslim, yet the Safavid Empire used religion differently to promote order and stability within its realm. As non-Turcoman converts to Islam, these Circassian and Georgian olmns (also written as ghulams) were completely unrestrained by clan loyalties and kinship obligations, which was an attractive feature for a ruler like Tahmsp whose childhood and upbringing had been deeply affected by Qezelb tribal politics. Ismail I, despite his heterodox Shi'a beliefs, which were not compatible with orthodox Shi'ism (Momen, 1985) patronized Shi'a religious leaders, granting them land and money in return for loyalty. (1986). But his responsibilities also included that of being the treasurer of the Shah's properties. The Silk Road, which led through northern Iran to India, revived in the sixteenth century. "Review of Emile Janssens'. Although Shh Ni'matullh was apparently a Sunn Muslim, the Ni'matullh order soon declared its adherence to Sha Islam after the rise of the Safavid dynasty. Islamic philosophy[237] flourished in the Safavid era in what scholars commonly refer to the School of Isfahan. His painting and calligraphic style influenced Iranian artists for much of the Safavid period, which came to be known as the Isfahan school. Stanford Jay Shaw. [206], According to the historian Roger Savory, the twin bases of the domestic economy were pastoralism and agriculture. In 1545 a combined IranianMughal force managed to seize Kandahar and occupy Kabul. In 1527 Tahmsp demonstrated his desire by shooting an arrow at Div Soltn before the assembled court. He was perhaps the closest advisor to the Shah, and, as such, functioned as his eyes and ears within the Court. 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. [220][221] With the later end of the Portuguese Empire, the British, Dutch and French in particular gained easier access to Persian seaborne trade, although they, unlike the Portuguese, did not arrive as colonisers, but as merchant adventurers. The Shirley brothers arrived in 1598 and helped reorganize the Iranian army, which proved to be crucial in the OttomanSafavid War (160318), which resulted in Ottoman defeats in all stages of the war and the first clear pitched Safavid victory of their archrivals. [227] Shah Abbas was determined to greatly expand this trade, but faced the problem of having to deal with the Ottomans, who controlled the two most vital routes: the route across Arabia to the Mediterranean ports, and the route through Anatolia and Istanbul. 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