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Chapter 4

8
T H E SA FAV I D
EMPIRE

T he Safavid Empire never equaled the size, power, or wealth of the Ot-
toman or Mughal empires. Its history had a different pattern. It did
not grow steadily over many decades but reached its maximum size within
a few years of its foundation and maintained those boundaries only briefly.
Safavid rule transformed the religious life of the empire but had a much
less significant effect on its ethnic composition and social structure. Some
historians have questioned whether it qualifies as an empire at all, though
the Ottomans and Mughals had no difficulty identifying the Safavids as
peers. The Safavid polity began as a confederation of Turkmen tribes, led
not by the leader of one tribe but by a Sufi shaykh, Ismail Safavi (I use the
anglicized Safavid for the order and dynasty but Safavi in personal names).
The Safavid ideology—a blend of ghuluww, Turko-Mongol conceptions of
kingship, and the folk Sufism of the Turkmen—energized the tribes. This
ideology and Ismail’s consistent military success from 1501 to 1512 sus-
pended the normal political operation of the tribal confederation. After the
first Safavid defeats, at Ghujduvan in 1512 and Chaldiran in 1514, Ismail’s
loss of prestige altered the balance of power within the confederation, giv-
ing the tribal leaders decisive authority and making their struggle for dom-
inance the central issue in Safavid politics. After 1530, Ismail’s son, Shah
Tahmasp, gradually strengthened his position enough to manipulate, rather
than be manipulated by, the tribes. After his death, however, the tribal

135
 30˚ 45˚ 60˚ 75˚

empire of Shah Ismail c. 1512 area conquered by Ottomans with date (1592) date of Safavid reconquest

Ottoman empire area contested by Uzbeks in 16th century Safavid capital

Uzbek land area contested by Mughals in 17th century Shii shrine

Mughal empire site and date of important battle or siege

khanate of Chaghatay Lake Balkhash

Aral 45˚
Sea

Black
Sea

Caspian
KHANATE
Georgia KHANATE OF
Sinope Sea OF KHIVA
Batum Tiflis BUKHARA Tashkent
Istanbul Shirvan Khiva
Amasya Trebizond Qars
Armenia Baku Khokand
Sivas Erzerum
Chaldiran Erivan 1578
(1603) Bukhara Kashgar
1514 Samarqand
Kayseri Ardabil
Malatya Tabriz
Diyarbakir KHANATE OF
CHAGHATAY

T
Gilan

ig
Merv

r is
Asterabad
Azarbaijan 1510 Balkh
Mosul Qazvin
Antioch Aleppo Mazandaran
0813313597-Streusand_Design 8/9/10 10:38 AM Page 136

1514 Meshhed sh
Eup 1516 (1603) Damghan Nishapur Ku
u

R i ve r
Kurdistan Teheran id

hr
H

at
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s 1587 Hamadan
Ri ver (1603) Khurasan
Qum
Samarra Kabul
Mediterranean Damascus Dasht-e-Kavir Herat
al-Kazimain Luristan Kashan
Sea Baghdad Ghazna
Karbala
Za Sistan
1534 gr
os Isfahan Qandahar
al-Najaf M Yazd
Syrian ou Dasht-e-Lut
Desert Khuzistan nt
ai
ns Kerman Multan
Barsa
ns

Cairo
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0 200 km

MA P 4 .1 Safavid Empire
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The Safavid Empire 137

chiefs again dominated the empire until the time of Abbas I (1588–1629).
Abbas transformed the Safavid polity from a tribal confederation into a
bureaucratic empire. The primacy of the bureaucracy, with the tribes pres-
ent but peripheral, survived until the rapid collapse of the empire in 1722.
The Ottoman and Mughal empires clearly deserve the title agrarian.
They represented transplants of the agrarian bureaucratic traditions of the
Middle East to rich agrarian regions elsewhere. The Safavids had no such
advantage; the tribal resurgence in the eighteenth century showed that the
ecology of the Iranian plateau continued to favor pastoral nomadism. The
Safavid regime relied not on broad agricultural prosperity or control of
major trade networks but on the export of a single commodity: Abbas I’s
central army and central bureaucracy depended on income from the export
of silk. The Safavid polity thus became a gunpowder empire because of
the increase in global trade in the sixteenth century. Otherwise, the
Safavid Empire, in all probability, would have remained a tribal confeder-
ation, held only the central and western parts of the Iranian plateau, and
had a shorter lifespan. The income from this commerce did not, however,
permit a return to the previous agrarian pattern of Abbasid times, based on
massive irrigation works. The empire thus became a peculiar hybrid.
Under Abbas I, the center became strong enough to reduce the Qizilbash
tribes to political insignificance but could not eliminate them. There was
no open frontier to divert them to. When the central regime failed, the
tribal forces became dominant by default.
The Safavid Empire was neither a revival of the ancient empires of the
Achaemenians (the Persians who fought the Greeks) and Sasanians nor the
beginning of the modern state of Iran. Although the Safavids united most
of what had been the Persian-speaking areas of the earlier empires, they did
not claim to be their heirs or legitimate successors. They were no more or
less Iranian than their Timurid and Turkmen predecessors. 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. In the words of Rudi Matthee, “Though not a na-
tion-state, Safavid Iran contained the elements that would later spawn one
by generating many enduring bureaucratic features and by initiating a
polity of overlapping religious and territorial boundaries.”1
The establishment of Twelver Shiism dominated the social, religious,
and cultural history of the Safavid period. Earlier dynasties frequently had
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138 4 – T H E S AFAV I D E M PI R E

B OX 4.1 Twelver Shiism

The Twelver (Ithna-Ashari; also known as Imami) branch of Shii Islam asserts
that the line of imams, the legitimate leaders of the Muslim community after
the death of the Prophet, ended when the Twelfth Imam disappeared in 873
in Samarra. Known as Muhammad al-Muntazar (the Expected), he will
eventually return as the messiah, the Mahdi. The absence of the true imam
creates a problem of political leadership. Some Twelvers have adopted an en-
tirely quietist position, arguing that legitimate political activity in the ab-
sence of the imam is impossible. As noted below, the Safavid rulers, and their
Zand, Qajar, and Pahlavi successors, considered themselves legitimate rulers
in the absence of the imam. From the late seventeenth century onward, the
Shii ulama have presented themselves as the representatives of the imam,
with the most senior of them, the grand ayatollahs, having the status of marja
al-taqlid (pattern for imitation), providing guidance for the believers. The
leading ulama had a significant political voice, but none before the Ayatol-
lah Ruhullah Khomeini claimed actual political authority.
Twelver Shiism did not become the largest and most influential variety
of Shiism until the Safavids imposed it on their empire.

Shii tendencies or preferences; none in the post-Mongol era had made

Shiism a political platform or sought to impose it. The Safavid imposition
of Shiism broke precedent and began the pattern of confessionalization.
But Safavid ghuluww had little in common with the Twelver Shiism that
eventually became the faith of the general population. There is no con-
sensus on why the Safavids made this innovation in religious policy.
By the time of Abbas I, the religion the Safavids had imposed had be-
come their principle source of legitimacy. Abbas I posed as the protector
and chief patron of Shari Shii Islam the basis of the regime. He began the
establishment of Shii madrasas especially at Isfahan and made great dis-
play of his personal piety. The Shii ulama responded by justifying Safavid
sovereignty in Shari Shii terms. The personalities of the next rulers made
the ulama supreme in the regime. The survival of Safavid prestige into the
nineteenth century suggests that the ulama domination of the Safavid
regime won considerable legitimacy for it among the general population.
But that new legitimacy did not translate to military power, as the regime’s
rapid downfall showed.
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The Safavid Empire 139

This apparent dichotomy reflects the division between the general, set-
tled population and the military classes typical of the Islamic world since
Abbasid times. The settled population, urban and rural, had little military
potential, except when trained and equipped as infantry with firearms.
The Safavid relationship with the Turkmen tribes gave them control of
most of the military manpower of the country, except in such marginal
areas as Baluchistan and the Afghan mountains. The diffusion of firearms
had little political or social effect in the Safavid domain. The Safavids re-
cruited few peasants for military service, and they never became a politi-
cal force, unlike in the Ottoman case. Safavid politics and military
recruitment followed the patterns common in the Islamic world before the
gunpowder period. Muslim nomads and mainly Christian outsiders re-
cruited primarily through the mechanism of military slavery dominated
the armed forces.
Historians of the Safavid period have emphasized the division between
Turks and Tajiks. In the words of Vladimir Minorsky, “Like oil and water,
the Turcomans and Persians did not mix freely and the dual character of
the population profoundly affected the military and civil administration of
Persia.”2 This duality was not a simple struggle for power. The Tajik bu-
reaucrats, administrators, and ulama did not wish to become the chiefs of
Turkmen tribes; the Turkmen chiefs could not function without Tajik ad-
ministrative expertise. The relationship was always symbiotic; within the
symbiosis, there was a struggle for dominance. In that struggle, however,
the Tajiks were the allies of the ruler, for their perceived interests—the po-
litical theory they believed and transmitted—lay in the concentration of
power at the center. The inherent military power of the Turkmen chiefs
made aspirations to autonomy natural. The Tajik administrators had no
such ambitions; the power that they sought could come to them only as
extensions of the ruler. Andrew Newman insightfully describes the Safavid
polity as a “project”:

The Safavid story is the story of the growth of its composite constituen-
cies: where from well prior to the capture of Tabriz throughout most of
the sixteenth century allied Turk political-military and Tajik administra-
tive interests dominated the project’s political center, [the last Safavid
ruler] Sultan Husayn commanded the recognition of an array of foreign
commercial, political and religious interests, as well as Turk and non-
Turk tribal, Tajik, and ghulam military, political and administrative court
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140 4 – T H E S AFAV I D E M PI R E

elements, and indigenous Muslim, Christian and foreign artisanal and

commercial-political classes.3

When Shah Ismail appointed the Tajik Amir Yar Muhammad Isfahani,
known as Najm-i Sani, to command the army he sent to Khurasan in
1512, he did so to establish his own authority—to make himself the or-
derer of the Safavid polity. The insubordination on the part of the Qizil-
bash amirs, which led to the defeat at Ghujduvan (see below), showed that
he could not do so. The Qizilbash resented Tajik authority—not neces-
sarily Tajiks as a group—because it implied the loss of their autonomy to
the central government. The Turk-Tajik dispute was not, ultimately, eth-
nic, though ethnic rivalry was certainly present. It was a clash over the na-
ture of the polity. The reforms of Shah Abbas indicated a victory for the
Tajik agenda, but the Tajiks did not enjoy many of the rewards. And the
victory for centralization proved temporary.

CHRONOLOGY
I divide Safavid history into five phases: (1) Sufi order, from the estab-
lishment of the Safavid Sufi order by Shaykh Safi to the accession of Shah
Ismail; (2) the establishment of empire, from 1501 to 1514; (3) tribal con-
federation, from 1514 to 1588; (4) the Abbasi transformation, from 1588
to 1629; and (5) inertia and devolution, from 1629 to 1722.

Sufi Order
Shaykh Safi, the founder and namesake of the Safavid Sufi order, lived
from 1252 or 1253 to 1334. He established a typical order of mystics,
without a political agenda or a sectarian Shii allegiance. The Safavid
order’s transformation into an organization of religious extremists with a
political agenda was not unique in its context. In the thirteenth, four-
teenth, and fifteenth centuries, a variety of extremist religio-political
movements developed in greater Iran and Anatolia. The Babai movement,
mentioned earlier, was perhaps the first of them. They espoused ghuluww
ideology, denied the legitimacy of existing political arrangements, and
generally focused on a messianic figure who would bring true justice. One
such group, the Sarbadars, combined peasants, urban dwellers, and rural
notables in an uprising against Mongol rule in Khurasan in 1337 and es-
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Chronology 141

tablished a state that survived for fifty years, the only state in greater Iran
in that era not to claim some form of Mongol legitimacy. Another group,
the Mushasha, began as an uprising against Timurid rule in Khuzistan. Its
leader, Sayyid Muhammad ibn Falah, claimed to be the Mahdi but suc-
ceeded only in establishing a durable provincial dynasty. Clearly, the po-
litical and religious atmosphere of this period fostered revolutionary and
messianic expectations. The mixture of political disorder, the breakdown
of the structure of Sunni authority after the destruction of the Abbasid
caliphate, responses to the presence and rule of the non-Muslim Mongols,
and the interaction of popular or folk Islam with Sufi theory all con-
tributed to the mixture.
The melding of ghuluww and Turkmen clan confederation began with
the association of Shaykh Junayd Safavi with Uzun Hasan Aqquyunlu.
Before Junayd’s time, the Safavid order had no political power, though it
was prominent and influential. Shaykh Safi al-Din had established the
headquarters of his order in Ardabil, near the shore of the Caspian Sea in
Azerbaijan. In his lifetime and that of his son, Shaykh Sadr al-Din
(1304/1305–1391), the Safavid order spread throughout greater Iran and
as far as Egypt and Sri Lanka. It gained many adherents among the Turk-
men of eastern Anatolia and Syria. Historians have sought to establish ex-
actly when the Safavids became a Shii order and whether they were
actually descendants of Muhammad and Ali. Zeki Velidi Togan and
Ahmad Kasravi have shown that the Safavids were not actually descended
from the Prophet. Kasravi contends that the family was Tajik but spoke
Azeri Turkish; Togan contends that they were Kurds. There can be no firm
answer to the question of when the Safavids became Shii. There was no
sharp line between Sunni and Shii Islam in the middle periods of Islamic
history. The transition from Sufi order to empire had two components:
the beginning of political and military activity and the activation of mes-
sianic claims.
Junayd, Safi al-Din’s great-grandson, became shaykh after the death of
his father, Ibrahim, in 1447. His paternal uncle Jafar challenged his suc-
cession and won the support of Jahanshah Qaraquyunlu, the ruler of the
Turkmen confederation that dominated the western Iranian plateau at the
time. Junayd was exiled from Ardabil. At this time, he first gathered a mil-
itary retinue. In 1456, he took refuge with the major opponent of Jahan-
shah, Uzun Hasan Aqquyunlu. Uzun Hasan sheltered Junayd for three
years and allowed him to marry his own sister. Presumably, Uzun Hasan,
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142 4 – T H E S AFAV I D E M PI R E

who had secured his paramountcy among the Aqquyunlu only in 1457,
sought to gain the support of Junayd’s followers among the Turkmen. Ju-
nayd later led a series of raids into the Christian areas of the Caucasus but
could not reestablish himself in Ardabil. In 1460, Junayd and his forces
were attacked by the Muslim ruler of Shirvan, Khalilullah, during their re-
turn from a raid on Georgia, and the Safavid leader was killed. Junayd’s
participation in ghaza fits the association of ghaza non-Shari religiosity
and pastoral nomadism familiar from the early phase of Ottoman history.
Junayd’s son, Haydar, spent his childhood at the court of Uzun Hasan and
married the ruler’s daughter (and thus his own first cousin). Uzun Hasan
installed Haydar as the shaykh of the Safavid order in Ardabil in the early
1470s, after his victories over Shaykh Jafar’s protectors, Jahanshah
Qaraquyunlu and Abu Said Timuri. Haydar introduced the distinctive red
turban that gave the followers of the Safavids their name, Qizilbash (red-
heads). Though most of the tribes that had formed the Qaraquyunlu con-
federation until Uzun Hasan defeated Jahanshah in 1467 joined the
Aqquyunlu confederation, many of their members became adherents of
the young shaykh of Ardabil instead. Haydar’s growing power, militant
stance, and theological extremism led to a dispute with Uzun Hasan’s son
and successor, Yaqub.
Yaqub, who had become effective leader of the Aqquyunlu in 1481,
and his chief minister, Qazi Isa, sought to alter the Aqquyunlu regime fun-
damentally. His program “aimed at the complete reorganization of the
empire along the lines of traditional Irano-Islamic statecraft.”4 This agenda
alienated many of the Turkmen and probably increased the influence of
the Safavids. Haydar first led the Qizilbash into the field against the Cir-
cassians in 1484 with Yaqub’s grudging permission and obtained transit
rights through Shirvan from its ruler, the Shirvanshah, Farrukhyasar, the
son of Junayd’s killer. Haydar led a second raid in 1486, but Yaqub then
forced him to swear an oath to end his military activity and devote him-
self to the spiritual guidance of his followers.
Haydar did not keep his vow for long; Yaqub actually asked his cousin
for military assistance two years later. Haydar mobilized his troops but
then obtained Yaqub’s permission to raid Circassia and passage rights from
the Shirvanshah. Instead of passing through Shirvan, however, Haydar at-
tacked Farrukhyasar. The Shirvanshah appealed for help to Yaqub, who
sent a large Aqquyunlu force. The combined Aqquyunlu-Shirvani army
crushed the Safavids on July 9, 1488. Haydar was killed, and his three
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Chronology 143

sons, Sultan Ali, Sayyid Ibrahim, and Ismail were imprisoned far from
Ardabil. This apparent victory weakened the Aqquyunlu regime, for many
of the disaffected Turkmen were sympathetic to the Safavids.
After Yaqub’s death in 1490, the Aqquyunlu Empire collapsed into a se-
ries of conflicts among the descendants of Uzun Hasan. One of his grand-
sons, Rustam bin Maqsud, established a modicum of order in 1493. He
permitted the three sons of Haydar to return to Ardabil, and the Safavids
supported Rustam against other Aqquyunlu princes. The Aqquyunlu ad-
ministration could not, however, control the Safavid forces once they were
in being. Several Aqquyunlu princes decided to arrest the three sons of
Haydar in the summer of 1494. The brothers attempted to flee to Ard-
abil, but Aqquyunlu forces overtook them outside the city. In the ensuing
battle, Sultan Ali was killed. Ibrahim renounced extremism, and the
Aqquyunlu authorities installed him in Ardabil. His seven-year-old
brother, Ismail, became the bearer of the Safavids’ militant tradition. He
escaped the Aqquyunlu and found refuge at the court of Ali Mirza Kiyai,
the Shii ruler of Gilan, in the city of Lahijan. Ismail remained in hiding
there for five years.

The Establishment of Empire, 1499–1514

Ismail emerged from his exile in Gilan in the summer of 1499, at the age
of twelve. The disorders within the Aqquyunlu realm had continued dur-
ing this period and prevented an immediate response to Ismail’s reappear-
ance. He rapidly attracted a huge following, including seven major tribes:
the Ustajlu, Shamlu, Takkelu, Varsaq, Rumlu, Zul Qadr, Afshar, and
Qajar. These tribes formed the Qizilbash confederation. He led these
forces against the old enemy of his family, the Shirvanshah, and by the end
of 1500 had killed Farrukhyasar and subjugated the rich province he had
ruled. The Safavid order had become a principality.
In 1501, Ismail’s forces occupied Tabriz, the Aqquyunlu capital and the
most important commercial center of western Iran. Ismail then defeated a se-
ries of Aqquyunlu princes, most importantly Sultan Murad, near Hamadan
on June 20, 1503. The urban centers of southern and western Iran—Isfahan,
Shiraz, Yazd, and Kirman—accepted Safavid rule. The Aqquyunlu held
Baghdad until 1508 but ceased to be a major political factor.
Following the victory at Hamadan, the Safavids conquered the Caspian
littoral (Mazandaran and Gurgan) in 1504, occupied the Aqquyunlu
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144 4 – T H E S AFAV I D E M PI R E

I M AG E 4. 1
The battle between Shah
Ismail I and Muhammad
Shaybani Khan in 1510: folio
from the Kebir Musavver
Silsilename. Murals in Shah
Abbas II’s Chihil Sutun
palace (1642) also depict
this battle. According to
Safavid accounts, after
killing Shaybani Khan,
Ismail had the skin
removed from the skull
and gilded it to use as a
wine goblet.

heartland of Diyar Bakr between 1505 and 1507, took Baghdad in 1508,
and finally, in 1510, occupied Khurasan. There, Shah Ismail encountered
two rivals, the incumbent Timurids and the insurgent Uzbeks. The con-
sequences of collective sovereignty and the appanage system had shrunk
Timurid control to Khurasan and Mawaralnahr (Mawara al-Nahr, mean-
ing “the land between the two rivers,” the Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya),
with major centers at Herat and Samarqand. The Timurids faced increas-
ing pressure from the Uzbeks in the north. The Uzbeks, Turkic nomads
ruled by descendants of Chingiz Khan through his son Jochi and grand-
son Shayban, had migrated southwest from their homeland between the
Ural Mountains and the Irtysh River in the second quarter of the fifteenth
century and controlled the north bank of the Syr-Darya by 1450. In
1490, one of the Uzbek princes, Muhammad Shaybani Khan, began the
conquests that made the dynasty a significant power. Between that year
and 1507, Shaybani Khan took Tashkent, Khwarazam, Balkh, and Herat,
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Chronology 145

effectively ending Timuri rule in central Asia. His last Timuri opponent
was the intrepid Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur, who later carried Timuri
sovereignty to the Indian subcontinent.
In 1509, Uzbek forces raided Kirman, which was Safavid territory.
Shah Ismail sent two embassies to Shaybani Khan to dissuade him from ex-
pansion westward; Shaybani Khan responded by demanding that Ismail
accept Uzbek (Chingiz Khanid) suzerainty and return to the spiritual vo-
cation of a Sufi. Ismail then led Safavid forces into Khurasan, met Shay-
bani Khan’s forces at Marv, and defeated them decisively on December 2,
1510. In 1511, Safavid forces assisted Babur in retaking Samarqand and
Bukhara from the Uzbeks. When the Safavids then withdrew, the Uzbeks
drove Babur off. Ismail sent another army to Babur’s assistance, but dis-
sension among the Safavid commanders led to a rout when the allies met
the Uzbek forces at Ghujduvan. Though Ismail later drove the Uzbeks out
of Khurasan, which they occupied after the battle, Ghujduvan ended ex-
pansion of the Safavid Empire.
The strength of the Safavid following among the Turkmen of Anatolia
made a clash with the Ottomans inevitable. The Ottomans had begun ef-
forts to suppress Qizilbash sympathizers from their Anatolian provinces in
1501, but the cautious Bayazid II avoided open hostilities with Ismail. This
passive policy was the immediate cause of Selim I’s revolt against his father.
There were widespread disorders among the Anatolian Turkmen during the
succession war, and many fled to Safavid territory. As soon as Selim I took
the throne, he began the thorough suppression of the Qizilbash in Ot-
toman Anatolia. He then invaded Safavid Azerbaijan. Ismail offered battle
at Chaldiran, northeast of Lake Van, on August 23, 1514. The Ottoman
tactic of tabur jangi defeated the Safavid cavalry. The Safavids suffered ex-
tremely heavy casualties. The Ottomans occupied Tabriz, but the limited
campaign radius of the Ottoman army prevented them from holding it.
The defeat at Chaldiran ended the first phase of Safavid history. Geo-
graphically, the Safavids lost only the province of Diyar Bakr, but the mo-
mentum of expansion was gone. Ismail, who had been a charismatic,
aggressive leader, became passive. He never led his troops in battle again.
Of the last ten years of his reign, there is little to report.
The establishment phase of the Safavid Empire ended with a Qizilbash
confederation ruling Azerbaijan, Iraq, western Iran, and Khurasan. It con-
fronted the Ottomans in the west and Uzbeks in the east and was com-
mitted to Shii Islam as the religion of the general population. With the
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146 4 – T H E S AFAV I D E M PI R E

exception of the loss of Iraq to the Ottomans in 1534, this description re-
mained accurate until 1588.

Qizilbash Confederation, 1514–1580

Ismail’s passivity transferred real authority to the leaders of the Qizilbash
tribes and the leading civilian officials. For most of the remainder of Ismail’s
reign, a Tajik vizier, Mirza Shah Husayn Isfahani, dominated the adminis-
tration. His supremacy eventually led to his assassination in 1523. Most of
the Qizilbash chiefs were also provincial governors and resided in the
provincial capitals rather than at the court, reflecting the comparative unim-
portance of the center. The governors of the most important provinces acted
as the guardians of Ismail’s five sons. Tahmasp Mirza, the eldest, was titular
governor of Khurasan, under the tutelage of Amir Khan Mowsillu at Herat;
the Mowsillu uymaq (uymaq was the standard term for tribe) thus domi-
nated the province of Khurasan. Ismail died of natural causes on May 23,
1524, aged only thirty-seven despite his twenty-three years of rule.
Tahmasp, aged ten, ascended the throne, apparently without dispute.
Historians have described the first decade of Tahmasp’s reign as a Qizil-
bash interregnum, since the Qizilbash chiefs clearly controlled the empire.
Internal stresses always took priority over external dangers, and the Ot-
toman threat always came before the Uzbek threat. The leaders of two
Qizilbash tribes, Div Sultan Rumlu and Kopek Sultan Ustajlu, established
themselves as coregents at the shah’s enthronement. Shah Ismail’s last vakil
(chief officer) had been an Ustajlu, so the new arrangement meant a loss
in influence for that tribe. Div Sultan’s efforts to eliminate the Ustajlu
from power entirely dominated the first two years of Tahmasp’s reign. By
1526, the Ustajlu had fled to Gilan, and Juheh Sultan Takkalu had joined
Div Sultan Rumlu as regent. The instability at court interfered with the de-
fense of Khurasan against the Uzbeks.
Between 1524 and 1540, Ubayd Khan Uzbek invaded Khurasan five
times. Shah Tahmasp “led” four campaigns to drive the Uzbeks from the
province, the Ottomans conquered Iraq and temporarily occupied Azer-
baijan, and the dominant uymaq changed four times in that period. Con-
sidering the combination of internal weakness and external dangers, it is
remarkable that the Safavid polity survived at all. When Tahmasp faced
the Ottoman invasion of Iraq, he had only 7,000 troops, not all of them
reliable, to face the victor of Mohacs. Only the limited campaign radius of
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Chronology 147

the Ottoman army prevented them from holding Tabriz. The Uzbeks had
a comparable limitation.
The Uzbek principalities—there were separate kingdoms in Mawaral-
nahr and Khwarazam—were appanage states in the extreme. Separate dy-
nasties, both descended from Shayban, the son of Jochi, ruled the two
kingdoms. Within the principality of Mawaralnahr, four different lines
ruled the main appanages of Bukhara, Samarqand, Balkh, Miyankal, and
Tashkent. The senior male member of the family had only limited au-
thority as grand khan. The principal opponent of Shah Tahmasp, Ubayd
Khan, did not become grand khan until 1533 and, even in that position,
had only limited success in swaying the other Uzbek leaders to his agenda.
Only his own appanage family, the Shah Budaqids of Bukhara, showed a
consistent interest in the acquisition of Khurasan. He was able to persuade
the rest of the Uzbek princes to join him in a united effort against the
Safavids only in 1524 and 1528.
Tahmasp defeated the Uzbeks decisively at Jam on September 24,
1528. The defeat made the other Uzbek clans unwilling to support him
against the Safavids. It was thus responsible for the hardening of the fron-
tier between Safavid Khurasan and Uzbek Mawaralnahr. The Safavids had
won at Jam using firearms. Though far more obscure than the major bat-
tles of the early gunpowder era, like Chaldiran, Mohacs, and Padua, Jam
ranks among them. The gunpowder forces that won the battle, however,
did not alter the internal political balance of the Safavid Empire, and the
victory over the Uzbeks did not give the Safavids the confidence to chal-
lenge the Ottomans in the field.
The Ottomans invaded three times in Tahmasp’s reign, in 1534, 1548–
1549, and 1553–1554. Each time, Tahmasp refused battle, ceded territory,
and survived. Tabriz fell in all three invasions; Ottoman forces advanced as
far east as the old Mongol capital of Sultaniyyah, two hundred miles south-
east of Tabriz, but could not hold the territory or subdue the Safavids. Su-
layman sought to put Tahmasp’s brothers Sam Mirza, in 1533, and Alqas
Mirza, in 1548, on the Safavid throne. The Ottomans might then have
governed the Safavid Empire indirectly, as they did the Crimean khanate,
another nomad-dominated principality, but neither effort succeeded.
The Ottoman invasion of Iraq in 1533–1534 caused the greatest crisis
of Tahmasp’s time. Its events are difficult to reconstruct. Sometime on the
march westward, a Shamlu agent attempted to poison the shah. Appar-
ently, the Shamlu and Takkalu uymaqs had aligned against the Ustajlu and
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148 4 – T H E S AFAV I D E M PI R E

the shah; Sam Mirza, who was governor of Herat with Husayn Khan
Shamlu as his guardian, was the rebels’ candidate for the throne. The
Takkalu-Shamlu party sought Ottoman support. Sam Mirza sent his sub-
mission to Sulayman during the Ottoman ruler’s march west, and Sulay-
man recognized him as the ruler of Iran west of Azerbaijan. This situation
caused panic at Tahmasp’s court, but Sam Mirza did not leave Herat until
after the Ottomans had withdrawn, at which point he submitted to his
brother immediately. After weathering this storm, Tahmasp was able to
manipulate the uymaqs rather than being manipulated by them.
The city of Herat had been the central objective of the struggle be-
tween the Safavids and the Uzbeks; the city changed hands several times.
Tahmasp regained it from the Uzbeks in 1537 and briefly conquered the
city and province of Qandahar from the Timurids the same year. Qanda-
har controlled an important overland trade route between the Iranian
plateau and the Indo-Gangetic plain; it became a point of contention be-
tween the Safavids and the Mughals (Timurids), as Herat was between the
Safavids and the Uzbeks. In 1543, Timurid prince Humayun came to
Tahmasp’s court, a refugee from the Suri Afghans and his brother Mirza
Kamran. Tahmasp made Humayun’s conversion to Shiism a prerequisite
for his assistance; the Timurid prince acquiesced reluctantly. In 1545, Tah-
masp provided Humayun with a small army to regain his empire from
Mirza Kamran, requiring in return that Humayun relinquish Qandahar
to him. Humayun conquered Qandahar and began the reestablishment of
what became the Mughal Empire. He duly transferred Qandahar to
Safavid sovereignty but took it back when the Safavid governor died. Tah-
masp led an expedition to Qandahar in 1558 and reconquered it.
Even during the second half of his reign, Tahmasp had little political
leverage compared to his Ottoman contemporaries. Despite his limited
freedom of action, however, he laid the foundation for Abbas I’s transfor-
mation of the Safavid polity. In a series of raids into the Caucasus, Tah-
masp took large numbers of Georgian, Armenian, and Circassian
prisoners, who became military slaves. Though the first unit consisting of
military slaves did not exist until the reign of Abbas I, most of its mem-
bers actually entered Safavid service in Tahmasp’s time. Tahmasp thus cre-
ated the nucleus of the force that changed the political balance of the
empire in his grandson’s time. Tahmasp also moved the capital of the em-
pire from Tabriz, the principal city of western Iran since Mongol times but
impossible to defend from the Ottomans, southwest to Qazvin.
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Chronology 149

For a monarch who reigned more than fifty years, Tahmasp leaves a re-
markably vague impression. He must be judged by his most positive ac-
complishment, the establishment of his dynasty. He may not have been a
great monarch, but had he been a lesser one, the Safavid Empire might
well have split into two separate principalities (not uncommon in tribal
confederations with weak rulers and strong tribal chiefs) or been destroyed
entirely. Circumstances made Tahmasp a passive figure; Chaldiran had
taught the dangers of activity.
Although Tahmasp had nine sons, only two, Ismail and Haydar, be-
came candidates for the throne when he died. Neither played an active
role in the contest; Ismail had been a prisoner since 1556, and Haydar was
young and inexperienced. Each had the backing of a coalition of Qizil-
bash tribes and other elements at court. Ismail’s supporters triumphed
without much difficulty.
Ismail reigned for fourteen months before his death, either by poison
or from an overdose of opium. His reign was as violent as it was brief. He
ordered the execution of all of his brothers (Muhammad Khudabandah, his
older brother, who had not been a contender for the throne because he
was nearly blind, survived only because of Ismail’s own death) and all but
three of his nephews and male cousins, as well as numerous Qizilbash
chieftains. Often taken as an indication of insanity, these executions may
well have been part of an effort to make the empire more stable by elimi-
nating the elements that had restricted Tahmasp’s power. Though seen as
a mad tyrant, had he lived, Ismail might have become the empire builder
his nephew Abbas later became. His death began a decade of disorder.
Muhammad Khudabandah and his three sons, Hamza Mirza, Abbas
Mirza, and Abu Talib Mirza, were the only Safavid princes to survive Is-
mail’s reign. The Qizilbash chiefs chose Muhammad Khudabandah as
shah. His reign had four phases: the dominance of his chief wife, Mahd-i
Ulya, from his enthronement to her murder in 1579; the dominance of the
vizier Mirza Salman and Hamza Mirza until the vizier’s assassination in
1583; the supremacy of Hamza Mirza alone until his assassination in 1586;
and the final denouement until the accession of Shah Abbas in 1588. At his
enthronement, no one expected Khudabandah to govern and he did not
disappoint. At first, his sister, Pari Khan Khanum, who had considerable
support among the Qizilbash and had orchestrated the enthronement of
Ismail, and a Circassian uncle in an important court office held the
strongest positions at court. Mirza Salman, who had been Ismail II’s vizier
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150 4 – T H E S AFAV I D E M PI R E

and feared his master’s sister, collaborated with Mahd-i Ulya to eliminate
Pari Khan Khanum, but Mahd-i Ulya took effective power, issuing royal
commands and appointing officers. She apparently sought to establish a
centralized regime and ensure the accession of her son Hamza Mirza. The
Ottomans exploited the new Safavid weakness by invading Azerbaijan and
Georgia in 1578. Hamza Mirza and Mirza Salman took the field the next
year and regained much of the lost territory. The Qizilbash chiefs found
Mahd-i Ulya’s hostile dominance intolerable and had her strangled.
Mahd-i Ulya’s son Hamza Mirza and protégé Mirza Salman inherited
her position and agenda. The Ottoman threat, together with an Uzbek in-
vasion of Khurasan, did not alter the behavior of the Qizilbash. The em-
pire was effectively partitioned. The Turkmen and Takkalu controlled
Qazvin; an Ustajlu-Shamlu coalition governed Khurasan with the young
Abbas Mirza as titular governor. The Khurasani coalition revolted in
1581, seeking to substitute Abbas for his father. Mirza Salman and Hamza
Mirza led the royal army to Khurasan the next year. The Ustajlu leader,
Murshid Quli Khan, surrendered to Hamza Mirza, and the royal forces
besieged the Shamlus in Herat. The Qizilbash chiefs resented the author-
ity of the Tajik vizier, and Mirza Salman accused them of dereliction of
duty in prosecuting the siege. The Qizilbash demanded the dismissal of
the vizier and the shah, and Hamza Mirza saw no choice but to surrender
Mirza Salman to them. He was executed shortly afterwards. The young
Hamza Mirza was eventually murdered while campaigning against the Ot-
tomans in December 1586. The empire now had no effective leadership.
After Hamza Mirza’s death, the Qizilbash broke into eastern and west-
ern factions. Abbas became the tool of Murshid Quli Khan Ustajlu in
Khurasan; the Iraqi faction supported his brother Abu Talib Mirza, ex-
pecting to partition the Safavid realm between them. But Abd Allah Khan
Uzbek, the greatest of the Shaybani rulers, invaded Khurasan and drove
Murshid Quli Khan west with Abbas. Once back at Qazvin, Murshid
Quli Khan created a consensus of the leading Qizilbash officers for the en-
thronement of his protégé. Abbas took the throne on October 1, 1588.

Imperial Transformation:
The Reign of Shah Abbas I, 1588–1629
When he placed his young ward on the throne, Murshid Quli Khan Us-
tajlu expected to govern the empire as vakil. Abbas I, at sixteen, hardly
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Chronology 151

I M AG E 4 .2
Portrait of Shah Abbas I.
Bishn Das, one Jahangir’s
finest court artists,
accompanied a Mughal
embassy to the court of
Shah Abbas I. Upon
returning home, Jahangir
awarded him an elephant by
appreciation for the
naturalistic portraits of
Abbas that no doubt aided
Jahangir in taking the
measure of his rival.

seemed likely to succeed in taking control of the empire from the Qizil-
bash chieftains. Murshid Quli Khan rearranged the offices of the court and
provincial governorships, without making major changes. The strength of
his position inevitably provoked a challenge from the other Qizilbash
chiefs. Abbas sought to rally support for himself as shah, not as the tool of
the Ustajlu or any other tribe. He employed the concept of shahisivani (lit-
erally, “love for the shah”). Intended to recall the loyalties of individual
Qizilbash to the shah rather than to their individual uymaqs, shahisivani
became one of Abbas’s mechanisms for strengthening his position.
Abbas had Murshid Quli Khan executed on July 23, 1589, less than
nine months after taking the throne. This action marked the beginning of
Abbas’s actual authority. In order to undertake a fundamental transfor-
mation of the empire, he had to secure his frontiers and could do so only
by making concessions. He opened negotiations with the Ottomans,
and on March 21, 1590, the Safavid representatives signed a peace treaty
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152 4 – T H E S AFAV I D E M PI R E

surrendering all of Azerbaijan and Iraq, as well as parts of Shirvan, Daghis-

tan, and Kurdistan. There was no treaty with the Uzbeks, but after an
abortive expedition in 1591, Abbas made no effort to retake Mashhad and
Herat until 1598. In 1594, the Safavid governor of Qandahar transferred
both his loyalty and the city to the Mughals. Abbas did not respond. He
thus obtained the breathing space necessary to transform the Safavid polity.
Abbas’s program had three elements: two fiscal and administrative and
one military. In order to obtain the income necessary, he established direct
Safavid rule over the silk-producing regions of Gilan and Mazandaran,
south of the Caspian and Qarabagh and Shirvan, further west. These oper-
ations lasted from 1593 to 1607. Abbas thus ensured that most of the prof-
its from the empire’s most valuable export went into the central treasury. He
also began a significant change in provincial administration, the transfer of
provinces from mamalik (provincial) to khass (central government) admin-
istration. I discuss these concepts in depth in the sections on military or-
ganization and provincial administration. Briefly, Qizilbash chiefs governed
mamalik provinces and distributed their revenues to their uymaqs, with lit-
tle or none going to the central government. Khass provinces paid their taxes
into the central treasury. The mamalik structure reflected the practice in
tribal confederations. The transfer of provinces from mamalik to khass
shifted the balance of power from the Qizilbash to the ruler. In some cases,
the transfer amounted to the conquest of provinces from the Qizilbash.
With this new revenue, Abbas paid for the construction of a new im-
perial capital at Isfahan, which began in 1597–1598, and for his military
reforms. He expanded the infantry, cavalry, and artillery units that his
grandfather had created, with soldiers primarily of slave origin, which
could defeat any tribal force just as the Safavid army had defeated the
Uzbeks at Jam. Abbas also transferred the capital to Isfahan, far from the
Ottoman frontier. His military reforms coincided with periods of weakness
in the Ottoman Empire and the Uzbek principalities. The Jalali uprisings
and the Long War distracted the Ottomans. The death of Abdullah Khan
in 1598 ended Uzbek unity, opening the way for the Safavids. Abbas led
his army from Isfahan in the spring, took Mashhad on July 29, and de-
feated the Uzbeks outside Herat on August 5.
In 1603, the Ottoman garrison abandoned the fortress of Nihavand in
Iraq, and a Kurdish chieftain revolted against the Ottomans. These events
and the Jalali disorders further west left the eastern Ottoman Empire in a
shambles. Exploiting this weakness, Abbas occupied Tabriz in 1603 and
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Chronology 153

Erivan, in eastern Anatolia, in 1604. In 1605, the Safavid army crushed an

Ottoman army sent to Sufiyan near Tabriz. This victory marked the trans-
formation of the Safavid Empire into a bureaucratic polity with a gun-
powder army. In 1622, Abbas conquered Qandahar from the Mughals
and, with the help of the British East India Company, took Hormuz from
the Portuguese. He later established a new port, Bandar Abbas, on the
mainland opposite Hormuz. It became the major outlet for exports, espe-
cially silk. After a pause, Abbas initiated hostilities against the Ottomans
again in 1623, retaking Iraq and a considerable part of Kurdistan. The
Safavids repulsed an Ottoman siege of Baghdad the next year. Abbas’s mil-
itary achievements matched the magnificence that his new imperial capi-
tal at Isfahan symbolized and articulated.
Abbas took drastic measures against his own family to secure his posi-
tion. His eldest son, Muhammad Baqir Mirza, known as Safi, may or may
not have been guilty of the plot for which his father executed him in
1615. Two other sons were blinded in 1621 and 1626 because he inter-
preted their efforts to secure succession as disloyalty to him. These steps
brought stability to the dynasty. Abbas imitated the Ottoman practice of
confining princes to the palace, making all future succession disputes a
matter of court politics. Before his death on January 19, 1629, Abbas had
nominated his grandson Sam Mirza, the eldest surviving Safavid prince
who had not been blinded, to succeed him. The young man took the
throne on February 17, using the name of his father, Safi.

Inertia and Devolution, 1629–1722

The French jeweler Jean Chardin, who spent eight years in Iran during the
reigns of Abbas II and Sulayman, wrote that the prosperity of Iran had
ended when Abbas I died. Western historians have generally accepted
Chardin’s view. Andrew Newman interprets the reigns of Safi (1629–
1642), Abbas II (1642–1666), Sulayman (1666–1694), and Sultan
Husayn (1694–1722) differently. He argues that the Safavid project, as he
calls it, remained successful throughout this period and that the sudden
fall of the empire to the Ghalzay Afghans indicated not the complete de-
generation of the regime but a narrow military failure. The character of
the rulers certainly changed. With the exception of Abbas II in the earlier
part of his reign, the later Safavid rulers generally remained in the palace
and divided their time between pleasure and piety. But, as mentioned
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154 4 – T H E S AFAV I D E M PI R E

above, the character of the monarch does not necessarily indicate the
strength of the regime. As in the Ottoman Empire, strong grand viziers
emerged to fill the gap left by the withdrawal of the monarchs. The Qizil-
bash grew less and less influential in politics; competition between palace
officials, bureaucrats, and the ulama became a central feature. No healthy
government, however, would sink into the military impotence that led to
the fall of the Safavids.
From a military perspective, the revived conflict with the Ottomans
dominated Safi’s reign. Murad IV renewed hostilities against the Safavids in
1629; the Ottoman army defeated the Safavids in the field near Hamadan
in November 1630 but then withdrew. After four years without a major ex-
pedition on either side, the Ottomans took Erivan and plundered Tabriz
in 1635. Safi recaptured Erivan, but in 1638 the Ottomans took Baghdad.
The next year Safi relinquished the Safavid claim to Iraq in the treaty of
Qasr-i Shirin, signed on May 17, 1639. The treaty ended hostilities be-
tween the Safavids and the Ottomans. In the east Safi lost Qandahar in
1638, though not to a Mughal siege. There was also a series of minor
Uzbek incursions, none of which had any major effect, and the Portuguese
raided the town of Qishm on the island of that name in the Persian Gulf.
Politically, Shah Safi had some significant successes. He gradually re-
placed the close associates of Abbas who had overseen his accession with
his own loyalists. He and his supporters overcame succession challenges
from an uncle and a nephew after his enthronement. The changes in court
offices took three years. In 1633–1634, Safi eliminated the most power-
ful man in the kingdom after himself, Imam Quli Khan. Imam Quli, the
son of Abbas’s leading officer, Allahverdi Khan, was the effective ruler of
southern Iran as the governor of Fars. Safi had him and his entire family
executed. The principal officers of Safi’s time illustrate the change in
Safavid politics wrought by his grandfather. Only one was a Qizilbash
tribal leader, two were Georgians (one of whom commanded the imperial
slave forces and the imperial musketeers), and one was a Turkmen not af-
filiated with a major tribe. He prevented further challenges to his position
from within the dynasty by ordering the execution of all Safavids other
than his own children. They also faced, and suppressed, a series of ghu-
luww uprisings early in the reign. Safi continued Abbas’s alliance with the
Shii legal specialists against the continual rumblings of ghuluww.
Safi’s reign did show evidence of significant fiscal strain. His vizier,
Saru Taqi, sought to enforce fiscal discipline. His rigor cost the empire
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Chronology 155

Qandahar. Summoned to court over a fiscal dispute, the governor, Ali

Mardan Khan, shifted his allegiance to the Mughals. Safi and Saru Taqi’s
program also included further transfers of provincial revenue from the
Qizilbash tribes to the central treasury and imposition of an array of new
taxes. Safi ended Abbas’s monopoly on silk exports at the beginning of his
reign, and the treasury apparently received significantly less revenue from
silk as a result, but the picture is far from clear.
Safi died unexpectedly on May 12, 1642, leaving a sound if diminished
empire. His nine-year-old son, Sultan Muhammad Mirza, took the throne
on May 15 as Abbas II, with Saru Taqi still in control. The vizier’s domi-
nance continued until 1645, when Qizilbash officers successfully con-
spired to have him assassinated, with Abbas’s consent. The Qizilbash
success in eliminating Saru Taqi was their last; the Qizilbash leadership
was no longer at the center of power. No single officer dominated the ad-
ministration, and the young shah took a major role in government. Abbas
II maintained the strength of the Safavid armed forces and continued the
transfer of provinces from mamalik to khass jurisdiction. Previously, only
the interior provinces of the empire had been shifted, but Khurasan and
Azerbaijan came under crown control in Abbas II’s reign. During his rule
the Safavids achieved their last significant military success, the reconquest
of Qandahar from the Mughals in 1649. Perhaps the enormous expense of
this expedition and the lack of any comparable objective, rather than a
lack of military energy, prevented any further expansion in this period.
The fundamental economic weakness of the Safavid regime, demonstrated
by its inability to halt the steady outflow of specie, remained. Newman
considers this problem one of the two major challenges Abbas II faced; the
other was continuing ghuluww-inspired unrest, or rather unrest among
the urban lower classes suffering from “the combined effects of specie out-
flow, currency devaluations and price inflation”5 and inspired by ghuluww.
Despite these challenges, there is little ground for asserting that the
Safavid enterprise had become substantially weaker under Safi and Abbas
II. Abbas showed signs of a debilitating illness in 1662 but remained ac-
tive until his death in October 1666.
The reigns of the last two Safavids continued the trends that existed
under Safi and Abbas II. Abbas’s eldest son, also named Safi, took the
throne as Safi II and was then reenthroned as Shah Sulayman on No-
vember 1, 1666. The young prince panicked when he was taken out of
the harem, fearing that he was to be killed or blinded. He showed few
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156 4 – T H E S AFAV I D E M PI R E

positive characteristics after that incident. He rarely attended meetings of

the council of state, communicating with state officials through his eu-
nuchs. The nexus of power moved entirely inside the palace. The Western
writers who describe him depict an alcoholic and libertine who alternated
between parsimony and profligacy. Without royal supervision, the Safavid
army and civil administration degenerated. There was no check on offi-
cial corruption. The lack of significant external threats and prior elimina-
tion of internal factionalism allowed the reign to pass without serious
disruption, and the borders remained peaceful. Fiscal weakness, however,
continued, exacerbated by the forces of nature. The empire suffered a se-
ries of poor harvests in the 1660s and 1670s, which led to repeated re-
gional famines. Several parts of the empire also suffered serious outbreaks
of plague from 1680 onward. The tax shortfalls that these events in-
evitably caused put severe stress on the Safavid treasury. The empire also
suffered external pressure from the Uzbeks, Kalmyks, and Cossacks on its
northern borders.
In response, Sulayman and his chief minister, Shaykh Ali Khan (a
Sunni Kurd), used various means to increase income and reduce expendi-
tures, including reduction of military expenditures, a tax on silver exports,
aggressive collection of taxes and fines in arrears, and attempts to increase
income from the sale of silk to the Dutch East India Company, which
purchased the material from the government instead of private suppliers.
None of these measures made a significant difference. The model of the
sericultural empire could not last. Too much of the wealth that flowed
into Iran from Europe in return for silk continued eastward to India and
the Dutch East Indies in return for spices, drugs, cotton textiles, and other
goods to sustain wealth. The English East India Company (EIC) and the
Dutch East India Company (VOC) had alternative sources of silk in Ben-
gal and China. Sulayman’s most significant action was the appointment
of Muhammad Baqir Majlisi as the empire’s chief religious official. Majlisi
sought to transform Safavid society into an entirely Shii environment and
called for the forced conversion of all non-Shiis. There is little informa-
tion about the enforcement of this policy on the ground. But in Sulay-
man’s time, the military and financial weakness did not undercut the
legitimacy or resilience of the regime. Sulayman died on July 29, 1694.
Sulayman’s courtiers chose his older son, Sultan Husayn, as his succes-
sor. He took the throne using that name on August 6, 1694. Enormously
pious, he was nicknamed Mulla Husayn. His piety distracted him from
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Chronology 157

government, though it did not prevent him from drinking. Majlisi re-
mained in office and continued his policy. The shah went on massive pil-
grimages, in 1706 traveling to Qum and Mashhad with a retinue of
60,000. The appearance of new military threats in the east did not cause
any significant reaction. When Baluchi tribesmen revolted in 1698–1699,
raiding Yazd and Kirman and almost reaching Bandar Abbas, the Safavid
court had no army to send against them. Sultan Husayn called upon Gur-
gin Khan, also known as Giorgi XI, a Georgian prince, to assemble an
army. Since Abbas I had established Safavid sovereignty in Georgia, the
Safavids had ruled the region through a prince, chosen from one of the
two royal houses. Gurgin Khan had recently been dismissed as governor
because he had become too powerful; apparently his power was excessive
because the Safavids had so little of their own. Appointed governor of Kir-
man, Gurgin Khan defeated the Baluchis and retained that office. In
1704, when the Baluchi menace reappeared in Qandahar province, Sul-
tan Husayn appointed Gurgin Khan there, and he had similar success.
The Georgian’s policies in Qandahar, possibly oppression of the Sunni
Afghans, provoked resistance among the Ghalzay Afghans, the dominant
tribal group in the area, under their leader Mir Uvays. Gurgin Khan de-
feated the uprising without difficulty and sent Mir Uvays to Isfahan as a
prisoner. But the Afghan leader proved a more dangerous foe in the capi-
tal than in the field, for he won the favor of Shah Sultan Husayn and was
allowed to return to Qandahar.
In 1709, Mir Uvays staged a coup in Qandahar and killed Gurgin
Khan. An anti-Georgian faction at court delayed a punitive expedition for
eighteen months; then two separate expeditions failed to dislodge the
Ghalzays. Mir Uvays ruled Qandahar until his death in 1715. His brother
Mir Abd al-Aziz succeeded him and wanted to come to terms with the
Safavids, but he was overthrown by his nephew Mahmud, who had
greater ambitions. The Abdali Afghans, a rival group located primarily in
Khurasan, gave Mahmud his chance. Like the Ghalzays, they expelled the
Safavid authorities and defeated a series of punitive expeditions. Sultan
Husayn’s advisers, concerned about events in the east, had him move his
court from Isfahan to Qazvin in 1717. But the shah remained in Qazvin
for three years without mounting a single expedition against either the Ab-
dalis or Ghalzays. Finally, Mahmud led the Ghalzays into the field, not
against the impotent Safavids but against his Abdali rivals as putative ser-
vants of the shah. When Mahmud defeated the Abdalis, Sultan Husayn
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rewarded him with the title Husayn Quli Khan and recognized him as
governor of Qandahar.
A year later, Mahmud attacked Kirman. Local Zoroastrians, disaffected
by persecution, opened the gates of the city for Ghalzays. Mahmud re-
mained in Kirman for nine months, appropriating food and supplies from
the population, before returning to Qandahar. In 1721, he again led his
army westward and took Kirman, but the city’s citadel had been strength-
ened, and the Ghalzays had no siege equipment. Mahmud eventually ac-
cepted a bribe from the garrison to abandon the siege, but he led his army
westwards toward Isfahan. Mahmud’s approach caused panic. Shah Sul-
tan Husayn chose to offer battle outside the city rather than prepare for a
siege. The two armies met at Gulnabad, outside Isfahan, on March 7, 1722.
Although Safavid forces greatly outnumbered the ragtag Afghan army, their
lack of discipline and coordination led to an overwhelming Afghan victory.
The Safavids could not drive the Afghans away; the Afghans could not
breach the city walls. Thus began the siege of Isfahan.
The ordeal lasted for seven months. Starvation and cannibalism became
commonplace; 80,000 people died. Mahmud crushed several relief expedi-
tions. Shah Sultan Husayn sent his son Tahmasp out of the city to organize
another effort, without result. Thousands perished trying to escape the city.
On October 20, Shah Sultan Husayn Safavi surrendered his throne and
royal insignia to Mahmud. He had to borrow a horse from Mahmud to ride
out to surrender; the imperial stables had been emptied for food. The
Safavid regime had ended. Power in Iran had reverted to the tribes.
Safavid prestige did not end, of course. Safavid pretenders did not dis-
appear from the scene for fifty years. But it swiftly became clear that they
would never be more than pretenders. The former shah was executed in
1726; Tahmasp became a puppet for Qizilbash chiefs, first Fath Ali Khan
Qajar and then Nadir Khan Afshar. Nadir Khan drove the Ghalzays from
Isfahan and enthroned Tahmasp there, but three years later he deposed
him in favor of his infant son, Abbas. In 1736, Nadir Khan deposed the
young boy and took the throne himself as Nadir Shah. He had the two
deposed rulers and another Safavid prince executed in 1740.

SOVEREIGNT Y, RELIGION, A ND LAW

Safavid conceptions of sovereignty evolved over time and addressed mul-
tiple audiences, though the evolution was less complex and the number of
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Sovereignty, Religion, and Law 159

audiences smaller than in the Ottoman Empire. Andrew Newman’s con-

ception of the Safavid polity as a project which used different narratives to
appeal to different constituencies has considerable merit, though it does
not of course apply exclusively to the Safavids. Turks and Tajiks were, of
course, the most important of the constituencies, but, as explained above,
these terms did not simply refer to ethnic groups. The Safavids also con-
fronted religious diversity along several different axes. In addition to the
divisions between Muslim and non-Muslim and between Sunni and Shii,
the Safavids’ environment included an assortment of mystical and esoteric
Muslim beliefs, some with messianic overtones and some without. The
Safavids also sought to articulate their sovereignty to outsiders, not only
their Ottoman, Uzbek, and Mughal neighbors but also Europeans. The
Safavid efforts to address all of these audiences succeeded for more than
two centuries, but not easily or evenly.
In the most recent significant work on Safavid political ideas, Kathryn
Babayan discusses the ideology of the Safavid movement within the gen-
eral category of ghuluww. In Babayan’s conception, ghuluww denotes a
world view of opposition, political and religious, drawing upon an intel-
lectual and spiritual legacy far older than Islam. Ghuluww was the con-
tinuation of such dissents against dominant faiths and the establishments
which supported them as Manicheanism and Gnosticism. These tradi-
tions emphasized a cyclic conception of time, not in the sense of endless
repetition but of successive cycles of prophecy and the incarnation of
God or pure spirit in humanity. They denied a strict separation between
creator and created. In Babayan’s words, ghuluww “was a repository of dif-
ferent traditions that with the cultural project of Islam came to be mar-
ginalized and cast as heretical.”6 Shah Ismail’s poetry, written in Turkish
under the pseudonym Khatai, places him in the ghuluww tradition: “I am
Very God, Very God, Very God! / Come now, O blind man who has lost
the path, behold the Truth!”7 The tradition of ghuluww provided the
background for the widespread messianic speculation toward the end of
the first hijri millenium; it also interlocked with the religious traditions
of central Asian origin. Although the Turkmen had been Muslims for cen-
turies and lived far from the central Asian steppes, many of the traditions
of the steppe remained alive. Ismail presented his authority in the idiom
of the Turkmen. Sufism among the Turkmen had mimicked the shaman-
ism of their central Asian past, in which charismatic individuals claimed
direct personal connections with the divine. Ismail was a charismatic