SAFAVID DYNASTY. Originating from a mystical order at the turn of the 14th century, the Safavids ruled Persia from 1501 to 1722.

Introduction. The period of the Safavids, the dynasty that took control of Persia in the early 16th century, is often considered the beginning of modern Persian history, just as the state they created is said to mark the genesis of the Persian nation-state. It would be anachronistic to call Safavid Persia a modern nation-state, and it is important to realize that, in many ways, Safavid society continued Mongol and Timurid patterns and practices—ranging from its coinage to its administrative institutions. The Safavids, in fact, consciously built their legitimacy on past tradition. Just as Timurid historians had attempted to forge a connection with the Mongols, so Safavid historians made an effort to associate Shah ʿAbbās I with Timur-e Lang (r. 1370-1405) and to present him as a divinely inspired figure. Yet it is also true that the Safavids made many original contributions and their legacy survives in various ways. They unified much of Persia under a single political control, transforming an essentially tribal nomadic order into a sedentary society deriving most of its revenue from agriculture and trade. Most importantly, the Safavids introduced a concept of patrimonial kingship, combining territorial authority with religious legitimacy that, with modifications, would endure until the 20th century. The political system that emerged under them had overlapping political and religious boundaries and a core language, Persian, which served as the literary tongue, and even began to replace Arabic as the vehicle for theological discourse. A number of administrative institutions created during the Safavid period or adapted from earlier times continued to exist well into the Qajar era. The Safavid period, finally, witnessed the beginning of frequent and sustained diplomatic and commercial interactions between Persia and Europe.

In discussing Persia between 1501 and 1722, several peculiarities of the area and the time should be borne in mind. The first concerns the country’s physical environment and its effects. Much of Persia consists of arid, unproductive land. Large parts receive insufficient rainfall to support agriculture but are well suited to pastoral nomadism. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nomads, organized in tribes, comprised as much as one-third to one half of the country’s population. A second and related issue was that military power in Persia was usually tribal in origin, with political power following suit. Until the 20th century, all of Persia’s ruling dynasties had their origins in tribal ambitions. The nomadic make-up of the state was reflected in an ambulant royal court and the fact that until modern times Persia did not have a fixed capital. Safavid Persia had a succession of capitals: for the capital was where the shah and his entourage happened to be. Thirdly, military and political power in Persia was generally in the hands of ethnic Turks, while ethnic Persians, called Tajiks, were dominant in the areas of administration and culture. As Persians of Kurdish ancestry and of a non-tribal background, the Safavids did not fit this pattern, though the state they set up with the assistance of Turkmen tribal forces of eastern Anatolia closely resembled this division in its makeup. At the same time, it is important to stress that the Turk versus Tajik barrier could be breached. Over time, many Turks served as bureaucrats while a number of Tajiks held military posts. Nor should the tension and rivalry created by mutual suspicion and divergent interests between the two groups be exaggerated. Fourthly, statecraft in pre-modern Persia was an admixture of Islamic traditions of governance, ancient Persian notions of kingship, and Central Asian, Turco-Mongolian principles of legitimacy and power. In the first, the ruler ruled the religious community as God’s trustee; the second was built around the notion of an absolutist monarch governing over his people as a shepherd over his flock; while in the third, power, or at least charisma, resided in the clan which included women—mothers and daughters—as much as sons and uncles, rather than in the person of the ruler. In this, as in other areas, Safavid Persia has much in common with its neighbors to the east and west, Mughal India and the Ottoman Empire. The absence of primogeniture—the right of the eldest son to succeed—in the latter tradition turned every succession into a long struggle for power and thus created much instability (though in Safavid Persia, the older Persian principle of the son succeeding the father usually prevailed).

Background. The Safavids began in about 1300 as a mystical order centered in the northwestern town of Ardabil, the hometown and burial place of the order’s founder, Shaikh Ṣafi-al-Din (1252-1334). Weathering the political storms attending the demise of Mongol rule in Iran and the rise and fall of Timur Lang, the Safavid order continued under the leadership of Ṣafi-al-Din’s son Ṣadr-al-Din (d. 1391-92) and Ḵᵛāja ʿAli (d. 1427), Jonayd (d. 1460), and Ḥaydar (q.v.; 1460-88), growing into an elaborate, ambitious movement inhabiting the interstices of the territory ruled by the Āq Qoyunlu and the Qara Qoyunlu. Their main supporters were Turkmen tribal groups known as the Qezelbāš (Qizilbāš), “redheads,” in reference to the red headgear they were said to have adopted at the time of Ḥaydar. Its twelve gores symbolized their allegiance to the Safavid ruler and the twelve Shiʿite Imams. Despite their collective name, these seminomadic warriors of Turkish ethnic origin did not claim a common descent. They retained their individual clan affiliation, and the different clans continued to be one another’s bitter rivals. The most important Qezelbāš clans supporting the Safavid cause were the Šāmlu, the Ostājlu, the Tekellu, Rumlu, and Ḏu’l-Qadr, all of them migrants from Syria and Anatolia. Each clan migrated to a different part of Persia, with their leaders appointed as governor of the area once the Safavids conquered it. Thus the Ostājlu were located in Azerbaijan and in part in ʿErāq-e ʿAjam and Kermān; the Qarāmānlu hailed from Širvān; the Šāmlu resided in Khorasan; the Tekellu held Isfahan, Hamadan, and parts of ʿErāq-e ʿAjam; Fārs was in the hands of the Ḏu’l-Qadr, the Afšār dominated in Kuhgiluya and Khuzestan (Ḵuzestān), and Baghdad rested under the Mawṣellu, a smaller tribe and offshoot of the Āq Qoyunlu.