Mar 31, 2023 OpenStax. Safavid Dynasty 1501-1736 (official end in 1760) and the Netherlands (Dutch East India Company) Exports Persian rugs Silks Textiles Imports Spices Metals Coffee Sugar Slavery- little or no slavery as a labor system Mainly recruited among Georgian, Armenian and North Caucasian renegades Since the ruler was directly appointed by God, men were required to obey his commands whether just or unjust. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here: The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia: Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed. Feature Flags: { Abbs I, byname Abbs the Great, (born Jan. 27, 1571died Jan. 19, 1629), shah of Persia from 1588 to 1629, who strengthened the Safavid dynasty by expelling Ottoman and Uzbek troops from Persian soil and by creating a standing army. (credit: Abbas I of Persia by Unknown/TRAJAN 117/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain), The Shah Mosque, built by Abbas I, is located on the south side of, In this image from a Persian history of his reign written about 1650, the Safavid ruler Shah Ismail (dressed in white) stands on the steps of a mosque prior to his coronation, having the sermon read in the name of the Twelve Imams and effectively declaring Shiism to be the state religion of Iran in 1501. In this way, one of his sons was executed and two were blinded. The army divisions were: Ghulams ("crown servants or slaves" usually conscripted from Armenian, Georgian, and Circassian lands), Tofongchis (musketeers), and Topchis (artillery-men). Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing GRAB THE BEST PAPER 92.2% of users find it useful Abbas I first fought the Uzbeks, recapturing Herat and Mashhad, in 1598. The city center was unique. There had been, however, Shi'a communities in some cities like Qom and Sabzevar as early as eighth century. Following the conquest of Iran, Ismail I made conversion mandatory for the largely Sunni population. Safavid Empire Flashcards | Quizlet Since two other sons had predeceased him, when he died on January 19, 1629, he had no son capable of succeeding him. In the same year he occupied Ghazni, Kabul, and Lahore. During his reign, the official language at the royal court was Azerbaijanian. The Safavids began not as a political dynasty, but as the hereditary leaders of a Sufi order based in the city of Ardabil, located in today's northwestern Iran. Prior to the rise of the Safavids, the region was broken up into a mosaic of autonomous states, all governed by local rulers. As the Safavid order developed, its members intermarried with other Turkic groups such as the Turcomen, Lar, and Bakhtiyari, and with Georgian, Armenian, and Pontic Greek Christians within their lands and bordering territories. The most distinctive and prized artworks of the Safavid era were illuminated manuscripts of well-known texts decorated with miniature paintings. Iskander Beg Monshis History of Shah Abbas the Great, written a few years after its subject's death, achieved a nuanced depth of history and character. Mirror mosaics were used in religious spaces as well, especially in Shia mosques and shrines to important Shia saints. Government - Safavid Empire & Sikhism Review At the time, he governed only Azerbaijan and part of the Caucasus. Fine silks. As a result of Mongol conquest, and relative religious tolerance of Ilhanids, Shi'a dynasties were established in IranSarbedaran in Khorasan being the most important. Based on the idea that the religiosity of the Turkish-speaking milieu that constituted the Safavid movement's grassroots was primarily shaped by this Karbala-oriented epic literature, this essay argues that Shaykh Jonayd, Shaykh Haydar, and especially Shah Esmil successfully reformulated the Safavid Sufi program to address the codes of . He was a disciple of the famed Sufi Grand Master Sheikh Zahed Gilani (12161301) of Lahijan. (Azeri is a Turkic language.) The carpets of Ardebil were commissioned to commemorate the Safavid dynasty. The Safavids were poorly armed, while the Ottomans had muskets and artillery. In 1536, the Ottomans formalized their own alliance with the king of France, an enemy of the Habsburgs, who sent a military adviser to counsel Sultan Suleiman about his war with Iran in 1547. Iran also continued to face threats from outside. His son Ali Mirza took his place, but within a few years his capital at Ardabil was conquered by his enemies. The armies of Peter the Great took the Caucasus in the Russo-Persian war of 17221723, while the Ottomans reoccupied northwestern Iran. In 1501, the Safavid Shahs declared independence when the Ottomans outlawed Shi'a Islam in their territory. Before the principal phases in the development of the Safavid administrative system are discussed in detail, a brief outline of the Safavid administrative and social structure may be helpful. 20th and Pattison, Philadelphia (, The Safavids established an artistic identity that resonated with the dynasties that came after. inch), 153940 C.E., Tabriz, Kashan, Isfahan or Kirman, Iran, (now at the Victoria & Albert Museum; photo: The Safavids commissioned and built hundreds of monuments during their reign, making them some of the most productive builders in all of Iranian history. Safavid dynasty, (1501-1736), ruling dynasty of Iran whose establishment of Twelver Shiism as the state religion of Iran was a major factor in the emergence of a unified national consciousness among the various ethnic and linguistic elements of the country. Representation of the human form has been forbidden in Islamic art at times; in Persian illuminated manuscripts, the artists response was to use the image to bring a specific person to the viewers mind without representing them accurately. The greatest of the Safavid monarchs, Shah Abbas (15871629) came to power in 1587, at the age of 16, following the forced abdication of his father, Shah Muhammad Khudbanda. The Safavid Empire was less ethnically diverse than the Ottoman Empire. what succession rules was followed by the Safavids? Ali Mirza was also killed, and his infant brother Ismail was sent into exile. The Safavid dynasty descended from diverse and mixed ethnic origins, and there is some disagreement among scholars as to whether they were of Azeri or Persian background. They cleverly allied themselves with European powers in order to protect themselves from the Ottomans. Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. Despite the strong rivalry between the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals, all three empires produced paintings of this type (Figure 4.27). He also made Efahn the capital of Persia and fostered commerce and the arts, so that Persian artistic achievement reached a high point in his reign . [5] In addition to that, the Safavids' power base included largely Turkic-speaking warrior tribes from Azarbaijan and Anatolia, who were collectively known as the Kizilbash, and were, at certain points in time, the de facto rulers of the empire. This clearly differentiated Iran from the Ottomans, who were Sunnis. They embarked on a military campaign, winning victory after victory until, in July 1501, Ismail entered the Shirvanshah capital of Tabriz and declared himself shah, or emperor, of all Iran (Figure 4.20). Shah Ismail, who saw himself as infallible and semidivine, believed his strong religious convictions had won him the Iranian throne, and he used his political and military authority to impose his religious ideology on the country (Figure 4.23). Members of the Safavid Dynasty likely were of Kurdish Persian descent and belonged to a unique order of Sufi -infused Shi'a Islam called Safaviyya. is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. They sustained one of the longest running empires of Iranian history, lasting from 1501 to 1736. In 1522, the Safavid royal library of Shah Tahmasp produced the most exquisitely illustrated Shahnameh of all time, now known as the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp. Royal manuscripts such as this were highly collaborative enterprises that brought together miniaturists, illuminators, calligraphers, poets, scribes, and gold sprinklers. In 1501, various disaffected militia from Azerbaijan and eastern Anatolia who were known as the Kizilbash (Azeri for "red heads" due to their red headgear) united with the Ardabil Safaviyeh to capture Tabriz from the then ruling Sunni Turkmen alliance known as Ak Koyunlu (The White Sheep Emirate) under the leadership of Alwand. One faction, which became known as the Sunnis, supported the candidacy of Abu Bakr al-Sadiq, Muhammads father-in-law. The maximum extent of the Safavid Empire under Shah Abbas I ( CC BY-SA 4.0) The Safavids were a dynastic family that ruled over modern-day Iran. Located in the central Middle East, the kingdom occupied a fundamental geographic location and had substantial effect in the stability of the region. In 1750, it was mostly governed through a loose confederation of powerful princely states ^1 1 and rich port cities. Chardin declares emphatically that outside court circles there was no arbitrary exercise of power by the shah, and both Chardin and Malcolm assert that the awe in which the shah was held by the court and the nobility was the primary reason for the relative security and freedom from oppression enjoyed by the lower classes. 1 - Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman Empires - Cambridge Core afavid dynasty, (1502-1736) Persian dynasty. This system brought the brightest and most talented into government service while preventing the development of an entrenched and unchecked aristocracy. inch), 153940 C.E., Tabriz, Kashan, Isfahan or Kirman, Iran (now at the Victoria & Albert Museum; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Since the ruler, as the representative of the Hidden Imm, was closer to the source of absolute truth than were other men, opposition to him was a sin. The city was designed as a treat for the senses, employing artistic motifs in tilework and calligraphy, broad sweeping arches and domes that mimicked the sky, the sounds of running water and wind blowing through leaves, and the scents of flowering shrubs and trees carried on the breeze. To further legitimize his power, Ismail I also added claims of royal Sassanian heritage after becoming Shah of Iran to his own genealogy. The Safavids began not as a political dynasty, but as the hereditary leaders of a Sufi order based in the city of Ardabil, located in todays northwestern Iran. This group became known as the Shia. Later, in 1722, an Afghan army led by Mir Wais' son, Mahmud, marched across eastern Iran, besieged, and sacked Isfahan and proclaimed Mahmud "Shah" of Persia. Then enter the name part While Safi al-Dins origins are lost to history, it is generally believed that he came from a family of Azeri-speaking Kurds, although even this is uncertain. As in the Ottoman Empire, wealthy Safavid women raised their public stature by becoming patrons of the arts and endowing public buildings. The art of these miniature paintings relies on a style called nonrepresentational. Instead of depicting a scene naturalistically, it uses forced or even impossible perspectives to show action on multiple tiers, revealing activity behind doors or walls that some of the subjects in the painting cannot see. The Ardabil carpet, still one of the largest Persian carpets in existence, was made during the Safavid period. Safavid Army - Military History - Oxford Bibliographies - obo Soon after the Safavids rose to power, they established Twelver Shiism (the largest branch of Shia, Safavid art and architecture reflected this adoption of a Shia identity. While Naqsh-e Jahan Square provided a focus, the city also featured a broad tree-lined avenue called the Chahar Bagh, stretching over four kilometers from the square to a royal country estate (Figure 4.28). Abbas then returned to the issue his grandfather had taken up: taming the Qizilbash, whose disputes had plunged Iran into civil conflict that twice nearly brought the country to ruin. (c) - PERSIAN LITERATURE IN THE SAFAVID PERIOD - Cambridge Core The social and political structure of the Safavid Empire Essay The order in Ardabil was founded in the thirteenth century by the Sufi master Zahed Gilani, and little is known about its beliefs and practices in its . Safavid Persia had a succession of capitals: for the capital was where the shah and his entourage happened to be. Later Safavid shahs continued to expand Isfahan, adding buildings, avenues, and bridges and commissioning structures in other cities based on the style cultivated in the capital. OpenStax is part of Rice University, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The three Islamic empires of the early modern period - the Mughal, the Safavid, and the Ottoman - shared a common Turko-Mongolian heritage. As Tahmasps royal studio was to painting, Abbass capital at Isfahan was to architecture. His grandfather had acquired over thirty thousand enslaved people employed as civil servants and palace administrators; turning to the Caucasus region again, Abbas decided to also create an enslaved soldier corps like the Ottoman Janissaries. Despite the Safavid dynasty's Sufi origins, most Sunni or Shi'a Sufi groups were prohibited by the Nimatullahi order. Museums around the world commissioned Pope and Ackerman to organize symposia and exhibitions on the topic of Persian art, where works from the Safavid Empire were especially of interest. The Sunni scholars, called Ulama (from alim, knowledge), were either killed or exiled. At the apex of this structure was the shah. Spain and the Vatican sent several embassies to Iran hoping to enlist it as an ally against the Ottomans. When the Safavid state weakened in its later years, the ulama were able to step in and use their newly acquired wealth to benefit their communities. This left room for invasion by outside enemies, which is exactly what happened in 1722 when the Afghan army besieged the capital of Isfahan. He had effective control under Shah Tahmasp II and then ruled as regent of the infant Abbas III until 1736, when he had himself crowned shah. Safavid miniatures are highly prized today; some of the best examples have sold for millions of dollars at auction. This genealogy was most likely invented by court historians during the sixteenth-century reign of Shah Ismail I. Total loading time: 0