Qizilbash

For the surname, see Qizilbash (name). For the related Sufi order that led to the Safavid dynasty, see Safavid order. For the related Sufi order in Turkey, see Alevism. For the suburb of Nicosia, Cyprus, see Kizilbash (suburb).
Banner of the Qizilbash, from an Iranian text book of 1976

Qizilbash or Kizilbash[Note 1] were a diverse array of mainly Turkoman[1] Shia militant groups that flourished in Azerbaijan,[2][3] Anatolia, the Armenian highlands, the Caucasus, and Kurdistan from the late 15th century onwards, and contributed to the foundation of the Safavid dynasty in early modern Iran.[4][5]

By the 18th-century, anyone involved with the Safavid state—militarily, diplomatically, or administratively—came to be broadly referred to as "Qizilbash". It was eventually applied to some inhabitants of Iran.[6] In the early 19th-century, Shia Muslims from Iran could be referred as "Qizilbash", thus highlighting the influence of the distinctive traits of the Safavids, despite the Iranian shah (king) Fath-Ali Shah Qajar (r. 1797–1834) simultaneously creating a Qajar dynastic identity grounded in the pre-Islamic past.[7]


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  1. ^ Babayan, Kathryn (1993). The Waning of the Qizilbash: The Spiritual and the Temporal in Seventeenth Century Iran. Princeton University. pp. 1–6, 41–47. "The Qizilbash, composed mainly of Turkman tribesmen, were the military force introduced by the conquering Safavis to the Iranian domains in the sixteenth century."
  2. ^ Cornell, Vincent J. (2007). Voices of Islam (Praeger perspectives). Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 225 vol.1. ISBN 978-0275987329. OCLC 230345942.
  3. ^ Parker, Charles H. (2010). Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400–1800. Cambridge University Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-1139491419.
  4. ^ Roger M. Savory: "Kizil-Bash". In Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. 5, pp. 243–245.
  5. ^ Savory, EI2, Vol. 5, p. 243: "Kizilbāsh (T. "Red-head"). [...] In general, it is used loosely to denote a wide variety of extremist Shi'i sects [see Ghulāt], which flourished in [V:243b] Anatolia and Kurdistān from the late 7th/13th century onwards, including such groups as the Alevis (see A. S. Tritton, Islam: belief and practices, London 1951, 83)."
  6. ^ Kia 2020, pp. 147–149.
  7. ^ Kia 2020, p. 151.