Safavid Iran

For other uses, see Safavi (disambiguation).

Guarded Domains of Iran
ممالک محروسه ایران (Persian)
Mamālik-i Mahrūsa-yi Irān
1501–1736
Flag of Safavid Empire
Map of Safavid Iran and its surroundings
Map of Safavid Iran and its surroundings
StatusEmpire
Capital
Common languages
Religion
Shia Islam (state religion)[18][d]
Sunni Islam
Zoroastrianism
Christianity
Judaism
GovernmentMonarchy
Shahanshah 
• 1501–1524
Ismail I (first)
• 1732–1736
Abbas III (last)
Grand Vizier 
• 1501–1507
Amir Zakariya (first)
• 1729–1736
Nader Qoli Beg (last)
LegislatureCouncil of State
Historical eraEarly modern period
• Establishment of the Safavid order by Safi-ad-din Ardabili
1301
• Established
22 December[19] 1501
• Hotak invasion
1722
• Reconquest under Nader Shah
1726–1729
• Disestablished
8 March 1736
• Nader Shah crowned
8 March 1736[20]
Area
1630[21]2,900,000 km2 (1,100,000 sq mi)
Population
• 1650[22]
8–10 million
CurrencyTuman, Abbasi (incl. Abazi), Shahi[23]
  • 1 Tuman = 50 Abbasi
  • 1 Tuman = 50 French livres
  • 1 Tuman = £3 6s 8d
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
Aq Qoyunlu
Afrasiyab dynasty
Timurid Empire
Mihrabanids
Shirvanshah
Kar-Kiya dynasty
Mar'ashis
Baduspanids
Afsharid Iran
Hotak dynasty
Russian Empire
Ottoman Empire

The Guarded Domains of Iran,[e] commonly called Safavid Iran, Safavid Persia[f] or the Safavid Empire,[g] was one of the largest and long-standing Iranian empires. It was ruled from 1501 to 1736 by the Safavid dynasty.[25][26][27][28] It is often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history,[29] as well as one of the gunpowder empires.[30] The Safavid Shāh Ismā'īl I established the Twelver denomination of Shīʿa Islam as the official religion of the empire, marking one of the most important turning points in the history of Islam.[31]

An Iranian dynasty rooted in the Sufi Safavid order[32] founded by Kurdish[33] sheikhs, it heavily intermarried with Turkoman,[34] Georgian,[35] Circassian,[36][37] and Pontic Greek[38] dignitaries and was Turkish-speaking and Turkified.[39] From their base in Ardabil, the Safavids established control over parts of Greater Iran and reasserted the Iranian identity of the region,[40] thus becoming the first native dynasty since the Buyids to establish a national state officially known as Iran.[41]

The Safavids ruled from 1501 to 1722 (experiencing a brief restoration from 1729 to 1736 and 1750 to 1773) and, at their height, they controlled all of what is now Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, eastern Georgia, parts of the North Caucasus including Russia, and Iraq, as well as parts of Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Despite their demise in 1736, the legacy that they left behind was the revival of Iran as an economic stronghold between East and West, the establishment of an efficient state and bureaucracy based upon "checks and balances", their architectural innovations, and patronage for fine arts.[29] The Safavids have also left their mark down to the present era by establishing Twelver Shīʿīsm as the state religion of Iran, as well as spreading Shīʿa Islam in major parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, Caucasus, Anatolia, the Persian Gulf, and Mesopotamia.[29][31]

  1. ^ "... the Order of the Lion and the Sun, a device which, since the 17 century at least, appeared on the national flag of the Safavids the lion representing 'Ali and the sun the glory of the Shiʻi faith", Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovskiĭ, J. M. Rogers, Hermitage Rooms at Somerset House, Courtauld Institute of Art, Heaven on earth: Art from Islamic Lands: Works from the State Hermitage Museum and the Khalili Collection, Prestel, 2004, p. 178.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Roemer 189 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b c Rudi Matthee, "Safavids Archived 2022-09-01 at the Wayback Machine" in Encyclopædia Iranica, accessed on April 4, 2010. "The Persian focus is also reflected in the fact that theological works also began to be composed in the Persian language and in that Persian verses replaced Arabic on the coins." "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".
  4. ^ Ronald W Ferrier, The Arts of Persia. Yale University Press. 1989, p. 9.
  5. ^ a b John R Perry, "Turkic-Iranian contacts", Encyclopædia Iranica, January 24, 2006: "... written Persian, the language of high literature and civil administration, remained virtually unaffected in status and content"
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Cyril Glassé 2003, pg 392 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, V, pp. 514–515. Excerpt: "in the heyday of the Mughal, Safawi, and Ottoman regimes New Persian was being patronized as the language of literae humaniores by the ruling element over the whole of this huge realm, while it was also being employed as the official language of administration in those two-thirds of its realm that lay within the Safawi and the Mughal frontiers"
  8. ^ a b c d Cite error: The named reference mazzaoui was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Ruda Jurdi Abisaab. "Iran and Pre-Independence Lebanon" in Houchang Esfandiar Chehabi, Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years, IB Tauris 2006, p. 76: "Although the Arabic language was still the medium for religious scholastic expression, it was precisely under the Safavids that hadith complications and doctrinal works of all sorts were being translated to Persian. The ʻAmili (Lebanese scholars of Shiʻi faith) operating through the Court-based religious posts, were forced to master the Persian language; their students translated their instructions into Persian. Persianization went hand in hand with the popularization of 'mainstream' Shiʻi belief."
  10. ^ Savory, Roger M.; Karamustafa, Ahmet T. (2012). "ESMĀʿĪL I ṢAFAWĪ: His poetry". Encyclopaedia Iranica.
  11. ^ Floor, Willem; Javadi, Hasan (2013). "The Role of Azerbaijani Turkish in Safavid Iran". Iranian Studies. 46 (4): 569–581. doi:10.1080/00210862.2013.784516. S2CID 161700244.
  12. ^ Hovannisian, Richard G.; Sabagh, Georges (1998). The Persian Presence in the Islamic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 240. ISBN 978-0521591850.
  13. ^ Axworthy, Michael (2010). The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant. I.B. Tauris. p. 33. ISBN 978-0857721938.
  14. ^ Roger Savory (2007). Iran Under the Safavids. Cambridge University Press. p. 213. ISBN 978-0-521-04251-2. qizilbash normally spoke Azari brand of Turkish at court, as did the Safavid shahs themselves; lack of familiarity with the Persian language may have contributed to the decline from the pure classical standards of former times
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference cambridgesafa was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. ^ Price, Massoume (2005). Iran's Diverse Peoples: A Reference Sourcebook. ABC-CLIO. p. 66. ISBN 978-1-57607-993-5. The Shah was a native Turkic speaker and wrote poetry in the Azerbaijani language.
  17. ^ Blow 2009, pp. 165–166 "Georgian, Circassian and Armenian were also spoken [at the court], since these were the mother-tongues of many of the ghulams, as well as of a high proportion of the women of the harem. Figueroa heard Abbas speak Georgian, which he had no doubt acquired from his Georgian ghulams and concubines."
  18. ^ The New Encyclopedia of Islam, Ed. Cyril Glassé, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 449.
  19. ^ Ghereghlou, Kioumars (October–December 2017). "Chronicling a Dynasty on the Make: New Light on the Early Ṣafavids in Ḥayātī Tabrīzī's Tārīkh (961/1554)". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 137 (4): 827. doi:10.7817/jameroriesoci.137.4.0805 – via Columbia Academic Commons. Shah Ismāʿīl's enthronement took place in Tabrīz immediately after the battle of Sharūr, on 1 Jumādā II 907/22 December 1501.
  20. ^ Elton L. Daniel, The History of Iran (Greenwood Press, 2001) p. 95
  21. ^ Bang, Peter Fibiger; Bayly, C. A.; Scheidel, Walter (2020). The Oxford World History of Empire: Volume One: The Imperial Experience. Oxford University Press. pp. 92–94. ISBN 978-0-19-977311-4.
  22. ^ Blake, Stephen P., ed. (2013), "Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman Empires", Time in Early Modern Islam: Calendar, Ceremony, and Chronology in the Safavid, Mughal and Ottoman Empires, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 21–47, doi:10.1017/CBO9781139343305.004, ISBN 978-1-107-03023-7, retrieved 2021-11-10
  23. ^ Ferrier, RW, A Journey to Persia: Jean Chardin's Portrait of a Seventeenth-century Empire, p. ix.
  24. ^ Flaskerud, Ingvild (2010). Visualizing Belief and Piety in Iranian Shiism. A&C Black. pp. 182–3. ISBN 978-1-4411-4907-7.
  25. ^ Helen Chapin Metz, ed., Iran, a Country study. 1989. University of Michigan, p. 313.
  26. ^ Emory C. Bogle. Islam: Origin and Belief. University of Texas Press. 1989, p. 145.
  27. ^ Stanford Jay Shaw. History of the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge University Press. 1977, p. 77.
  28. ^ Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire, IB Tauris (2006).[page needed]
  29. ^ a b c Matthee, Rudi (2017) [2008]. "Safavid Dynasty". Encyclopædia Iranica. New York: Columbia University. doi:10.1163/2330-4804_EIRO_COM_509. ISSN 2330-4804. Archived from the original on 25 May 2022. Retrieved 23 June 2022.
  30. ^ Streusand, Douglas E., Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Boulder, Col : Westview Press, 2011) ("Streusand"), p. 135.
  31. ^ a b Savory, Roger (2012) [1995]. "Ṣafawids". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E. J.; Heinrichs, W. P.; Lewis, B.; Pellat, Ch.; Schacht, J. (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Vol. 8. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0964. ISBN 978-90-04-16121-4.
  32. ^ Baltacıoğlu-Brammer, Ayşe (2021). "The emergence of the Safavids as a mystical order and their subsequent rise to power in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries". In Matthee, Rudi (ed.). The Safavid World. Routledge Worlds (1st ed.). New York and London: Routledge. pp. 15–36. doi:10.4324/9781003170822. ISBN 978-1-003-17082-2. S2CID 236371308.
  33. ^ * Matthee, Rudi. (2005). The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500–1900. Princeton University Press. p. 18; "The Safavids, as Iranians of Kurdish ancestry and of nontribal background (...)".
    • Savory, Roger. (2008). "EBN BAZZĀZ". Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. VIII, Fasc. 1. p. 8. "This official version contains textual changes designed to obscure the Kurdish origins of the Safavid family and to vindicate their claim to descent from the Imams."
    • Amoretti, Biancamaria Scarcia; Matthee, Rudi. (2009). "Ṣafavid Dynasty". In Esposito, John L. (ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. Oxford University Press. "Of Kurdish ancestry, the Ṣafavids started as a Sunnī mystical order (...)"
  34. ^
    • Roemer, H.R. (1986). "The Safavid Period" in Jackson, Peter; Lockhart, Laurence. The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 6: The Timurid and Safavid Periods. Cambridge University Press. pp. 214, 229
    • Blow, David (2009). Shah Abbas: The Ruthless King Who Became an Iranian Legend. I.B. Tauris. p. 3
    • Savory, Roger M.; Karamustafa, Ahmet T. (1998) ESMĀʿĪL I ṢAFAWĪ. Encyclopaedia Iranica Vol. VIII, Fasc. 6, pp. 628–636
    • Ghereghlou, Kioumars (2016). ḤAYDAR ṢAFAVI. Encyclopaedia Iranica
  35. ^ Aptin Khanbaghi (2006) The Fire, the Star and the Cross: Minority Religions in Medieval and Early. London & New York. IB Tauris. ISBN 1-84511-056-0, pp. 130–131
  36. ^ Yarshater 2001, p. 493.
  37. ^ Khanbaghi 2006, p. 130.
  38. ^ Anthony Bryer. "Greeks and Türkmens: The Pontic Exception", Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 29 (1975), Appendix II "Genealogy of the Muslim Marriages of the Princesses of Trebizond"
  39. ^ "Safavid Iran" at Encyclopædia Iranica, "The origins of the Safavids are clouded in obscurity. They may have been of Kurdish origin (see R. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, 1980, p. 2; R. Matthee, "Safavid Dynasty" at iranica.com), but for all practical purposes they were Turkish-speaking and Turkified."
  40. ^ Why is there such confusion about the origins of this important dynasty, which reasserted Iranian identity and established an independent Iranian state after eight and a half centuries of rule by foreign dynasties? Roger Savory, Iran under the Safavids (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980), p. 3.
  41. ^ Herzig, Edmund; Stewart, Sarah (2011). Early Islamic Iran. I. B. Tauris.


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