Safavid dynasty

Not to be confused with Saffarid dynasty.

Safavid dynasty
دودمان صفوی,
Safavid flag after 1576
CountrySafavid Iran
Founded22 December 1501
FounderIsmail I (1501–1524)
Final rulerAbbas III (1732–1736)
TitlesShahanshah of Iran
TraditionsTwelver Shi'ism
Dissolutionc. 1736

The Safavid dynasty (/ˈsæfəvɪd, ˈsɑː-/; Persian: دودمان صفوی, romanized: Dudmâne Safavi,[1] pronounced [d̪uːd̪ˈmɒːne sæfæˈviː]) was one of Iran's most significant ruling dynasties reigning from 1501 to 1736.[2] Their rule is often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history,[3] as well as one of the gunpowder empires.[4] The Safavid Shāh Ismā'īl I established the Twelver denomination of Shīʿa Islam as the official religion of the Persian Empire, marking one of the most important turning points in the history of Islam.[5] The Safavid dynasty had its origin in the Safavid order of Sufism, which was established in the city of Ardabil in the Iranian Azerbaijan region.[6] It was an Iranian dynasty of Kurdish origin,[7] but during their rule they intermarried with Turkoman,[8] Georgian,[9] Circassian,[10][11] and Pontic Greek[12] dignitaries, nevertheless, for practical purposes, they were Turkish-speaking and Turkified.[13] From their base in Ardabil, the Safavids established control over parts of Greater Iran and reasserted the Iranian identity of the region,[14] thus becoming the first native dynasty since the Sasanian Empire to establish a national state officially known as Iran.[15]

The Safavids ruled from 1501 to 1722 (experiencing a brief restoration from 1729 to 1736 and 1750 to 1773) and, at their height, controlled all of what is now Iran, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Armenia, eastern Georgia, parts of the North Caucasus including Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, as well as parts of Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, 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.[3] 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.[3][5]

  1. ^ *Afšār, ta·līf-i Iskandar Baig Turkmān. Zīr-i naẓar bā tanẓīm-i fihristhā wa muqaddama-i Īraǧ (2003). Tārīkh-i ʻʻālamārā-yi ʻʻAbbāsī (in Persian) (Čāp-i 3. ed.). Tihrān: Mu·assasa-i Intišārāt-i Amīr Kabīr. pp. 17, 18, 19, 79. ISBN 978-964-00-0818-8.
    • p. 17: dudmān-i safavīa
    • p. 18: khāndān-i safavīa
    • p. 19: sīlsīla-i safavīa
    • p. 79: sīlsīla-i alīa-i safavīa
  2. ^ "SAFAVID DYNASTY". Encyclopædia Iranica.
  3. ^ a b c Matthee, Rudi (13 June 2017) [28 July 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.
  4. ^ Streusand, Douglas E., Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Boulder, Col : Westview Press, 2011) ("Streusand"), p. 135.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ 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.
  7. ^
    • 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 (...)"
  8. ^
    • 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
  9. ^ 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. 130–1
  10. ^ Yarshater 2001, p. 493.
  11. ^ Khanbaghi 2006, p. 130.
  12. ^ 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"
  13. ^ "Safavid dynasty" 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."
  14. ^ "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?" RM Savory, Iran Under the Safavids (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980), p. 3.
  15. ^ Alireza Shapur Shahbazi (2005), "The History of the Idea of Iran", in Vesta Curtis ed., Birth of the Persian Empire, IB Tauris, London, p. 108: "Similarly the collapse of Sassanian Eranshahr in AD 650 did not end Iranians' national idea. The name "Iran" disappeared from official records of the Saffarids, Samanids, Buyids, Saljuqs and their successor. But one unofficially used the name Iran, Eranshahr, and similar national designations, particularly Mamalek-e Iran or "Iranian lands", which exactly translated the old Avestan term Ariyanam Daihunam. On the other hand, when the Safavids (not Reza Shah, as is popularly assumed) revived a national state officially known as Iran, bureaucratic usage in the Ottoman empire and even Iran itself could still refer to it by other descriptive and traditional appellations".