The Guarded Domains of Iran, commonly called Safavid Iran, Safavid Persia or the Safavid Empire, was one of the largest and longest-lasting Iranian empires. It was ruled by the Safavid dynasty from 1501 to 1736, though some historians date its fall to 1722, when Isfahan fell to the Afghans. It is often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history, as well as one of the gunpowder empires.
Shah Ismail I established Twelver Shi'ism as the official religion of the empire, marking one of the most important turning points in the history of Islam.
A dynasty rooted in the Safavid order, a dervish order of Sufism, founded by sheikhs of native Iranian (possibly Kurdish) origin, it was not only Persian-speaking, but also Turkic-speaking and Turkified. From their base in Ardabil, the Safavids established control over parts of Greater Iran and reasserted the Iranian identity of the region, thus becoming the first native dynasty since the Buyids to establish a national state officially known as Iran.
The main group that contributed to bringing the Safavids to power, due to making up the bulk of the Safavid army, were the Qizilbash (lit. 'red-heads'), who consisted of Turkoman tribes. Meanwhile, ethnic Iranians, including the Shahs, held the positions in bureaucracy and cultural affairs, leading the empire politically as the administrative and religious elite. In the 17th century, Armenian, Georgian, and Circassian gholams (slave-soldiers) emerged as the "Third Force" and became the primary military authority until the fall of the Safavids.
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. The Safavids have also left their mark down to the present era by establishing Twelver Shi'ism as the state religion of Iran, as well as spreading Shia Islam in major parts of Central Asia, Caucasus, Anatolia, the Persian Gulf, and Mesopotamia.
The Safavid dynasty is considered a turning point in the history of Iran after the Muslim conquest of Persia, as after centuries of rule by non-Iranian kings, the country became an independent power in the Islamic world.
Names
The Guarded Domains of Iran was the common and official name of the Safavid realm, and it remained the country's official title under subsequent rulers until 1924. The idea of the Guarded Domains illustrated a feeling of territorial and political uniformity in a society where the Persian language, culture, monarchy, and Shia Islam became integral elements of the developing national identity. The concept presumably had started to form under the Ilkhanate in the late 13th century, contributing to the establishment of the early modern Persianate society. Its shortened form was mamalik-i Iran ("Kingdom of Iran"), and it also had other variants, such as mamalik-i mahrusa-yi khusravani ("the Royal Guarded Domains") and mamalik-i mahrusa-yi humayun ("the Imperial Guarded Domains").; It was also often shortend as Iran.
The phrase mulk-i vasi' al-faza-yi Iran ("the expansive realm of Iran") is used in both the 17th-century chronicle Khold-e barin and the 1680s travelogue Safine-ye Solaymani by the Safavid ambassador to the Ayutthaya Kingdom. This recurring expression highlights the authors' pride and recognition of their homeland. This expression is likely the appropriate Persian way to describe an "empire" in the writings of that period.
Background
Safavid history begins with the establishment of the ZahediyehSufi order in Gilan by its eponymous founder Zahed Gilani. Having no male heir, Zahed married his daughter to his favorite disciple, Safi al-Din Ardabili, and appointed him as the spiritual successor of the Zahediyeh order. Safi al-Din succeeded him upon his death in 1301, and through his great spiritual charisma, the Zahediyeh order gained enormous influence in the city of Ardabil—Hamdullah Mustaufi noted that most of the people of Ardabil were followers of Safi al-Din. Consequently, the Zahediyeh gradually became known as the Safaviyya, after the more widely known Safi al-Din.
Religious poetry from Safi al-Din, written in the Old Azari language—a now-extinct Northwestern Iranian language—and accompanied by a paraphrase in Persian that helps its understanding, has survived to this day and has linguistic importance.
After Safī al-Dīn, the leadership of the Safaviyya passed to Sadr al-Dīn Mūsā († 794/1391–92). The order at this time was transformed into a religious movement that conducted religious propaganda throughout Iran, Syria and Asia Minor, and most likely had maintained its Sunni Shafi'ite origin at that time. The leadership of the order passed from Sadr ud-Dīn Mūsā to his son Khvajeh Ali Safavi († 1429) and in turn to his son Ibrāhīm († 1429–1447).
When Shaykh Junayd, the son of Ibrāhim, assumed the leadership of the Safaviyya in 1447, the history of the Safavid movement was radically changed. According to historian Roger Savory, "Sheikh Junayd was not content with spiritual authority and he sought material power." At that time, the most powerful dynasty in Iran was that of the Qara Qoyunlu, the "Black Sheep", whose ruler Jahan Shah ordered Junāyd to leave Ardabil or else he would bring destruction and ruin upon the city. Junayd sought refuge with the rival of Kara Koyunlu Jahan Shah, the Aq Qoyunlu (White Sheep Turkomans)KhanUzun Hassan, and cemented his relationship by marrying Uzun Hassan's sister, Khadija Begum. Junayd was killed during an incursion into the territories of the Shirvanshah and was succeeded by his son Haydar Safavi.
Haydar married Alamshah Halime Begum, Uzun Hassan's daughter, possibly named "Martha", who gave birth to Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty. Martha's mother Theodora—better known as Despina Khatun—was a Pontic Greek princess, the daughter of the Grand KomnenosJohn IV of Trebizond. She had been married to Uzun Hassan in exchange for protection of the Grand Komnenos from the Ottomans.
After Uzun Hassan's death, his son Ya'qub felt threatened by the growing Safavid religious influence. Ya'qub allied himself with the Shirvanshah and killed Haydar in 1488. By this time, the bulk of the Safaviyya were nomadic Oghuz Turkic-speaking clans from Asia Minor and Azerbaijan and were known as Qizilbash "Red Heads" because of their distinct red headgear. The Qizilbash were warriors, spiritual followers of Haydar, and a source of the Safavid military and political power.
After the death of Haydar, the Safaviyya gathered around his son Ali Mirza Safavi, who was also pursued and subsequently killed by Ya'qub. According to official Safavid history, before dying, Ali had designated his young brother Ismail as the spiritual leader of the Safaviyya.
Society
While large in terms of land area, the large proportion of deserts and mountains in its territory meant density was very low; the empire's population is estimated to have probably numbered between eight and ten million in 1650, as compared to c. 20 million for the Ottoman Empire in 1600.
Safavid society was a meritocracy where officials were appointed on the basis of worth and merit, and not on the basis of birth. It was certainly not an oligarchy, nor was it an aristocracy. Sons of nobles were considered for the succession of their fathers as a mark of respect, but they had to prove themselves worthy of the position. This system avoided an entrenched aristocracy or a caste society. There are numerous recorded accounts of laymen that rose to high official posts as a result of their merits.
Nevertheless, the Iranian society during the Safavids was that of a hierarchy, with the shah at the apex of the hierarchical pyramid, the common people, merchants and peasants at the base, and the aristocrats in between. The term dowlat, which in modern Persian means "government", was then an abstract term meaning "bliss" or "felicity", and it began to be used as concrete sense of the Safavid state, reflecting the view that the people had of their ruler, as someone elevated above humanity.
Also among the aristocracy, in the middle of the hierarchical pyramid, were the religious officials, who, mindful of the historic role of the religious classes as a buffer between the ruler and his subjects, usually did their best to shield the ordinary people from oppressive governments.
Turks and Tajiks
The power structure of the Safavid state was mainly divided into two groups: the Turkic-speaking military – whose job was to maintain the territorial integrity and continuity of the Iranian empire through their leadership – and the Persian-speaking administrative/governing elite – whose job was to oversee the operation and development of the nation and its identity through their high positions. Thus came the term "Turk and Tajik" to describe the Persianate, or Turko-Persian, nature of many dynasties which ruled over Greater Iran between the 12th and 20th centuries, in that these dynasties promoted and helped continue the dominant Persian linguistic and cultural identity of their states, although many of the dynasties themselves were of non-Persian (e.g. Turkic) origins. The relationship between the Turkic-speaking 'Turks' and Persian-speaking 'Tajiks' was symbiotic, yet some form of rivalry did exist between the two. As the former represented the "people of the sword" and the latter, "the people of the pen", high-level official posts would naturally be reserved for the Persians. Indeed, this had been the situation throughout Persian history, even before the Safavids, ever since the Arab conquest. Shah Tahmasp introduced a change to this, when he, and the other Safavid rulers who succeeded him, sought to blur the formerly defined lines between the two linguistic groups, by taking the sons of Turkic-speaking officers into the royal household for their education in the Persian language. Consequently, they were slowly able to take on administrative jobs in areas which had hitherto been the exclusive preserve of the ethnic Persians.
The third force: Caucasians
From 1540 and onwards, Shah Tahmasp initiated a gradual transformation of the Iranian society by slowly constructing a new branch and layer solely composed of ethnic Caucasians. The implementation of this branch would be significantly widened and completed under Abbas the Great (Abbas I).
According to Colin Mitchell, for Tahmasp, the background of this transformation circled around the aim of drastically restricting the power of the military tribal elite of the empire, the Qezelbāš. This was a huge impedance for the authority of the shah, and furthermore, it undermined any developments without the agreeing or shared profit of the Qezelbāš. As Tahmasp understood and realized that any long-term solutions would mainly involve minimizing the political and military presence of the Qizilbash as a whole, it would require them to be replaced by a whole new layer in society, that would question and battle the authority of the Qizilbash on every possible level, and minimize any of their influences. This layer would be solely composed of hundreds of thousands of deported, imported, and to a lesser extent voluntarily migrated ethnic Circassians, Georgians, and Armenians. This layer would become the "third force" in Iranian society, alongside the other two forces, the Turkomans and Persians.
The series of campaigns that Tahmasp subsequently waged after realising this in the wider Caucasus between 1540 and 1554 were meant to uphold the morale and the fighting efficiency of the Qezelbāš military, but they brought home large numbers (over 70,000) of Christian Georgian, Circassian and Armenian slaves as its main objective, and would be the basis of this third force; the new (Caucasian) layer in society. According to the Encyclopædia Iranica, this would be as well the starting point for the corps of the ḡolāmān-e ḵāṣṣa-ye-e šarifa, or royal slaves, who would dominate the Safavid military for most of the empire's length, and would form a crucial part of the third force. As non-Turcoman converts to Islam, these Circassian and Georgian ḡolāmāns (also written as ghulams) were completely unrestrained by clan loyalties and kinship obligations, which was an attractive feature for a ruler like Tahmāsp whose childhood and upbringing had been deeply affected by Qizilbash tribal politics. Their formation, implementation, and usage was very much alike to the janissaries of the neighbouring Ottoman Empire. In turn, many of these transplanted women became wives and concubines of Tahmasp, and the Safavid harem emerged as a competitive, and sometimes lethal, arena of ethnic politics as cliques of Turkmen, Circassian, and Georgian women and courtiers vied with each other for the king's attention. Although the first slave soldiers would not be organized until the reign of Abbas I, during Tahmasp's reign, Caucasians already became important members of the royal household, Harem and in the civil and military administration, and were on their way of becoming an integral part of society. Tahmasp I's successor, Ismail II, brought another 30,000 Circassians and Georgians to Iran of which many joined the ghulam force.
Following the full implementation of this policy by Abbas I, the women (only Circassian and Georgian) now very often came to occupy prominent positions in the harems of the Safavid elite, while the men who became part of the ghulam "class" as part of the powerful third force were given special training on completion of which they were either enrolled in one of the newly created ghilman regiments, or employed in the royal household. The rest of the masses of deportees and importees, a significant portion numbering many hundreds of thousands, were settled in various regions of mainland Iran, and were given all kinds of roles as part of society, such as craftsmen, farmers, cattle breeders, traders, soldiers, generals, governors, woodcutters, etc., all also part of the newly established layer in Iranian society.