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 . The Ardabil carpet, still one of the largest Persian carpets in existence, was made during the Safavid period. An attempt to recapture the territory in 1618 resulted in a devastating loss for the Ottomans. The Afghans rode roughshod over their conquered territory for a dozen years, but were prevented from making further gains by Nadir Shah Afshar, a former slave who had risen to military leadership within the Afshar tribe in Khorasan, a vassal state of the Safavids. The dedication of the Persian Building at the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exhibition, October 6, 1926. Although at first he was able to negotiate safe passage for his army, the Shirvanshahs, already uneasy about Haydars growing power, used his eventual attack on one of their cities as an excuse to declare war on the Safavids. The carpets of Ardebil were commissioned to commemorate the Safavid dynasty. With the capture of Tabriz, the Safavid dynasty officially began. 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. While the study of Safavid art flourished in modern European cities like Paris, London, and Rome, courses in Persian art were not offered in American universities until the 1940s. In 1736, Nader deposed the infant Abbas III and crowned himself shah, bringing the Safavid Empire to an end and establishing the short-lived Afsharid dynasty. Render date: 2023-04-30T14:46:17.907Z To log in and use all the features of Khan Academy, please enable JavaScript in your browser. Sunni clerics and theologians were given the choice of conversion or exile. In addition to fighting its perennial enemies, the Ottomans and Uzbeks, as the seventeenth century progressed, Iran had to contend with the rise of two more neighbors. Royal manuscripts provide a glimpse into the fusion of regional styles used in early Safavid art. The Safavid empire was founded by the Safavids.They became a centralized government. To further legitimize his power, Ismail I also added claims of royal Sassanian heritage after becoming Shah of Iran to his own genealogy. Then he turned against the Ottomans, recapturing Baghdad, eastern Iraq, and the Caucasian provinces, by 1622. During his reign, the Safavid state reached the height of its military, political, and economic power. The Ardabil Carpet, Maqsud of Kashan, Persian: Safavid Dynasty, silk warps and wefts with wool pile (25 million knots, 340 per sq. This strengthening of direct ties between the ulama and the people, and the separation of the religious establishment from the state, is believed to be one of the reasons Shiism long outlasted the Safavid era. 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). As the spiritual heir of Sheikh Zahed, Safi Al-Din transformed the inherited Zahediyeh Sufi Order into the Safaviyeh Order. The Ottomans sued for peace in 1612, relinquishing the Caucasus to the Iranians. The Safavid Empire was less ethnically diverse than the Ottoman Empire. It was perhaps to perpetuate the distinction of Persian from Arabic culture that attracted the Iranians towards Shi'a Islamthe heartland and sacred sites of Sunni Islam would always be in the Arabian peninsula. By agreement, the Safavids would attack the Ottomans whenever the Ottomans attacked the Habsburgs to divide the Ottoman army between two fronts of battle and thereby weaken it. If you are redistributing all or part of this book in a print format, Then enter the name part In 1598, Abbas moved his capital from Qazvin to Isfahan in the central Iranian plateau, far from the constantly shifting borders with the Ottomans and Uzbeks and closer to the Persian Gulf and the newly arrived traders of the British and Dutch East India Companies. Outside of Iran, Safavid art was the portal to the wider world of Persian art and architecture when art historians first began studying Islamic art in the early nineteenth century. The production of silk was one of the most important industries in Iran. We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. In 1501, the Safavid Shahs declared independence when the Ottomans outlawed Shi'a Islam in their territory. In 1738, Nadir Shah reconquered Afghanistan starting with the city of Kandahar. 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. Poetry lacked the royal patronage of other arts and was hemmed in by religious prescriptions. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Sunnis who resisted conversion but remained in Iran faced death. After Abbas had ordered the mass deportation of Georgians to central Iran, he sent Oghuz Turks (Turcomen) to settle the area; the local population that remained refused to allow them to do so, however, and staged a military rebellion. Some Safavid ceramic artists went so far as to place a fake Chinese workshop stamp on the back of their products to increase their value. Safavid military history had three phases. Empires: Safavid and Qajar | Encyclopedia.com One of the reasons the Qizilbash were eventually replaced as palace administrators, bureaucrats, and military elites is that they had occasionally used their collective power to render some of the weaker shahs mere figureheads. 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). According to many historians, the Safavid empire marked the beginning of modern Persia. Shiism was not officially tolerated by the Sunni caliphs of the Umayyad and Abbasid Empires because of its perceived challenge to their rule. Later, during the Safavid and especially Qajar period, the role of Shi'a ulema increased and they were able to exercise a role in social and political life independent of the government. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. This group became known as the Shia. PDF Safavid Dynasty 1501-1736 (official end in 1760) Originally, the Safaviyeh was a spiritual, less denominational response to the upheavals and unrest in northwest Iran/eastern Anatolia in the decades following the Mongol invasion. The Safavids ultimately succeeded in establishing a new Persian national monarchy. SAFAVID DYNASTY - Encyclopaedia Iranica hasContentIssue false, THE JALAYIRIDS, MUZAFFARIDS AND SARBADRS, TRADE FROM THE MID-14TH CENTURY TO THE END OF THE SAFAVID PERIOD, RELIGION IN THE TIMURID AND SAFAVID PERIODS, SPIRITUAL MOVEMENTS, PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY IN THE SAFAVID PERIOD, PERSIAN LITERATURE IN THE TIMURID AND TRKMEN PERIODS (782907/13801501), PERSIAN POETRY IN THE TIMURID AND SAFAVID PERIODS, For an annotated general bibliography of the Safavid period, see, https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521200943.007, Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. In response, the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II deported the Shiites of his empire from Anatolia to other regions where they would be unable to heed the Safavid call. Except for Shah Abbas II, the Safavid rulers after Abbas I were largely ineffectual. Iranian ceramics became highly valued for export because of their remarkable similarity in style and quality to treasured Chinese porcelain, with even more intricately painted decorations. (PDF) The Rise of the Safavids as a Political Dynasty: The Revolution 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, Republic of Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Armenia, eastern Georgia, parts of the North Caucasus including Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, as well as parts of Turkey, Syria, For this reason, many silks used floral and vegetal motifs that appealed to both Persian and foreign markets. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. He used state funds to construct schools where Shia beliefs were taught and to build shrines to Ali and members of his family. Detail, Sultan Muhammad, The Court of Gayumars, Shahnameh for Shah Tahmasp I, c. 152425, opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper, 45 x 30 cm, folio 20v (Aga Khan Museum, Toronto; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Roger M. Savory, "Safawidsiii, The establishment of the Safawid state,". In the previous century, Russia Muscovy had deposed two western Asian khanates of the Golden Horde and expanded its influence into the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia. afavid dynasty, (1502-1736) Persian dynasty. ISBN links support NWE through referral fees, Establishment of Shi'ism as the state religion, Conflict between Turcomans and Persians during the Safavid period, E. Yarshater, "Language of Azerbaijan, vii., Persian language of Azerbaijan,". The Safavid concept of kingship, combining territorial control with . The Safavids were a dynastic family that ruled over modern-day Iran. Not only had Ismails forces occupied the empires border cities, but he had begun recruiting for his army among the ethnic Turkish tribes of eastern Anatolia and encouraging the Shia Muslims in Ottoman lands to revolt against their Sunni rulers. Shah Ism'l I, who established the Safavid dynasty in 907/15012, considered himself to be the living emanation of the godhead, the Shadow of God upon earth, and the representative of the Hidden Imm by virtue of direct descent from the Seventh Imm of the Twelver (Ithn'ashariyya) Sh'a, Ms al-Kzim. However, Safi al-Dins great-grandson Junayd made several changes to the orders doctrine, adopting specifically Shia ideas. [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. 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. Feature Flags: { Haydar was killed in battle in 1488. He captured Tabrz from the Ak Koyunlu and became shah of Azerbaijan (1501) and Persia (1502). Sultan Muhammad, The Court of Gayumars, Shahnameh for Shah Tahmasp I, c. 152425, opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper, 45 x 30 cm, folio 20v (Aga Khan Museum, Toronto; photo: This fusion of artistic styles is best glimpsed in the story of. PDF The Safavid Empire OpenStax is part of Rice University, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. They sustained one of the longest running empires of Iranian history, lasting from 1501 to 1736. (credit: The Feast of Sada, Folio 22v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp by Ferdowsi/Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Arthur A. Houghton Jr., 1970 /Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain), This miniature created in the Mughal Empire in 1594 shows a scene from the, https://openstax.org/books/world-history-volume-2/pages/1-introduction, https://openstax.org/books/world-history-volume-2/pages/4-3-the-safavid-empire, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, Identify the factors that contributed to the rise of the, Discuss the similarities and differences between, Describe the political structure of the Safavid Empire. Abbas I was particularly lenient toward the Armenian Christian population of Isfahan, due to their participation in the lucrative manufacture and export of silk. Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing GRAB THE BEST PAPER 92.2% of users find it useful Corrections? The Safavid family later claimed that Safi al-Din was descended from the Prophet through Muhammads daughter Fatima and son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib. of your Kindle email address below. Although a majority of the people in the kingdom were Iranians, there were also some Arabs, Turks, and Armenians. is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings Shiisms rise created a new religious hierarchy in Iran. Through his mother, Shah Ismail I was descended from the Komnenos dynasty that once ruled the Byzantine Empire. At its zenith, during the long reign of Shah Abbas I, the empire's reach comprised Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Find out more about saving to your Kindle. The princes had Turcoman, Persian, Kurdish, and even Armenian, Indian, Afghan, or Georgian mothers. 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. Iran became a feudal theocracy: There was no separation of religion and state; the Shah was held to be the divinely ordained head of both. 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. Throughout the rest of the decade, Ismail I fended off attacks from the Ottomans, stamped out the remnants of a rival faction, called the Ak Koyunlu, and continued to expand his territoryHamadan in 1503, Shiraz and Kerman in 1504, Najaf and Karbala in 1507, Van in 1508, Baghdad in 1509, Khorasan and Herat in 1510. -This caused tension between the Safavid Empire and Ottoman Empires, which was a Sunni empire. Power was shifting to a new class of merchants, many of them ethnic Armenians, Georgians, and Indians. The beginning of the seventeenth century saw the power of the Qizilbashthe original militia that had helped Ismail I capture Tabriz and which over the century had insinuated themselves as entitled bureaucrats in the administrationdeclined. The borders of Iran were secure at the end of Tahmasps reign, but his son and grandson were ineffective leaders who failed to keep the Qizilbash rivalries from once again destabilizing the country, which led to yet more incursions by Ottoman and Uzbek forces. Second, it brought the royal workshops closer to the silk route, making it easier for the Safavids to control the sale of Persian silk. To save content items to your account, Abbas I reformed the military and civil service and built a showpiece capital city, Isfahan, which remains one of the masterworks of Persian Islamic art and architecture. The empire's rulers, like the Ottoman rulers, were Muslim, yet the Safavid Empire used religion differently to promote order and stability within its realm. Thus, the end of his reign, 1666, marked the beginning of the end of the Safavid dynasty. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox. Poetry stagnated under the Safavids; the great medieval ghazal form languished in over-the-top lyricism. Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. One of the most famous achievements of Tahmasps workshop was an illustrated version of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran written by the poet Ferdowsi in the tenth century. As the Safavid dynasty approached the middle of the eighteenth century, the last shahs took less and less interest in foreign and local affairs, and retreated to the interior life of the palace. To save content items to your account, 20th and Pattison, Philadelphia (, The Safavids established an artistic identity that resonated with the dynasties that came after. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Silk was akin to gold in this era, and Safavid silk was renowned for both the high quality of its raw silk, as well as the exquisite designs of their embroidered textiles. The art of the Safavids is simply magnificent. If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked. Haydar declared a religious war against the Christian residents of the Caucasus, but in order to reach them, he had to pass through the territory of the Shirvanshahs, who were allied with his enemies. A major problem faced by Ismail I after the establishment of the Safavid state was how to bridge the gap between the two major ethnic groups in that state: The Qezelbash Turkmens, the "men of the sword" of classical Islamic society whose military prowess had brought him to power, and the Persian elements, the "men of the pen," who filled the ranks of the bureaucracy and the religious establishment in the Safavid state as they had done for centuries under previous rulers of Persia, be they Arabs, Turkic, Mongols, or Turkmens. Government of Safavid Empire - John McGarvey In this way, one of his sons was executed and two were blinded. 4, p. 14. Increased contact with distant cultures in the seventeenth century, especially Europe, provided a boost of inspiration to Iranian artists who adopted modeling, foreshortening, spatial recession, and the medium of oil painting (Shah Abbas II sent Zaman to study in Rome). The city center was unique. Safi al-Din is believed to have come from a family of Kurds who spoke Azeri. Browne, "A Literary History of Persia," Vol. (credit: Shah Tahmasp in the mountains by Freer Gallery of Art/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain), This Persian miniature produced in the studio of Shah Tahmasp depicts the Feast of Sada, a mythical event that celebrates the discovery of fire. They sustained one of the longest running empires of Iranian history, lasting from 1501 to 1736. Despite these similarities, however, significant differences . One faction, which became known as the Sunnis, supported the candidacy of Abu Bakr al-Sadiq, Muhammads father-in-law. The article analyses the social and political structure of the Safavid Empire. The Safavid shahs were wary of groups that sought to exert too much power over them and the government. 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 earliest stages. The patterns on Tahmasps robe have been embellished with gold. At the apex of this structure was the shah. 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. When Shah Abbas I came to power in 1588, he immediately began making plans to move the Safavid capital to Isfahan, a city in central Iran. The pope also hoped Abbas would allow the construction of a cathedral in his new capital city of Isfahan, but on their arrival his emissaries found three Roman Catholic churches already there (Figure 4.24). Between 1508 and 1524, the year of Ismail's death, the shah appointed five successive Persians to the office of vakil. They sustained one of the longest running empires of Iranian history, lasting from 1501 to 1736. Their demise was followed by a period of unrest. The Safavid armies quickly reconquered Khorasan from the Uzbeks and moved on to Azerbaijan. Shah Tahmasp supported both schools at a royal painting workshop where artistic masters were invited to work with luxury materials such as gold leaf and ground lapis lazuli (Figure 4.25). Safavid Iran - Wikipedia (c) - PERSIAN LITERATURE IN THE SAFAVID PERIOD - Cambridge Core Although the Safavids were eventually able to reestablish authority, they never achieved their earlier level of control. While strongly influenced by Persian miniatures, Mughal miniatures tended to represent a more realistic depiction of animals and humans. (credit: Armenian Frescoes by David Stanley/Flickr, CC BY 2.0), This detail of a sixteenth-century miniature by the Persian artist Farrukh Beg shows Shah Tahmasp, who was a great patron of the arts. After becoming the Safaviyeh leader in 1447, Sheikh Junayda descendant of Sheikh Safi Al-Dintransformed it into a revolutionary Shi'a movement with the goal of seizing power in Iran. First, by bringing the capital closer to the center of the empire and away from the Ottoman border, it safeguarded the court from the Turks. 5.2: Safavid Empire - Humanities LibreTexts 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 . The Safavids were defeated and, as the Ottoman force moved on Tabriz, engaged in scorched-earth combat. The Safavid Empire dates from the rule of Shah Ismail (ruled 1501-1524). The dynasty declined in the century following his reign, pressed by the Ottoman Empire and the Mughal dynasty, and fell when a weak shah, ahmsp II, was deposed by his general, Ndir Shah. By the end of this section, you will be able to: To the east of the lands of the Ottomans, another Islamic empire emerged at the beginning of the sixteenth century. @kindle.com emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. This led inevitably to an assumption of kingly infallibility. Constant wars with the Ottomans made Shah Tahmasp I move the capital from Tabriz, into the interior city of Qazvin in 1548. [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 they . Tahmasp went on to become the longest-reigning Safavid shah. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Like the Ottomans and Mughals, the Safavids developed a powerful military, ran a strong and well-organized central state, and fostered a climate in which artistic and intellectual culture flourished. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. The net result of these various Safavid theories of kingship was absolutism. 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. After the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258, the Sunni caliphate became a weak figurehead position that held only symbolic authority. The cathedral Abbas ordered built for the Armenian Christians still serves that community in Isfahan today. 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. He was able to reverse many of Irans territorial losses to the Russians and Ottomans; however, he had no interest in sharing power. Junayds son Haydar created a solid political and military framework by establishing a Safavid military order known as the Qizilbash, after their distinctive red hats (qizil means red in Azeri). In one grand example, Pope facilitated a full-scale reproduction of a Safavid mosque at the 1926 Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exhibition. The Common people were the lowest class on the pyramid in which they mainly consisted of farmers and herders. The other faction wished the leadership to remain within Muhammads biological family and backed Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammads cousin and son-in-law, whom they believed the Prophet had chosen as his successor. The Safavid dynasty had its origin in the Safaviyya Sufi order, which was established in the city of Ardabil in the Azerbaijan region.
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