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The Safavid dynasty (; ,* (2026). 9789640008188, Mu·assasa-i Intišārāt-i Amīr Kabīr. ISBN 9789640008188
) was the ruling dynasty of Safavid Iran, and one of Iran's most significant ruling dynasties reigning from Safavid Iran. Their rule is often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history, as well as one of the gunpowder empires.Streusand, Douglas E., Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Boulder, Col : Westview Press, 2011) ("Streusand"), p. 135. The Safavid Shah Ismail I established the Twelver denomination of Shia Islam as the official religion of the Persian Empire, marking one of the most important turning points in the history of Islam. The Safavid dynasty had its origin in the Safavid order, which was established in the city of Ardabil in the Iranian Azerbaijan region. It was an Iranian dynasty of Kurdish people origin,
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 Western world, the establishment of an efficient state and bureaucracy based upon "checks and balances", their Safavid art, and Mecenate. 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 Shi'a Islam in major parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, Caucasus, Anatolia, the Persian Gulf, and Mesopotamia.
According to historians,Tamara Sonn. A Brief History of Islam, Blackwell Publishing, 2004, p. 83, É. Á. Csató, B. Isaksson, C Jahani. Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case Studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic, Routledge, 2004, p. 228, . including Vladimir Minorsky and Roger Savory, the Safavids were Turkish speakers of Iranian origin:Roger M. Savory. "Safavids" in Peter Burke, Irfan Habib, Halil İnalcık: History of Humanity-Scientific and Cultural Development: From the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century, Taylor & Francis. 1999, p. 259.
By the time of the establishment of the Safavid empire, the members of the family were Turkicized and Turkish-speaking,, "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." and some of the Shahs composed poems in their then-native Turkish language. Concurrently, the Shahs themselves also supported Persian literature, poetry and art projects including the grand Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp,John L. Esposito, The Oxford History of Islam, Oxford University Press US, 1999. pp 364: "To support their legitimacy, the Safavid dynasty of Iran (1501–1732) devoted a cultural policy to establish their regime as the reconstruction of the historic Iranian monarchy. To the end, they commissioned elaborate copies of the Shahnameh, the Iranian national epic, such as this one made for Tahmasp in the 1520s."Ira Marvin Lapidus, A history of Islamic Societies, Cambridge University Press, 2002, 2nd ed., p. 445: To bolster the prestige of the state, the Safavid dynasty sponsored an Iran-Islamic style of culture concentrating on court poetry, painting, and monumental architecture that symbolized not only the Islamic credentials of the state but also the glory of the ancient Persian traditions." while members of the family and some Shahs composed Persian poetry as well.Colin P. Mitchell, "Ṭahmāsp I" in Encyclopædia Iranica. "Shah Ṭahmāsp's own brother, Sām Mirzā, wrote the Taḏkera-yetoḥfa-ye sāmi, in which he mentioned 700 poets during the reigns of the first two Safavid rulers. Sām Mirzā himself was an ardent poet, writing 8,000 verses and a Šāh-nāma dedicated to his brother, Ṭahmāsp (see Sām Mirzā, ed. Homāyun-Farroḵ, 1969)."See: Willem Floor, Hasan Javadi (2009), The Heavenly Rose-Garden: A History of Shirvan & Daghestan by Abbas Qoli Aqa Bakikhanov, Mage Publishers, 2009. (see Sections on Safavids quoting poems of Shah Tahmasp I)
The authority of the Safavids was religiously based, and their claim to legitimacy was founded on being direct male descendants of Ali,Kathryn Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran, Cambridge, Massachusetts; London : Harvard University Press, 2002. p. 143: "It is true that during their revolutionary phase (1447–1501), Safavi guides had played on their descent from the family of the Prophet. The hagiography of the founder of the Safavi order, Shaykh Safi al-Din Safvat al-Safa written by Ibn Bazzaz in 1350-was tampered with during this very phase. An initial stage of revisions saw the transformation of Safavi identity as Sunni Kurds into Arab blood descendants of Muhammad." the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, and regarded by the Shiʻa as the first Imam.
Furthermore, the dynasty was from the very start thoroughly intermarried with both Pontic Greeks as well as Georgians lines.From Maternal side: Chatrina daughter of Theodora daughter of John IV of Trebizond son of Alexios IV of Trebizond son of Manuel III of Trebizond son of Alexios III of Trebizond son of Irene Palaiologina of Trebizond. From Paternal side: Shaykh Haydar son of Khadijeh Khatoon daughter of Ali Beyg son of Qara Yuluk Osman son of Maria daughter of Irene Palaiologina of Trebizond. In addition, from the official establishment of the dynasty in 1501, the dynasty would continue to have many intermarriages with both Circassians as well as again Georgian dignitaries, especially with the accession of Tahmasp I.
The Safavids also drew inspiration from earlier times, both historical and mythological. The historical component was the Turco-Mongol tradition, which the Safavids considered themselves the inheritor of. The 14th century warlord Timur influenced their self-image. In his autobiography, Shah Tahmasp I mentioned that he often read the Tarikh-e Teymur. This romanticized past was given renewed attention once the Safavids abandoned their role as warriors.
The mythological component was references to pre-Islamic kings and heroes. Zahhak, Fereydun and Jamshid were amongst the figures that Shah Ismail I compared himself to in his poetry. His two sons Sam and Rostam, had traditional Persian names. When Shah Soltan Hoseyn was crowned shah in 1694, Jamshid and Kay Kawad were amongst the pre-Islamic figures mentioned in the Khutbah speech by the sheykh al-islam of Isfahan, Mohammad Baqer Majlesi. The Tohfat al-alam, a paean to Shah Soltan Hoseyn composed about ten years after his coronation, contains similar themes. Although many dynasties in Iran remembered only fractions of the past, they still aimed to claim a connection to it, a tradition the Safavids continued. The Dutch Iranologist Rudi Matthee adds "Yet that does not mean that the Safavids were engaged in a systematic and comprehensive mining of the past with the intention of "retrieving" an authentic identity".
The identity of the Safavids was broad in certain aspects, consistent with premodern custom. The Safavid dynasty was likely of Kurds origin, while Shah Ismail I had Pontic Greeks descent and spoke a variant of Azerbaijani Turkic. Both Rudi Matthee and English–American Iranologist Dick Davis agree that "pure identity was not part of Iran's early, multi-ethnic and imperial consciousness and emerged only in Sasanian times". The Safavids still set themselves apart from others, mainly judging by perceived levels of civilization. Those considered barbarians were not only outsiders but also certain neighboring Muslims, including Arabs, Turks, and Kurds. Texts in Persian portrayed them all as primitive, unpredictable and unreliable. The Safavids considered the truly uncivilized groups to include the Turkmens, Lezgins, Kipchaks, and Uzbeks. This grouping also included the Russians, whom the Iranians reportedly called the "Uzbeks of Europe". The Safavid outlook on civilization also included Western Europe, albeit they were rarely mentioned in Persian texts. These texts make little mention of Europe (Farangestan) as a competitor, threat, or point of comparison, even long after the Safavid dynasty. Secondary sources, typically from Europe, provide the majority of the information regarding Safavid views on Europeans.
Legitimacy in the Safavid chronicles revolved around support for the shah and his associates, not adherence to the Muslim divine order or ties to the land. In this system, loyalty became the key and nearly exclusive condition for inclusion. The clerical elite in Iran justified this perspective in religious terms, seeing the dynasty and its shah as essential to upholding and safeguarding the divine order.
Especially in urban areas, Safavid literature and Persian poetry connected the past, including the pre-Islamic past, to the present and functioned as a body of shared cultural traditions for both the common people and the elite. The legendary pre-Islamic Iranian past, with kings battling eternal forces of evil in Iran's national epic, the Shahnameh, was connected to the Islamic Safavid present, which had its own strong symbols of righteousness and redemption.
The Safavids revitalized the Guarded Domains of Iran. The idea of the "Guarded Domains" was formed by a feeling of territorial and political uniformity in a society with shared cultural elements such as the Persian language, monarchy, and Shia Islam. In addition to supporting an advanced Persian material culture, the Safavids contributed to the development of an Islamic philosophical and theological heritage. The Safavids established trade and diplomatic ties with Europe, introducing Iran to Western developments for the first time.
The Safavid dynasty regarded Iran, both as a territory and as a concept, as under their rule and divinely protected. The name "Iran" occurs rarely in early chronicles, suggesting that its location was considered too evident to require frequent mention. The attention to "Iran" as a unified entity, shielded by the Iranian army, increased somewhat under the reign of Shah Abbas I, who defended the country from external opponents while reducing the autonomy of outlying areas and islands. Iran, seemingly, was recognized without formal proclamation.
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 for theological conversation. Well into the Qajar Iran era, some administrative institutions established during the Safavid era or modified from earlier periods continued to exist. Iran and Europe first began regular, long-term diplomatic and commercial exchanges during the Safavid era.
The Reformation in northern and central Europe and the Counter-Reformation that followed it are comparable to the state-sponsored Shia Islam that resulted from the advent of the Safavids and the Sunni response to it. The split that resulted between the Sunnis and Shias is similar to the Protestant-Catholic split that accelerated the formation of nation-states in Europe. The emergence of the Safavid state and its adoption of Shia Islam as the official faith was a pivotal moment that significantly affected both Iran and the surrounding Sunni-majority regions. The conversion to a state-sponsored religion, in this case Shia Islam, provided the bond required to hold together the fundamental elements of Safavid state, similar to other early states such as Spain and England. Iran was largely shaped into a geographical empire with a unique identity due to the fusion of religious and political elements by the Safavid dynasty.
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