political structure of the safavid empire
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). The OpenStax name, OpenStax logo, OpenStax book covers, OpenStax CNX name, and OpenStax CNX logo Then two Englishmen, Robert Sherley and his brother Anthony, helped Abbas I to reorganize the Shah's soldiers into a partially paid and well-trained standing army similar to the European model (which the Ottomans had already adopted). in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. Ismail I, despite his heterodox Shi'a beliefs, which were not compatible with orthodox Shi'ism (Momen, 1985) patronized Shi'a religious leaders, granting them land and money in return for loyalty. As the Safavid order developed, its members intermarried with other Turkic groups such as the Turcomen, Lar, and Bakhtiyari, and with Georgian, Armenian, and Pontic Greek Christians within their lands and bordering territories. He captured Tabrz from the Ak Koyunlu and became shah of Azerbaijan (1501) and Persia (1502). The Safavid concept of kingship, combining territorial control with . The carpets of Ardebil were commissioned to commemorate the Safavid dynasty. on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. are licensed under a, Connections Across Continents, 15001800, Exchange in East Asia and the Indian Ocean, Capitalism and the First Industrial Revolution, The Exchange of Ideas in the Public Sphere, Nationalism, Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Political Order, Inventions, Innovations, and Mechanization, Regulation, Reform, and Revolutionary Ideologies, The Collapse of the Ottomans and the Coming of War, The Causes and Consequences of World War II, The Contemporary World and Ongoing Challenges, Science and Technology for Todays World, Recommended Resources for the Study of World History, This map shows the Safavid Empire (green) at its greatest extent, including disputed territories (dots) where the Safavids found themselves in conflict with the Ottoman Empire (orange) and the Uzbek rulers of the Khanate of Bukhara (purple). New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article afavid dynasty, (1502-1736) Persian dynasty. Culture flourished under Safavid patronage. It was founded by Isml I, who, by converting his people from Sunnite to Shite Islam and adopting the trappings of Persian monarchy, planted the seeds of a unique national and religious identity. The epic called the Shahnameh (Book of Kings), a stellar example of manuscript illumination and calligraphy, was made during Shah Tahmasp's reign. 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. 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. 1999-2023, Rice University. Nadir Shah defeated the Afghans in the Battle of Damghan, in 1729. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Abbas I first fought the Uzbeks, recapturing Herat and Mashhad, in 1598. The Safavids generally ruled over a peaceful and prosperous empire. 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. However the brief puppet regime of Ismail III ended in 1760, when Karim Khan felt strong enough take nominal power of the country as well and officially end the Safavid dynasty. They sought to control these populations by enslaving or deporting their members, and nobles were often requested to convert to Shiism. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive. Abbs I (r. 15881629) brought the dynasty to its peak; his capital, Efahn, was the centre of afavid architectural achievement. With his new army behind him, Abbas undertook to gain back the territories lost to the Uzbeks and Ottomans. After being sheltered by allies, the twelve-year-old Ismail emerged from exile in 1499 claiming to be the Mahdi or messiah and began rallying the Qizilbash troops who had fought for his father and brother. The Sunni scholars, called Ulama (from alim, knowledge), were either killed or exiled. Soon after the Safavids rose to power, they established Twelver Shiism (the largest branch of Shia, Safavid art and architecture reflected this adoption of a Shia identity. 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. 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. 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. Under the Peace of Amasya, concluded in 1555, Armenia and Georgia were divided between the two empires; the Ottomans gained control over Iraq and access to the Persian Gulf, while Irans control over Azerbaijan was guaranteed. 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 Rise of the Safavid Empire. To log in and use all the features of Khan Academy, please enable JavaScript in your browser. Royal manuscripts provide a glimpse into the fusion of regional styles used in early Safavid art. In the east, the Mughal dynasty of India had expanded into Afghanistan at the expense of Iranian control, taking Kandahar and Herat. As the spiritual heir of Sheikh Zahed, Safi Al-Din transformed the inherited Zahediyeh Sufi Order into the Safaviyeh Order. Power was shifting to a new class of merchants, many of them ethnic Armenians, Georgians, and Indians. Ismail I continued to expand his base in northwestern Iran. 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 . then you must include on every digital page view the following attribution: Use the information below to generate a citation. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Museums around the world commissioned Pope and Ackerman to organize symposia and exhibitions on the topic of Persian art, where works from the Safavid Empire were especially of interest. Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. One of the most renowned Muslim philosophers, Mulla Sadra (1571-1640), lived during Shah Abbas I's reign and wrote the Asfar, a meditation on what he called "meta philosophy," which brought to a synthesis the philosophical mysticism of Sufism, the theology of Shi'ism, and the Peripatetic and Illuminationist philosophies of Avicenna and Suhrawardi Maqtul (1155-1191). Despite near-constant war, during this time Iran reached new cultural and economic heights. The Safavid Empire was established in an Iran that had been long fragmented. By 1511, the Uzbeks in the north-east were driven across the Oxus River where they captured Samarkand establishing the Shaibanid dynasty, and from which they would continue to attack the Safavids. Here, Bihzad helped establish the birth of a new Safavid aesthetica hybrid of the colorful expressionism and naturalistic rendering of the dynasties that preceded the Safavids. In the fifteenth century, the Safaviyeh gradually gained political and military clout in the power vacuum precipitated by the decline of the Timurid dynasty. 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. 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. Posted 7 months ago. Our mission is to improve educational access and learning for everyone. Abbas then returned to the issue his grandfather had taken up: taming the Qizilbash, whose disputes had plunged Iran into civil conflict that twice nearly brought the country to ruin. Abbas I also supported direct trade with Europe, particularly England and The Netherlands, which sought Iranian carpets, silk, and textiles. 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). An attempt to recapture the territory in 1618 resulted in a devastating loss for the Ottomans. Through this alliance many members of the ulama became landowners themselves, creating a religious aristocracy that gave them a level of political independence. They were originally a religious brotherhood who became more powerful because of warlords and political marriages. 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. The Safavid empire was founded by the Safavids.They became a centralized government. However, the original ancestral line of the Safavids was a religious order of Sufi mystics that lived in Ardabil, a city now in Azerbaijan (Sufism is the mystical branch of Islam that originated during the, Shah Ismail, the founder of the Safavid dynasty, rejoined the western and eastern halves of the Iranian plateau through military achievement. Never was the Divine Right of Kings more fully developed than by the Safavid shahs. What fueled the growth of Safavid economy was Iran's position between the burgeoning civilizations of Europe to its west and India and Islamic Central Asia to its east and north. 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. In 1750, it was mostly governed through a loose confederation of powerful princely states ^1 1 and rich port cities. Henceforth, a treaty, signed in Qasr-e Shirin, was established, delineating a border between Iran and Turkey in 1639, which still stands in northwest Iran/southeast Turkey. The Safavids ultimately succeeded in establishing a new Persian national monarchy. Safavid Persia had a succession of capitals: for the capital was where the shah and his entourage happened to be. Safavid miniatures are highly prized today; some of the best examples have sold for millions of dollars at auction. This gives a convincing explanation as to why the Turkic Azerbaijani language became so important in a land with an overwhelming Persian-speaking majority. This clearly differentiated Iran from the Ottomans, who were Sunnis. For this reason, many silks used floral and vegetal motifs that appealed to both Persian and foreign markets. The remaining 5 percent of Shia are Zaydis or Seveners, a sect established by Zayd, the great-grandson of Ali, who disagree with Twelvers over the identity of the seventh imam. To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org The maximum extent of the Safavid Empire under Shah Abbas I ( CC BY-SA 4.0) The Safavids were a dynastic family that ruled over modern-day Iran. of your Kindle email address below. In May 1501, Ismail I declared Tabriz his capital and himself Shah of Azerbaijan. The Safavids were defeated and, as the Ottoman force moved on Tabriz, engaged in scorched-earth combat.
Mangrove Beach Bar Aruba Menu,
What Are The Trichotomy Of Criminal Investigation,
Peloton Instructor Ages,
Articles P