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It did not last forever, however. The borders of Iran were secure at the end of Tahmasp’s 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. Tahmasp’s grandson Abbas I,
generally considered the strongest Safavid shah as well as one of the greatest rulers in Iranian history, found
himself compelled to take up arms once again (Figure 4.21). During his reign, the Safavid state reached the
height of its military, political, and economic power. 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.
FIGURE 4.21 Shah Abbas I. This detail from a series of seventeenth-century paintings decorating the walls of the
Chehel Sotoun Palace in Isfahan, Iran, depicts Shah Abbas I, who ruled over Iran at the height of the Safavid
dynasty’s power. (credit: “Abbas I of Persia” by Unknown/“TRAJAN 117”/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
By the time the seventeen-year-old Abbas was crowned shah in 1588, Iran was in chaos. After waging war
against the Uzbeks, Abbas realized that fighting the Ottomans with the country in upheaval would be nearly
impossible. As a result, he signed a peace treaty in 1590 that gave nearly half his territory, including the
former capital of Tabriz, to the Ottomans. 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. His grandfather had acquired over thirty thousand enslaved people employed as civil servants and
palace administrators; turning to the Caucasus region again, Abbas decided to also create an enslaved soldier
corps like the Ottoman Janissaries.
With his new army behind him, Abbas undertook to gain back the territories lost to the Uzbeks and Ottomans.
The Safavid armies quickly reconquered Khorasan from the Uzbeks and moved on to Azerbaijan. The
Ottomans sued for peace in 1612, relinquishing the Caucasus to the Iranians. An attempt to recapture the
territory in 1618 resulted in a devastating loss for the Ottomans.
Despite near-constant war, during this time Iran reached new cultural and economic heights. In 1598, Abbas
4.3 • The Safavid Empire 141
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. The city was built as a showpiece, with administrative buildings and
public markets opening on the enormous Naqsh-e Jahan (“Exemplar of the world”) Square (Figure 4.22).
FIGURE 4.22 Naqsh-e Jahan Square. The Shah Mosque, built by Abbas I, is located on the south side of Naqsh-e
Jahan Square in the center of Isfahan. The square, a UNESCO World Heritage site, still serves as a gathering place
today. (credit: “Naqsh-e Jahan Square” by Bijan Tehrani/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
The city center was unique. All levels of society could mix there, from members of the royal court whose
pavilion overlooked the square, to the Shi‘ite clergy whose mosque was at the square’s southern end, to foreign
dignitaries, members of the military, merchants, and commoners. A soup kitchen distributed free food to the
needy, and occasionally the square was cleared for polo games, public ceremonies, and festivals. To populate
his new capital, Abbas ordered several different populations to settle in it, including Armenians, Jewish
people, Circassians, and other Caucasian peoples, many of whom had been displaced during his war against
the Ottomans in their homelands. The cathedral Abbas ordered built for the Armenian Christians still serves
that community in Isfahan today.
After Abbas’s death, the Safavid state met another internal threat, this time from the Georgian kingdom of
Kakheti. 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. Although the Safavids were eventually able to reestablish authority, they never
achieved their earlier level of control.
Iran also continued to face threats from outside. In the early eighteenth century under the reign of Tsar Peter
the Great, Russia began to encroach on the northern shores of the Caspian Sea and to compete for influence in
the Caucasus. The armies of Peter the Great took the Caucasus in the Russo-Persian war of 1722–1723, while
the Ottomans reoccupied northwestern Iran. The entry of European ships to the Indian Ocean trade cut off
much of Iran’s direct access to Africa and South Asia. Over the course of the 1730s, Nader Afshar, one of the
Safavid vassals, established himself as a strong military ruler. He was able to reverse many of Iran’s territorial
losses to the Russians and Ottomans; however, he had no interest in sharing power. In 1736, Nader deposed
the infant Abbas III and crowned himself shah, bringing the Safavid Empire to an end and establishing the
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short-lived Afsharid dynasty.
Establishing Shi‘ism as the State Religion
The Safavids declared Shia Islam the state religion of Iran in the early 1500s, and it remains so to this day,
encompassing about 10 percent of the worldwide Muslim population. The Shia movement originated with a
dispute over Muhammad’s successor after his death in 632. One faction, which became known as the Sunnis,
supported the candidacy of Abu Bakr al-Sadiq, Muhammad’s father-in-law. The other faction wished the
leadership to remain within Muhammad’s biological family and backed Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s cousin
and son-in-law, whom they believed the Prophet had chosen as his successor. This group became known as the
Shia.
The Shia believe Ali, who finally succeeded Uthman to become the leader of the Muslim community in 656,
was the first legitimate imam, the title they give their spiritual leader rather than “caliph.” They view the line of
Muhammad that descends through Ali and his wife Fatima, Muhammad’s daughter, as the only source of
definitive religious guidance. About 95 percent of Shia also believe Ali was the first of twelve infallible leaders
chosen by God, so this sect is often called the Twelvers. Twelvers hold that the twelfth and final imam,
Muhammad al-Mahdi, went into “mystical hiding” in the ninth century and will return, along with Jesus, to
defeat evil on earth and herald the Day of Judgment. 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.
Sunnis respect Ali and all the Twelve Imams, but they do not believe the Twelve alone were divinely chosen to
lead the Muslim community. In their view of Islam, any pious man who followed the example of Muhammad
could lead the Muslim community.
Shi‘ism was not officially tolerated by the Sunni caliphs of the Umayyad and Abbasid Empires because of its
perceived challenge to their rule. For this reason, most Shia movements developed far outside the control of
these caliphates, in places like Morocco, Yemen, Iran, and central Asia. After the Mongol conquest of Baghdad
in 1258, the Sunni caliphate became a weak figurehead position that held only symbolic authority. During the
period of Mongol rule over Iran and the Caucasus, the distinction between Shia and Sunni became less
important than it had been. When Ismail crowned himself Shah in 1501, most of Iran’s population was Sunni.
When he declared Twelver Shi‘ism to be the state religion of Iran, he hoped to unify his Iranian subjects by
having them adopt a form of Islam that gave them a unique identity and distinguished them from their military
and politicalenemies the Ottomans and the Uzbeks, who were both Sunni.
Historians generally agree that the Safavids’ efforts to convert Muslims in their empire to Shi‘ism utilized
coercion and force. 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). He ordered all Iran’s Sunni Muslims to become Shi‘ites. Sunni
clerics and theologians were given the choice of conversion or exile. Sunnis who resisted conversion but
remained in Iran faced death. To spread the new beliefs and win converts, Ismail brought Shia scholars to Iran
from Lebanon and Syria. He used state funds to construct schools where Shia beliefs were taught and to build
shrines to Ali and members of his family. Ismail also invited foreign Shi‘ites living in places where they were
persecuted by the Sunni majority to move to Iran, promising them land and protection.
4.3 • The Safavid Empire 143
FIGURE 4.23 Shi‘ism as the State Religion. In this image from a Persian history of his reign written about 1650, the
Safavid ruler Shah Ismail (dressed in white) stands on the steps of a mosque prior to his coronation, having the
sermon read in the name of the Twelve Imams and effectively declaring Shi‘ism to be the state religion of Iran in
1501. (credit: “Shah Isma'il, History of Shah Isma'il, by Mu'in Musavvir, Isfahan, Iran” by Muin Musavvir/British
Library/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
The conversion efforts of the Safavids have left long legacies in the Islamic world. Though the majority of
Muslims in Azerbaijan and Iran considered themselves Shia by the time the Safavid era ended in 1736, Nader
Shah attempted to restore Sunnism as the dominant sect. But there was little public enthusiasm, and after his
death most who had claimed to adopt Sunnism during his reign quietly reverted to Shi‘ism. At the same time,
however, the Safavids’ conversion policy brought tensions between Sunni and Shia to a level not seen since
Muhammad’s death. The hostility between the sects that continues today is usually traced to the Safavid era
and the dynasty’s military rivalry with the Ottomans, especially after the sultan acquired the Sunni title of
caliph in 1517.
The Safavids were generally more tolerant of non-Muslim subjects than they were of the Sunni. Nevertheless,
Safavid rulers were aggressive toward the Armenians, Georgians, and other Christians in the Caucasus region,
whom they considered potentially rebellious. They sought to control these populations by enslaving or
deporting their members, and nobles were often requested to convert to Shi‘ism. Christians elsewhere in the
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Safavid realm, however, were given considerable freedom to build churches and honor their own customs and
beliefs. Abbas I was particularly lenient toward the Armenian Christian population of Isfahan, due to their
participation in the lucrative manufacture and export of silk. Spain and the Vatican sent several embassies to
Iran hoping to enlist it as an ally against the Ottomans. 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).
FIGURE 4.24 Holy Savior Cathedral in Isfahan. The interior of the Armenian Christian Holy Savior Cathedral in
Isfahan, built in 1606, incorporates both Christian imagery, such as scenes from the life of Christ, and Islamic-style
decorative tilework. (credit: “Armenian Frescoes” by David Stanley/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Safavid Government and Culture
During the Safavid period, Iran was ethnically quite diverse. Safi al-Din is believed to have come from a family
of Kurds who spoke Azeri. 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. Through his mother, Shah Ismail I was descended from the Komnenos
dynasty that once ruled the Byzantine Empire. He used Persian as the language of government and composed
poetry in Azeri, contributing to its development as a literary language. The Qizilbash were largely Turcoman,
another Turkic group with its own language. Various groups of Persian-speaking peoples lived in the Iranian
plateau and were usually described as “Tajik.”
The Safavid shahs were wary of groups that sought to exert too much power over them and the government.
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
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