Empires: Safavid and Qajar

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SAFAVID AND QAJAR

The Safavid period (1501–1722) continued many Mongol and Timurid practices, but may also be seen as the beginning of modern Iranian history. The Safavids unified much of Iran under single political control. Under them a political system emerged in which political and religious boundaries over-lapped. The Safavid concept of kingship, combining territorial control with religious legitimacy, would endure, with modifications, until the late twentieth century. Many administrative institutions established by them survived well into the Qajar era. The Safavid era, finally, saw the beginning of frequent and sustained diplomatic and commercial relations with Europe.

The Safavids, who were of Kurdish ancestry, began in about 1300 as a mystical order centered in the northwestern Iranian town of Ardabil, the burial place of the order's founder, Shaykh Safi al-Din. The nature of their original beliefs remains unclear but in time they turned to a extremist form of Shi ism that included the veneration of a leader seen as an incarnation of god. Though the Safavid leaders were spiritual leaders rather than tribal chiefs, they built their state with the military assistance of tribal groups. Known as Qizilbash, redheads, in reference to their red headgear, these Turkmen migrants from Syria and Anatolia were to become the mainstay of the Safavid army.

Under Shah Isma˓il (r. 1501–1524) the Safavids evolved from a messianic movement to a political dynasty. Upon seizing power, Isma˓il proclaimed Tabriz his capital and Shi˓ism the faith of his realm, thus endowing his new state with a strong ideological basis. In time, Isma˓il extended his territory as far as Iraq and the Persian Gulf. His expansionism brought him into conflict with the Uzbeks in the east and the Ottomans in the west, both Sunni powers that felt threatened by the formation of a militant Shi˓ite state on their borders. Equipped with firearms, the Ottomans in 1514 routed the Safavid army in the battle of Chaldiran and briefly occupied Tabriz.

Aside from waging war, Isma˓il concentrated on state building. In 1508 he took a series of measures that increased the power of Iranian administrators at the expense of that of the Qizilbash. Henceforth a functional division emerged between ethnic Iranians, who in majority staffed the bureaucracy, and ethnic Turks, who dominated the army. Under Isma˓il the first example of the influence of court women is also seen, a legacy of the Central Asian element in Safavid statecraft. Tajlu Khanum, one of his wives and the mother of the future Shah Tahmasp, was as powerful as the shah himself in Isma ˓il's later reign.

Shah Isma˓il was succeeded by his ten-year-old son, Tahmasp (r. 1524–1576). The first decade of his long reign was marked by a civil war among the Qizilbash that nearly overwhelmed the shah. Once he emerged from this conflict, Tahmasp adopted a policy designed to curtail the unruly Qizilbash. He continued to appoint Tajik officials to key positions traditionally reserved for Turks, and began the trend of giving administrative posts to Georgians and Armenians, so-called ghulams, who were captured during expeditions into the Caucasus. (The women became employed in the royal harem.) Until 1555, when he concluded a peace accord with them, Shah Tahmasp also fought three wars against the Ottomans, and in the process moved his capital from Tabriz to Qazvin, a city located further in the interior.

Shah Tahmasp presided over a court that fostered culture. The quality of the illuminated manuscripts produced during his reign would never be surpassed. His religious policy focused on the further implantation of Shi˓ism and saw attempts to standardize religious practice around a scriptural, urban-based version of the faith as opposed to the folk beliefs of the Turkmen. To disseminate the creed, the shah also invited Shi˓ite scholars from Arab lands, most notably from Lebanon, to migrate to Iran.

These trends continued and culminated under Shah ˓Abbas (r. 1587–1629), the strongest and most visionary of the Safavid rulers, who came to power in 1576, following the interregnum of the cruel Shah Isma˓il II and the nearly blind Mohammad Khodabandeh. Shah ˓Abbas was above all a brilliant strategist, keen to regain the territories that had been lost to internal sedition and outside enemies during the turmoil preceding his reign. Well aware that he could not fight on two fronts at once, he made a humiliating peace with the Ottomans so as to be able to take on the Uzbeks and attend to domestic matters. This done, he resumed war with the Ottomans and reconquered large parts of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. In later years, ˓Abbas recaptured Qandahar (lost again in 1638), established control over the Persian Gulf littoral by ousting the Portuguese from Hormuz, and seized part of Mesopotamia, including Baghdad (lost again in 1639).

In his domestic agenda Shah ˓Abbas pursued centralized, personalized power and the maximization of cash revenue. He liquidated a number of powerful Qizilbash leaders, including the ones who had helped him come to power, and suppressed any religious group that challenged his authority. He also resettled tribes to far-off regions with the aim of strengthening frontiers and breaking up loyalties. In the 1590s the shah transferred his capital from Qazvin to Isfahan, a move that gave Iran an administrative center closer to its geographical center, aside from completing the shift from a Turkish to a Persian cultural focus. Most importantly, Shah ˓Abbas set out to break the power of the Qizilbash. He removed a great deal of the state land that they controlled as fiefs by turning it into crown domain administered directly by a wazir appointed by the shah, so that revenue would flow into the royal treasury. Ghulams were appointed as governors of these newly formed crown provinces. Shah ˓Abbas's reforms mark an important phase in the evolution of Safavid Iran from a steppe formation to a bureaucratic state.

Shah ˓Abbas is especially famous for encouraging trade. He reestablished road security and had numerous caravanseries constructed throughout his realm. Under him, Isfahan, endowed with a newly built administrative and commercial center, became a thriving city of some 500,000 inhabitants. His special focus on the Persian Gulf trade and his efforts to stimulate the export of silk combined a need for revenue and a desire to open up an alternative outlet to the land-based routes via Ottoman territory. He allowed Western merchants to settle in the newly founded port of Bandar ˓Abbas, offering them commercial privileges in return for royal profit and the promise of naval assistance. His overtures to the West, expressed in countless embassies to European courts, were mostly aimed at finding allies in his anti-Ottoman struggle.

Under Shah ˓Abbas's direct successors, Safi (r. 1629–1642) and ˓Abbas II (1642–1666), Iran offered the outward appearance of stability. Baghdad was lost to the Ottomans, but Shah ˓Abbas II managed to recapture Qandahar from the Mughals. Though competent rulers, both lacked the vision and determination of their predecessor. Under them, economic problems became apparent and state control weakened. Some of these problems were perhaps inevitable given Iran's inherent weaknesses—much arid, unproductive land, an unevenly spread and heavily nomadic population, a dependence on the outside world for precious metal. Others stemmed from the very same measures taken by ˓Abbas I. Good examples of those are the conversion to crown land and his practice of isolating the heir to be in the royal harem for fear that he might present a premature challenge to royal power. The first led to extortion of the peasants by supervisors who only leased the land for a limited time and thus saw no reason for long-term investment. The second produced inept rulers and empowered those who inhabited the royal quarters, eunuchs and women. The army, already weakened by the continuing antagonism between the Qizilbash and the ghulams, became largely neglected following the conclusion of a definitive peace accord with the Ottomans in 1639.

It was under the last two Safavid shahs, Solayman (r. 1666–1694) and Sultan Hosayn (r. 1694–1722), that order and stability began to unravel. Whereas their predecessors had been roving warriors, forever vigilant in patrolling their realm to pacify unruly tribes and repel border raids, they reigned as stationary monarchs who, aside from occasional hunting parties, preferred to live immured in the palace, hidden from the public eye. Disconnected and hardly interested in administrative affairs, they relied on their grand wazirs for the daily running of the state. Though able administrators who successfully tapped new sources of revenue to fill the royal coffers, these chief ministers were unable to combat the increasingly abusive practices of provincial governors and to reverse the crippling corruption and factionalism in court circles. The results were seen in a deteriorating currency, a fall in agricultural output, and growing numbers of bankruptcies among merchants. Equally serious was the pressure that began to be put on non-Muslims, a function of the growing influence of the Shi˓ite clergy, especially under the pious and impressionable Shah Sultan Hosayn, who ruled under the spell of his maternal grandmother, Miryam Begum; the court eunuchs; and Muhammad Baqir Majlisi, a conservative cleric who advocated a literal interpretation of the faith. The Armenians of New Julfa near Isfahan, a group with a disproportionately large role in the economy, lost their tax advantages and by the late seventeenth century many wealthy merchants began to migrate to Europe, India, and Russia.

As of 1710 disintegration set in. While the shah built pleasure gardens, the cost of which was extorted from peasants and merchants, the country faced internal rebellion and outside attack. The final blow came from the east, with Baluchi and Afghan tribesmen occupying Kerman and Mashad. In 1722 a small contingent of Afghan Ghilzai warriors penetrated the interior, defeated a hastily assembled Safavid army, and proceeded to besiege Isfahan. The city fell six months later, brought to its knees by starvation, and Sultan Hosayn was forced to confer the title of shah on Mahmud, the Afghan leader. Meanwhile, Russia and the Ottoman Empire took advantage of the turmoil by occupying Iran's northwestern regions.

Artwork original to the period appears in the volume one color insert.