Shah Ismail I

In 1501 Ismail made Twelver Shi’ism the official religion. Savory writes that this step had no precedent among Islamic states. His followers, the Qizilbash, saw him as divine, and his Turkish poems under the pen name “Khata’i” encouraged that belief.

Matthee says the conversion of Iran was a long process: in the mid-16th century Qazvin, Shiraz and Hamadan were still Sunni centres, and in 1720 an Ottoman observer counted a third of the people as Sunni.

Savory sees the political gain in setting the new Safavid state apart from its powerful Sunni neighbours, the Ottomans to the west and the Uzbeks to the east. We treat this as his reading, not Ismail’s own words.

The religious border drawn then is still part of the region’s political map.

On 23 August 1514, on the plain of Chaldiran, Ottoman artillery and musketeers broke the Qizilbash horse. Selim took Tabriz but left eight days later. Ismail went into mourning in black and had his standards dyed black.

Savory writes that he never again led his troops in battle; Matthee calls this “famously said” and notes it is true that the shah did little to stop the loss of Balkh and Kandahar.

Defeat shook the belief in the shah’s invincibility and divine aura; that is Matthee’s reading. That Chaldiran “broke Ismail’s spirit” is a famous story, and we label it as such, not as a record.

Courage without new weapons does not last against a state that has them. A century later Shah Abbas acted on that lesson.

Matthee writes that the Qizilbash received land in return for their loyalty and were made governors of newly conquered provinces. The chancery stayed in Persian (Tajik) hands.

Minorsky, quoted by Savory, said the Turkmans and Persians did not mix freely, “like oil and water”. At Ghijduvan many Qizilbash left the field because they had been put under a Persian commander.

This is our reading: land in this state was a reward for loyalty to a holy leader, not a lasting right. When the leader’s aura shook at Chaldiran, the bond between land and loyalty loosened, and the Qizilbash amirs fought over the provinces while Tahmasp was a child.

Property tied to one man’s favour loses its protection when he falls.

Tahmasp was born near Isfahan on 22 February 1514, became shah at ten on 23 May 1524 and died at Qazvin on 14 May 1576: the longest Safavid reign. Until about 1533 Qizilbash amirs ruled in his name. In 1528 at Jam he beat the Uzbeks with the help of gunpowder.

He campaigned in the Caucasus and by 1553 had moved more than 30,000 people, mostly women and children, to the Iranian plateau; Mitchell sees this as the start of the ghulam corps. On 29 May 1555 he made the Peace of Amasya with the Ottomans. Humayun, the Mughal emperor, was his guest from 1543 to 1545. The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp was finished in the mid-1540s.

The year the capital moved from Tabriz to Qazvin is disputed: Matthee gives 1548, Mitchell 1557. Mitchell sees the motive more in reducing Turkic influence at court than in fear of the Ottomans.

Amasya drew a line that, Matthee says, through the Treaty of Qasr-e Shirin in 1639 became the basis of Iran’s border with Turkey and Iraq today.