Iran in World History

Ghezelbash
, or “red 
heads,” because of their distinctive turbans wrapped around a pointed 
red crown. During the second half of the fifteenth century the Safavid 
order became increasingly militarized, and by 1501 their young leader, a 
remarkable fourteen-year-old by the name of Esma‘il, was able to capture 
Tabriz and assume for himself the ancient title “Kings of Kings of Iran.”
Over the subsequent decade, the youthful Esma‘il, at the head of a 
Ghezelbash army that believed him divine and invincible, extended his 
power from Anatolia and Mesopotamia to eastern Khorasan as far as 
the Uzbek-held lands. At the Battle of Marv in 1510, Esma‘il defeated the 
Uzbek ruler Muhammad Shaybani Khan, whom he executed and whose 
skull he had fashioned into a drinking cup in the ancient steppe tradition.
Esma‘il’s successes alarmed the Ottomans, who forcibly relocated 
many of his Turkmen supporters farther west into Ottoman lands 
where they would be easier to control. In 1514, the Ottoman sultan 
Selim I marched on Azerbaijan at the head of a huge army, engaging the 
Safavids on the plain of Chalderan. With their superior numbers and 
European artillery, the Ottomans defeated Esma‘il’s forces, demolishing 
the myth of his invincibility. Psychologically devastated and discredited 
among his formerly devoted followers, Esma‘il entered a long retirement 
that ended with his early death in 1524. His final legacy was the com-
missioning of a magnificent illustrated copy of the 
Book of Kings
, which 
was completed during the reign of his son, Tahmasp.
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Many art histo-
rians consider this work to be the pinnacle of Persian painting.
Since Tahmasp was only ten when his father died, the reins of gov-
ernment were initially held by his Ghezelbash regent, an able general 
named Ali Beg Rumlu who managed to suppress the internecine clan 
rivalries that threatened to tear the new empire apart. On attaining 
maturity, Tahmasp proved a capable ruler, upholding the Safavid state 
in the face of constant threats from both the Ottomans in the west and 
the Uzbeks in the east over a fifty-two-year reign. He moved the capital 
to Ghazvin, out of reach of the Ottomans, and oversaw the gradual 
conversion of much of Iran to the “Twelver” branch of Shi‘ism which 
facilitated the rise to political power of the Shi‘ite Ulama.
Safavid prestige was enhanced by their success in restoring north-
ern India to the Mughal ruler, Babur’s son Humayun, who had been 

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ousted in 1540 by marauding Afghans (a term which at the time signi-
fied ethnic Pushtuns, contrary to the broader meaning it has today). 
Humayun sought refuge at Tahmasp’s court and, following an oppor-
tunistic conversion to Shi‘ism, he was given use of a Safavid army with 
which he reconquered Delhi in 1555. As Tahmasp had become some-
thing of a religious fanatic by that point, many Iranian writers and 
artists followed along with Humayun to seek new careers under the 
Mughals. This initiated a two-centuries-long brain drain that culturally 
depleted Iran, to the great benefit of India.
“Shi‘izing” propaganda had played an important role for the 
Safavids in mobilizing the support of Turkmen warriors, especially 
against the Ottomans, but their unorthodox beliefs were not Shi‘ism per 
se. In a poem aimed at rallying his warriors, the young shah Esma‘il had 
said of Ali, “Know him to be God, do not call him human”
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—a clearly 
heretical view by any standard.
In Tahmasp’s time, actual scholarly Shi‘ite authority in Iran was 
still thin on the ground, which meant that the shah had to import 
legal experts from Lebanon and elsewhere to buttress the legitimacy of 
the new state. It became government practice to renumerate religious 
scholars with land grants, as had traditionally been accorded to mili-
tary leaders. Many religious families thus acquired large estates, which 
accounts for the impressive landholdings and massive wealth enjoyed 
by a number of powerful religious figures in Iran even today.
Needless to say, the view of Shi‘ism promoted by the Lebanese 
Ulama differed considerably from the Ali-worshipping folk religion of 
the Turkmens. Orthodox Shi‘ism had to be imposed through govern-
ment force, first directed at the heretical Ghezelbash and then at the 
general population, most of whom were Sunni. These forced conver-
sions had little impact in eastern Iran, which led to a permanent politi-
cal divide between the Persian-speakers of Iran proper and those of 
modern Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, most of whom have 
remained Sunni to this day.
Upon Tahmasp’s death the various Ghezelbash clans renewed 
their rivalries. These continued throughout the short reigns of the 
next two Safavid kings, Esma‘il II and Mohammad Khodabandeh. 
Khodabandeh’s sixteen-year-old son forced him to abdicate and as-
sumed the throne as Shah Abbas I in 1587. The young Abbas wasted 
no time in restructuring the increasingly ineffectual Safavid military, 
which had recently lost much of the Caucasus to the Ottomans and 
the eastern provinces to the Uzbeks. He hired two English advisors, 
the brothers Robert and Anthony Sherley, to reorganize his army on 

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the European model, with a salaried officer corps and modern artil-
lery. With this new, professional standing army at his disposal, Abbas 
was no longer dependent on the tribal Ghezelbash or subject to their 
internecine intrigues.
In 1598 Abbas moved the Safavid capital from Ghazvin to Esfahan, 
which was closer to the geographical center of the empire. He then 
embarked on a massive building campaign, importing Armenian 
craftsmen from the town of Jolfa on the Araxes River in the Caucasus. 
“New Jolfa,” on the south bank of Esfahan’s Zayandeh River, remains 
a distinctly Armenian neighborhood to this day, and Armenian silver-
workers, tile-makers, and other craftsmen continue to be visible figures 
within the Esfahan bazaar. Of ancient West Asia’s many linguistic and 
ethnic groups, the Armenians are almost unique in having maintained 
their distinct identity up to the present.
Under Shah Abbas, Armenians also flourished as international 
businessmen, building up thriving commercial networks that con-
nected Iran with Europe, India, and China. The Armenians were espe-
cially important in the traffic of luxury items such as silk. Georgians 
and Circassians from the Caucasus, meanwhile, attained prominent 
posts in the government and military. Abbas cultivated relations with 
European powers, particularly England and Spain, in an effort to cir-
cumvent and undermine the political and economic strength of the 
Ottomans. He offered trading concessions to European companies 
and allowed Christian missionaries to operate in Iran, though these 
were allowed to proselytize only among Iran’s Christian communities 
and could not target Muslims. As a result of this missionary activity, 
a substantial number of Iran’s Chaldean Christians and some of its 
Armenians accepted the pope’s authority and became Catholics.
European travelers marveled at the changes brought by Abbas to his 
new capital, reflected in the expression “Esfahan is half the world.” The 
central urban layout of the city—including the immense Royal Plaza 
(