Safavid Iran

Safavid Iran
Rebirth of a Persian Empire

andrew j. newman
Mary’s Book

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 Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements ix

Map Iran in the Safavid Period xii
Introduction 1
The conventional wisdom 2
The appearance of a field 3
The legacy of growth 4
An alternative synthesis 7
A myriad of discourses, one ruler to unite them 9
1 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I (1488–1524) 13
Ismail as Turk and Tajik 13
Turk and Tajik at the heart of the realm 15
The culture of politics, the politics of culture 17
Internal and external challenges: Chaldiran
and after 20
The Shi
i clerical response 24
Summary and conclusion 24
2 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: The Reign of Tahmasp
(1524–1576) 26
Civil war, and its aftermath . . . 26
. . . and external threats 27
The Turkish response 28
The continuation of Tajik support 29
Safavid heterodoxy reasserted 31
Tahmasp and the Tajiks 33
Tahmasp and the faith 36
Summary and conclusion 38
3 The Second Civil War: Ismail II (1576–1577) and Khudabanda
(1578–1587) 41
Alliances and antagonisms 41
The internal dynamic: Turk and Tajik in the second
civil war 43
vi Contents
A Sunni interlude 45
The arts in the second civil war 47
Summary and conclusion 49
4 Monumental Challenges and Monumental Responses:
The Reign of Abbas I (1587–1629) 50
The challenges 50
Political and military responses: creation,
consolidation and expansion 52
Spiritual responses: reinvigorating Abbas’ credentials 55
Economic responses 60
Declarations of loyalty (and wealth) 63
History as politics 67
The ‘popular’ dimension: spiritual disquiet on the urban
scene 68
Summary and conclusion 71
5 Shifts at the Centre and a Peace Dividend: Shah Safi
(1629–1642) 73
A smoother accession? Turmoil at the centre 73
The renewal of spiritual unrest 74
Changing responses of changing centres: searching for
legitimacy 75
Summary and conclusion 80
6 The Peace Dividend Consolidated: Shah Abbas II
(1642–1666) 81
A smoother accession and a ‘new’ vizier 81
Silk and specie 82
A balanced approach to spiritual turmoil 83
The Vizierates of Muhammad Bek and Muhammad Mahdi
Karaki: familiar centres and familiar policies 85
The economics of legitimacy 87
‘The Persian interlude’ 90
Summary and conclusion 91
7 Meeting the Challenges: Shah Sulayman (1666/68–1694) 93
The smoothest accession to date 93
Socio-economic crises and responses 94
Spiritual challenges and complex responses: Baqir
Majlisi and Safavid Shi
ism 96
The discourse of architecture and art 100
Summary and conclusion 103
8 Denouement or Defeat: The Reign of Shah Sultan Husayn
(1694–1722) 104
The institutionalisation of transition 104
The balancing of interests: Safavid pluralist discourse
continued 105
 Contents vii
Foreign and domestic challenges and responses 106
Maintaining the spiritual balance 108
An economic snapshot: a plethora of taxes 112
Creativity and consumption 114
Denouement or defeat? 115
Epilogue: Poetry and Politics – The Multiplicity of Safavid
Discourse 117
Aftermath 124
Appendix I: Key Dates 129
Appendix II: Key chronicles and travellers 135

Notes 145
Select Bibliography 248
Index 265
 Preface and
Acknowledgements
I have been interested in Safavid Iran since 1977 when, as a first-year
graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, searching
for a PhD topic, I read Laurence Lockhart’s 1958 description of the well-
known Twelver Shi
i scholar Muhammad Baqir Majlisi (d. 1699) as ‘an
extremely bigoted mujtahid ’, ‘a rigid and fanatical formalist’, an oppon-
ent of all philosophical inquiry and a persecutor of Jews and Armenians.
Echoing the decades’ old judgement of E. G. Browne (d. 1926), Lockhart
stated that Majlisi’s influence was such as to render Safavid Iran unable
to respond to the attacks which culminated in the fall of the capital of
Isfahan to the Afghans in 1722. Although alone the 1982–3 Beirut edi-
tion of Bihar al-Anwar, Majlisi’s massive, Arabic-language collection of
the hadiths of the twelve imams, runs to some 110 volumes, Lockhart’s
source for such sweeping characterisations was a single, rather short,
essay of Majlisi composed in Persian.1
My 1980 oral examinations, the passing of which allowed me to
commence my dissertation research, were partly predicated on a pro-
posal to examine Majlisi’s life and works. In the process of that research
I discovered a dearth of secondary-source works on Twelver Shi
ism and
the 1986 PhD became, instead, an examination of developments in Shi
i
jurisprudence from the disappearance of the twelfth Imam in 873–4 to
the years immediately following the establishment of Twelver Shi
ism as
the realm’s official faith following the 1501 capture of Tabriz by the first
Safavid shah, Ismail. Several subsequent articles on Shi
ism in the Safavid
period did not immediately relate to Majlisi. When I returned to Majlisi,
while preparing a paper for the Third International Round Table on
Safavid Persia, which I convened in 1998 in Edinburgh, I discovered that
although Western scholars had yet to commence any systematic examin-
ation of his many, mostly Arabic-language, works the aforementioned
sweeping characterisations of the man and his legacy had, in fact,
assumed the status of ‘received wisdom’ in the field.
In 2000, in the aftermath of sending in the proofs for my first
book, on Twelver doctrine and practice in the late ninth and early tenth
centuries,2 I.B.Tauris asked me to write a new general history of the
x Preface and Acknowledgements
Safavid period. Given the logarithmic expansion in the scholarly interest
in the period since the Iranian revolution, as discussed below, this was a
daunting challenge for someone whose research interests in the period
had to date involved research into apparently arcane aspects of Shi
i
religious discourse.
In attempting to rise to this challenge I owe much to the comments,
criticisms and assistance of such well-respected figures in Iranian and
Safavid history as Iraj Afshar, Sussan Babaie, Kathryn Babayan, Stephen
Blake, Sheila Canby, Ehsan Eshraqi, Willem Floor, Gene Garthwaite,
Edmund Herzig, Robert Hillenbrand, Rasul Jafariyan, Paul Luft, Rudi
Matthee, Sandy Morton, Sholeh Quinn, Mansur Sefatgol and Maria
Szuppe. These, along with many others, may well not recognise their
own contributions to, and in any case are to be absolved of responsibility
for any aspect of, the present volume, let alone my failure to adhere to
the original deadline for its submission. The latter has been met only
with the utmost patience and forbearance of I.B.Tauris’s Publisher and
Managing Editor Mr Iradj Bagherzade, my patient editor Dr Lester
Crook and his assistant Ms Clare Dubois.
I would also like to thank Dr Ian Revie, Head of the School of Lan-
guages, Literatures and Cultures of the University of Edinburgh for his
help in securing the support of the School’s Research Fund to assist with
the reproduction of the dustjacket.
I must also thank my wife and, especially, my daughter, to whom this
volume is dedicated, for their constant patience and encouragement over
the last four-plus years.
Upon my graduation from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in
1974, having never been West of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, let alone
outside the US, with the encouragement of Dartmouth Professor Gene
Garthwaite I journeyed to, and spent two years in Iran. There, teaching
English and travelling throughout the country, I became acquainted with
something of Persian language, culture and history. As many travellers in
‘the East’, my sojourn was also an occasion for introspection and, when I
commenced my graduate studies in California in 1977, with the
encouragement of Afaf Marsot, Peter Gran, Amin Banani and Nikki
Keddie and such colleagues as Yahya Sadowski, Fred Lawson, Ken Cuno,
Halah Fattah and others, I became as interested in the study of the study
of the history of Iran and the region as a whole as in the memorisation of
legions of names and dates.
In the years since and, especially, in the aftermath of the Iranian revo-
lution, the Safavid period has taken on meanings for Iranians different to
those it has in the West. The present volume is directed primarily to the
Western-language audience, including the growing number of specialists
in the various sub-disciplines of Safavid Studies and those in other
branches of Middle Eastern Studies but also, and in particular, the non-
specialist interested in Iran and the region generally. Hence any ‘scien-
tific’ effort to reconcile the all-too many efforts to transliterate Arabic
 Preface and Acknowledgements xi
and Persian words into English by recourse to a complicated system of
diacritical marks is eschewed in favour of somewhat idiosyncratic sys-
tem of transliteration based loosely on that used in the International
Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES). Dates also are generally
given only in their ‘ad’ version, except for occasional dates of publica-
tion; where this makes for flagrant inaccuracy, two Christian years may
be given as, for example, in ad 873–4, corresponding to the Hijri 260,
the year of the disappearance of the twelfth Shi
i Imam. Moreover, while
footnotes do refer to Persian and Arabic sources, care is also taken to
refer to available translations of primary sources as well as secondary
works by specialists available in English and other Western languages.
The bibliographical convention of omitting names of publishers is
followed throughout.
Edinburgh
July 2005
Map Iran in the Safavid Period
 Introduction

When the Great Prince [Abbas I] ceased to live Persia ceased to prosper.1
Jean Chardin
(French Huguenot resident in Iran in the 1660s and 1670s)

More than two thousand years ago Cyrus the Great (558–530 bc)
established the ancient Persian Achaemenian empire. A few turbulent
years later he was followed by Darius the Great (522–486) and his son
Xerxes (486–465), but the empire eventually fell to Alexander (330–323).
At the height of its 220-year history (550–330) the Achaemenian empire
stretched from modern-day Libya in the West to the Indus and Central
Asia in the East, featured a well-developed administrative bureaucracy,
used political marriages with, and parcelled out grants of land and/or
titles to, key military and administrative figures to bind their interests to
those of the ruling house, employed non-Persians in the adminstration
of the realm, and portrayed the sitting ruler as simultaneously the apex
of the different political traditions of all of the region’s various peoples –
including the Medes, Babylonians, Jews, Lydians and Egyptians. Indeed
the well-known inscription at Bisitun (520–519) proclaiming the acces-
sion of Darius to the throne was written in three languages of the
empire’s people – Akkadian/Babylonian, Elamite and Old Persian –
and the famous reliefs at Persepolis (commenced c. 515) which depict
processions of subject peoples bearing gifts and thus acknowledging
Darius’ rule further attest to the vastness and complex makeup of the
Achaemenian empire and his rulership, as representative of the para-
mount Zoroastrian deity Ahura Mazda, as ‘king of kings’ over, and thus
transcending, them all.
Since that time, situated between the Eastern Mediterranean, the
Levant and Asia Minor on the West, Asia and the Indian subcontinent
on the East and Russia and the Persian Gulf on the North and South,
Iran and what is distinct about the peoples of the Iranian plateau have
been the mediated product of the interaction of its peoples’ own tradi-
tions with the historical, spiritual and cultural traditions of peoples of
2 Introduction
the many other regions, near and far, who have passed through and
settled there.
The Safavid period, conventionally dated from Ismail’s capture of
Tabriz in 1501 to the fall of Isfahan to the Afghans in 1722, stands
between Iran’s medieval and modern history. The present work offers an
understanding of the history of Iran under the Safavids, the longest-
ruling dynasty in Iran’s history since its conquest by Muslim armies in
the 640s, which differs from that generally accepted to date.

The conventional wisdom

Roger Savory’s is the first, and the last, general history of Safavid Iran. It
appeared more than two decades ago, in 1980,2 the year after the flight
from Iran of the last Pahlavi ruler, Muhammad Riza, the year of the
latter’s death and the return to Iran of the Ayatollah Khomayni (d. 1989)
after nearly two decades of exile abroad, and in the midst of the occupa-
tion of the American embassy in Tehran which had commenced in
November 1979.
Savory’s volume summarised the Western understanding of the period
to that date, an understanding which was mainly the product of work by
both himself and such earlier scholars as Browne, V. Minorsky (d. 1966)
and Lockhart (d. 1975).3
To that time Western-language discussions of the Safavid period
usually had commenced with mention of the Ardabil-based Safavid Sufi
order as an urban, quietist, contemplative spiritual movement established
by the eponymous Shaykh Safi al-Din (d. 1334), whose followers were, in
fact, mainly Sunnis. In c. 1447, owing to an influx of levies from a
number of Turkish tribes, the order is said to have embraced a new
militant, messianic religio-political discourse. Its leaders were viewed as
divine and a distinctive red twelve-pleated hat (taj) was adopted to signal
veneration of the Twelve Shi
i Imams – from which headgear the Qizil-
bash (Turkish, ‘red-headed’) confederation of member tribes derived its
name. The shift also signalled the start of an offensive military strategy.
In 1501 Safi al-Din’s descendant Ismail led Qizilbash forces in the cap-
ture of Tabriz and went on to seize control of a territory roughly con-
tiguous with the boundaries of modern-day Iran. Ismail also established
Twelver Shi
ism as his realm’s official faith, in distinction to the Sunnism
of the Ottomans to the West and the Uzbeks to the Northeast. Ismail was
also said to have invited large numbers of Shi
i clerics resident in Arabic-
speaking lands to Iran to assist in the promulgation of the faith’s doc-
trines and practices throughout the realm and to have encouraged the
view of himself both as a direct descendant of the Shi
i Imams and the new
faith’s chief defender. In 1514 Ottoman forces inflicted a crushing defeat
on the Safavids at Chaldiran after which Ismail, his own confidence
shattered, is said to have withdrawn into himself. He died in 1524.
At Ismail’s death and the accession of his nine-year-old son Tahmasp,
 Introduction 3
what is portrayed as the inherent unruliness of the Qizilbash tribal levies
boiled to the surface to cause a decade of civil war which left Safavid
territory vulnerable to a series of Ottoman and Uzbek invasions. Tahmasp
finally asserted his authority over the tribes, signed a peace treaty with
the Ottomans, checked Uzbek incursions and relocated the capital from
Tabriz to Qazvin. At Tahmasp’s death in 1576 the unrestrained nature of
the tribal forces resurfaced and resulted in further intra-Qizilbash strife
and loss of territory to foreign invasions.
Abbas I (reg. 1588–1629), Tahmasp’s grandson, is said to have checked
Qizilbash influence both by opposing their military might with that of
large numbers of Georgian and other Caucasian converts and by driving
underground the very millenarianism which had driven the tribal levies’
earlier conquests. Abbas retook territory seized by the Ottomans and
Uzbeks, moved the capital to Isfahan, embellished that city with monu-
mental architectural undertakings of a secular and non-secular nature,
patronised poets, artists and philosophers and promoted contacts with
Europe.
If Abbas’ reign fostered military, political and economic stability, it is
also said to have set in motion certain forces which his much less able
successors were unable to manage. Friction obtained between Abbas’
newly created non-Qizilbash military corps and the traditional tri-
bal elite. In addition, to meet their own, increasingly extravagant
expenses successive courts expanded khassa lands (lands under direct
control of the central court) at the expense of mamalik lands (lands
under provincial administration) and degraded the level of the realm’s
military preparedness. Indeed, having been born and reared in the haram
and, hence, understood as easily swayed by the influence of such power-
ful, intriguing parties at court as the haram women and palace eunuchs,
Abbas’ successors are generally portrayed as more interested in
debauchery or in religion than in the affairs of state. Sultan Husayn,
the last Safavid shah, is portrayed as so attentive to the goodwill of
courtiers and clerics – the latter including Majlisi – and so busy with
ostentatious building projects that the state was unable to mount any
credible response either to burgeoning internal socio-economic and pol-
itical crises or to bold raids by the Afghans from the East. Following one
such incursion, the Afghan capture of Isfahan in 1722 is understood as
signalling the dynasty’s end.4

The appearance of a field

In the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution both the number of Western
scholars whose primary research interests lay in this period of Iran’s
history and those for whom the period is one of many areas of interest
began an exponential increase and Western ‘Safavid Studies’, as a separ-
ate and distinct field of scholarly endeavour, may be said to have come
into existence.
4 Introduction
The reasons for this growth in interest are not the subject of the
present volume, but the number of post-Revolution international con-
ferences on various aspects of the period clearly attest to it. The last two
decades of the twentieth century witnessed the organisation of three,
successively larger, international Round Tables, in 1988, 1993 and 1998,
all held in Europe, at which scholars addressed issues in Safavid society
and culture.5 1998 also witnessed two other scholarly gatherings on the
period6 and more recent symposia only portend continued expansion.7
In Iran, incidentally, the field has followed a similar course of
expansion. Of the older generation of scholars such figures as Nasrallah
Falsafi (d. 1981) and M. T. Danish-pazhuh (d. 1996), Abd al-Husayn
Navai, whose compilations of key documents from the period are mostly
out of print, M. I. Bastani-Parizi, Iraj Afshar, Ehsan Eshraqi, Ahmad
Munzavi and Husayn Mirjafari are especially noteworthy. Collectively
these scholars have already forgotten more than most others might hope
to know. For at least a decade after 1978, engulfed by revolution and
war, there was some question that Iran could produce a new generation
of scholars to succeed, though not replace, such giants. The subsequent
appearance of such figures as Rasul Jafariyan and Mansur Sefatgol
should easily set minds to rest.8
Indeed, despite the turmoil of the period the 1980s also witnessed the
commencement of the (re)publication in Iran of key Persian- and Arabic-
language primary materials both by established religious and cultural
organisations and a host of new ones together with the organisation of
exhibitions and other research activities. The latter include, for example,
an exhibition centre devoted to the painter Riza Abbasi (d. 1635) opened
in Tehran in 1993, a centre for the study of the work of the philosopher
Mulla Sadra (d. 1640) opened in Tehran in the early 1990s, a 1999
international conference on Mulla Sadra, a conference on Majlisi in
Isfahan in 2000 – itself the occasion of the publication of several works
on his life and the republication of a number of Majlisi’s writings –
and a conference on ‘Isfahan and the Safavids’ organised at the Uni-
versity of Isfahan in February 2002. As an indication of the growth of
domestic interest in the period, some 140 abstracts were submitted for
the latter. More recently February 2004 witnessed a conference on Surab
Tanukabuni (d. 1712) at the University of Isfahan in February 2004, and
‘The Safavids and the Course of Iranian History’ was organised at the
University of Tabriz in October 2004. A conference on the career and
contributions of Sultan Muhammad, the early Safavid-period artist, is
set for Tabriz in May 2005.

The legacy of growth

As a result of this recent activity scholars and lay persons interested in
Safavid Iran today have at their disposal an intimidating array of pri-
mary and secondary sources, composed in a myriad of languages, not
 Introduction 5
available to earlier researchers. Some two dozen Persian-language ‘court’
chronicles produced over the period are now available, most in pub-
lished form (see Appendix II). These and such other Persian-language
sources as, for example, court/diplomatic correspondence and religious
endowment (vaqf) documents vie for attention with the accounts of con-
temporary Western travellers and residents in to Iran, written variously
in English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Russian and Polish. There
are also the records of contemporary Western commercial and political
interests, composed in Dutch, English, French, German, Portuguese
and Spanish, and a substantial body of Armenian-language material.
Although Safavid-period religious figures composed some of their
works, especially those of a ‘popular’ nature, in Persian, most Shi
i
clerics of the day, whether resident in Iran or abroad, composed their
scholarly works in Arabic. The contemporary biographical dictionaries
of the period’s clerics, nearly all of which are now available in pub-
lished form, were produced in both languages. Given the interaction
between the Ottomans and the Safavids, there are also Turkish-
language political/military, commercial and religious sources, for the
most part still stunningly under-utilised. Important ‘non-textual’
sources include, for example, buildings, monument inscriptions, coins,
pottery, carpets, paintings, metalwork and manuscript and single-page
illustrations.
The post-Revolution growth in scholarly interest in the period, in both
the West and Iran, together with the growth of available source materials
has in fact encouraged the appearance of sub-disciplines within the field.
Where before 1978 study of the period focused mainly on the period’s
political history, the field’s scholarly output now includes studies on the
Safavid economy and military, on the political relations between Safavid
Iran and its neighbours as well as of Safavid socio-cultural history.
The latter, construed broadly, encompasses research on the family and
women, tribal life and customs, religious life and discourse, religious
minorities, science and medicine, art and architecture, painting, metal-
work, ceramics, carpets, history-writing and court-sponsored and popu-
lar literary expression. If several of these sub-disciplines are at present
somewhat sparsely populated others are sufficiently well-developed as to
have generated a series of lively internal ‘debates’.
Despite the recent enormous growth in scholars and sources and
notwithstanding the efforts of the Round Tables’ organisers to encour-
age discussions between scholars of the field’s different sub-disciplines,
Safavid studies nevertheless remains bifurcated between studies of the
socio-economic and political realms and those of the cultural: the con-
tributions of the one group of scholars still generally do not figure in
the analyses, and often not even the footnotes and bibliographies, of the
other.
More importantly, regardless of their specific areas of research, most
authors continue to subscribe to the conventional understanding of
6 Introduction
the period which is outlined above and whose origins date, at least, to
the early years of the last century. Thus, for example, the political
boundaries of the period are still accepted as demarcated by the twin
politico-military events of Tabriz
capture and Isfahan’s fall. Implicitly
identifying the geographical boundaries of the modern Iranian state as
‘normal’, scholars project these back to the Safavid period and label
variations therein over the period as ‘territorial gain’ or ‘loss’. Indeed,
in reference to the Safavids the continued use of the term ‘state’ itself,
connoting, for example, fixed, internationally recognised borders, a
common language and a monopoly at the centre of the use of force, is
itself particularly problematic. In fact, to take but one example, Qizilbash
tribal elements and the early shahs especially were more comfortable
in dialects of Turkish, native Iranians (Tajiks) spoke Persian and the
primary language of the established faith was Arabic.
Perhaps most strikingly, post-1980 works on particular aspects of
Safavid history – socio-economic, political or ‘cultural’ – continue to
refer to the period in terms of the inherent and continuous conflict
between Qizilbash and Tajik, of the repeated, largely vain, efforts of
various shahs to curb the political/military and spiritual influence of
Qizilbash leaders and levies and, particularly beginning in the seven-
teenth century, the growing imbalance between khassa and mamalik
lands, the rise of a ‘shadow’ government based in the haram, the growing
intolerance of Safavid Shi
ism and the presence of ‘strong’ or ‘weak’
rulers. The second Safavid century in particular continues to be portrayed
as having begun with a burst of cultural and intellectual achievement, in
an atmosphere of military, political, and economic stability – ascribed
solely to the presence of Abbas I, a ‘strong’ ruler – only to end in the
darkness of fanatical religious orthodoxy amid military, political, and
economic chaos and ‘weak’ leadership at the centre. Whatever their spe-
cific sub-discipline, scholars of the period continue to take as given the
inevitable decline and fall of the Safavid ‘state’, as represented by the
1722 Afghan capture of Isfahan.9
Preoccupation with the Safavid ‘fall’ and, especially, dating the onset
of Safavid ‘decline’ ever earlier in the period, is reinforced by recourse
to the critiques of the Safavid system on offer in both Persian-language
historical chronicles and a variety of Western-language sources.
However, of the Persian-language sources on which Western writers
have relied to explain the ‘decline’ of the ‘state’, especially during
the reigns of Shah Sulayman (reg. 1666/68–94) and Sultan Husayn
(reg. 1694–1722), most were composed well after the 1722 capture
of Isfahan10 and the varied agendas of their authors have yet to be
acknowledged and explored as Quinn has done with earlier court
chronicles.11
Western scholars of the period have also relied heavily on the accounts
of various Western residents in, and travellers to, Iran over the period.
Absent from these Western-language studies is any critical discussion of
 Introduction 7
the information and ‘analyses’ on offer therein even though, as the few
examples to be cited herein suggest, the authors of these accounts fre-
quently contradict each other on trends, events, facts and figures, present
as historical ‘fact’ information gathered well after the occurrence of the
events in question, or in such detail – about life and politics at court, for
example, including life in and the influence of the haram – as to beg
credulity, and write from vantage points or possess political, religious
and/or commercial agendas which render their contributions less than
‘objective’.12 Similarly, the recent focus on Western economic data for
the period, if long overdue, has, nevertheless facilitated according a key,
if not determinist, role in Safavid ‘decline’ to such purely economic
trends and events as the movement of specie and the trade in silk on a
par with that which gripped Ottoman Studies from the late 1970s as
it explored the roots of Ottoman ‘decline’ under the influence of I.
Wallerstein’s 1974 The Modern World System and the subsequent
emergence of ‘world system theory’.13
If Ottoman studies, which for so long laboured under the burden of
‘decline studies’, has begun to move on,14 the suggestion that the end
of Safavid dynasty was the inevitable result of an increasingly dys-
functional society’s inability to respond to an increasingly severe series
of internal and external challenges remains well accepted. Indeed, within
the larger Western-language field of Middle Eastern Studies general
histories of the region reproduce the paradigm without reference to
secondary, let alone primary, sources.15

An alternative synthesis
A study of the period which simply ‘updated’ Savory’s volume by
adding the detail available in, and references to, all of the many primary
and secondary sources on the period which have appeared since 1980
would only reinforce, in overlong form, the teleological framework of
analysis which continues to dominate the West’s study of the period.
On the other hand, a study whose primary goal was to challenge indi-
vidual aspects of the conventional approach to the period or render a
‘verdict’ on one or more of the ‘debates’ within the field’s many sub-
disciplines risks both being arcane and overly negative, particularly for
the non-specialist reader for whom the present work is at least partly
intended.
Taking the lead from the avowed goals of the several Round Tables to
date, here the Safavid story is told, first, by adopting a multi-disciplinary
approach to address trends and events in and across the socio-economic,
political and ‘cultural’ realms and, secondly, by rejecting the con-
ventional preoccupation with Safavid ‘decline’ to ask, instead, why the
Safavids endured as long as they did. Indeed, if the 1501–1722 dates are
accepted, the Safavid was the longest-lasting of Islamic Iran’s various
polities, outlasting such of its Western contemporaries as the Tudors, the
8 Introduction
Stewarts and the Republic in England or, in France, the Valois and their
successors the Bourbons.16
Dispensing also with the term ‘state’, given the problems therewith
cited above, such terms as ‘project’, ‘polity’ and ‘realm’ appear fre-
quently herein in relation to the Safavid enterprise. These are intended to
underline the manner in which from the very first different, and poten-
tially mutually conflicting, interests and agendas were intertwined with
each other and with the fortunes of the Safavid house, itself embodied in,
and led by, the shah. The distinctly heterogeneous ‘discourse’ of the
shah – that discourse itself comprising both statements and actions –
reflected and thereby legitimised the individual discourses of each of the
polity’s constituent elements and facilitated both the recognition and
incorporation of ‘new’ constituencies into the project, even as extant
‘members’ retained prominence therein, and the transcendence and thus
the subordination of each.17 The Safavid story is the story of the growth
of its composite constituencies: where from well prior to the capture of
Tabriz throughout most of the sixteenth century allied Turk political-
military and Tajik administrative interests dominated the project’s polit-
ical centre, Sultan Husayn commanded the recognition of an array of
foreign commercial, political and religious interests as well as Turk and
non-Turk tribal, Tajik, and ghulam military, political and administrative
and other court elements, and indigenous Muslim, Christian and foreign
artisanal and commercial-political classes.
Over the period fealty to the person of the sitting shah bespoke
acceptance of both the presence of others of the realm’s constituencies
and the hierarchical manner of their arrangement around his mediating
and transcendent headship which obtained over his reign and the result-
ing broader project itself, even if the occasionally incompatible interests
of some of these constituencies caused intermittent outbreak of internal
discord.
Only disloyalty to the authority and legitimate rule of the sitting shah
constituted treason, not only to himself and to the Safavid house but
also, and more importantly, to the very configuration of constituencies
whose precise ordering around the head of the house underlay the rule of
the shah in question. Those who put forth such challenges therefore paid
the ultimate price. Indeed loyalty was as valued as competence if not
more so; loyal incompetents, generally, were only replaced. If they suf-
fered worse, the consequence of their transgressions were seldom visited
upon their progeny. Otherwise, considerable political autonomy at the
central and provincial level was the norm and individual discourse, espe-
cially of the broadly construed ‘cultural’ nature – artistic and religious,
for example – however discordant, was tolerated. Indeed, as will be
seen, the centre frequently strove to identify simultaneously with the
more contradictory of those of the realm’s independent discourses
which did not overtly challenge its authority and thus rise above, and
transcend, the mêlée.
 Introduction 9
As to the above-mentioned outbreaks of internal discord, in the first
Safavid century especially the death of the sitting ruler, which removed
the single individual around whose inclusive and transcendent discourse
the realm’s constituencies had achieved an arrangement, was most
often the cause thereof. Indeed, perhaps the greatest challenges to the
polity came with the deaths of Ismail and Tahmasp, the consequent
breakdown of the precise configuration of the realm’s constituencies,
especially among and between the Qizilbash tribes, and a consequent
political and military disorder which encouraged the Ottoman and/or
Uzbek incursions. In these two instances especially, the support of the
core Turk–Tajik alliance for the overall project remained solid, however.
In fact over the longer term this alliance oversaw and acquiesced both in
changes in the core constituencies over the period to endow an ever
larger number of elements with an interest in the Safavid project and in
the steady institutionalisation of the realm’s political processes which
underlay increasingly peaceful successions over the period. Such develop-
ments, in the context of the economic benefits accruing to the realm with
the 1555 Amasya treaty with the Ottomans and, especially, the nearly
century-long peace with the Ottomans which commenced in 1639,
underpinned the increasing domestic political stability which marked the
second Safavid century.

A myriad of discourses, one ruler to unite them

The inclusivity at the heart of the longevity of the Safavid project was
hardly unknown in Islamic history. In the early ninth century, for
example, the Abbasid caliphs included in their personal retinues scholars
of different religious backgrounds including, famously, non-Muslim
medical practitioners, and sponsored the translation into Arabic of a
myriad of non-Arabic philosophical and scientific texts.
Given its status as a geographical cross-roads, pre-Islamic and, in the
Islamic period, pre-Safavid Iran had its own history of ethnic, religious
and cultural diversity and inclusivity. Most recently, in the aftermath of
both the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century and those of Timur
(d. 1405) both sets of ‘foreign’ rulers adopted Islam as the dominant
spiritual discourse and sponsored various projects which attested to their
regard for the faith. Cognisant of the region’s historical religious diver-
sity, they also patronised discussions between spokesmen for the various
indigenous religious traditions, thereby acknowledging the legitimacy of
each and their own transcendent authority over all.18 These rulers also
employed skilled members of the native Iranian Tajik class to administer
their empire and adopted, and patronised, the latter’s distinctive cultural
discourse, especially the ‘traditional’ Tajik literary arts and crafts.
The Qaraquyunlu and Aqquyunlu tribal entities which succeeded the
Timurids on the region’s political scene pursued a similarly inclusive
‘project’: Islam was their religion, their tribal military levies were Turks,
10 Introduction
their administrators were Tajiks and their cultural discourse was Persian.
Such inclusivity was especially a feature of the reign of Uzun Hasan
(d. 1478), ruler of the Aqquyunlu (White Sheep) tribal confederation
who, in the face of opposition from the Ottomans, Mamluks and the
Qaraquyunlu (Black Sheep) Turkish tribal confederacy, held sway over a
territory stretching from the Euphrates in the West to Kirman in the East
and from Transcaucausia in the North to the Persian Gulf in the South.
In the tradition of both Timur and the Qaraquyunlu ruler Jahan Shah
(d. 1467), during whose thirty-year reign the Qaraquyunlu had amassed
considerable territory, Uzun Hasan’s spiritual discourse paid homage to
urban and rural, and especially tribal, spiritual discourse, even while it
underlined his own claims to ‘universal leadership’ over them all. Uzun
Hasan patronised religious structures, encouraged religious endowments
and students, including Tajik sayyids, descendants of the Prophet
Muhammad (d. 632), and patronised the arts and sciences. He also
claimed his victories were foretold in the Qur
an and was even hailed by
the theologian and philosopher Jalal al-Din Davani (d. 1503) as ‘the
envoy of the ninth [i.e. fifteenth] century’ – in reference to the Prophet’s
statement that in every century Allah would send someone to ‘renew’ the
faith – an upholder of secular justice and Islamic law, ‘the shadow (zill)
of Allah, the caliph of Allah and the deputy (naib) of the Prophet’ and
‘holy warrior (ghazi) in the path of Allah’. The great Persian Sunni
Naqshbandi Sufi poet Jami (d. 1492), invoking an earlier religio-political
legitimacy associated with holy war and raids on the infidel, described
Uzun Hasan, known to have worn darvish dress at public audiences, as
‘Sultan of the ghazis’. In mosque inscriptions Uzun Hasan was also
described as ‘the just sultan’ and ‘the just Imam’, terms which in Twelver
Shi
i discourse could be construed as identifying Uzun Hasan as the
returned twelfth Imam himself. Uzun Hasan even also paid homage to
the Mongol legacy.19
Uzun Hasan’s ‘universalist’ discourse was advanced in the midst of the
various discourses of a mass of both quietist and militantly pantheistic,
messianic and egalitarian Sufi orders and other spiritual movements
whose polemics often exhibited a distinctly Shi
i, anti-establishment tinge
and all of which were swirling throughout the region, especially in the
aftermath of the political fragmentation following Timur’s death.20 In
the context of continued Qaraquyunlu politico-military setbacks, such
discourse facilitated the re-alignment of both Qaraquyunlu member
tribes and Tajik administrators under his leadership.21
In his struggle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of Turk and Tajik Uzun Hasan
undertook also to identify with such discourse as was espoused by
various of these Sufi orders. Among these the Safavids, based at Ardabil,
were deemed of sufficient importance to merit two marriage alliances.
In c. 1456–9, Uzun Hasan married his sister to the order’s leader
Junayd (d. 1460), a direct descendant of its founder Shaykh Safi al-Din.
He also supported Junayd’s claim to rule the order over that of an uncle
 Introduction 11
who enjoyed Qaraquyunlu support. In c. 1471–2, Uzun Hasan married
his daughter, herself the daughter of the last Christian emperor of
Trabzond and thus of noble Greek descent, to Junayd’s twelve- or
thirteen-year-old son, and leader of the order, Haydar (d. 1488); the
later, by the previous marriage, was already Uzun Hasan’s nephew.
Haydar’s three sons from this marriage included his third son Ismail,
born in 1487.22
Ismail’s grandfather and father led an order which, based on its
growing association with a number of the region’s Turkish tribes,
was indeed both propounding a more radical, messianic discourse
and undertaking a pro-active military strategy. Indeed both men were
killed in battle: Junayd fighting Shirvanshah associates of Jahan Shah
Qaraquyunlu, and Haydar also against the Shirvanshah, as Uzun Hasan’s
sons’ and grandsons’ struggle for succession in the aftermath of his death
so fractured the Aqquyunlu polity as to pave the way for the rise of the
Safavids. At Haydar’s death Ismail was hidden by supporters first at
Ardabil and then for some years in Lahijan under the protection the local
governor Mirza Ali Karkiya, a Zaydi Shi
ite whose sayyid family had
ruled the area since the late 1360s.
Thus was Ismail by birth descended on both sides from princely
families of differing faiths, by upbringing associated with well-established
Tajik sayyid practitioners of a distinct body of Shi
i doctrine and practice
and, at his father’s death, the spirituo-political leader (shaykh, pir, qutb,
murshid-i kamil) of a Sufi-style movement comprised of the region’s
Turkish tribal levies, some with Aqquyunlu associations, whose spiritu-
ality was informed by similarly Shi
i-tinged radical messianism circulating
in the region of what is now Northern Syria and Iraq, Eastern Turkey
and Northwestern Iran. Unsurprisingly, Ismail’s own words and actions
– his ‘discourse’ – reflected each of his own several personalities, each
aspect of which – Christian and Shi
i Muslim, Tajik and Turk – was
recognised and thereby legitimised and subordinated.
In 1499, as rival Aqquyunlu princes and their tribal supporters
continued their internecine fighting, Ismail and his supporters left Lahijan
for Syria and Asia Minor where, near Irzinjan, he was met by more
followers. In 1500, near Shamakhi, Ismail met in battle and defeated
elements of the same Shirvanshah who had killed his grandfather and
father. In 1501, a century after the death of Timur, having defeated a
rump Aqquyunlu contingent at Shurur, near Nakhchivan, Ismail entered
Tabriz, the capital of the Ilkhanids, Jahan Shah Qaraquyunlu and his
own grandfather the Aqquyunlu Uzun Hasan. In 1503 Ismail defeated
another Aqquyunlu force near Hamadan and secured control over
Central and Southern Iran. Mazandaran and Gurgan, along the Caspian
Sea, fell as did Yazd. Diyar Bakr, Uzun Hasan’s homeland where his
son-in-law and Ismail’s father Haydar had spent his formative years, was
also taken. Baghdad fell in 1508. Shirvan and Khurasan fell, the latter
after a decisive battle at Marv in December of 1510 with the Uzbeks who
12 Introduction
had taken the area in 1507 after the death of the last Timurid, Husayn
Bayqara, in 1506. Several days later Ismail entered Herat and soon
thereafter the rest of Khurasan also came under Safavid control.
Between the capture of Tabriz and Herat, that is, in less than a decade,
Safavid forces secured territories previously ruled by eight different
rulers.23
 1
Laying the Foundations
Ismail I (1488–1524)

Ismail as Turk and Tajik

Haydar’s son Ismail, to whom fell the leadership of the Safavid Sufi order
at his father’s death in battle in 1488, was but fourteen at the capture of
Tabriz.
Although a contemporary, overt opponent of the Safavids linked both
Ismail’s grandfather Junayd and his father Haydar with overtly extrem-
ist spiritual polemics,1 Ismail’s own divan of poetry reveals rather a dis-
tinctly heterogeneous, multi-confessional messianic dimension as lying
at the heart of his spiritual discourse.
Using the pen-name ‘The Sinner (Khatai)’, in one poem Ismail wrote of
himself,
1 Today I have come to the world as a Master. Know truly that I am
Haydar’s son.
2 I am Faridun, Khusraw, Jamshid, and Zohak. I am Zal’s son (Rustam)
and Alexander.
3 The mystery of Anal-Haqq [lit. ‘I am The Truth’] is hidden in this my
heart. I am the Absolute Truth [or ‘Allah’] and what I say is Truth.
4 I belong to the religion of the ‘Adherent of the Vali [Ali]’ and on the
Shah’s path I am a guide to every one who says: ‘I am a Muslim.’
5 My sign is the ‘Crown of Happiness’. I am the signet-ring on
Sulayman’s finger.
6 Muhammad is made of light, Ali of Mystery. I am a pearl in the sea
of Absolute Reality.
7 I am Khatai, the Shah’s slave full of shortcomings. At thy gate I am
the smallest and the last [servant].
Elsewhere he wrote:
1 My name is Shah Ismail. I am God’s mystery. I am the leader of all
these ghazis.
2 My mother is Fatima, my father is Ali; and I am the Pir of the Twelve
Imams.
14 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I
3 I have recovered my father’s blood from Yazid. Be sure that I am of
Haydarian essence.
4 I am the living Khidr and Jesus, son of Mary. I am the Alexander of
[my] contemporaries.
In still other poems Ismail, using terms which echoed those circulating in
the discourses of the various militant, mystical and messianic movements
abroad in the region at the time, addressed his followers as ghazi, Sufi,
and ‘brother (akhi)’ and, employing mystical terminology, ‘men of rec-
ognition (ahl-i iqrar)’ and ‘men of truth (ahl-i haqq)’ – the latter being
the name of a contemporary movement linked to the Biktashis – as well
as qizilbash, after his followers’ distinctive twelve-pleated taj which
denoted the same veneration for the Imams found in the discourses of
other contemporary messianic discourses and was said to have been
adopted during Haydar’s time.2
The manner of Ismail’s identification with Twelver Shi
ism, proclaimed
as the new realm’s faith at Tabriz’ capture in 1501, added further dimen-
sions to this messianic discourse. He and his immediate retinue were in
fact relatively unacquainted with the intricacies of Twelver Shi
i doc-
trines and practices.3 However, his long-term residence in Zaydi Shi
i
Lahijan endowed Ismail with some familiarity with Shi
i discourse, for
example, awareness that references to himself as ‘the perfect, the just
Imam (al-imam al-adil al-kamil)’ or ‘the just sultan (al-sultan al-adil)’
would allude both to his status as secular successor to his grandfather
Uzun Hasan, to whom similar terms had been applied, but also, in
Twelver tradition, to himself as the now-returned twelfth Imam.4
The Safavids also advanced claims to their status as sayyids. Such
claims, if not also further substantiating Ismail’s identification with the
Hidden Imam himself, also put the Safavids on a par with the sayyid
founders of such other of the region’s contemporary millenarian move-
ments as the Hurufis, the Kubravis, the Nimatallahis and the Mushasha.5
Contemporary ‘popular’ tales also identified Ismail as Abu Muslim,
the leader of the Khurasan-based Arab armies which defeated the
Umayyads in 765 to establish the pro-Shi
i Abbasid state and who was
believed to have gone into hiding to return to establish justice in this
world.6
Taken together, the discourse surrounding Ismail in this period pro-
jected both his abject status – ‘the Sinner’ – in relation to and as
the transcendent embodiment of the spirituo-cultural traditions of the
region’s key discourses. The young shah was thus simultaneously one
with the chief figures of the Tajik Persian cultural legacy – Faridun,
Khusraw, Jamshid, Rustam, Alexander; of Shi
ism – Khidr, Ali and Ali’s
‘adherent’, the twelve Imams and their pir, the now returned Hidden
Imam, if not also Allah himself; of key figures in the Christian religious
and historical tradition;7 and the pir of the region’s numerous messianic,
egalitarian Sufi movements – ghazi, akhi, Abu Muslim. Ismail, being ‘the
 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I 15
universal-simultaneous ruler who is both transcendent and dominant’,
stood at once as both the servant of, and the paramount figure above,
all. He spoke to, embodied and thus surpassed each of these traditions
as each existed on both the urban scene and among the region’s rural
and especially tribal elements likely in more commingled, than distinct,
forms.8
In the midst of continued post-Uzun Hasan intra-Aqquyunlu clashes
such complex discourse certainly facilitated the realignment of
Aqquyunlu tribal contingents with Ismail, all the more so as the divan
was composed in a Turkish dialect peculiar to the region comprising
parts of modern-day northeastern Iraq, northwestern Iran, Eastern
Turkey and the Southern Caucasus from whence these elements were
drawn and similar discourses flourished.9

Turk and Tajik at the heart of the realm

Ismail’s heterodox spiritual discourse, especially appealing to both Turk
and Tajik, was matched by practical recognition of the importance of
these two key constituencies to the life of the emerging Safavid polity,
further facilitating the moves of elements of each from the Aqquyunlu to
Ismail and the Safavid ‘camp’ and intertwining their fortunes with, and
thus furthering their acceptance of and loyalty to, each other, Ismail and
the Safavid enterprise itself.
At the political-military heart of the Safavid project in this period
stood the various Turkish tribes of the Qizilbash confederation, the
loyalty of whose chiefs and levies guaranteed Ismail’s early military vic-
tories. Marriage alliances between the Safavid house, even before Tabriz,
and grants of territory later allocated to, the Ustajlu and Shamlu tribes –
the latter with Aqquyunlu connections – attest to the pre-eminence of
these two within the confederation over these years. Leading members
of both married sisters of Ismail, for example.10 Like the Shamlu, the
Mawsillu had been an important member of the Aqquyunlu confeder-
ation but elements thereof had paid fealty to Ismail after the capture of
Diyar Bakr from another Mawsillu chief. In a testament of their import-
ance to the polity, and certainly to encourage further loyalty, Ismail
himself twice married into the tribe; a Mawsillu was the mother of
Tahmasp, Ismail’s oldest son, and a key figure at her son’s court.11 A
prominent figure of the Qaramanlu, another former Aqquyunlu con-
federate, married one of Ismail’s sisters and, sometime before 1510, a
Kurdish chieftain married yet another sister.12 The presence of tribal
chiefs from the Dhul-Qadr and Afshar, both also former associates of the
Aqquyunlu, and of Talish and Rumlu chiefs in secondary posts affirms
the relative importance of these tribes in the Qizilbash confederation.13
Given their prominence it is not surprising that later Safavid chroniclers
identified these tribes – and some of the above-mentioned individuals in
particular – as among Ismail’s companions when he departed Lahijan in
16 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I
149914 and accorded them pride of place in their accounts of Safavid
forces at key battles between 1500 and 151415 even if the genuine origins
of some – including the Mawsillu, Afshar, Qajar and other associates
of the Aqquyunlu tribal confederation – cannot be identified with any
accuracy.16
Not all of the lands which came under Ismail’s authority were secured
by Qizilbash levies in battle, however. Indeed, a number of local, sitting
rulers acknowledged Safavid authority and consequently retained their
positions and relative autonomy. These included rulers in Gharjistan,
North of Khurasan, Khuzistan – the latter after Ismail fought and killed
the local Mushasha ruler – Kurdistan, one of whose princes, as noted,
married a sister of Ismail, Luristan and Sistan.17
Local Iranian elements also had another, perhaps more important role
to play. Administering the vast territory which so quickly came under
Safavid hegemony required the input of a constituency different to the
Qizilbash tribal levies. Thus, just as some Aqquyunlu tribal elements
‘defected’ to the Safavids over this period, so former Aqquyunlu admin-
istrators, native Iranians, took up administrative positions at both the
central and provincial levels. Their acceptance of these posts signalled
Tajik acceptance of, and lent further legitimacy to, both the assumption
of power in the region by the Safavids under Ismail and the larger
Safavid project and, as part and parcel thereof, the key role of the
Turkish constituency in that project. The Turks, in both encouraging and
working with these Tajik elements, thereby acknowledged the importance
of the Tajik contribution to the life of the polity.
Among the more prominent of these Tajik administrators was
Muhammad Zakariya Kujuji (d. 1512–13), an Aqquyunlu vizier whose
family had served Timur and who himself, prior to Tabriz, had advised
Ismail on the confused state of affairs among, and urged an ultimately
successful attack on, the Aqquyunlu. He was subsequently appointed
Ismail’s first vizier.18 The Savji family had served Uzun Hasan and his
avowedly anti-Shi
i and anti-Safavid son and successor Yaqub, but now
one, a judge in Iraq, served as Ismail’s envoy to the Uzbeks in 1510 and
later became judge of all of Khurasan. Another was chief judge in
Tabriz.19 At its conquest in 1503–4, a member of Isfahan’s Jabiri family,
which had also served the Aqquyunlu, was appointed vizier of Fars,
under a Dhul-Qadr governor; the family remained prominent in Isfahan
over the Safavid period and in the Fars administration until the eighteenth
century.20
That none of these figures hailed from families with any history of any
profound commitment to, or themselves had any detailed knowledge of,
the newly established faith of Twelver Shi
ism21 was clearly no barrier to
employment.
Nevertheless, special efforts were also made to reach out to native
Iranian sayyids, descendants of the Prophet himself. The Sunni Sayyid
Nur al-Din Abd al-Vahhab, a descendant of the third Shi
i imam, Husayn,
 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I 17
had been Shaykh al-Islam of Tabriz under Uzun Hasan and was related
by marriage to the Aqquyunlu house while other family members had
also served, and were related to, the Qaraquyunlu. At the capture of Herat
Ismail received the Sayyid with honour and, after Chaldiran, appointed
him ambassador to the Ottoman Sultan Selim I (reg. 1512–20).22 Follow-
ing the capture of Khurasan gifts were distributed among, and accepted
by, the descendants of Imam Riza, the eighth Shi
i Imam, who adminis-
tered the shrine at the Imam’s tomb in Mashhad.23 A judge from the
Qazvin branch of the Marashi sayyids, administrators of the shrine in
the city which housed the mausoleum of a son of the same Imam, was an
envoy to the Uzbeks.24
The identities of key office holders over these early years, insofar as
these can be charted, suggest an effort to balance the interests of Turk
and Tajik at the polity’s centre.25 Thus, for example, the post of amir
al-umara, a pre-Saljuk office which now amounted to commander-in-
chief of the Qizilbash forces, was, perhaps naturally, held by tribal
amirs; signalling their paramount influence within the tribal confeder-
ation, the Ustajlu and Shamlu dominated the post.26 Another military
post, the office of qurchibashi, dating from the Mongol period and refer-
ring to the head of the mounted cavalry or royal guards, was held by
Ustajlu, Dhul-Qadr and Takkalu amirs.27 By contrast, the ‘civilian’ pos-
ition of sadr, a Timurid-period post related to the religious institution,
was held throughout this period by Tajiks, including many sayyids. Like
the tribal elite and the other Tajik administrators named above, however,
neither these holders of the post or their families possessed any demon-
strable Twelver Shi
i links; indeed, the first sadr, appointed in 1501, the
year of Tabriz’ occupation, had been Ismail’s religious tutor in Lahijan
and so was probably a Zaydi Shi
ite. The viziers were also all Tajiks in
this period as were the holders of the post of mustawfi al-mamalik, the
comptroller-general.28
In at least one instance prior to Chaldiran in 1514 the effort to
accommodate Tajik interests at the administrative level entailed some
Turkish compromise. As with many of the realm’s top posts, that of vakil,
the vice-regent in charge of mainly non-military matters, including some
religious issues, was already in existence under the Aqquyunlu. Husayn
Bek Shamlu, from another branch of the Shamlu to that of Ismail’s
brother-in-law Abdi Be, was made vakil in the year of Ismail’s entrance
into Tabriz, when Ismail was fourteen years of age, but was replaced in
1510 by the Gilani goldsmith Najm al-Din, a native Iranian. Abdi Beg
was compensated with the post of governor of Herat, however.29

The culture of politics, the politics of culture

The centre’s contributions to ‘culture’, broadly construed, during Ismail’s
reign recall the somewhat limited scale of those of his Aqquyunlu and
especially Qaraquyunlu predecessors.
18 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I
While these pale in comparison with Mongol and Timurid, let alone
later Safavid, patronage, the Safavids’ early-projected association with a
distinctly Persian cultural discourse at once cast the project as a succes-
sor to the region’s earlier polities in this regard and bespoke Qizilbash
recognition of the cultural legacy of their Tajik associates whose skills
were so essential to the administration of the realm. Other Tajiks were
thereby reassured as to the legitimacy of their presence in, and the
importance of their involvement to, the Safavid project.
The young ruler personally was, in fact, no doubt familiar with the
Persian cultural legacy at least from his several years’ residence in
Lahijan; indeed, in 1493–4, the year Ismail arrived in Lahijan, its ruler
had taken delivery of a Shahnama with over 300 illustrations.30
After Tabriz the elaborate centres of book production – which included
calligraphers, illuminators, miniaturists and binders, each requiring a
plethora of specialist materials – which had flourished at Tabriz, Shiraz
and Herat under the patronage of previous political establishments con-
tinued to produce works in their distinctive styles. The occasional
Safavid ‘twist’ soon became observable, however. Thus, early in the
period Ismail’s workshop at Tabriz a manuscript of the Khamsa of
Nizami (d. 1202) originally commissioned by the Timurid Babur (reg.
1483–1530) and continued under Uzun Hasan’s anti-Shi
i anti-Safavid
son Yaqub, was now embellished with additional illustrations featuring
the distinct Safavid twelve-pleated taj.31 In Fars the newly ensconced
Dhul-Qadr tribal elite maintained Shiraz’s reputation as a centre of book
and miniature production: the city’s workshop produced manuscripts of
some classical Persian texts which featured illustrations clearly informed
by the city’s earlier styles as well as others which utilised both Herati
and earlier Turkish styles, and featured a distinctly Shirazi-style taj.32
Herat, whose artisans remained in the city after its 1510 capture by the
Safavids, also continued as a metalworking centre. The Timurid style of
small, tight arabesques and interlocking lobed cartouches continued
on into the early Safavid period although inscribed invocations to Ali
begin appear after 1510,33 paralleling the appearance of the Safavid taj
in contemporary manuscript illustrations.
Persian itself had been the region’s literary language following the
Persianisation of Rum/Asia Minor from at least the thirteenth century
when Persian men of letters fled West in the face, especially, of Mongol
incursions in the East. Jahan Shah Qaraquyunlu had composed poetry in
Persian and patronised large numbers of poets and prose writers; even
Ottoman rulers composed poetry in Persian.34 Herat under the last
Timurid ruler, Husayn Bayqara, was a noted centre of traditional Persian
culture. Both Sultan Husayn and his vizier Mir Ali Shir Navai (d. 1501)
were accomplished poets in Persian and Turkish, and the city was a
focal point for artists, poets, historians and musicians. Nur al-Din
Abd al-Rahman Jami (d. 1492), the leader of the Sunni Naqshbandi
Sufi order, was based in Herat and the style of his masnavis recalled
 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I 19
those of Sadi and Hafiz (d. 1391) and his ghazals those of Iraqi-qasida
writers.
Ismail, although he had composed his own divan in Chagatai Turkish,
demonstrated his desire to associate himself with Persian literary tradi-
tions and his continuing pragmatic attitude toward employing non-
Shi
ites, and requested Jami’s nephew Hatifi (d. 1520–1), who had
served Husayn Bayqara, to undertake an historical epic on the lines of
his earlier Zafarnama, written in celebration of Timur.35 Many other
poets who had served the Timurid and Aqquyunlu court also now served
at the pleasure of Ismail.36
If Persian was now the cultural discourse of choice, the newly
established Turk-Tajik centre also undertook to solidify its identification
with Islam itself and Shi
i Islam in particular, in the pattern of preceding
of the region’s political establishments. Neverthless, the identification
with Shi‘ism was not exclusive, given continuing widespread Sunni
tendencies in the realm.
Ismail personally is identified with refurbishment of Imam Riza’s
shrine in Mashhad, though this stands as a relatively minor project
compared, for example, with the mosque built there by Shah Rukh’s
wife Gawhar Shad in 1418–19.37
Others at the centre, however, also participated in such projects. In
1512 in Isfahan, where Ismail and his retinue frequently wintered, the
architect Mirza Shah Husayn Isfahani, the Tajik vizier to Durmish Khan
Shamlu – whose mother was Ismail’s sister and who was Isfahan’s
governor from 1503, built the Harun-i Vilayat tomb for a son of one
of the Imams on the square (maydan) of the same name which was then
the focal point of the city’s life. Some of the inscriptions thereon recall
the distinctly messianic Shi
i, if not especially Twelver, dimensions of the
region’s spiritual discourse and Ismail’s own identification therewith in
his poetry: a hadith on the portal facade mentions Harun, associates
Ismail with Ali as his ancestor and endows Ismail with such titles as
ghazi and mujahid (holy warrior), the first of which was used by Ismail
in his poetry. Other inscriptions, such the Prophet’s statement ‘I am the
city of knowledge and Ali is its gate’, recall conventional, if not distinctly
messianic, Shi
i references.38 Indeed, the names Ali, Muhammad and
Allah appear in a Kufic cartouche at the apex of the entrance arch of
the Eastern door. Chinese clouds appear in a panel below, and beneath
that panel is the name Ismail, such that all four individuals are clearly
linked. Interestingly, the traditional style of the building itself evokes
continuity, not radical change,39 suggesting an intention to portray the
Safavids as successors to the region’s earlier polities. Moreover, as a joint
Turk-Tajik project, the undertaking also attested to the loyalty of each
constituency to, and their identification with, each other and the larger
polity which their alliance underpinned, this but a decade after Tabriz.
Ismail’s continued attention to Ardabil, as well as contributions to the
family tombs at and near the city, bespeak simultaneous concern to
20 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I
enhance further the place of the Safavid house itself, the role of Safavid
Sufi order and himself as head of both.40
Taken together these undertakings affirm the centre’s care to continue
to project a heterodox spiritual discourse to identify with the individual
discourses of elements key to the life of the newly established polity.
Messianic discourse focusing on alternative personages was by defin-
ition, however, illegitimate. Thus, although the Mushasha of Southern
Iraq pledged fealty to Ismail following the 1508 conquest of Baghdad,
the joint rulers of the confederation were killed later the same year by
the new Safavid governor of Shushtar, likely on Ismail’s orders and
probably owing to their continuing efforts to claim association with
the Twelver faith.41 When, in 1511–12, in the aftermath of a failed
millenarian uprising in Ottoman territory, surviving Takkalu tribal
elements fled to Safavid territory and plundered a caravan of merchants
along the way, Ismail had their leaders executed.42 Ismail also turned
on the Nizari Ismaili Shi
a, based at Andijan, near Arak, as their activ-
ities became increasingly open following the Safavids’ appearance; the
shah ordered the execution of Shah Tahir, the thirty-first imam of the
Muhammad-Shahi branch of the Nizari Ismailis, who fled to India in
1520.43 Ismail also moved against popular equation of himself and the
Safavid rising with the return of Abu Muslim.44
Spokesmen for other competing spiritual discourses signalled a desire
for a modus vivendi. As already noted Jami’s nephew Hatifi, the leader
of the Naqshbandi order who had served Husayn Bayqara in Herat,
accepted a commission from Ismail. The Yazdi notable Sayyid Abd
al-Baqi, a descendant of the founder of the Nimatallahi Sufi order, Shah
Nimatallah Vali (d. 1413), was both sadr and, from 1512, vakil. Some
Nurbakhshis accepted land grants from Ismail.45

Internal and external challenges: Chaldiran and after

Over Ismail’s reign the Safavid polity faced, and survived, several
internal and one important external challenge. Within its first decade the
militarily incompetent and quarrelsome Khuzani vakil Najm-i Thani
was put in charge of a multi-tribal force sent to restore to the Timurid
Babur those of his Khurasani territories taken by the Uzbeks. The
Uzbeks defeated the Safavid force in 1512. In that defeat both Husayn
Bek Shamlu, Herat’s governor, and a Talish commander fled the field,
the vakil Najm-i Thani was caught and beheaded and, ultimately, the
Uzbeks took the city.
Nevertheless, when Ismail, whose son Tahmasp has just been born,
arrived from Isfahan with another force the Safavids retook the city.
Realpolitik dicated the shah’s exercise of a ‘light touch’ vis-à-vis the
Qizilbash amirs who had fled the field.46
With Ismail occupied in the East, his half-brother Sulayman challenged
the shah’s authority by entering the Safavid capital Tabriz at the head of
 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I 21
a large procession in a clear effort to recreate and eclipse Ismail’s
entrance into the city more than a decade before. Neither the local
population nor, more importantly, the local Ustajlu commander, whose
brother was the future vakil Muhammad Bek Ustajlu, were impressed,
however, and for advancing such a direct challenge the rebel was killed.47
A far greater, external, threat emerged from the West. For the Ottomans
the rise of the Safavids had presented an important internal challenge in
Eastern Anatolia, the home of many Qizilbash and other tribal elements
with overtly pro-Safavid sympathies, as witnessed by the 1511–12
Takkalu rising. Following an intra-Ottoman conflict over succession to
Bayazid, proponent of a non-military approach to the ‘Eastern question’,
his successor Selim I, joining with a former Aqquyunlu notable and a
Dhul-Qadr chief loyal to Egypt’s Mamluks, engaged and defeated Safavid
forces at Chaldiran, 80 miles northwest of Tabriz, in August 1514.
Although soon thereafter Selim himself entered Tabriz, apparently with-
out a fight, he did not press his advantage and instead turned southwest.
In 1515 the Ottomans captured a fort near Irzinjan and, in 1516, took
both Diyar Bakr and Kurdistan. Eventually, Selim moved against the
Mamluks and entered Cairo in 1517.48
Tabriz was, therefore, reoccupied a month after its capture. However,
the Safavids lost the former Aqquyunlu capital Diyar Bakr and Irzinjan,
where Ismail had rallied his tribal supporters troops some twenty years
before. The following year, 1515, Ismail was also unable to prevent
Portuguese consolidation of control over the Persian Gulf island of
Hormuz and signed a treaty ceding control to Portugal and in return for
a military-commercial anti-Ottoman alliance.
Despite the deaths of a number of key Qizilbash and Tajik figures,
Ismail’s wives and, with the fall of Tabriz, loss of the centre’s treasury and
key artisans,49 the Turk-Tajik alliance underpinning Ismail’s reign held,
allowing the shah to continue active in defence of the realm. Selim’s
movements having offered the Safavids a moment of respite, Ismail dis-
patched a large Qizilbash force to support Mamluk resistance as the
Ottomans moved South. After a warning from the Mawsillu and Rumlu
governors of Qayin and Balkh of a severe famine, the Shamlu governor
of Herat and Khurasan was replaced with the same Mawsillu amir who
was sent to Herat with the three-year old Tahmasp as his charge.50 Three
years later, in 1520, Shamlu and Takkalu forces were sent to check a
move by Sultan Selim toward Baghdad which, however, collapsed with
the Sultan’s death that year.51 When the Mawsillu governor of Herat
was suspected of rebellion, following the Uzbeks’ 1521 crossing of the
Oxus and seizure of parts of Herat, he and his charge accepted recall to
court and replacement by Ismail’s new-born son Sam Mirza, son of a
Georgian woman, in the care of Durmish Khan Shamlu. The latter’s
mother was Ismail’s sister. The Shamlu checked the Uzbek incursion
and new Shamlu, Takkalu, Rumlu and Afshar sub-governors were
appointed. Qizilbash forces also checked a series of local risings in
22 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I
Damghan, Mazandaran, Rasht in 1518 and in 1521–2 in Georgia, all no
doubt encouraged by the Safavid defeat.52 Too, in this period Ismail also
entered into profuse correspondence with European powers seeking aid
against the Ottomans.53
The continuing loyalty of the Ustajlu and Shamlu, whose links to
Ismail and pre-eminence within the Qizilbash confederation pre-dated
the capture of Tabriz, certainly encouraged continuing overall Qizilbash
loyalty and intra-Qizilbash stability following Chaldiran. The Shamlu
held Herat and, with the death at Chaldiran of the Tajik vakil Najm-i
Thani, Muhammad Bek Ustajlu jointly held the posts of military vakil
and amir al-umara from 1514–5 until his death in 1523–4. He was
succeeded by his son who was, in turn, succeeded by a Rumlu. The
Ustajlu also held the post of qurchibashi from 1514 to 1518.54
Tajik support for the project also remained demonstrably firm. For
the remainder of Ismail’s reign Tajiks accepted the post of vizier, for
example. The longest-serving was Mirza Shah Husayni, the architect-
vizier of Durmish Khan Shamlu in Isfahan, who was appointed to the
post in 1514 and was also the non-military vakil. A grating personality,
Husayni held the post for ten years until his assassination in 1523, with
issues of personal finance providing the final straw. He was succeeded by
another Tajik, Jalal al-Din Muhammad Tabrizi, who was of the same
Kujuji family as the above-mentioned Amir Zakariya.55 The post of sadr
also remained in Tajik hands after Chaldiran; none of its holders, as
before, was known for any profound, overtly Twelver Shi
i sympathies,56
attesting to efforts to retain the loyalities of the Sunni population.
Before Chaldiran marriage alliances had both recognised the import-
ance of, and apparently succeeded in, binding the fortunes of the Safavid
house to those of key Qizilbash tribal elements. Following Chaldiran
Ismail contracted marriage alliances with important local Northern dyn-
asties, clearly in hopes of obviating the need for military action to secure
his Northern borders, and with little regard for their religious prefer-
ences. Following Durmish Khan Shamlu’s suppression of the revolt by
the governor of Rasht in 1518, the governor himself attended the court
at Tabriz, was given a new title and, in 1521–2, a daughter of Ismail in
marriage.57 In 1519–20 Ismail married another daughter to Sultan Khalil
Shirvanshah, whose grandfather had in fact killed Ismail’s father; Ismail
later married Khalil’s sister.58
Such practical efforts to insure the allegiance of the Turk-Tajik alliance
in the aftermath of Chaldiran were complemented by a discourse which
further expanded on the person and position of the shah as the apex
of the spirituo-political and cultural discourses of the polity’s key con-
stituencies. Among the region’s rural and tribal elements especially, for
example, Qizilbash tribal elements, the messianic discourse surrounding
Ismail continued to be both promoted and accepted.59
Post-Chaldiran religious discourse was marked also by an increasingly
overt Safavid identification with Twelver Shi
ism, particularly its
 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I 23
messianic dimensions. A 1519 inscription on a wooden panel of a box at
the grave of Imam Musa referred to the command to build the box as
having been issued by ‘the just, the perfect sultan . . . Shah Ismail . . . the
Husaynid’.60 Such titles, as before, echoed similar terms as applied both
to such of Ismail’s predecessors as Uzun Hasan, as well as claims to sayyid
status and identity as the returned twelfth Imam. Isfahan’s 1522 Masjid-i
Ali, in whose construction the same Tajik Mirza Shah Husayni – Isfahan’s
vizier now appointed administrative vakil after Chaldiran – was involved,
contains inscriptions citing the name Ismail as appearing twelve times in
the Qur
an, as many as the number of the Imams, including the, very
implicitly, now-returned twelfth Imam. The chronogram ‘He has come,
the opener of Gates’ clearly implied Ismail’s supra-mortal status.61
Ismail’s Mawsillu wife, Tajlu Khanum (d. 1540), also participated in
this increasingly overt identification with the faith. In 1522 she endowed
the farms, gardens and villages she owned around Varamin, Qum and
Qazvin to the shrine of Fatima, the sister of the eighth Imam, in Qum
and she encouraged the establishment of other pious foundations. She
financed the repair of a bridge in Eastern Azerbaijan and, promoting her
husband’s simultaneous status as head of the Safavid Sufi order, Tajlu
Khanum also financed substantial portions of Ismail’s projected tomb
at Ardabil.62 Ismail himself also undertook improvements to various
religious shrines and buildings in this period.63
Ismail’s identification with, and promotion of, the traditional discourse
of the Safavid’s Tajik constituency, also continued apace after Chaldiran.
In 1522, eight years after the battle, Ismail recalled his son Tahmasp to
Tabriz from Herat. The latter had been studying under the great Timurid
painter Bihzad whose own acceptance of Safavid rule was demonstrated
by his painting of the poet Hatifi, the descendant of the Naqshbandi
Jami who had earlier accepted a commission from the shah, wearing the
Safavid taj. Bihzad, and possibly other Herati painters in the Timurid
style, accompanied Tahmasp and soon thereafter, following Bihzad’s
apparent appointment as head of Ismail’s workshop, the Tabrizi Sultan
Muhammad, the previous head, ceased work on the Shahnama previously
commissioned by Ismail and commenced a new one.
In this manuscript the Tabrizi style of painting was adapted to the
Herati style to suit the heir apparent and thereby inaugurated the union
of the Eastern and Western Iranian traditions of painting which dis-
tinguished the Tabrizi school for the next three decades.64 Substantively,
those of this manuscript’s illustrations completed before Ismail’s death
in 1524 highlight such ‘historical’ Iranian victories as that of over the
forces of Turan. As such the project appears to have been intended as a
reaffirmation both of the legitimacy of the distinctly Tajik interest, and
role, in the Safavid project as well as, especially, in the aftermath of
Chaldiran, Ismail’s identification with Persian heritage – perhaps, espe-
cially, the divine right of the king to rule and his subjects’ corresponding
imperative to follow – and a suggestion as to the eventual triumph of
24 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I
Persian forces over more contemporary enemies. Ismail also commis-
sioned other works in the Persian tradition, including a 1524–5 Nizami,
to make up for the depletion of Tabriz’ manuscript collection during the
Ottomans’ brief occupation of the city.65

The Shi
i clerical response

Although there was some interest in orthodox Twelver Shi
ism in the
Iranian heartland in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and
the Tajik Shi
i sayyids in Qazvin and Mashhad, at least, had accepted
Ismail’s gifts and, therefore, at least ostensibly, his claims,66 the region’s
major Shi
i centres were located in Arabic-speaking lands, particularly
the Lebanon, the Iraqi shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala and the Eastern
Arabian coastland known as Bahrayn. The heterodoxy of Safavid reli-
gious expression and practice, especially as embellished by such critics as
Khunji and Pakaraji, the Safavid military and administrative elite’s at
best cursory interest in and commitment to the faith and the Chaldiran
defeat less than fifteen years after Tabriz can only have suggested to these
clerics both the problematic, and transient, nature of the Safavid project.
Indeed, over this period only one Arab Twelver Shi
i cleric is known
to have journeyed East specifically to associate himself with Safavid
Shi
ism. From at least 1504, three years after Tabriz, the very junior
Lebanese Ali Karaki (d. 1534) was both associated with the court and in
receipt of considerable remuneration therefrom. By 1510, Karaki held
some administrative authority in the newly conquered areas of Arab
Iraq, an annual stipend and had endorsed the Safavid use of such terms
as ‘the just sultan’ and ‘the just Imam’ as references to Ismail, intimating
the latter’s identification as the now-returned Twelfth Imam. Karaki
subsequently modified this understanding, to justify his relationship
with the shah by portraying himself as ‘the general deputy (naib amm)’
of the Imam to the community until the latter’s return who, according to
the perhaps-majority interpretation by this time, was authorised in the
interim to interact with the established political authority.67
Karaki was welcomed by Tajik sayyids based at Imam Riza’s shrine in
Mashhad and subsequently contracted a marriage alliance with a prom-
inent Astarabadi sayyid family. However, both junior and senior Arab
clerical contemporaries abroad both directly and indirectly condemned
Karaki’s association with Ismail and, implicitly therefore, the legitimacy
of the Safavid project itself. One prominent Arab scholar, having jour-
neyed to Safavid territory and having seen Ismail for himself, returned to
the Lebanon.68

Summary and conclusion

Although it has been suggested that only in the establishment of Twelver
Shi
ism did the Safavid differ from the Aqquyunlu dynasty,69 the limited
 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I 25
manner of Twelver Shi
ism’s establishment in these years could hardly
have sustained the Safavid project through such a crisis as Chaldiran. In
fact, it was Ismail’s very heterodox spiritual discourse coupled with very
practical actions – marriages, allotments of land and appointments to
important posts – which publicly recognised, legitimated and further
encouraged the participation of Turk and Tajik in support of, and their
identification with, a Safavid project larger than each which sustained
the enterprise. Certainly aided by the Ottomans’ fortuitous move to the
southwest after the battle, the continuation of Ismail as the transcendent
head of this project clearly remained sufficiently consequential to these
constituents to warrant their continued allegiance after Chaldiran.70
However, the earlier Aqquyunlu formation – many of whose Turk and
Tajik elements now served the Safavids – had not survived the combin-
ation of both a major military defeat – in 1473 defeat by the Ottomans
at Bashkent – and the death of a ruler – five years later, in 1478, of
Uzun Hasan. It remained to be seen whether the Safavid project and
the Turk-Tajik alliance which had to date underpinned it could survive
the passing of Ismail himself in Tabriz in May 1524, ten years after
Chaldiran, following a fever.
 2
Reconfiguration and
Consolidation
The Reign of Tahmasp (1524–1576)

Ismail both stood simultaneously at the apex of the Safavid project’s

component spirituo-religious and cultural traditions and, as the uni-
versal ruler, was the sole spokesman for their transcendent sum total. His
spiritual discourse, reinforced by ‘practical’ measures, linked the inter-
ests of the polity’s two key constituencies – Turk and Tajik – to each
other and to himself sufficiently strongly to withstand the challenge of
Chaldiran. The civil war which raged for more than a decade after
Ismail’s passing did not reflect serious questioning of the legitimacy and
authority of the Safavid house itself but was in the main a struggle
between and among Qizilbash tribal elements and their Tajik associates
to construct a new hierarchical alignment of those interests around
Ismail’s eldest son, the ten-year old Tahmasp.1

Civil war, and its aftermath . . .

Ismail’s death initially encouraged a Rumlu challenge, in alliance with
the Takkalu and Dhul-Qadr, to the existing Ustajlu-Shamlu dominance
of the Qizilbash confederation. From this challenge arose a tripartite
alliance of Rumlu, Takkalu and Ustajlu elements. The Ustajlu were
quickly excluded from this grouping, stripped of their territorial hold-
ings, and, in 1526–7, defeated in battle by the Takkalu. The Takkalu,
having then defeated the Rumlu, assumed de facto regency from 1527–31
and even withheld assistance to the Shamlu governor of Herat in the face
of Uzbek attacks.2 A 1531 Shamlu march against the royal camp in
Isfahan sparked an attack on, and ‘massacre’ of, Takkalu elements by a
combined force including Ustajlu, Rumlu, Dhul-Qadr and Afshar elem-
ents. A Shamlu regency ensued, from 1530–1 to 1533–4. The Shamlu
took both the best lands and the key posts but the Ustajlu, as related to
the Safavid house by marriage as were the Shamlu, were important junior
partners and held key provincial appointments.3 Takkalu and some
Dhul-Qadr elements then implicated the Shamlu chief in a plot to poison
 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp 27
his cousin the shah in favour of Sam Mirza, Tahmasp’s half-brother by a
Georgian woman. Most other factions of the Takkalu and some Dhul-
Qadr remained loyal to Tahmasp, however, such that Tahmasp was able
to order the Shamlu leader’s execution. Sam Mirza himself chose to wait
in the wings and besiege Mughal Qandahar. At his defeat by the Mughals
in 1536, Sam returned to court. Tahmasp received his half-brother but
the subsequent execution of Sam Mirza’s Shamlu supporters marked the
effective end of Shamlu dominance and the civil war, and left the Ustajlu
at the head of the Qizilbash confederation.4
At the centre itself the fortunes of key Tajik associates of the different
tribal factions varied according to those of their tribal patrons. Jalal al-
Din Muhammad Tabrizi, of the Tabrizi Kujuji family, had, for example,
been appointed vizier just prior to Ismail’s death. An associate of the
Ustajlu-Shamlu alliance which underlay Ismail’s reign, at Ismail’s death
Tabrizi was killed by the insurgent Rumlu. The Rumlu then exiled his
Ustajlu-nominated replacement, the Tajik sayyid Qadi Jahan Qazvini
(d. 1552–3), whose life was twice saved by the intervention of Tahmasp’s
Mawsillu wife. Jafar Savji, previously governor of Isfahan, was
appointed vizier in 1524–5 and served through the Takkalu regency. He
was dismissed at their fall in 1531 and eventually executed. With the rise
of the Shamlu, the pro-Shamlu vizier in Khurasan, the Tajik Nur Kamal
Isfahani, replaced Savji. As the Shamlu fell in 1533–4 Nur Kamal’s prop-
erty was seized. He was tortured and, although freed, replaced jointly by
the same Qadi Jahan and a member of the prominent Khuzani family of
Isfahan which had furnished Ismail’s vizier Najm-i Thani. The latter was
executed in 1535. With the Ustajlu resuming their position of pre-
eminence at the centre from the following year, their protégé Qadi Jahan
retained the post until his retirement c. 1550–1.
This pattern applied in the provincial level as well: as the Ustajlu–
Shamlu alliance emerged, for example, another Khuzani was appointed
vizier for Mashhad and the affairs of Imam Riza’s shrine.5

. . . and external threats

Both the Uzbeks and Ottomans seized the advantage offered by this
period of prolonged internal disorder to launch full-scale invasions of
Safavid territory. The Uzbeks launched five attacks on Khurasan between
1524 and 1540. During the fourth, lasting from 1531 to 1534 – in the
aftermath of the Takkalu ‘massacre’, an Ottoman invasion eastward and
the Qizilbash counter-move – the Uzbeks advanced as far as Rayy, South
of present-day Tehran.6
The Ottomans represented the greater threat. In the aftermath of the
above-mentioned Takkalu massacre some surviving Takkalu elements
urged the Ottomans to intervene. In early 1532, following a European
peace treaty which settled challenges on their Western borders, the
Ottomans commenced two decades of invasions into Safavid territory.
28 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp
During their 1532–3 to 1535 incursion the Ottomans seized Tabriz,
Kurdistan and attracted support in Gilan. In 1534, the year of the plot
to poison Tahmasp, the Ottomans accepted the peaceful surrender of
Baghdad and all of Arab Iraq, including the Shi
i shrine cities of Najaf and
Karbala. Basra surrendered in 1538. During their 1546 to 1548 invasion
the Ottomans entered Safavid territory in support of Alqas (d. 1548),
Ismail’s son by another Mawsillu woman, who had risen against
Tahmasp in 1536 while governor of Shirvan. Pardoned by Tahmasp,
Alqas rose again and finally sought refuge with the Ottomans. When his
attacks on Hamadan, Qum, Kashan, Isfahan and Fars failed to attract
domestic support Alqas surrendered to Tahmasp who had him jailed.
In c. 1553, in response to Safavid counter-moves in Kurdistan, Irzirum
and Van the Ottomans launched another series of incursions. The
Safavids sued for peace. The resulting treaty of Amasya, concluded in
1555 and remaining in force until after Tahmasp’s death,7 recognised
Ottoman sovereignty over Arab Iraq/Mesopotamia, including Baghdad,
and Kurdistan.8 In the aftermath of this treaty – which, given the
losses in Anatolia and Arab Iraq shifted the Safavid geographical centre
eastwards – Qazvin replaced Tabriz as the Safavid capital.9

The Turkish response

While detailed contemporary information on the changing influence of
the different Qizilbash tribes during the civil war period is scanty,10 the
tribal origins of the holders of the centre’s key offices over the entire
period, especially during the civil war, mainly reflected the fractioning of
the Qizilbash confederation at Ismail’s death and their jostling for pos-
ition around his very young son and successor Tahmasp as they had
around Ismail himself.11 If they were paramount tribe at the end of the
civil war, by Tahmasp’s death in 1576 the Ustajlu occupied fifteen such
key posts, including such influential positions as the guardians to various
royal princes as well as the governorship of Khurasan. The latter entailed
the post of guardian to the future Abbas I (b. 1571), second son of
Tahmasp’s eldest son Muhammad Khudabanda (d. 1595).12 The Ustajlu
also held the governorships of Sarakhs, Sistan, Shushtar and Dizful.
Other Qizilbash tribes were allotted posts in the post-civil war period
according to their, decidedly secondary, hierarchical importance at the
polity’s political-military centre of the polity.13
Military, and therefore political, power continued to lie with the
tribes at both the central and provincial levels such that once lands were
allocated among tribal elements, the centre exercised a light touch over
provincial affairs.14 Although provincial political-administrative struc-
tures apparently replicated those of the centre, tribes treated the lands
they were allocated in the provinces – as tuyuls, iqta or land grants – as
personal property. Revenues therefrom were, in effect, wages over which
the centre exercised very little control. Local authorities also appointed
 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp 29
their own judges and enjoyed autonomy in the organisation of local
religious affairs.15
As they had during the time of Ismail, marriage alliances were used to
bolster further support for the Safavid house and Tahmasp himself.
Tahmasp’s mother was a Mawsillu and his principal wife, whom he
likely married right around Ismail’s death, was the Mawsillu Sultanum
Bekum (d. 1593–4). She gave Tahmasp two sons, including Muhammad
Khudabanda who was born in 1532, during the early years of the
Shamlu-Ustajlu regency, when Tahmasp himself was only eighteen years
old, and Ismail II, born in 1537.16
Several of Tahmasp’s eight daughters were given in marriage to others
within the Safavid house itself, no doubt to stave off any further risings
such as those associated with Tahmasp’s two brothers. One daughter
married Ibrahim (d. 1577), son of Tahmasp’s full brother Bahram
(d. 1549), when the latter was governor of Mashhad. Another daughter
was promised to another son of Bahram who, however, died in 1576.17
Key posts were also allocated to family members. Before his rebellion
Alqas, Tahmasp’s brother by another Mawsillu woman, had been
Shirvan’s governor. He was replaced by Tahmasp’s son Ismail. Bahram’s
son Ibrahim was sent to Khurasan – a posting mainly allotted to a high-
ranking family member, usually the oldest son.18 Masum Bek Safavi
(d. 1569), whose great-grandfather was a brother of Haydar, Tahmasp’s
grandfather, was the administrator of the Ardabil shrine c. 1536–7
and governor of Ardabil c. 1544–5. His loyalty, and presumably his
competence, not found wanting, he rose high over the later years of
Tahmasp’s reign. With the support of others of the ruling house and key
Mawsillu, Rumlu, Afshar and Ustajlu chiefs he played a key role in the
1565 crushing of a Takkalu revolt.19 Masum Bek was involved in the
arrest of Tahmasp’s son Ismail in 1556 shortly after the latter’s arrival in
Herat as Khurasan’s governor, following Ismail’s commission of ‘certain
acts displeasing to his father’ for which he was jailed until 1576.20

The continuation of Tajik support

The continued Tajik presence at the central and provincial levels of
administration after the civil war signalled both the Turks’ need for Tajik
administrative support and the latter’s continuing acceptance of their
role alongside the Turks in the larger Safavid project.21 Some of these
elements had served the political centre during Ismail’s reign, but there
were also some new faces in the administration, especially at the provin-
cial level. These included many sayyids,22 a number of whom served
in the provinces,23 some, especially in the case of Khurasan, as direct
appointees of the centre.24
The period’s court chronicles, authored by Tajiks, also attest to Tajik
acceptance of, and continued Safavid claims to, sayyid status and a
special relationship with Shi
ism; in return for such overt acceptance
30 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp
of these claims as these betokened, the centre remained tolerant of
continued Tajik sympathies for Sunni Islam. In his Habib al-Siyar, com-
pleted in 1524, the sayyid Ghiyas al-Din Khvandamir (d. 1535–7), who
had described his earlier patron the Timurid Sultan Husayn Bayqara as
‘Allah’s shadow on earth’ and retained pro-Sunni tendencies, accepted
Ismail’s claims to descent from the seventh Imam, Musa, and praised the
Imams themselves as repositories of divine knowledge and miraculous
powers.25 Khvandamir’s son Amir Mahmud voiced similar sentiments
in his 1550 Zayl Habib al-Siyar, composed in Herat.26 In his 1542
Lubb al-Tavarikh, completed for Tahmasp’s full-brother Bahram, Yahya
Qazvini (d. 1555), who remained in Qazvin after its capture by Ismail
and throughout the civil war, described the Imams as infallible and Ali as
‘the rightful Imam’ and possessor of ‘prophetic knowledge’. Qazvini
praised both his patron and the Safavid house as a whole and, himself a
Husayni sayyid, accepted Safavid claims to being descendants of Imam
Musa, although he retained some sympathies for the Sunni perspective
on key historical events in Islamic history.27 In the same year Mir
Abul-Fath, another Husayni sayyid, also affirmed the Safavids’ status as
sayyids in his revision to the chief work on Safavid genealogy, Safvat
al-Safa.28 Another Qazvini, Ahmad b. Muhammad Ghaffari (d. 1567),
from a family of local Sunni judges, in his 1552 Nigaristan and his 1563–4
Nusakh-i Jahan-Ara traced the Safavid family line back through Imam
Musa and referred to Tahmasp’s accession as ‘the end of time’ and to the
shah himself as ‘the shadow of Allah on earth’ – a title bestowed by
Davani on the Safavids’s Sunni forebearer Uzun Hasan less than a century
before – even as, like Sayyid Yahya, his perspective on Islamic history
bespeaks Sunni sympathies.29
Local elements also signalled their acceptance of the continued
legitimacy of the Safavids, and Tahmasp in particular, in other, more
public, ways. In 1543, after the end of the civil war, Qutb al-Din, an
Isfahani notable, built a mosque whose founding inscription dates the
building to the reign of ‘the most just, the most noble, the shadow of
Allah to the Faithful . . . Sultan Shah Tahmasp, the Husaynid’. The same
year one Shaykh Muhammad Safi built the Dhul-Fiqar mosque, a nearby
school and bathhouse in Isfahan’s bazaar. The inscription dates the
building to ‘the days of the caliphate of the most just Sultan . . . Shah
Tahmasp, the Husaynid’.30
The centre utilised a combination of efforts to further encourage
security in potentially troublesome areas in this period. On the one hand,
following the consolidation of the new Ustajlu-dominated Qizilbash
hierarchy around the shah, the centre moved to limit the independence of
territories which had previously enjoyed considerable autonomy. In
c. 1537–8, much of Sistan came under a tribal governor and from c. 1558
until 1598–9 the province was ruled by a Safavid prince with a Qizilbash
amir as his guardian. In 1538 and 1551 respectively, direct control was
secured over Shirvan and Shakki. Baku also came under central control
 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp 31
in this period.31 Between 1540 and 1554 the Safavids also launched a
series of attacks in the Caucasus,32 and Georgian districts were brought
under control with local governors being appointed from, and taxes
being paid to, the centre.33
Other less problematic areas continued to enjoy some degree of
autonomy.34
The house continued to utilise marriages to cement alliances with local
notables,35 still with little regard for the extent of new relatives’ religious
commitments. In c. 1549, Tahmasp himself married a Shirvani woman
who had been married to his brother Bahram at the latter’s death. In
c. 1567–8 Jamshid Khan (d. 1580–1), governor of Western Gilan and
himself grandson of the marriage between a daughter of Ismail and
Amira Dubbaj of Rasht, married a daughter of Tahmasp. As these
daughters were the products of intermarriages with various Circassian
and Georgian houses, these marriages linked these notables both to
Tahmasp himself and the Safavid house and also to each other.36 Indeed,
c. 1549, Tahmasp’s son Khudabanda, son of a Mawsillu, married the
daughter of the marriage of a Gilani notable to the daughter of the
sayyid Qadi Jahan Qazvini, the Tajik vizier whose life Khudabanda’s
Mawsillu mother had saved during the civil war. In 1565–6 Khudabanda
took a second wife, Khayr al-Nisa, of the Marashi sayyid family which
had ruled in Mazandaran since the fourteenth century; this union
produced Abbas I.37
With selected Tajiks even being granted the right to wear the distinctive
Safavid taj,38 the fortunes of Turks, Tajiks and the Safavid house itself
were thus ever more firmly linked.

Safavid heterodoxy reasserted

The widespread reappearance of the Abu Muslim traditions at Ismail’s
death and over the civil war period39 further attests that Ismail’s death
removed the single individual who had projected himself also as the
transcendent spokesman of the region’s various messianic spiritual
polemics. In response, the post-civil war political realignment of Turk
and Tajik around Tahmasp’s leadership was further encouraged by the
reaffirmation of the same inclusive and transcendent spirituo-cultural
discourse which had obtained under, and focused on, Ismail.
Just as his father had, in addition to projecting his divine status,
simultaneously styled himself ‘the Sinner’, Tahmasp’s several experi-
ences of personal repentance (tawba) also publicly projected his status as
an individual, and very human, believer. Not coincidentally, these
repentances occurred at particularly problematic points in his reign.
Tahmasp’s first repentance came during the civil war, for example, as
he rushed back from engaging the Uzbeks in Khurasan to face the
Ottomans and in the aftermath of the Shamlu plot to poison him and to
put his half-brother Sam Mirza on the throne, and resulted in Tahmasp’s
32 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp
decree (firman), issued c. 1533–4, banning such non-Islamic practices
as gambling, prostitution, music and drinking. Following a second
tawba, c. 1555–6, in the aftermath of the humiliating Amasya 1555
treaty with the Ottomans and perhaps also the subsequent decision to
move the capital from Tabriz to Qazvin, Tahmasp ordered the country’s
‘amirs and notables’ to ‘repent of all their sins’.40 The next year, 1556–7,
he also charged his nephew Ibrahim, sent to replace Khurasan’s Qizilbash
governor, to enforce religious edicts there.41 In 1563–4, following a
dream in which he saw the Imam, Tahmasp issued decrees forbidding the
tamgha – a trades’ tax dating at least to the Mongol period – certain
guild taxes, gambling and drinking houses all as contrary to Islamic law,42
such an edict clearly pointing to the failure of earlier prohibitions.43
In c. 1571–2 Tahmasp is said to have taken action against musicians
and singers at court.44
If such actions projected Tahmasp’s mortality they also, implicitly and
simultaneously, projected a superior image of the shah as defender of the
faith, thus reinforcing his spiritual legitimacy and authority at precisely
such times as his political and military fortunes were being severely tested.
Indeed, further simultaneous public proclamation of Tahmasp’s
superior, messianic and implicitly divine status, in addition to that on
offer in the Tajik-authored court chronicles cited above, is attested dur-
ing and in the aftermath of the civil war.45 A 1531–2 inscription at the
Isfahan Congregational Mosque, during the Takkalu regency, described
the shah as ‘the leader of the army of the Mahdi, the Lord of the Age
(sahib al-zaman) . . . Shah Tahmasp the Safavid, the Husaynid’.46 After
the civil war Tahmasp continued to be identified as a Husayni sayyid,
sahib al-zaman and ‘the just sultan’, the latter terms referring both to his
secular authority and lending themselves, as during his father’s life, to
being identified as the now-returned twelfth Imam.47 As late as 1571, five
years before his death, a Venetian report noted that Tahmasp’s subjects
regarded him as ‘not a king, but as a god, on account of his descent from
the line of Ali’.48
Tahmasp also remained attentive to the status of the Safavid Sufi order
and his own position as its head. Between 1536 and 1542, after the civil
war, Tahmasp constructed a new building at the Ardabil shrine, the very
large Jannat Sarai, to encourage, and accommodate an overflow of, vis-
itors for devotions if not also religious/spiritual performances, at the
shrine or even his own tomb.49
This reaffirmed Safavid messianism remained as exclusive in this
period as it had during Ismail’s reign. Between 1526 and 1531, at the
height of the intra-Qizilbash struggle, and coincident with the decline
in Ustajlu influence in particular, the above-mentioned resurfacing of
legends attesting to the imminent reappearance of Abu Muslim gener-
ated an uncompromising response from the centre.50 The Nimatallahi
Sufi order as well remained the particular focus of efforts to link its
fortunes to those of the Safavids and, thereby, effectively limit, if not
 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp 33
neutralise, the independence of its discourse. The head of the order Nur
al-Din Baqi (d. 1564), the son of the Yazdi notable Mir Abd al-Baqi
Yazdi, Ismail’s sadr and vakil, was confirmed as naqib and governor of
Yazd when Tahmasp acceded to the throne and, c. 1535–6, married a
sister of Tahmasp, following the 1521–2 death of the latter’s first hus-
band, another Tajik, Amira Dabbaj Rashti.51 In 1554–5, the daughter of
this union married Tahmasp’s son, the future Ismail II who, the next
year, was sent to Khurasan as its governor.52 Court chronicles of the
period similarly downplayed any independent Nimatallahi Sufi discourse,
likely reflecting the official denigration of any alternative to the Safavid
hegemony over Sufi discourse.53
The Nurbakhshi were not so accommodating. In c. 1537 the succes-
sor to Shah Qasim Nurbakhsh, who had himself been well treated,
refused the hand of a sister of Tahmasp, bespeaking an effort to maintain
Nurbakhshi independence. He was subsequently executed.54
As for other potentially alternative Shi
i discourses, the already-
mentioned intermarriages between the Safavid house and prominent
Gilanis, some of whom were Zaydi Shi
a, bespeak efforts to guarantee
their loyalty.55 The son of Shah Tahir, the imam of Muhammad-Shahi
branch of the Nizari Ismailis, attended Tahmasp, thereby according him
some degree of obeisance, before he returned to the Deccan. The Andi-
jan-based Qasim-Shahi Ismailis were persecuted c. 1573, however,
and their Imam was jailed and executed.56 The Shi
i discourse of the
Khuzistan-based Mushasha sayyids was deemed sufficiently problematic
that Qizilbash governors were sent to Shushtar in 1539–40 and Dizful in
1541–2.57

Tahmasp and the Tajiks

Continued Tajik loyalty to the Safavid project was encouraged by the
centre’s continued efforts to identify with, and patronise, traditional
Persian cultural discourse. Special veneration for the early Safavids and
Ismail, as in the various Tajik-authored histories mentioned above, for
example, reflected well in turn on Ismail’s son and successor Tahmasp.
Such veneration is evident also in the Shahnamah-yi Ismail, a work
commenced by Jami’s nephew Hatifi, who had served both the Timurid
Sultan Husayn Bayqara and Ismail, but which was completed in 1533,
during the Shamlu–Ustajlu regency, by the latter’s student, the Tajik poet
Qasimi Gunabadi (d. 1574). Writing in the midst of internal strife and
external challenges Gunabadi drew on, and sometimes contrived, paral-
lels between the careers, and military successes, of Ismail and Timur
and their respective houses, and thereby bestowed special attention on
Tahmasp as his father’s successor.58
Perhaps the centre’s best-known cultural contribution during Tah-
masp’s reign was the continuing patronage by the shah, himself well
versed in the Persian ‘arts of the book’ from the time of his residence in
34 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp
Herat, of the Shahnama project commenced during his father’s reign in
the aftermath of Chaldiran in 1514 but completed between 1535 and
1537,59 when Tahmasp was aged about twenty-six, as Shamlu-Ustajlu
dominance gave way to Ustajlu domination and the civil war came to an
end. That, in the midst of intra-tribal struggles and repeated foreign
incursions from both the East and West, successive Turk-Tajik factions at
the centre continued to devote the necessary, and substantial, resources
to this most Persian of undertakings,60 with its distinctly militarist over-
tones and its special emphasis on such themes as the divine right of kings,
together with the already-noted contribution of Qasimi, attests to differ-
ent ruling factions’ united dedication to the paramount position of the
Safavid house. It further suggests that the civil war was less about
replacing Ismail’s first-born son and, hence, natural successor Tahmasp
or overturning the rule of the house itself than about assuming paramount
influence over both.
The same homage to the Tajik cultural legacy is evident in the
illustrations of a Khamsa completed between 1539 and 1543, after the
end of the civil war. The Khamsa’s now appropriately unwarlike themes
hearken back to a more traditional dynasty ruling in Iran – Timurid or
Turk – and a relative absence, at least, of internal unrest, even if foreign
dangers continued to threaten.61
Later years saw no diminishment in the centre’s interest in and
patronage of Persian as the dominant cultural discourse. In the new
capital of Qazvin, for example, Tahmasp commissioned new palaces, a
whole complex known as the Sa
adatabad Garden, with bathhouses,
four markets, and the Iram gardens.62 The former garden was divided by
two avenues at the intersection of which stood the Chihil Sutun palace.
The latter, completed c. 1556, was replete with paintings with strongly
Persian lyrical themes, including images of hunts and picnics, games of
polo and women promenading with friends in a garden. Some were
apparently designed by Tahmasp and others by Muzaffar Ali, a relative
of the famous Bihzad. In 1558–9 and 1561–2 ghazals, some by Hafiz,
were added to its walls.63
The same interest in the Persian was also in evidence in the provinces.
Thus, Tahmasp’s nephew Ibrahim, governor of Mashhad since 1556–7,
commissioned an illustrated edition of Jami’s Haft Awrang. The work
was apportioned among the skilled illuminators, calligraphers and illus-
trators based in Mashhad, Herat and Qazvin. The project took nine
years to complete, exhibits a variety of stylistic differences, helped
establish a number of younger artists including Shaykh Muhammad of
Sabzavar and Ali Asghar and influenced others based as far away as
Shiraz.64 Herat’s artists also produced single-page illustrations of
dancing Sufis, hunts and picnics and male and female figures for the non-
court market65 although its poets did drift to Uzbek or other Safavid
centres. Tabriz, despite losing its status as capital, continued to be a
centre of the arts of the book as did Shiraz.66
 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp 35
These same distinctly Persian themes were visible in manuscript
illustrations, textiles and a fine silk carpet produced in Kashan which
features dragons, simurghs, flowers and pheasants. The latter two
appear also on the inside of a period lacquer bookbinding.67
Nevertheless, the traditional artisnal styles in all these areas of
expression also experienced modifications over the period. Thus, where
the style of candlesticks featuring in the illustrations for the above-
mentioned Shahnama and Khamsa, with their wide conical bases and
cylindrical shafts, suggests little change from the thirteenth century, a
1539 candlestick produced in Lahore exhibited a distinctly Persian style
of arabesques.68 The illustrations for Tahmasp’s Shahnama feature the
continued juxtaposition of Turkish and Timurid styles.69
Tahmasp himself was also known for his patronage of Persian poetry.
Prominent poets of note in this period included the Nimatallahi Vahshi
(d. 1583–4) of Bafq, in Kirman, who wrote qasidas in praise of the
shah, Sayyid Ali b. Khvaja Mir Ahmad known as Muhtasham, of
Kashan (d. 1587–8 or 1592), a writer of elegies, qasidas and ghazals and
Urfi Shirazi (1556–6 to 1590–1). Poets such as the vakil’s son Sharaf
Jahan (d. 1560), the satirist Hayrat (d. 1553), Damiri (d. after 1578)
and Abdi Bek Shirazi (d. 1580) were also associates of Tahmasp’s
court.70 Although Muhtasham’s panegyric poetry at one point earned
Tahmasp’s disapproval and some poets, including Muhtasham himself,
subsequently turned to religious poetry, praising the Imams in particu-
lar,71 Tahmasp continued to patronise non-religious verse and to com-
pose such poetry himself.72 The provincial courts, including those of
Tahmasp’s own relatives, continued their active support of ‘traditional’
Persian poetry throughout period.73
Female members of the household were also well-known patrons of
the traditional Persian arts. Tahmasp’s full sister Mahin Banu, known
as Shahzada Sultanum (d. 1562), a close counsellor of her brother,
studied Persian and the Qur
an with Tajik teachers, studied with the
librarian, great calligrapher and manuscript illuminator and painter
Dust Muhammad, and was a patroness of Persian literature and reli-
gious writings.74 Tahmasp’s daughter Gawhar Sultan Khanum (d. 1577),
whose mother is not known and who married Tahmasp’s nephew
Ibrahim, was also a patron of the arts and known for her piety and
learning75 as was Pari Khan Khanum (d. 1578), Tahmasp’s daughter by
a Circassian.76
Tribal elements were also both patrons, and practitioners, of the
traditional Persian arts, thus signalling their acceptance of the cultural
discourse of their Tajik associates as the realm’s prevailing cultural dis-
course. Musayyib Khan Takkalu (d. 1590), for example, a relative of the
Safavid house via a marriage alliance with the Mawsillu, was a notable
patron of the arts, a musician and a calligrapher.77
36 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp
Tahmasp and the faith
Tahmasp had been solicitous of Shi
ism during in his early years.
During his several campaigns against the Uzbeks between 1528 and
1533 Tahmasp made several pilgrimages to Imam Riza’s shrine in
Mashhad.78 In c. 1531, Tahmasp’s Mawsillu mother Tajlu Khanum
(d. 1540) endowed property to Qazvin shrine as did the son of his vizier
Qadi Jahan Husayni and in 1531 Tahmasp himself issued a firman
confirming the Marashi family’s guardianship of the shrine.79
Just as Ismail after Chaldiran so in the aftermath of the civil war
the centre was increasingly attentive to its identification with the faith.
Tahmasp was a prominent patron of Ashura ceremonies and was said
to have left a sister of his unmarried for the Imam and a horse saddled
and ready for the latter’s return.80 In 1537 he further confirmed the
Marashi’s trusteeship of the shrine in Qazvin, two years later he forgave
the taxes of two members of the family and, following the relocation
of the capital to Qazvin, he ordered the shrine’s refurbishment and
enlargement.81 Tahmasp also repaired and/or embellished a number of
religious sites, including for example, c. 1559–60, the great mosque at
Kirman, and, c. 1565–6, that in Sabzavar.82
In a clear effort to link Turk and Tajik with Shi
i discourse in art as in
life an illustration in the court-sponsored Shahnama associated with an
early passage describing a journey on a ship whose passengers are the
Prophet, Ali and the latter’s sons Hasan and Husayn, depicts all of them
wearing the Safavid taj. Shi
i invocations also feature in some of the
manuscript’s architectural panels.83 A similarly Shi
i agenda is also in
evidence in other works of the period.84
Others at the Safavid centre, including members of both the Safavid
household, Turk and Tajik, also publicly affirmed their adherence to the
faith. The Qazvin shrine was the burial place of choice for a number of
prominent figures, including the vizier Qadi Jahan, Tahmasp’s sister
Shahzada Sultanum, and a son of Tahmasp’s Tajik sadr Amir Muhammad
Yusuf (d. 1570).85 The same Shahzada Sultanum made important dona-
tions to the Iraqi shrine cities and at her death in 1564 another sister,
Khanish Khanum, was buried in Karbala.86 In Isfahan in 1566–7, an
Afshar chieftain built a canal from the nearby Zayanda Rud to the
Masjid-i Ali and appointed the city’s Shaykh al-Islam, the Arab Ali
Minshar Karaki, as supervisor of its vaqf,87 suggesting the presence of a
working relationship between elements of the Twelver clergy, including
non-Tajiks, and the tribal military/political elite. Too, as attested by an
Isfahani grain merchant’s 1539–40 dedication of the revenues of a group
of fruit trees to the Imamzada of Harun-i Vilayat,88 in the civil war’s
aftermath local elements also moved to declare publicly their allegiance
to the new faith.
Nevertheless, as already noted, over Tahmasp’s reign the centre’s spir-
itual discourse remained as heterodox as it was under Ismail. Turk and
 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp 37
Tajik elites, in the early years of Tahmasp’s reign especially, preoccupied
with the very fate of the Safavid project itself, generally evinced limited
interest in any of the details of Twelver Shi
i doctrine and practice per se:
none of the polity’s chief officers, Turk or Tajik, were known for any
decidedly, or specifically, Twelver Shi
i tendencies.
Ali Karaki, one of the few Arab Twelver clerics known for certain to
have relocated from the Arab West in this period to Safavid Iran to
participate in the faith’s establishment, suffered the same fate as the
various Tajik protégés of the contending Qizilbash tribes during the civil
war.89 Karaki, whose rising fortunes during Ismail’s reign had coincided
with Shamlu-Ustajlu pre-eminence, faced a particular challenge during
the 1527–31 Takkalu regency. A network composed of the joint-sadrs
Sayyid Mansur Dashtaki – a native of Shiraz and, although like the sixth
sadr, Astarabadi, a student of the Sunni philosopher Davani, at least a
nominal Twelver, and Sayyid Nimatallah Hilli, a genuine Twelver, their
court-based allies and Sulayman Qatifi, under whom Hilli had studied,
and whose opposition to Karaki dated at least to 1510, mounted a series
of challenges to Karaki, who as yet held no official court position. Hilli,
echoing his teacher’s ruling, challenged Karaki’s postulation that the
cleric, as deputy (naib) of the Hidden Imam, was permitted to lead the
Friday prayer during the Imam’s absence.90 In the event, in 1529, as
the Takkalu struggled to maintain their position, Hilli was dismissed and
banished. Two years later, in 1531–2, as the Shamlu-Ustajlu alliance,
during whose pre-eminence in Ismail’s reign Karaki had prospered,
achieved power, Dashtaki was dismissed and replaced as sadr by a student
of Karaki.
Coincident with the return of the Shamlu-Ustajlu alliance, during
whose earlier pre-eminence in Ismail’s reign his fortunes had flourished,
Karaki participated in the centre’s move against the Abu Muslim legends
which had surfaced at Ismail’s death and flourished during the regency
of, and were perhaps encouraged by heterodox elements among, the
Takkalu.91 In 1533, with Karaki’s loyalty to the Shamlu-Ustajlu centre
thus attested, Tahmasp issued a firman ceding authority over the realm’s
religious affairs to Karaki and ordering all officials and elites to give
‘obedience and submission . . . in all affairs’ to Karaki, who was therein
styled the ‘seal of the mujtahids’. The firman’s distinctive religious ter-
minology, in which the shah declared Karaki ‘deputy of the Twelfth
Imam (naib al-imam)’, suggests its composition by Karaki himself as the
newly re-emerged Shamlu-Ustajlu ruling coalition, struggling to assert its
pre-eminence internally and externally, ceded responsibility for details of
the faith’s doctrines and practices to an individual of proven loyalty. If
so, his allowing the temporal ruler to identify the Imam’s representa-
tive in the document permitted the identification of the shah as the imam
himself; indeed, during the reign of Tahmasp’s father Karaki had initially
similarly fostered the possibility of identifying Ismail as the returned
Imam.92
38 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp
Karaki subsequently moved to exercise his new-found authority to
further establish both the faith and that authority. He ordered changes in
the prayer direction of mosques throughout Safavid territory, an issue on
which he and Dashtaki had clashed, and also changes in the levying of
the land tax. He also ordered the appointment of a prayer leader in every
village to instruct the people in the tenets of Twelver Shi
ism. The latter
especially suggests the limited extent of the faith’s appeal throughout the
realm some three decades after Tabriz. Indeed the Friday prayers which
Karaki had argued the clergy were entitled to perform during the absence
of the Hidden Imam were discontinued soon after Karaki’s own death in
1534, as the Shamlu focused on the Ottoman incursions which culmin-
ated in the loss, in the same year, of Baghdad and the shrine cities, in
the aftermath of which Shamlu domination collapsed and the Ustajlu
commenced their ascendancy.93
Most contemporary Arab clerics remained sufficiently sceptical of
Safavid Shi
ism, perhaps all the more so given Karaki’s continued associ-
ations therewith and the loss of its Western territories, as to avoid
Safavid territory over the civil war period, even after Karaki’s death. The
Lebanese Husayn b. Abd al-Samad Amili and his associate Shaykh
Zayn al-Din Amili in particular offered criticisms of Karaki’s legacy and
his Safavid connections.94 Even Zayn al-Din’s sudden execution by the
Ottomans in 1557, two years after the Amasya treaty, and Shaykh
Husayn’s subsequent flight to Iran, failed to spark any mass exodus of
Arab Shi
i clerics to Safavid territory.95
Subsequently, however, the Ustajlu-dominated centre, clearly mindful
of Karaki’s loyalty, was attentive to other members of his family. Karaki’s
son, for example, was honoured at court. Special attention was reserved
for the son of one of Karaki’s daughters, Sayyid Husayn (d. 1592–3),
who came to Iran c. 1552, nearly twenty years after the death of his
grandfather and five decades after Tabriz. Sayyid Husayn, as a clear
mark of particular favour, was appointed Ardabil’s Shaykh al-Islam.
After a 1559 essay for Tahmasp in which he argued for the legitimacy of
the clergy’s performance of Friday prayer during the absence of the
Hidden Imam – the position for which his grandfather had been roundly
criticised – Sayyid Husayn was invited to the newly designated capital of
Qazvin where, c. 1563, he was appointed the capital’s Shaykh al-Islam,
replacing Shaykh Husayn, who, as his teacher Zayn al-Din, had opposed
Ali Karaki’s position on this issue. Like his grandfather Sayyid Husayn
was later accorded the title ‘seal of the mujtahids’.96

Summary and conclusion

Although it has been suggested that soon after the 1555 Amasya treaty
Tahmasp scarcely left his Qazvin palace until his death in 1576,97 in fact
the shah was continually active over this period in the face of a variety of
internal and external challenges. In 1556, mindful of his half-brother
 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp 39
Alqas’ treachery with the Ottomans, Tahmasp organised the arrest and
jailing of his own son, the future Ismail II, in Herat. In 1557 Tahmasp
sent troops to recover Astarabad. In 1558 he attacked and retook
Qandahar from the Mughals and received the Ottoman prince Bayazid
who had fled East after rebelling against Sulayman. In 1560 he received
an Ottoman delegation and the following year he sent Bayazid back to
the Sultan. In 1563 he parried another Uzbek attack and sent Masum
Bek to take Mazandaran. In 1564 the same Masum Bek and a number of
tribal amirs put down a rebellion in Herat and the next year this column
moved North to check a potential threat. In 1566, raids were launched
against Khurasan from Bukhara and the next year Tiflis was threatened
and the governor of Gilan revolted. Masum Bek and a number of amirs
checked this latter threat and Gilan was given to an Ustajlu governor.
In 1567 Tahmasp dispatched his own Shahnama with a large delegation
to the recently ascended Ottoman Sultan Selim II (reg. 1566–74).
Although perhaps intended to attest to continued good relations with
the new sultan, the gift of this lavishly illustrated, very Persian text sim-
ultaneously spoke to the continued prominence of Persian culture at the
Ottoman court, promoted Safavid superiority therein and, perhaps most
importantly, as per our earlier discussion of the work, affirmed to the
new Ottoman ruler the unity of the forces behind the Safavid project;98
implicit too therein was the eventual ‘Persian’ triumph over more con-
temporary adversaries. In 1569 an Afshar tribal figure was sent to
remove a recalcitrant governor near Bandar Abbas. In 1571 forces in
Gilan rose and were put down and, in 1573 over-taxation of local guilds
sparked a rising in Tabriz.99
The deaths of Jihan Shah Qaraquyunlu and of both Uzun Hasan, the
latter in the aftermath of the 1473 Ottoman rout of Bashkent, and
Yaqub of the Aqquyunlu, had inaugurated intra-confederation struggles
from which neither the Qaraquyunlu or Aqquyunlu polities recovered.
Indeed, the political fragmentation among the Aqquyunlu at Yaqub’s
death certainly contributed to an upturn in Safavid fortunes, especially
as key tribal elements detached themselves from the Aqquyunlu system
and aligned with the Safavid project.100
By contrast, in the face of both Chaldiran and Ismail’s death ten years
later, the Safavid project survived. The fractioning of the Qizilbash
confederation at Ismail’s death did not betoken any efforts to identify
alternate successors to Ismail – Tahmasp’s brothers Sam Mirza and
Alqas Mirza attracted Turk or Tajik support – or to overturn the project
itself, but rather stemmed from clashes for positions of influence around
his very young successor. Arguably, once again, good fortune smoothed
the success of the reconstitution of a new Turk-Tajik alliance around a
new shah as both the realm’s traditional enemies, the Uzbeks and the
Ottomans, were unable, or simply failed, to press home the obvious
advantages which each, the Ottomans in particular, enjoyed in this
period as they had following Chaldiran.
40 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: Tahmasp
At the same time, however, the realm’s key constituents did not pass
up the opportunities afforded them, especially following the Amasya
treaty. Over Tahmasp’s reign the Ustajlu, prominent under Ismail, only
further consolidated the position of pre-eminence they achieved at the
Safavid centre at the end of the civil war. As under Ismail, the other
Qizilbash tribes came to be arrayed hierarchically below. Land grants,
marriages and allocations of key posts, as before, secured the loyalty of
both key members of these tribes and key members of the family itself to
the reconstituted centre. Encouraged by the ongoing, and in this period
perhaps necessary, Safavid acceptance of nominal Tajik conversions
to Shi
ism and together with tolerance of continued widespread Sunni
tendencies, Tajik elites also stood by the project. Judiciously applied
sticks and carrots encouraged the loyalty of notables along the realm’s
Northern marches. Paralleling and further cementing these practical
efforts to insure the support of its chief constituencies was the continued
promulgation of the heterodox but exclusive spiritual discourse familiar
from Ismail’s reign coupled with the continued patronage, by tribal and
family members in particular, of traditional Tajik cultural markers.
Over the longer term Tahmasp’s reign thus less witnessed the estab-
lishment of any system of relations among and between the realm’s core
constituencies radically different to that which had obtained during
Ismail’s reign than it did the reconfiguration of those constituencies’
arrangement. In both instances the Ustajlu were a key force at the centre.
At the apex of the project’s component parts stood the shah himself,
whose discourse, as that of his father, both gave voice to, and medi-
ated between, the potentially conflicting interests, agendas and cultural
traditions, of these constituencies and in the process transcended them all.
 3
The Second Civil War
Ismail II (1576–1577) and
Khudabanda (1578–1587)

As during Ismail’s lifetime so over the nearly fifty-year reign of his son
Tahmasp the Safavid project came to turn fundamentally on the person
of Tahmasp as simultaneously the spokesman for, mediator between and
transcendent figure above, the interests and agendas of the polity’s core
constituencies arranged hierarchically around him. Thus, as at Ismail’s
death five decades before, the configuration of constituencies which
established itself at the centre over Tahmasp’s reign was voided with his
death in 1576, but with results which were both familiar – prolonged
internal disorder – and unfamiliar – the formation of alliances both
between and among traditional and newer members of the project’s key
constituencies and the pre-emptive murder of potential contenders for
the throne and their supporters.

Alliances and antagonisms

Tahmasp’s mother was a Mawsillu and his own Mawsillu wife was
the mother of both Muhammad Khudabanda (b. 1532) and the future
Ismail II (b. 1537). Of Tahmasp’s other known wives four were Georgian,
one each was a Circassian and Daghistani, and two others were concu-
bines.1 In 1556, nearly two decades after Ismail’s birth, one of Tahmasp’s
Georgian wives bore him a son, Haydar.2
The succession of Haydar, twenty years old at his father’s death, was
supported by a complex coalition which consisted of Ustajlu, some
Talish, Takkalu and Georgian elements at court, the supporters of Masum
Bek Safavi and his son, called the Shaykhavandis, some qurchi elements
and Tahmasp’s nephew Ibrahim.3
This coalition was opposed by a similarly complex grouping of
Rumlu, Afshar, Qajar, Bayat and Varsaq elements, Kurds, Pari Khan,
Tahmasp’s daughter by a Circassian wife, and Pari Khan’s Circassian
uncle Shamkhal Sultan. In short order this latter group captured and
killed Haydar and freed his older half-brother Ismail who had been
42 Second Civil War: Ismail II and Khudabanda
imprisoned since 1556. Members of Haydar’s party having fled the
capital, Ismail was brought thence and declared shah in August 1576.
Later accounts embellish the accession ceremony itself4 but the sub-
sequent disposition of key positions of state and key provinces reveals
that in addition to those mentioned above, elements of the Dhul-Qadr,
Shamlu, Takkalu and, even some Ustajlu, were also among key
supporters.5
The latter, no doubt mindful of the earlier threats posed to Tahmasp
by his half-brothers Alqas and Sam, quickly moved against potential
contenders for the throne and their supporters. Leading Ustajlus were
killed as were a number of Ismail II’s half-brothers, Ibrahim – Tahmasp’s
nephew – and other supporters of both Haydar and his father Tahmasp.
Masum Bek’s son, likewise a family member, was also jailed.6 Pari Khan
also soon fell out of favour and her wealth was seized. In 1577, that
is within a year, however, Ismail was dead, possibly of an accidental
overdose of opium.7
Although Pari Khan quickly resurfaced, other Qizilbash, including
Shamlu, Dhul-Qadr, Ustajlu and Afshar elements, now settled on
Muhammad Khudabanda, Ismail II’s older uterine brother by Sultanum
Bekum Mawsillu. Khudabanda, then aged about forty-six, was
Tahmasp’s oldest son, but his blindness owing to an eye affliction had
caused him to be passed over at his father’s death. Now, however, his
Qizilbash supporters brought him to Qazvin from Shiraz and gradually
withdrew their support of Pari Khan. Soon after Khudabanda’s coron-
ation Pari Khan and her Circassian uncle were killed, she by her own
Afshar guardian. Ismail II’s infant son was also killed.8
Khudabanda’s second wife was Khayr al-Nisa, of the Mazandarani
Marashi sayyids. She was, like Pari Khan, a non-Qizilbash who enjoyed
Qizilbash support – in Khayr al-Nisa’s case, especially from the Shamlu.
Khayr al-Nisa now initiated an effort to have her first-born son, twelve-
year-old Hamza (b. 1566–7), recognised as her husband’s successor.9
When, however, she moved against a number of key Qizilbash elements,
and especially when she attempted to bypass key figures among the
Afshar, Dhul-Qadr, Shamlu, Ustajlu – one of whom was in command of
Ardabil and who shared control of Khurasan with the Shamlu – and
Turkman tribes, all of whom had previously supported her against
Pari Khan, they complained vigorously to Khudabanda. In 1579, less
than two years after her husband had been declared shah with their
support, these same amirs therefore sanctioned her murder. At this
widespread disorder broke out both in the capital and the provinces
among Qizilbash levies; some of Khayr al-Nisa’s Mazandarani associ-
ates were targeted and even the Afshar qurchibashi and a Dhul-Qadr
official sought the protection of their fellow amirs.10
A Takkalu-Mawsillu-Turkman tribal alliance now declared Khayr
al-Nisa’s first son Hamza crown prince. In response, a Shamlu-Ustajlu
alliance rose in Khurasan in 1581 to assert the claim of their protégé,
 Second Civil War: Ismail II and Khudabanda 43
Khayr al-Nisa’s second son Abbas (b. 1571), whom both Ismail II and
Khayr al-Nisa had tried to have killed. A march eastward against this
alliance by Khudabanda, Hamza and their allies the next year turned
back when faced with Ottoman incursions in the West. The following
year, 1586, Hamza was killed in camp in Azerbaijan.11
At Hamza’s death some Shamlu and Ustajlu elements supported the
designation of the young Abu Talib Mirza (b. 1574–5), Khudabanda’s
third son by Khayr al-Nisa, as crown prince. In Khurasan other Shamlu
had lost control of Abbas to Murshid Quli Khan Ustajlu who, with
the support of elements of the Turkman – to whom he was related by
marriage – Afshars and Qajars, brought Abbas toward Qazvin, picking
up additional support along the way from the Dhul-Qadr. Abbas’ formal
accession, in 1587, with Khudabanda handing his crown to his sixteen-
year-old son some ten years after his own enthronement and then himself
being jailed in Rayy, signalled the return of the Ustajlu as the pre-eminent
tribal force within the Qizilbash confederation.12
As during the years following Ismail I’s death, foreign enemies took
advantage of the internal struggles which followed Tahmasp’s death. An
Uzbek attack, launched in 1578, was repulsed by the Turkman governor
of Mashhad. More importantly, however, just as a peace treaty with the
European powers had permitted the Ottomans to launch the series of
invasions of Safavid territory which began in 1532, so now the defeat
which the Ottomans suffered at Lepanto in 1571 together with Hapsburg
acknowledgement of Ottoman power freed Sultan Murad III (reg.
1574–95) to launch a series of incursions into Safavid territory between
1578 and 1590. Parts of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Shirvan, Kurdistan and
Luristan fell, as did, in 1585, Tabriz. The internal disorder also encour-
aged risings in Kurdistan and Shirvan and feuding among Georgian
princes in the North.13

The internal dynamic: Turk and Tajik in the second civil war
Over this period key Qizilbash elites dominated the polity’s key central
and provincial political-military posts, if commensurate with shifting
political alignments. At the centre, Khudabanda made his son Hamza his
vakil and, at his death in 1586, Abu Talib, Hamza’s full brother by
Khayr al-Nisa, assumed the position. However Murshid Quli Khan, the
Ustajlu chief who put his protégé, Khayr al-Nisa’s second son Abbas, on
the throne, made himself vakil, thus signalling the resumption of the
tribal domination of the post.14 The Afshar held the post of qurchibashi
in this period, as they had since 1534.15
Provincial governorships were held by tribal elites appointed from the
centre or, as a sign of the inability of the coalition controlling the capital
to enforce its writ throughout the realm, retained by tribes out of favour
at the centre. In either case provincial authorities continued to retain
considerable local autonomy.16 Indeed Khayr al-Nisa’s attempt to
44 Second Civil War: Ismail II and Khudabanda
remove Kashan from the Turkman and otherwise undermine the role of
other key tribal amirs had marked the beginning of her end.
Tajiks continued as administrators at both the central and provincial
levels. Mirza Salman, of Isfahan’s Jabiri family which had served the
Aqquyunlu and, at the 1503–4 Safavid conquest of Fars, provided a
vizier for the province under the Dhul-Qadr, was assistant to the vizier of
Azerbaijan and then became supervisor of the royal workshops. Having
changed allegiances several times immediately after Tahmasp’s death,
he was appointed vizier in 1577 during Ismail II’s short reign and
remained in post into Khudabanda’s reign. Although at the murder of
Khayr al-Nisa he was surrendered by Khudabanda and Hamza as part of
the price for continued support of the Turkman-Takkalu alliance which
controlled Qazvin and was murdered, the family maintained its hold
over the vizierate of Fars until the eighteenth century.17
In another contrast with the first civil war, during this period there was
a greater degree of continuity of service among the Tajiks in the central
and provincial administration, irrespective of religious affiliations or
association with changing tribal ruling fractions. Tajiks, and sayyids
especially, continued to hold the post of sadr, for example.18 Tahmasp’s
chief accountants were all Tajiks and most remained in post throughout
the civil war. Mirza Shukrallah Isfahani, Tahmasp’s last comptroller-
general, was Ismail II’s vizier and, at Khudabanda’s succession, became
vizier of Khurasan and warden of the Mashhad shrine. A Khuzani also
served the Ustajlu Murshid Quli Khan in Khurasan under Khudabanda.19
A member of the Tabrizi Kujuji family was Ismail II’s chief scribe, comp-
troller near Hamadan and then comptroller-general. He served Hamza
and Abbas I made him vizier.20 At the provincial level also there was
continuity in the Tajik domination of junior and senior administrative
posts.21 Khudabanda was especially respectful of the Tajik sayyid class,
in 1578 confirming the Marashi sayyids as custodians of the shrine in
Qazvin22 and receiving at court Mir Damad (d. 1630–1), Ali Karaki’s
grandson through marriage to a prominent Astarabadi sayyid family,
when he left Mashhad.23
Although Turk and Tajik remained pre-eminent at the centre, as will
have been seen from the descriptions of the key actors at the centre in
these years, newly incorporated Georgian and Circassian elements now
began to appear on the scene, attesting to their rising influence within
the polity. Pari Khan’s uncle, Shamkhal Sultan, was sealkeeper during
Ismail II’s short reign, when the Ustajlu were out of power and a Qizilbash-
Circassian alliance dominated the centre.24 In 1585 Farhad Bek, a
ghulam and chief administrator of the imperial household during
Tahmasp’s later years, became chief agent to Khudabanda’s son Hamza.
He built himself a huge mansion in Isfahan’s Naqsh-i Jahan garden,
away from the Harun-i Vilayat district, the city’s traditional centre,
using materials from a palace of Ismail I.25
Elite-level marriages contracted in this period, as earlier, point to
 Second Civil War: Ismail II and Khudabanda 45
efforts to win the support of, or at least placate, certain key constituents.
Although under Ismail II many pro-Haydar Ustajlus were killed and he
himself was son of a Mawsillu, he married an Ustajlu woman and in
1576, the same year as his father’s death, he married a woman from the
Khunuslu, apparently an Ustajlu sub-clan. He also seems to have mar-
ried one of his own daughters to Salman Khan Ustajlu, whose father was
Ismail I’s grandson. In a clear attempt to strengthen his hand with newer
members of the polity as well Ismail, also in 1576, married the daughter
of his sister Pari Khan’s Circassian uncle Shamkhal Sultan. His new
wife’s sister was Tahmasp’s Circassian wife and remained Pari Khan’s
close advisor during this period and was killed with her.26
Khudabanda also used marriages to trawl for Tajik support. In 1555
Ismail II had married the daughter of the 1535–6 marriage between a
sister of Tahmasp and the Nimatallahi Nur al-Din Yazdi (d. 1564), son
of Ismail’s sadr and vakil. In 1578–9, Khudabanda married a daughter
of his brother Ismail II to Khalilallah b. Mir Miran Yazdi (d. 1607–8),
the son of the same Nur al-Din.27
Marriages of others of Tahmasp’s daughters in this period reflect
similar political acumen. In 1577–8, i.e. after Tahmasp’s death, another
of Tahmasp’s daughters – Maryam Bekum (d. 1608–9) – married Khan
Ahmad Khan Lahiji, of a family long associated with the Safavids.28
Ismail II promised another of Tahmasp’s daughters, Zaynab Bekum,
full sister of Maryam, to Ali Quli Khan, the Shamlu guardian of Abbas
I and governor of Khurasan in 1576–7; the latter died before the mar-
riage could take place, and she never married.29 In 1580 another, the
daughter of a concubine promised to a son of Tahmasp’s full brother
Bahram, then governor of Qandahar, was, at the latter’s death in 1576,
instead married to the Mawsillu-Turkman governor of Tabriz.30 Another
daughter, by a Daghistani princess, was promised to Musayyib Khan
Takkalu, a cousin, but in 1580–2 married the same Salman Khan Ustajlu
who married a daughter of Ismail II.31 As for Khudabanda, in 1586,
his first son by Khayr al-Nisa, Hamza (d. 1586), married into the
family of the Tajik Salman Jabiri, whose career spanned the reigns of
Tahmasp, Ismail II and Khudabanda, and whose family had served the
Aqquyunlu.32

A Sunni interlude
As during the reigns of Ismail and Tahmasp so in this period, as typified
by references in contemporary court chronicles, few of the realm’s non-
clerical elites – Turk, Tajik or northerner – were especially well versed in
the details of the doctrines and practices distinctive to the established
faith.33 As earlier in the century many Tajiks, as already noted, retained
discernible Sunni proclivities. Nominal profession of Twelver Shi
ism
remained sufficient to secure employment at the central or provincial
level over this period for those elites whose families, or who themselves,
46 Second Civil War: Ismail II and Khudabanda
had served the region’s earlier non-Shi
i political establishments. Such
profession signified an expression of fealty to the person of the shah
which, for the Tajiks especially, included acknowledgement of the
Safavids’ sayyid status, and amounted to a profession of loyalty to
the larger Safavid project and their own part therein.
The widespread reappearance of the Abu Muslim traditions in the
realm at Ismail’s death and the risings among Nuqtavi elements in
Kashan and Ismaili elements in Andijan during Tahmasp’s 1574 illness34
had demonstrated the clear continued potential for challenges to the dom-
inant Safavid spiritual discourse at times of uncertainty at the centre.
These were only aggravated by the struggles between the supporters of
Haydar and Ismail II over the succession.
The case of Mirza Makhdum Sharifi (1544/5–1587) illustrates the
relative weighting which the centre continued to accord loyalty and
faith, especially at such times. Although his family could trace its lineage
back to Sharif Jurjani, the famous theologian who had served Timur
himself, Mirza Makhdum was descended from Sayyid Sharif al-Din Ali
who, though not known for any especially long-standing Shi
i pro-
clivities, became sadr in 1512, and the Sunni Husayni sayyid Qadi Jahan
Qazvini. The latter, supported by the Ustajlu, was vizier during the latter
years of Ismail I’s reign and the early years of Tahmasp’s, was dismissed
during the first civil war only to be reappointed as the Ustajlu reasserted
their predominance; his granddaughter married Khudabanda c. 1549.
Mirza Makhdum, appointed chief judge in Fars, where the family had
extensive land holdings, came to the capital Qazvin later in Tahmasp’s
reign. He did not, according to Munshi’s later account, enjoy the shah’s
immediate favour. He was allowed to preach in the city, however, and
the large crowds he drew attested to his own prominence as a Sunni, to
the continued presence of Sunni sentiments at the very political heart
of the polity and to the centre’s continuing tolerance of Sunnism.35
At Tahmasp’s death, Pari Khan chose Mirza Makhdum to read the
khutba at her brother Ismail II’s accession and he was appointed co-sadr,
sharing the post with Shah Inayatallah Isfahani. With such support
Mirza Makhdum subsequently made even less effort to conceal his Sunni
sympathies.36
The tolerance shown Mirza Makhdum and his overtly Sunni tendencies
by Ismail II, Pari Khan and their Qizilbash and, apparently also, their
Circassian allies coincided with efforts to moderate Safavid Shi
ism’s
exclusionist tendencies.37 This was itself in accord with the terms of the
1555 Amasya treaty with the Ottomans which had required the Safavids
to end the ritual cursing of the first three caliphs. Such moves would
thereby obviate any Ottoman excuse for breaking the treaty and, more
importantly, could only have encouraged greater loyalty among the
realm’s many at best nominally-Shi
i Tajiks38 and, thereby, bolster Ismail
II’s own internal political position.
In the event, some Qizilbash amirs in alliance with prominent Iranian
 Second Civil War: Ismail II and Khudabanda 47
Shi
i clerics rejected Ismail II’s Sunni flirtation, bespeaking the extent
to which Shi
ism, if not the detailed body of Twelver Shi
i doctrine
and practice, continued to be the centre’s faith of choice even, or
perhaps especially, in these times of political, and concomitant spiritual,
uncertainty. At Ismail II’s perhaps timely death Mirza Makhdum, nar-
rowly missing being killed by Qizilbash elements, fled to Ottoman
territory.39 However brief, the Sunni flirtation together with the political
disorder which marked the period further can only have further deterred
key Twelver Shi
i clerics based outside the realm from association with
the Safavid project.40
The aftermath of the Mirza Makhdum episode and Ismail II’s death
witnessed a renewal in the realm’s spiritual uncertainty: in the first
four or five years after Ismail II’s death contemporary sources record
the rising of several pseudo-Ismails, described as darvishes (qalandars)
unattached to any recognised Sufi order. These were said to have enjoyed
widespread support, among Tajiks especially in Luristan, Fars, Khuzistan,
Hamadan, Gilan and Khurasan; one originated in the Ardabil area, the
spiritual home of the Safavid Sufi order. The widespread, apparently
non-Qizilbash, tribal support these risings also enjoyed, among Kurds
and Lurs especially, suggests interest in the primacy of the militant Sufi
dimension characteristic of early Safavid spiritual discourse.41
Not surprisingly, therefore, Khudabanda’s subsequent ten-year rule
witnessed a resumption in the identification of Twelver Shi
ism as the
realm’s established faith and the person of the shah with, as chief
spokesman for and defender of, the faith. An inscription in Isfahan’s
Congregational Mosque dated to 1578, the year of his accession, refers to
Khudabanda as ‘the most just . . . Sultan’ and ‘the Shadow of Allah’.
Isfahan’s Shah Zayd Imamzada dates to 1586 and mosque repairs were
carried in Shiraz in the same year.42 As well, a number of prominent court
figures were buried at the Qazvin shrine, including Ismail II himself.43

The arts in the second civil war

Patronage of the traditional Persian discourse by the different factions in
control of the centre did not suffer as much in this period of political
disorder and spiritual contention as might be thought. Perhaps precisely
in the midst of such challenges, the strengthening of bridges to the Tajik
class, whose active support was indispensable to the realm’s daily life,
was all the more crucial. Indeed, as with members of that administra-
tive class itself over this period, there was little turnover in the court-
based artists between the reign of Tahmasp and that of his immediate
successors.
Ismail II, himself a calligrapher, poet and painter, was pointedly
interested in the arts of the book. Such painters as the Afshar Sadiqi Bek,
Zayn al-Abidin, Siyavush, and Ali Asghar, who had served both
Tahmasp and his nephew Ibrahim – killed following Ismail II’s accession
48 Second Civil War: Ismail II and Khudabanda
– at the latter’s court in Herat, all entered Ismail II’s service and were
involved in the lavish illustration of a Shahnama which Ismail commis-
sioned but which, likely because of his early death, was never completed.
If some of these artists’ works were less detailed and perhaps less inter-
esting than the works they had produced for Tahmasp, such artists as
Shaykh Muhammad, who had also worked for Ibrahim, continued to
produce works in the style reminiscent of the pre-civil war period. The
Husayni sayyid and calligrapher Mir Sayyid Ahmad of Mashhad served
both Tahmasp and Ismail II.44 Khudabanda’s son Hamza supported the
work of Siyavush, a student of Muzaffar Ali who had contributed to
Tahmasp’s Garshaspnama and Ismail II’s Shahnama.45
The arts also flourished in the provinces. Based in Herat Muhammadi
enjoyed the special patronage of Ali Quli Khan Shamlu, Abbas’ relative
and guardian, in the years prior to Abbas’ accession. Trained at the court
of Tahmasp, Muhammadi both contributed to a Gulistan dated to 1582
and produced single-page works, drawn and painted, for inclusion in
albums, suggesting that artists were as mindful of the need to seek sup-
port among individual patrons as that of the court whose patronage
could, especially in this period, vary with the taste of the ruler, let alone
the ruler himself.46
In Mashhad Abdallah Shirazi served Ibrahim for twenty years and
then entered Ismail II’s service before returning East. In the early 1580s
Shirazi illustrated and illuminated collections of Ibrahim’s poetry, per-
haps with the patronage of Ibrahim’s daughter Gawhar Shad (d. 1587).
His colleagues are identified with a page from a divan of Hafiz dated to
1581–2. The latter was produced under the patronage of the Turkman
governor of Tun and Tabas whose sister was married to Murshid Quli
Khan Ustajlu, the governor of Mashhad and prime supporter of Abbas
I’s candidacy.47 Kashan also continued as such a centre; the painter
Ali Asghar returned to his native city after Ismail II’s death but continued
to produce works in a distinctly Qazvini style. The centre’s scribes also
appear to have found work in the shrine cities of Mashhad and Qum
copying Qur
ans and other religious materials. Motifs found in book-
binding and illumination also continued to feature in carpet and metal-
work and ceramics in this period and to attest to developments in each of
these crafts and their continued cross-fertilisation.48
Among prose writers also there was also some continuity of employ-
ment over the period. The Husayni sayyid Qadi Ahmad Qummi, whose
father had served Tahmasp and Tahmasp’s nephew Ibrahim in Herat
and died in 1582, held employment throughout the reigns of both
Ismail II – who entrusted Qadi Ahmad with the project which, when
completed in 1590, two years after ‘Abbas’ enthronement, was the
chronicle Khulasat al-Tavarikh – and Khudabanda.49
 Second Civil War: Ismail II and Khudabanda 49
Summary and conclusion
The conventional wisdom on the events of this period stresses the
inherent dichotomy between Qizilbash and Tajik interests, with the
recently arrived Georgian and Circassian elements allying themselves
with the Tajiks.50 In fact, however, contemporary political events are
more usefully explained as the result of the break-up of the Qizilbash
confederation between and among its tribal components and the forging
of alliances between these and such newly emerging, and incorporated,
elites as the Georgians and Circassians, while links were maintained with
Tajik elements whose support for the project in fact remained consistent
over the period. Too, political murder first features prominently on the
Safavid scene following Tahmasp’s death.
If times of crisis provide better evidence of mettle than do times of
peace, then the struggles in this period in particular attest to the ongoing,
if not yet final, breakdown of any remaining parochialisms which separ-
ated Turks both from each other but especially from Tajiks together with
the beginnings of the integration of new constituencies into the Safavid
project less than a century after the capture of Tabriz. So well developed
were the ties between and among these constituencies and the Safavid
house itself that all supported the perpetuation of the Safavid project –
if not always on their own ranking within the centre’s hierarchy and,
therefore, on its leader. Safavid elites also agreed on the continued estab-
lishment of Twelver Shi
ism, at least and especially as it distinguished
their project from both domestic and external alternatives, even if most
were still unfamiliar with its finer points.
 4
Monumental Challenges and
Monumental Responses
The Reign of Abbas I (1587–1629)

Abbas’ 1587 enthronement in Qazvin was supported by, and repre-

sented the reassertion of the military and political pre-eminence of,
elements among the Ustajlu. Other Qizilbash elements arrayed them-
selves around the Ustajlu-dominated centre:1 soon after the formal
accession, various provincial amirs – including Afshar from Kirman,
Dhul-Qadr from Fars and Qum, Talish from Astara and Turkman from
Ardabil – arrived to pay homage to the new ruler. Under Murshid Quli
Khan Ustajlu’s supervision, these received letters confirming their pro-
vincial holdings and listing the number of troops to be provided for an
expedition to break the Uzbek siege of Herat. The expedition was com-
manded by the same Shamlu amir whom Ismail II had ordered to kill
Abbas.
In this same time frame, two royal marriages were arranged, one
between Abbas and the daughter of one of Tahmasp’s sons killed by
Ismail II and another with the widow of Khudabanda’s son Hamza,
herself the granddaughter of Tahmasp’s full brother, Bahram.2 Thus was
Abbas’ position within, and as the head of, the house further bolstered.

The challenges
The situation was not stable, however. Murshid Quli Khan was soon
challenged by rival Ustajlu and Shamlu elements and their Tajik associ-
ates. Murshid Quli Khan’s subsequent, and likely calculated, failure to
relieve his Shamlu rival in Herat which permitted the city’s capture by
the Uzbeks,3 can only have hastened his own murder, sanctioned by an
alliance of Qizilbash, including rival Ustajlu, and Tajik administrative
elements. The victorious Ustajlu faction soon dispatched those who had
served Khudabanda and his son Hamza and some non-Ustajlu amirs,
including some Shamlu and Turkman. Abbas freed his father from jail in
Rayy, where he had been consigned by Murshid Quli Khan.4
The writ of this new configuration of forces and, by extension, that of
 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I 51
Abbas himself, did not extend very far, however. In Khurasan other
amirs and troops, including Qajars and other Ustajlu, deserted to other
Safavid princes, including the grandsons of Ismail I through his son
Bahram. In Isfahan still other amirs supported Abbas’ full brothers, Abu
Talib, at thirteen three years younger than Abbas, and the younger
Tahmasp (b. 1576). The feuding spilled over into Fars, Kirman and Yazd
during the third year after Abbas’ accession.5 The Tajik associates of the
various Qizilbash factions played roles in these machinations.6
The ongoing disarray after Abbas’ accession allowed the Ottomans,
who had commenced a series of invasions of Iran in 1578 and captured
Tabriz in 1585, to continue their incursions. In the East, the Uzbeks,
having seized Herat, moved against Mashhad.
The internal politico-military challenges to Abbas authority coincided
with, and no doubt encouraged and were encouraged by, spiritual
challenges. Between 1587 and 1589–90, certain Sufi elements openly
questioned Abbas I about the identity of their pir, implying that the still-
living Khudabanda remained the order’s head. The reaction of the young
Abbas, and his tribal backers, to such overt disloyalty to the person of
the shah was absolute: the Sufis were executed. So, too, in 1592–3, was
the leader of a group of Sufis in Lahijan which had supported Ismail I
when he was in hiding in Gilan but who, in this period, also questioned
the identity of Abbas as the present pir.7
Spiritual challenges were also offered by Nuqtavi elements. These,
whose discourse focused on the cyclical renewal of prophecy, bespeaking
associations with Hurufi and Ismaili doctrine as well as other millenar-
ian discourses, had risen in villages around Kashan when Tahmasp fell ill
two years before his death in 1576.8 In 1590, several years after Abbas’
enthronement, a rising by a Shiraz-based Nuqtavi poet whom Tahmasp
had blinded in 1565, was foiled by local clerics. Two years later, how-
ever, the Nuqtavi Darvish Khusraw rose up in Qazvin. The darvish, from
a family of refuse collectors and well-diggers, had been active and popu-
lar in the city, as well as in Sava, Kashan, Isfahan, Nain and Shiraz,
late in Tahmasp’s reign. Tahmasp himself had examined the darvish’s
polemic and had banned him from public speaking. After his accession
both Abbas and other officials visited the darvish’s lodge, in a clear
effort, in the midst of the disorder recounted above, to derive credibility
from associating themselves with such an evidently popular preacher. On
the basis of numerology, Nuqtavi elements forecast 1593 as the year in
which a Nuqtavi who had achieved true unity with Allah would assume
power. In the context of the ongoing disorder this preaching is said to
have attracted significant support among both ‘Turk [i.e. Qizilbash] and
Tajik’. The movement was also put down, with the shah’s personal
intervention,9 but boiled up in Kashan, Mashhad and Fars. An Ustajlu
amir and other Qizilbash elements associated with it were executed.10
Twice in the years after 1590, when Abbas was occupied with Uzbek
challenges in Khurasan, the Mushasha Arabs of lower Iraq, known for
52 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I
their Twelver associations, moved to assert their independence; on the
second occasion, they occupied Dizful. Safavid forces checked both
moves.11
Although all these challenges came to nought, they reflected clear,
ongoing disquiet among both Turk – even some Qizilbash – and Tajik,
rural and urban elements, with the new shah’s spiritual credentials,
especially in the context of ongoing political strife.

Political and military responses: creation, consolidation and expansion

Once again, political pragmatism prevailed. A 1590 peace treaty with
the Porte recognised Safavid losses of territory to the Ottomans, including
parts of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Qarabagh, Khuzistan and Shirvan and
parts of Luristan and Kurdistan and Tabriz itself, and included a clause
requiring the Safavids cease cursing the first three caliphs.12 With peace
secured in the West, albeit in as humiliating a fashion as the Amasya treaty
decades before, in the same year Abbas moved against and defeated the
ghulam governor of Isfahan, and blinded and jailed his own two brothers.
In 1590 also Abbas defeated Yaqub Khan Dhul-Qadr, governor of Shiraz,
effectively marking the end of the realm’s second civil war.13
Organisation for and the retaking of territories seized by the Uzbeks
and Ottomans over the two decades since Tahmasp’s death soon com-
menced and, in 1598–9, Eastern Khurasan, including Herat, Mashhad,
Balkh, Marv and Astarabad, were retaken although Balkh, and much
artillery, was lost to a Uzbek reinvasion in 1602–3. Turning West,
Safavid forces took Azerbaijan, Nakhchivan and Irivan. An Ottoman
counterattack on Tabriz was crushed, and Shirvan was retaken in
1607–8. Although a 1612 peace treaty recognised the 1555 Amasya
boundaries, a further Ottoman effort to recover their lost territories,
focusing on the Caucasus, followed. Despite a 1619–20 treaty, in 1623–4
the Safavids retook parts of Kurdistan, Baghdad and the shrine cities and
occupied Diyar Bakr. A series of campaigns over the period brought
parts of rebellious Georgia into Safavid territory. Qandahar, lost to the
Mughals in 1594, was retaken in 1622.
Abbas’ own court chronicler Munshi credits these military successes
to Abbas’ divinely inspired creation of the ghulam or qullar corps – small
forces composed mainly of non-Qizilbash Arab and Persian tribal volun-
teers and captured Georgian, Circassian and Armenian youth, converted
to Islam and trained in the military arts.
In fact, the formation of such a force pre-dated Abbas,14 and the
ghulams served both as military levies and commanders, joining with
tribal elements at the military-political centre and, alongside Tajiks, as
administrators; there were even ghulam artisans in the royal workshops.
In this period, moreover, the military ghulams in particular were neither
an independent, or especially large, body of troops or group of com-
manders, let alone the most prominent military force, or political power.15
 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I 53
By Munshi’s own accounts, the Safavid forces involved in the
minor and major campaigns against the centre’s internal and external
opponents over Abbas’ reign comprised combinations of military forces
– Qizilbash tribal contingents, qurchis, ghulams, non-qurchi Qizilbash,
and even corps of musketeers. These forces were led, individually or
sometimes jointly, by commanders drawn from various backgrounds.
These included, for example, the Qaramanlu commander Farhad Khan
(d. c. 1598–9), who was amir al-umara of Azerbaijan and governor,
variously, of Astarabad, Fars, Gilan, Herat and Shiraz, and warden of
the Ardabil shrine16; the Armenian ghulam Allahvirdi Khan (d. c. 1613),
chief of the qullar corps (qullaraqasi) and governor of Fars; and the
Kurdish commander Ganj Ali Khan (d. 1624–5), later governor of
Kirman.17
Overall, if the ghulams did supply both commanders and levies the
balance of military and, hence, political, power over Abbas’ reign
remained with tribal forces, organised in their traditional tribal contin-
gents or as unified cross-tribal, qurchi forces.18
Two other important developments further strengthened tribal mili-
tary-political pre-eminence. First, certain members of the Qizilbash con-
federation including, especially, a number of Takkalu and Dhul-Qadr
elements whose loyalty and reliability was suspect, were eliminated.19
Perhaps more importantly, however, the period witnessed the gradual
incorporation into the Qizilbash confederation of a number of previ-
ously non-Qizilbash tribal elements. Thus, in his list of Qizilbash amirs
holding the realm’s key posts at the end of Abbas’ reign,20 Munshi iden-
tified as Qizilbash subclans or as ‘tribes subordinate to them’ many for-
merly non-Qizilbash tribal elements which had existed on the fringes of
the Safavid project. The latter included, especially, substantial Kurdish,
Luri and Chagatai elements.21 Attesting to their important, but clearly
secondary, position within the realm, only after listing all the Qizilbash
amirs did Munshi then name those ghulams who had been raised to
‘amir’ status. The latter designation, he explained, occurred ‘when a
Qizilbash amir or governor died and there was no one in his tribe suit-
able for promotion to the rank’. By this gradual, somewhat casual pro-
cess, by 1629 – the year of Abbas’ death – ghulams came to comprise
only one-fifth of the realm’s amirs.22
Similarly, although by Abbas’ death ghulams held eight of the four-
teen key provincial governorships,23 over the course of Abbas’ reign,
both the key posts at the centre and key provincial governorships
remained in tribal hands; over the course of Abbas’ reign the Shamlu and
Dhul-Qadr emerge as especially prominent in these posts as they did in
the number of amir-ships.24 Over this period, as before, for example,
tribal leaders mainly held the posts of qurchibashi25 and divanbeki; the
latter, although ostensibly a judicial post, was first and foremost a military
position.26
Marriages contracted over the period further attest to the continued
54 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I
primary importance of non-ghulam elements. Immediately following his
accession, as already noted, Abbas himself contracted two marriages
within the household, further securing his position of prominence therein.
One of Abbas’ daughters married Isa Khan Safavi, grandson of Masum
Bek, the qurchibashi from 1612–13 into Shah Safi’s reign. Such was the
importance of this particular family line that the first tribe in Munshi’s
1629 list of the Qizilbash tribes was the ‘Shaykhavand’ – not a real
‘tribe’ at all but simply members of the Masum Bek line of the Safavid
house – who were thereby accorded Qizilbash status.27
The prominence of the Ustajlu early in Abbas’ reign was attested by
the marriage, soon after Abbas’ accession, of the daughter of Haydar, the
son of Khudabanda’s son Hamza, to the Ustajlu governor in Hamadan,
Hasan Khan Ustajlu (d. 1624–5), who led the 1603 campaign against the
Ottomans.28
Abbas, in the manner of his predecessors, also used marriages to
cement further ties with local notables, especially those of potentially
troublesome regions. In 1591, Abbas’ eldest son Muhammad Baqir,
known as Safi, was betrothed to the Gilani Yakhan Bekum (d. c.
1602), the daughter of the 1577–8 marriage of Khan Ahmad Khan
Gilani (d. 1577–8) to Tahmasp’s daughter Maryam Bekum (d. 1608–
9).29 In fact the marriage did not take place and in 1602, in the midst
of an Uzbek reinvasion of Khurasan, Abbas himself married Yakhan
Bekum. In c. 1590–1, in the midst of the Sufi and Nuqtavi unrest,
Tahmasp’s daughter Maryam Bekum, after the death of her husband in
1577–8, married Shah Nimatallah III, son of Mir Miran Yazdi, of the
Nimatallahi Sufi order, with whom the Safavid house had been allied
by marriage since early in Tahmasp’s reign. An Afshar married a
daughter of Mir Miran,30 further signalling the degree of interaction
between Turk and Tajik not common in the region prior to the rise of
the Safavids.
Mir Miran’s was a sayyid family and in this period, in fact, five of
Abbas’ six daughters were married into prominent Tajik sayyid families.
One daughter was married to Mirza Razi, of Isfahan’s Shahristani say-
yids, who was Abbas’ sadr c. 1607, succeeding his own uncle in the post.
Mirza Razi’s nephew Mirza Rafi al-Din, who married the same daughter
of Abbas at Mirza Razi’s death in 1617, succeeded Mirza Razi as sadr.
The Shahristanis had served Ismail and Tahmasp and a member of
the family was Isfahan’s vizier during Abbas’ reign.31 The Shahristani
sayyids intermarried with Isfahan’s Khalifa sayyids, originally from
Mazandaran, one of whom was sadr in this period. Mirza Rafi al-Din
himself contracted a marriage with the family of the Khalifa sadr; the son
of the latter, Khalifa Sultan (d. 1654), also known as Sultan al-Ulama,
was vizier between from 1624 to 1632, into Safi’s reign, and again in the
reign of Abbas II. Through his mother Khalifa Sultan was also related
to Abbas’ own Marashi sayyid mother, Khayr al-Nisa, and he himself
married one of Abbas’ daughters.32
 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I 55
If, although Christian blood flowed in Safavid veins, members of the
house never formally contracted marriages with originally Christian
ghulams, the ghulams’ ‘special’ status was nevertheless recognised. Thus,
the presence of particularly prominent Caucasian ghulam at Abbas I’s
court bespoke an effort to associate with local elites33 and ghulams who
were Christian by birth. Too, despite their conversions, Christian ghu-
lams were permitted to continue to observe their pre-conversion, non-
Islamic practices.34 As will be noted below, that Abbas II and Sulayman
were the product of marriages with Circassians was never an issue.
Tajik elements, including many sayyids, also continued to be promin-
ent in the central and provincial ‘civilian’ administration. All the period’s
viziers were Tajiks, for example: together the Tajik Hatim Bek Urdubadi
and his son, descendants of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 1274), served as
viziers to Abbas for three decades as earlier members of the family had
served the early Safavids. Abbas’ last two viziers, including the above-
mentioned Khalifa Sultan, were members, by marriage, of the household
itself.35 All those who held the post of sadr were Tajik sayyids; most, as
we have seen, also related by marriage to the house itself.36 Tajiks were
comptrollers of the realm’s finances.37
Outside the capital Abbas confirmed the Qazvini branch of the
Marashi sayyid family as guardians of the city’s shrine, various suy-
urghal grants as hereditary in nature and the management of the shrine’s
affairs as independent of the centre.38

Spiritual responses: reinvigorating Abbas’ credentials

The centre not only oversaw the incorporation of new tribal and ghulam
elements as ‘members’ of the project’s key constituencies and the con-
solidation of the house’s connections with Tajik sayyids and other not-
ables, as described above, but also the reinforcement of the legitimacy of
Abbas’ political and spiritual authority in the realm. This process
included reinvigorating the projection of the shah as simultaneous repre-
sentative of the agendas and discourses of each of the realm’s component
constituencies, and thus sole arbiter among and between them and uni-
versal, transcendent ruler of, and over, their sum total.
The vast scale of this reinvigoration process itself attests to the
perceived vast scale of both the internal and external challenges to
Abbas’ rule.
The greatest of the manifestations of this effort and its complex nature
are to be found in Isfahan following its designation as the realm’s capital
– its central location making it relatively safer than Qazvin from Ottoman
and Uzbek incursions – perhaps as early as c. 1590, concomitant with
the effective end of the second civil war.39
In c. 1595, in the aftermath of that designation, Abbas repaired and
renovated the area of Maydan-i Harun-i Vilayat, the city’s traditional
centre, and soon thereafter commenced work on the Chahar Bagh (Four
56 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I
Garden) avenue and plans for the construction of great buildings for the
Naqsh-i Jahan garden. A 1592–3 flood had destroyed many bridges
across Isfahan’s Zayanda Rud and in 1597–8 Abbas commenced a new
bridge which was completed three years later. In 1602–3, following the
1598 recapture of Mashhad and Herat from the Uzbeks and with work
on the Chahar Bagh avenue completed, and bowing to local residents’
opposition to any further expansion of the city’s traditional centre, the
Harun-i Vilayat square,40 work commenced on a new square based at the
Naqsh-i Jahan garden retreat. This was the Maydan-i Naqsh-i Jahan.
The Qaysariyya Bazaar (the Imperial Market) was also laid out so as to
connect the newer with the older maydan.41 On the new square construc-
tion also began on the Ali Qapu palace, whose gateway, perhaps func-
tioning as an entryway into the Chahar Bagh Avenue gardens, so pushed
its way into the new square as to break the symmetry of the facade
itself, all the more projecting power and authority.42 Although between
1602 and 1611 the court hardly visited the city,43 construction on these
projects and planning for others continued apace. Abbas also estab-
lished the Abbasabad suburb, on the banks of the Zayanda Rud, for
refugees from Tabriz. Although, thereafter preoccupied with a retreat in
Mazandaran, Abbas made only five more visits to the capital before his
1629 death,44 these ‘secular’ building projects insured that the new
square, itself based on a traditional Iranian courtyard,45 advanced the
claim of Abbas and his retinue to authority in the politico-military
sphere on a scale which dwarfed all other Safavid building projects to
date.
The same image of the shah’s authority was also promoted in similar
fashion outside Isfahan. Thus, possibly prior to the relocation of the
capital to Isfahan, Abbas made additions to the palace complex at
Qazvin. In 1611, in the aftermath of victories against the Ottomans and
as work on Isfahan’s Shah Mosque began, work commenced also on the
Farahabad (Place of Happiness) Palace on the banks of a local river in
Mazandaran. Recalling Isfahan, the site included an arcaded square with
a mosque at the South and palace buildings to the North; a separate
palace was built for official receptions and administration. In 1612–13,
another palace was established in Astarabad, complete with workshops
and bathhouses, gardens and parks, the latter with intricate water-
features. Abbas also commenced a further palace-garden complex in
Kashan.46
The number and scale of religious edifices which appeared in the same
time frame alongside, and all around, the above ‘political’ structures
point to an especial effort to reassert Safavid spiritual legitimacy com-
mensurate with political authority in response to the domestic political-
spiritual challenges thereto discussed above. Reassertion of the centre’s
spiritual legitimacy was all the more important given the various internal
challenges to Abbas’ spiritual authority recounted above. Promotion of
the association with Twelver Shi
ism in particular was all the more
 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I 57
important in light of the Safavids’ continued loss of control over the Shi
i
shrine cities to the West.
The best-known of the capital’s religious buildings, in fact, date from
early in Abbas’ reign. These included, most famously, the Mulla Abdallah
Shushtari school, dated to 1599,47 and the Lutfallah Maysi (1602 to
1618–19) and the Royal Mosques (1611 to 1630–1), the latter two both
on the new maydan, as well as other mosques located elsewhere in
the city.48
That there was a distinctive ‘authority’ dimension to these ‘spiritual’
projects is clear. The Lutfallah Mosque, still standing on Abbas’ new
square, for example, contained a inscription, executed in 1603–4 – even
as Balkh had just been retaken by the Uzbeks – by Ali Riza Abbasi, in
which the shah is pointedly referred to as ‘the greatest and most dignified
sultan . . . the reviver of the customs of his forefathers, the propagator of
the faith of the infallible Imams . . . Abbas, the Husaynid, the
Musavid’.49
On the new maydan’s Southern side work on the Shah, or Royal,
Mosque was commenced in 1611, in the aftermath of victories against
the Ottoman campaigns, Tabriz’ recapture and as work commenced
on the Qaysariyya Gateway on the opposite side of the new square.
Completed two decades later, and nearly a decade after the recapture of
Iraq, the new mosque eclipsed the older Congregational Mosque located
in the city’s traditional spiritual-commercial Harun-i Vilayat square,
portions of which structure dated to the Saljuk period. The new
mosque’s traditional four-ayvan plan, like the new maydan itself,
recalled the classical tradition of Iran’s Islamic architecture. With its
huge footprint and multiple functions, the new structure also recalled the
huge mosques of the early Islamic period: the East and West ayvans lead
into domed chambers, the sanctuary features long eight-domed winter
prayer halls, and the four minarets are located two each at the gateway
and the qibla ayvan, with the gateway ayvan enlarged by wings projecting
from each side.
As important for the shah’s position as propagator of the faith, the
new mosque also contained two schools, at the Eastern and Western
corners of the courtyard, with underground rooms so that teaching
could be continued in the hot summer and cold winter months.50
Further projecting power and authority, a unique double-dome struc-
ture was utilised in the mosque with the outer dome rising some 52 metres
so as to be visible from four different places on the road from Kashan.51
The 1616 mosque inscription, completed by Ali Riza Abbasi, stated
that the command to build the mosque had been issued by Abbas,
‘the Husaynid, the Musavid’, and recalled the memory of Tahmasp,
Abbas’ grandfather. Other inscriptions, such as the Prophet’s statement
‘I am the city of knowledge and Ali is its gate’, attested to the distinctly
Alid nature of the project and, hence, the very Alid commitments of its
patron.52
58 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I
Outside the capital from early on in his reign Abbas was an especial
patron of Mashhad, site of the shrine of the eighth Imam. Abbas visited
the shrine some twelve times, often in the course of military campaigns.
He also ordered much restoration work undertaken, and made numer-
ous endowments, to the shrine53 and commanded that the bodies of
Ismail II and his own Mazandarani mother Khayr al-Nisa Marashi be
moved to Mashhad.54 The former capital Qazvin and, especially, its
shrine, also merited the centre’s attention and patronage over Abbas’
reign.55 In the environs of Kashan and Natanz also, much attention was
lavished on religious buildings.56 Too, the shah immediately visited the
Iraqi shrine cities when these were retaken, along with Baghdad, in
1624, and also two years later, after an Ottoman effort to retake Baghdad
was repulsed. He also reached out to the Shi
a of the Hijaz dedicating, c.
1605, a substantial portion of the income of the new maydan’s royal
sarai, the city’s chief sarai built in 1603, to the male and female sayyids
in Najaf and Madina.57
The centre also openly associated itself with key Arab and Iranian
Twelver clerics of the period. In addition to the buildings for Lutfallah
Maysi and Abdallah Shushtari who had emigrated from Arab centres of
the faith, Mir Damad, the Tajik sayyid descendant of Ali Karaki who
came to court from Mashhad during the reign of Khudabanda, was
another close associate of Abbas’ court. Mir Damad’s own marriage to
Shushtari’s daughter further solidified the alliance between Tajik sayyids
and immigrant Arab clerics which dated to the Karaki-Astarabadi mar-
riage of which Mir Damad himself was a product. The marriage of
Sayyid Husayn Karaki’s son Habiballah to a daughter of Maysi certainly
solidified the latter’s position among the realm’s clerical elite.58
Mir Damad himself was a student of Shaykh Husayn Amili. As in
other instances, neither Mir Damad’s prospects nor those of the Shaykh
Husayn’s son Shaykh Bahai were diminished by Shaykh Husayn’s demo-
tion by Tahmasp in favour of Sayyid Husayn Karaki and Shaykh
Husayn’s subsequent departure from Iran. Indeed, Bahai succeeded his
father as Herat’s Shaykh al-Islam, was appointed to same post in Isfahan,
took an active role in the capital’s building programme and undertook
domestic political missions for Abbas. He also managed the constitution
as vaqf of the Qaysariyya bazaar and all the bazaars of the new square,
including a sarai and bath, and the vaqf transactions relating to the Shah
Mosque. Like Ali Karaki, Bahai also accompanied the shah on military
campaigns.59 He was also said to have cited a hadith from his father
foretelling the rise of Ismail in Ardabil.60
The centre was simultaneously mindful of various, more ‘popular’
challenges to the shah’s spiritual authority and took care to associate
itself with such spiritual expression as a means of mitigating, if not also
directing, the discourse and influence thereof. In 1596–7 Abbas removed
Tahmasp’s body from Mashhad, when his grandfather’s tomb had been
defiled by the Uzbeks at their seizure of the city, and buried it in Isfahan’s
 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I 59
Imamzada Darb-i Imam, itself the final resting place of two descendants
of the Imams. Abbas also endowed a vaqf of three hundred tumans to
the shrine.61 He also commenced work on a tomb for a grandson of the
second Imam, Hasan, itself part of a complex of a mosque and school62
and on a tomb for the mystic Baba Rukn al-Din (d. 1367–8), on the
South bank of the Zayanda Rud.63 In Kashan, where Abbas had also
commenced a palace and ordered repairs to various religious buildings,
the thirteenth-century imamzada of a descendant of the sixth Imam,
Jafar al-Sadiq (d. 765), received special attention in this period. Indeed,
obviously taken with the city and the shrine, Abbas himself would
be buried inside the imamzada, metres from the tomb of the Imam’s
descendant Habib b. Musa.64
Abbas also encouraged Muharram ceremonies and the commemor-
ation of the martyrdom of Imam Ali and sponsored display-clashes
between the Nimati and Haydari factions – the traditional factional
groups into which Iran’s urban population were divided. The shah also
revived the practice of illuminations on major and minor occasions, as
sponsored either by the court or by sympathetic merchants, although,
when such occasions fell during Muharram, they occurred even the dis-
approval of such court-associated clerics as Shaykh Bahai. Abbas also
promoted both the celebration of the traditional Iranian New Year based
on the solar calendar, where the Islamic calendar is lunar-based, and the
celebration of ayd-i qurban, at least part of which, the procession of
a camel chosen for ritual slaughter, was the subject of great popular
celebration.65
At the same time the centre was also attentive to its distinctly Sufi
associations, all the more important in the face of the already-noted
challenges to the exclusivity of this link. Abbas’ thirteen visits to the
family shrine at Ardabil, as with his Mashhad visits, often at pivotal
times, reminded the faithful – especially tribal elements whose politico-
military support was so badly needed but whose spiritual allegiance was
in question – of his status as the head of the Safavid Sufi order.66 The
continued importance of Sufi discourse to the Safavid project was further
attested by the prominence accorded the traditional Sufi tawhidkhana at
the Ali Qapu palace and other rituals and practices associated with the
Safavid Sufi order itself – including the granting of the taj – which
also projected Abbas’ exclusive leadership thereof. Sufi elements were
conspicuously present both at Abbas’ accession and his funeral.67
Indicative of continuing regard for Tajik interests, traditional Persian
cultural discourse was also encouraged. In the aftermath of Abbas’
accession, the reign’s chief manuscript-illustrators, including the Afshar
Sadiqi Bek, appointed director of the royal artists’ workshops, Zayn
al-Abidin, Ali Asghar and his son Riza Abbasi, Shaykh Muhammad and
Siyavush – all of whom had served earlier shahs and had spent time in
Herat – commenced work on an illustrated Shahnama. What was com-
pleted of the project attests to a greater attention to detail and expression
60 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I
as well as such motifs as jutting rock formations and various Qazvini-
style elements which had featured in Sadiqi Bek’s contributions to Ismail
II’s Shahnama and highlight the involvement of Shaykh Muhammad,
Riza Abbasi and Sadiqi Bek in developing a new style of painting within
the familiar tradition of the illustrated Shahnama.68
Other manuscripts from the period reveal these artists’ simultaneously
increasing familiarity with and receptivity to European styles of expres-
sion, thanks to Shaykh Muhammad’s introduction of such styles of
painting into Iran. A greater naturalism became visible and European
figures appeared in paintings otherwise dominated by distinctly Iranian
images and literary allusions.69

Economic responses
The rapid development of Isfahan, in line with the centre’s effort to
project its military, political and spiritual authority, had concrete eco-
nomic dimensions. By 1599, just a decade into Abbas’ reign, the sub-
urban sectors of Isfahan were said to have 600 sarais, many serving as
centres for specific professions or for merchants from a particular region,
and the owners of many of which, like other urban sarais, constituted the
revenues therefrom as vaqf to schools, mosques and hospices.70
At the North end of the new maydan the Qaysariyya (Imperial) gate,
completed c. 1617–8, opened into the Qaysariyya Bazaar, built in 1603
at the same time as the royal sarai itself. The new bazaar’s shops grad-
ually spread northwards to link the new maydan with the old city centre.
Over the century the latter gradually became the socio-economic centre
for the common people and a place for religious festivals while the new
square to the South was increasingly dominated by, and the centre of, the
economic and politico-cultural activities of the court; the latter included,
for example, polo and horse-racing as well as ambassadorial receptions,
celebrations of the New Year in March and coronations.71
As part of its projection of military and political authority, but also
with profound economic implications, the centre paid great attention to
restoring the road security which had deteriorated during the second
civil war period. A network of caravansarais came to dot the major trade
routes which criss-crossed the realm, with the effect of boosting both
local/internal and long-distance trade. Abbas himself was associated
with a system of sarais connecting Kashan, an obvious favourite of the
shah, with Isfahan and many other sarais, most no longer extant.72
The realm was thus in perfect position to take advantage of other
economic developments of the time.
Just as the ghulam were added to the realm’s constituencies to bolster
the projection of Safavid military-political fortunes, the addition of
Armenians, wealthy Armenian long-distance merchants in particular,
enhanced the economy. In c. 1604, and at least partly because of the
Safavid scorched-earth policy adopted in the Ottoman wars, between
 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I 61
5,000 and 10,000 Armenians were forcibly moved from Julfa, in
Eastern Anatolia, into Iran’s own heartland, to New Julfa in Isfahan.
If a decidedly violent process,73 on the road to Isfahan the wealthier
Armenian merchants were treated better than others of their coreligion-
ist deportees,74 attesting to awareness of the position of these as the key
middle men in the international system of trade passing West through
Iran to the Eastern Mediterranean ports and Southern Europe, North to
the Black Sea and Russia, and East to Afghanistan, India, China and the
Philippines.75
By the mid-fifteenth century Iranian silk, known in the West from
the thirteenth century, was one of the most profitable items in this
Armenian-dominated long-distance trade.76 Since 1543 the Portuguese
had been using Hormuz, which they had seized in 1515 in the aftermath
of Chaldiran, to tranship that silk to their possessions in India. The great
Western European merchant trading companies, particularly the English
and Dutch companies, were established in the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries precisely to seek out trading routes and monop-
olies in such items in the East independent of the Italian, Ottoman and
Iberian trading systems.77
In the face of rising European demand for Iranian silk, as part of a
general, renewed Western European economic expansion eastwards,
Iran’s silk output and trade and the overland route generally had suf-
fered through Ottoman interference with trade and repeated wars over
the century and, especially, Ottoman domination of the silk-producing
areas in Gilan from 1585 to 1603.78
The Safavid centre, struggling to consolidate Abbas’ authority against
enemies foreign and domestic, was as much in need of allies as Ismail
after Chaldiran and of specie with which to raise armies and fund other
initiatives.79 Thus, a redirection of trade away from the Ottoman-
dominated Levant ports through the newly arrived Gulf-based English
East India Company (EIC) and Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) por-
tended a cut in Ottoman Customs revenues and a corresponding rise in
Safavid economic, if not also politico-military, fortunes. Abbas therefore
left few stones unturned in an effort to establish a variety of links –
economic, political and cultural – by which to strengthen ties to the
West, welcoming merchant delegations, political envoys, travellers and
even missionaries. He sent the Englishman Anthony Sherley, who had
arrived in Qazvin in 1598 with a request from England for an anti-
Ottoman alliance, back to Europe with an Iranian envoy. From 1607
Abbas attempted to divert the silk trade to Portuguese-controlled Goa in
India from which silk might be shipped direct to Europe. In an atmos-
phere of renewed tensions with the Ottomans c. 1615, Abbas sent
Sherley back to Europe to explore further possibilities for alliances.
Abbas also linked up with English forces to retake Hormuz from the
Portuguese in 1622, accepted gifts from the EIC and VOC, and signed
treaties with each in 1617 and 1627 respectively.80
62 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I
While the joint military operation to take Hormuz succeeded, the
companies’ interest in and trade with Iran, in silk especially, fluctuated in
accord with and depended on broader, world-wide trading patterns in
goods. The companies, in fact, increasingly hoped to sell enough of their
goods locally to finance purchases of Iranian silk,81 and so company
representatives sought full rights to organise their trade inside Iran
commensurate with their own requirements. By contrast, the court
wanted immediate payment for goods purchased, silk especially, in
specie.82
The Armenian merchants, newly arrived in Isfahan, gradually re-
established their pre-eminent position in the region’s overland trade to
the direct financial benefit of the Safavid court: in 1619 Armenian mer-
chants outbid the EIC to take delivery of the shah’s recently monopolised
silk.83 The Ottomans, despite, and in the midst of, Ottoman-Safavid
hostilities, were mindful of the revenues to be made from the transit
trade and were consequently increasingly reluctant to hinder movement
of goods, including silk, through their territory. The companies grad-
ually realised that the Gulf trade promised little consistent profit and
much expense, and directed their interests elsewhere, mainly further
East, while for Iran the overland route to the West, organised by the New
Julfan Armenians, was consistently more profitable than the Gulf.84
The Safavid centre was in fact especially pro-active in its efforts to
assist the recently arrived Armenian newcomers to establish themselves
in Isfahan, just as it had been for the refugees from Tabriz. Abbas allo-
cated the Armenian community land and seed and a 1604 decree
exempted its clerics from a series of taxes. Just as Christian ghulams
were permitted to continue their religious practices, so the Safavid court
encouraged the Armenians to do the same. Trade clearly being good, the
first churches soon appeared; the famous Church of Mary was built by a
prominent silk merchant in 1613. A 1614 firman encouraged the build-
ing of large churches and by 1618–19 the community boasted ten. A
later firman allowed the building of a cathedral and later still royal land
was granted the Armenians along the Zayanda Rud.85
The centre was not lax, however, in simultaneously seeking out other
economic opportunities. The court greatly expanded the range and
depth of court-based workshops beyond the production of luxury items
to include workshops for other, more mundane, ‘domestic’ activities and
‘state-owned manufactories’, both to maintain an independent source of
labour and to make money by selling workshop-produced items locally
and abroad at advantageous prices. The centre also moved to tax both
imports and exports, to institute royal trading monopolies – including,
from 1619, a monopoly on domestic silk – to sell concessions, to force
local sales of royally imported and requisitioned, domestically produced
goods at prices advantageous to the centre, and to employ royal mer-
chants to handle all such commercial operations undertaken by the
court. Such measures had been practised during the reigns of Ismail and
 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I 63
Tahmasp but not on the scale now adopted. Concomitant with Safavid
pragmatism, in all these operations the centre benefitted from the ser-
vices of Jews, the newly arrived Armenians of New Julfa, resident Indian
merchants, called Banyans, and Muslims.86
The centre also moved to address its need for gold and silver. Both
were used for brocading and gilding but specie was, as the basis of Iran’s
coinage, used also to finance military expeditions and to purchase such
key imports as steel, textiles, indigo and sugar. The latter all came from
the Indian subcontinent which was, in fact, Iran’s most important trad-
ing partner over the period. With no gold and silver mines of its own,
Iran depended on the bullion which flowed into the realm, mainly via the
overland routes from Russia and especially the Ottoman empire, to
finance the purchase of such items as silk. To curb the outflow of specie,
in 1593 Abbas initiated currency reform and in 1618, the year before the
promulgation of the silk monopoly, he banned the export of specie by
both foreign companies and local merchants. The need for specie was at
the root of the court’s insistence that the foreign trading companies pay
for silk in specie.87
Throughout these processes, the centre remained especially attentive
also to the economic concerns of key local interests and the populace in
general. In Isfahan’s Shah Mosque are inscribed a 1625 firman reducing
taxes for rope-makers and a 1628 firman lowering taxes for various
named guilds.88 Firmans dated to 1590 and 1613 in Kashan’s Imadi
Mosque attest to several tax reductions in the city.89 Repeated popular
protests led to the repeal of a 1606 tax levied on Yazd’s weavers guild,
the weavers being immensely powerful in the country, to maintain the
local military garrison.90 Likewise the centre was also responsive to
complaints about the conduct of its officials, even if these were prominent
Qizilbash figures, in financial and other matters.91
The centre was mindful of the need for good centre-provincial rela-
tions, especially in times of crisis, and was aware that local officials along
the routes to and at the Gulf ports derived their own incomes based on
the autonomy they enjoyed in the trading process, including the right to
impose their own tax schemes on the foreign traders. Hence it continued
to allow local administrators considerable autonomy and undertook
only limited reorganisation of provincial administration. As a result, in
addition to those already so classified prior to Abbas’ accession only
a few additional provinces, especially silk-producing provinces, were
made crown land in this period.92

Declarations of loyalty (and wealth)

In the previous century key figures from among the realm’s two chief
constituencies, Turk and Tajik, had utilised a variety of means – from the
acceptance of key administrative posts to the writing of chronicles – to
signify their acceptance of the politico-military and spiritual dimensions
64 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I
of the Safavid project. During Abbas’ reign, similar undertakings bespoke
similar intentions although, commensurate both with the expansion in
the number of core constituencies and growing wealth, the scope and
scale of such projects dwarfed those undertaken during the reigns of
Abbas’ predecessors.
Isfahan, as this centre’s first and main, if not sole, ‘capital’ was per-
haps naturally was the chief focus of this attention, as such declarations
there spoke especially loudly. Among court associates, for example, in
1605–6, the Sufrachi, the head of the royal table, built a mosque at the
Northwest corner of the imperial palace area; the language employed to
describe Abbas in the building’s inscriptions echoed that in the earlier,
court-sponsored Lutfallah Maysi and Shah Mosques.93 In 1609–10, the
chief of the imperial heralds (jarchibashi) Malik Ali Sultan, an Isfahani
with a nisba suggesting affiliation with the Taji-buyuk tribe, built a
mosque in the Southern portion of the Imperial Bazaar which bears a
similar inscription.94 The ghulam Muhibb Ali Bek, who organised the
vaqf for the Shah Mosque in 1614, also contributed to that vaqf.95
Tajik elements made similar declarations. In 1601–2, a member of
Isfahan’s Shahristani sayyid family, itself affiliated with the Safavid
house by marriage and members of which had served Ismail and
Tahmasp and now Abbas himself, tiled the dome of Isfahan’s Imamzada
Darb-i Imam; an accompanying inscription acknowledged the Safavids’
lineage, describing Abbas as ‘the Husaynid, the Musavid’.96 In 1610,
near the older Congregational Mosque on the Maydan-i Harun-i
Vilayat, Nur al-Din Muhammad Jabiri Ansari, of the prominent Tajik
Isfahani family whose members had served the political establishment
since the time of the Aqquyunlu, and who himself had effected repairs to
that older Congregational Mosque in 1587–8, built a school with some
twenty-two rooms, and constituted the revenues of various villages and
shops as vaqf to support the school. As Abbas I himself had done with
revenues of the Imperial Bazaar, so Jabiri directed revenues to be spent
on the Hijazi and Iraqi shrines.97 In c. 1623, a member of the Farahani
family of sayyids, one of whom had served as vizier of Shirvan during
Tahmasp’s reign, built a small mosque.98 Maqsud Bek, a local artisan
who rose to become superintendent of the royal workshops in this
period, built a mosque just Northeast of the new maydan in 1601–2; the
mihrab inscription was completed by the same Ali Riza Abbasi who
would later embellish the Lutfallah Maysi and Shah Mosques. A takiyya
stood nearby.99
Similar contributions by non-court elements similarly acknowledged
authority and, also, suggest growing wealth. In 1609–10 one Mulla Aqa
Hawaijdar – the name perhaps suggesting connections with the cloth
trade – built a mosque in the Imperial Bazaar to replace a Buyid mosque
of the same name and adorned it with familiar inscriptions of loyalty to
the Safavid project.100 One Nur al-Din Muhammad Isfahani commenced
construction of the main mosque in the Dardasht area of the city,
 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I 65
Northwest of the old maydan, completing it in 1629–30, the first year of
the reign of Shah Safi, Abbas’ successor; inscriptions therein attested to
fealty to both.101
Outside the capital both familiar elements and members of the more
recently incorporated constituencies used similar means to demonstrate
allegiance to the faith and, thereby, the multi-constitutional nature of the
Safavid project as a whole. In Kirman Ganj Ali Khan, the Kurdish mili-
tary commander and governor of the province from 1596, commenced a
mosque, school and sarai complex.102 In 1590, a prominent Mawsillu
figure was buried in the Qazvin shrine.103 In c. 1612 Allahvirdi Khan,
the Armenian convert, general and governor of Fars, sponsored work at
Imam Riza’s shrine in Mashhad. At his death in 1613 Allahvirdi Khan,
a ghulam, was himself buried in Mashhad, near the shrine of Imam
Riza. In Shiraz, Allahvirdi Khan’s son Imam Quli Khan, who succeeded
his father as governor of Fars at the latter’s death in 1613 and was
himself an accomplished military commander, oversaw the building of
the Khan school for the city’s own Mulla Sadra, on whom see further
below, in 1615. The school exhibited a style which was reminiscent both
of earlier schools and of those in Isfahan and demonstrated the continu-
ing vitality of provincial architectural styles.104 The projects of Ganj Ali
Khan and Allahvirdi Khan in particular point to the successful integra-
tion of the ghulam into the political-spiritual discourse of the larger
Safavid project, and to the wealth being accumulated at the provincial
level.
‘Secular’ buildings also attested to growing wealth and confidence.
Thus, the commander of the musketeers and the court jester built large
mansions in the capital. Provincial elements also asserted their presence,
and allegiance, on the national scene in the same manner. Ganj Ali Khan
had a grand mansion on the South bank of the Zayanda River and Imam
Quli Khan also built a grand mansion next to the mosque of Lutfallah
Maysi in Isfahan.105 Rustam Khan Qaramanlu, a local governor in the
Shirvan region, also built one of Isfahan’s largest mansions, complete
with a bathhouse and mosque.106
Court elements also actively participated in the realm’s economic pro-
jects, thereby both declaring their loyalty to the larger project itself and,
doubtless also, enhancing their own economic position in the prevailing
healthy economic climate. Beginning in 1597–8 Allahvirdi Khan over-
saw construction of a bridge in Isfahan commenced by Abbas I. When
completed in 1607 later the still-visible forty-vaulted bridge linked the
garden retreat of the Naqsh-i Jahan area and the Abbasabad garden
retreat known as Hizar (one thousand) Jarib. Upstream from the latter,
the Marnan Bridge connecting the New Julfa area with the Western
sectors of the Abbasabad suburb was built by an Armenian merchant at
Abbas’ request.107 When Malik Ali, chief head of the imperial heralds,
built his mosque in 1610, he probably also built the nearby sarai which
bears his name and housed the city’s Jewish merchants.108 The ghulam
66 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I
Muhibb Ali Bek, who organised and contributed to, the vaqf for the
Shah Mosque in 1614, also built a sarai for the Indian cloth merchants
who traded in brocaded cloth, robes and turban cloth with silver and
gold thread.109
Local merchants also undertook such projects. In Isfahan, for example,
Abbas also approached a rich perfume-seller, one Maqsud, and con-
vinced him to build a sarai. The latter obliged, of course, and made over
the structure to Abbas himself. The shah, in turn, gave it to his sister. A
coffee merchant built an inn for merchants from Natanz who sold
raisins, linen and fruit.110
Outside the capital, familiar and recently incorporated elements con-
tributed also to the development of both the polity’s economic infra-
structure and general security. Zaynab Bekum (d. 1641–2), Abbas’ aunt
by a Georgian woman, used her own income from the polltax (jizya) of
Yazd’s Zoroastrian community to complete one of the sarais on the road
to Mashhad, together with a water tank and pond. The same Muhibb Ali
Bek completed this work using income from both crown estates and
those of Zaynab Bekum.111 In Natanz a court minister who was a
Husayni sayyid built a fortified rest house (ribat) c. 1619.112 In Kirman
the Kurdish general Ganj Ali Khan built a sarai as part of a mosque and
school complex. The wife of the khan of Lar is said to have built a sarai
on the road to Gombroon (Bandar Abbas).113
The growing production of single-page illustrations over this period
further attests to the growing wealth of middle-ranking associates of the
central and provincial courts, commercial and merchant elements, and
certainly the newly incorporated constituencies, clearly eager to patron-
ise the same artists who enjoyed the favour of the courts’ elites. Where
illustrations of young courtly figures had been popular in the previous
century, in this period single-page paintings of older men, as darvishes
and labourers, for example, were popularised by Riza Abbasi, Sadiqi
Bek Afshar, Muhammadi and Siyavush. Indeed, during his period away
from the court, between 1603 and 1610, when he frequented the com-
pany of wrestlers and engaged in other ‘popular’ pursuits, Riza devoted
himself entirely to the such illustrations. After his return to court Riza
made direct use of the paintings and drawings of Bihzad and later still
his work exhibited aspects both of earlier styles – especially in use of
slender, elongated torsos – and new styles – a ‘new’ face with thick
eyebrows, round cheeks and full lips. His legacy set the stage for a whole
school of later Safavid artists.114
Such innovative combinations of the traditional and the new are also
found in other areas of material culture. Early in Abbas’ reign the met-
alworking schools of Khurasan and Western Iran exhibited development
of traditional styles within familiar forms of expression, as attested by
candlesticks dated 1588–9 and 1598–9; the latter, an early example of
enamelling in metalwork, features an image of Layla and Majnun and
youths pouring wine. The appearance of a new form of ewer as early as
 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I 67
1602–3, perhaps deriving from an earlier Indian example, attests to a
vitality of style and, in this case, a taste for the exotic – not unusual in
the increasingly cosmopolitan, and increasingly wealthy setting of both
the new capital and the realm itself.115
Similarly, domestic demand for ceramics, produced throughout the
realm and both beholden to Chinese styles and exhibiting awareness of
such other forms of expression as painting, grew so fast in this period
that Abbas settled some 300 Chinese potters in Iran to boost domestic
production. The growth in demand for such pottery products as hookah
bases and ceramic water pipes was certainly boosted by the introduction
of tobacco in the 1610s, as attested by the appearance of both items in a
1630 painting of Riza Abbasi. Iranian potters’ output was of such qual-
ity that the VOC mixed the best Kirmani ceramics with Chinese items for
export to Europe.116 Similarly, early in the period carpet production in
Kashan, Kirman and Herat continued apace but utilised designs similar
to those of the previous century. The growth of Isfahan and the need for
carpets to cover the floors of the capital’s growing number of mosques
and schools encouraged production of carpets using more silk and gold
than had been seen before, another sign of growing wealth which also
increased domestic demand for specie. The finest examples of these
‘Polonaise’ carpets, of silk warps and wefts, were produced both for
domestic elites and also for export.117

History as politics
Like court chronicles composed during the previous century, so the
chronicles of Abbas’s reign also demonstrated the loyalty of their
authors and, implicitly in turn, the constituencies of which they were
members, to the Safavid project. Where, however, the sixteenth century’s
chronicles recalled Turko-Mongol claims to universal rule and rooted
that present in the events of prehistory, the historians of Abbas’ reign,
reflecting a growing sense of self-assurance, generally reached back only
to the distinctly Safavid past and such earlier Safavid chronicles as
Khvandamir’s Habib al-Siyar, whose roots lay in Rawzat al-Safa of
his grandfather Mir Khvand, to project, to highlight and thereby to
legitimate Abbas’ position as the latest head of the family.
Within this common framework the historians of the period neverthe-
less pursued distinctly individual agendas. Qadi Ahmad Qummi (d. after
1606), the Tajik Husayni sayyid who completed his Khulasat al-
Tavarikh in 1590–1, began his history with the life and times of Shaykh
Safi al-Din whose line he traced back to the seventh of the twelve imams,
Imam Musa, thus demonstrating Tajik sayyids’ continuing acceptance of
the Safavids as one of their own. In his Tarikh-i Abbasi, completed c.
1611–12, the court astrologer Jalal al-Din Yazdi offered an accounting
of astrological bases underpinning the reign of Abbas before offering a
detailed genealogy of Abbas’ forebears which also included Imam Musa.
68 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I
The court scribe Iskandar Bek Munshi (d. 1633) began his Tarikh-i Alam
Ara-yi Abbasi, volume one of which dates to 1616 and which was com-
pleted in 1629, with an account of the life of the Prophet and the
Imams.118
These chroniclers’ embellishment of certain aspects of the Safavid past
furthered its legitimacy in the present. Both Qadi Ahmad and Munshi
emphasised associations between the Safavid house and Timur, the for-
mer with Shaykh Safi al-Din’s son Sadr al-Din Musa (d. 1391), and the
latter with Musa’s son Khvaja Ali (d. 1427).119 Qadi Ahmad retained the
version of the distinctly Twelver Shi
i preparations for the funeral of
Shaykh Zahid, Safi al-Din’s mentor and spiritual guide, found in Amir
Mahmud’s 1550 Zayl-i Habib al-siyar, bespeaking Tajik sayyid accept-
ance of the longevity of Safavid claims to association with the faith.120 In
his Afzal al-Tavarikh, a three-volume history of the Safavids to the death
of Abbas I begun in 1616–17, and the second volume of which was being
revised in India in 1639, a decade after Abbas’ death121 Fazli Khuzani,
whose forbears had served the Safavid court, embellished accounts of
Ismail I’s early years to emphasise the Sufi and Qizilbash dimensions to
his career.122
Varying accounts of Abbas’ victory over Yaqub Khan Dhul-Qadr and
his 1590 execution, arguably marking the end of the second civil war,
further highlight the preoccupations of the centre and its historians in
this period. With his Timurid sympathies Qadi Ahmad notes Yaqub
Khan built a fort with the stones from a Timurid-period religious school
and orphanage which he ordered destroyed. In his 1598 Nuqavat al-
Asar fi zikr al-akhyar, Mahmud Afushta Natanzi (b. 1531–2), of whom
little is known, portrayed Yaqub Khan as an oppressor of tribes and
commoners who failed to acknowledge Abbas’ authority. Yazdi high-
lighted Yaqub Khan’s destruction of the Timurid school but also the
plundering of other schools, domes, arches and other buildings to build a
castle and garden for himself, his killing of a cleric and plundering of
Yazd. Munshi, the court secretary, focused on Yaqub’s refusal of various
summons to court and his claim to the province of Fars as his own.123
Yaqub Khan emerges as the antithesis of key traditions of leadership –
Sufi, Shi
i, Qizilbash/tribal and Tajik/administrative – with which the
polity’s various components were identified, and he thus comes to per-
sonify all the realm’s enemies and all the challenges which Abbas,
and the larger project which he embodied, faced over his reign.

The ‘popular’ dimension: spiritual disquiet on the urban scene

The physical expansion of Isfahan, if not of other cities as well, and
especially the growth of urban ‘popular’ classes over the period, encour-
aged the expansion of links between urban artisans and craftsmen and
urban-based messianic Sufi discourse already visible early in Abbas’
reign with the urban appeal of the Nuqtavi and Darvish Khusraw. The
 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I 69
growing presence of these elements, and these connections, are well
attested. The painter Riza Abbasi, during his 1603–10 self-imposed
removal from court, consorted with the urban ‘lower orders’; many of
his works from this period are replete with images of older men as the
darvishes and labourers he saw in the city.124 Mir Damad’s student Mir
Findiriski (d. 1640), a philosopher, poet and teacher of both mathemat-
ics and medicine, also spent much time among these elements.125 In his
1617–18 Kasr Asnam, Sadr al-Din Muhammad Shirazi, known as Mulla
Sadra (d. 1640), a Shirazi aristocrat and student of both Mir Damad
and Shaykh Bahai, lamented the fact that artisans and craftsmen were
abandoning their professions to associate themselves with popular
Sufi movements.126 An anonymous essay written between 1626 and
1629 attacking the messianic veneration of Abu Muslim points to the
reappearance on the urban scene of this tradition, of which the centre
had been wary since early in the previous century.127
Such sightings, as in the previous century, occurred especially at times
when messianic fervour was abroad elsewhere in the realm. Indeed, c.
1614–16, coinciding with the apparent involvement of the shah’s eldest
son Muhammad Baqir in a plot which resulted in the prince’s murder by
a ghulam who was later freed for his act of loyalty, another group of
Lahijani Sufis were executed, condemned as ‘not being Sufis’128, i.e. for
disloyalty to the person of the ruling shah/pir. In 1619–20, coincident
with the appearance of a ‘pestilence’ which struck down large numbers
of courtiers and commoners and which was attributed to the appearance
of a comet the year before and which rendered Abbas himself extremely
ill, a rising incited by Gilani sayyids, one of whom proclaimed himself
the deputy of the Hidden Imam, attracted a wide following.129
Concerned with the oppositional discourse on offer in some of the
capital’s coffee houses, patronised as they were by artists, poets, musi-
cians, storytellers and Sufis, Abbas delegated clerical associates of the
court to monitor the activities of these venues and to preach sermons or
lead prayers along more acceptable lines.130 The appearance of many
Persian-language religious primers on various, basic aspects of Twelver
doctrine and practice written by clerical associates of the court, includ-
ing Shaykh Bahai, Mir Damad and such of their students and associates
as Muhammad Taqi Majlisi (d. 1659),131 represented efforts by the
centre and its clerical associates to influence ‘popular’ spiritual discourse
in the period, if not to insure its ‘orthodoxy’.
Although Mir Damad and Bahai served the court, in their scholarly
writings both were active in their pursuit of philosophical inquiry and,
particularly, its reconciliation with Twelver Shi
ism. The former built on
the illuminationist interpretations of Suhravardi (d. 1191) and Davani to
transform the metaphysics of Ibn Sina (d. 1037) from a purely rational,
abstract system of thought into a spiritual reality within a distinctly
Twelver Shi
i framework.132 Mulla Sadra was active in the reconciliation
of philosophy with gnosis (irfan), based on many of the basic principles
70 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I
of gnosis as formulated by Ibn al-Arabi (d. 1240) and other prominent
Muslim thinkers from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, but firmly
grounded his reconciliation of these two traditions in the revelation of
Twelver Shi
ism.133
These same clerics also actively supported expanding the role of the
senior clerics trained in the rationalist religious sciences, the mujtahid or
faqih, in both the formulation of doctrine and practice and the clerics’
assumption of many of the Imam’s practical responsibilities of daily
import to the life of the community during the Imam’s absence, thus
building on the principle of ‘general deputyship’ enunciated by Mir
Damad’s forbear Ali Karaki. Bahai argued for greater clerical control
over the collection and distribution of both zakat and khums during the
occultation. Mir Damad argued the faqih was permitted to lead the
Friday congregational prayer service while the Imam was absent.134
To be sure, the audience for these clerics’ Arabic-language philo-
sophical, theological and jurisprudential writings, and their disputations,
was likely restricted to the clergy itself.135 However, the combination
of recourse to rationalist philosophical thought and these clerics’ con-
sequent and exclusive claim to exercise many of the Imam’s rights and
prerogatives aroused lower-ranking, less well-connected clerics. The lat-
ter objected, in particular, first, to the claim to exercise authority over
issues of doctrine and, especially, over affairs of daily, very public,
import to the life of the community during the Imam’s continued absence
and second, to the court backing which these clerics, and their claims,
enjoyed. The former’s overt and wide-ranging interest in seemingly
obscurantist philosophical inquiry, together with the tendencies of some
to frequent the popular quarters, allowed their critics to challenge their
authority by equating this sort of inquiry with the doctrines and prac-
tices of ‘popular’ Sufism itself. The strident denunciations of Shaykh
Bahai’s alleged Sufi tendencies, apparently visible in the supposed mys-
tical dimensions of his poetry and the darvish dress he is said to have
worn, as well as his preferences for an expanded role for the clergy,
eventually forced him to resign as Isfahan’s Shaykh al-Islam. Mulla
Sadra was also denounced for his ‘popular’ Sufi tendencies and, despite
repeated efforts to distance himself therefrom, finally abandoned the
capital for a prolonged residence in Kahak, near Qum.136 Taqi Majlisi
who, like Mir Damad and his own teacher Shaykh Bahai, was descended
from Arab émigrés and was interested in philosophical discourse, was
himself publicly linked to the Abu Muslim revival.137
Debates over the extent of clerical authority during the Imam’s
absence continued as they had during the reigns of Ismail and Tahmasp
and, indeed, since early in the faith’s history. Muhammad Amin Astara-
badi (d. 1640) criticised earlier Shi
i scholarship, and such Safavid-period
clerics as Ali Karaki, Shaykh Zayn al-Din and Bahai – Bahai’s father
having been a student of the Shaykh – for failing to ground their theo-
logical and jurisprudential analyses in the revealed texts of the faith,
 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I 71
particularly the hadiths, or akhbar, of the Imams; hence the name
Akhbari, for the ‘school’ of thought with which Astarabadi came to be
identified. Related arguments surfaced questioning the textual basis for
the mujtahid’s assumption of the Imam’s responsibilities for issuing legal
rulings, collecting and distributing believers’ alms and leading of Friday
prayer as the Imam’s deputy (naib) during his absence. The court’s cler-
ical associates, including moderates of opposing persuasions, favoured
the prayer. However, in that the prayer would have mentioned the shah’s
name and thereby legitimised his rule, its permissibility during the
Imam’s absence was as much a touchstone in the continuing debate over
clerical authority and the clergy’s association with, and its legitimisation
of, the centre in this period as it had been in the previous century.138

Summary and conclusion

The great political-military, economic and cultural achievements with
which Abbas’ reign has been so often, and so often solely, identified –
from the rise of the ghulam to the architectural embellishment of Isfahan,
the flowering of philosophical inquiry, the legacy of the arts and even the
rise of the Armenian community in Isfahan – as well as those achieve-
ments, such as the expansion of the Qizilbash, which have received less
attention to date – were part and parcel of, and followed directly from,
the questioning of the authority and legitimacy of Abbas and the Safavid
project as a whole on all these levels.
The vast scale and multi-layered nature of these achievements over
Abbas’ reign followed from, and attests to, the range and perceived scale
of these challenges.
The composition of Abbas’ ‘cabinet’ at his death in particular reflects
the success of the incorporation into the Safavid project, over the more
than four decades since his 1587 accession, of new constituencies into
the larger project without dislodging established ones and the import-
ance of close family ties particular. In 1629, of the top thirteen members
of the cabinet by office, five were Tajiks (including the vizier and
the sadr, both of whom were sayyids), five were ghulams and three
had tribal connections (including a Shamlu vakil and the Shaykhavand
qurchibashi). The ghulam, as soldiers and administrators, straddled the
roles of both the traditional constituencies; eight of the fourteen key
provincial governorships and about a quarter of the realm’s amirs were
ghulams at Abbas’ death.
Nevertheless, tribal elements still dominated the polity’s political and
military spheres, as represented by the gradually expanded Qizilbash
confederation, with the Shamlu, especially, and Dhul-Qadr apparently
replacing the Ustajlu as the pre-eminent tribes therein by Abbas’ death:
the balance of the realm’s governorships were held by tribal elements
who also constituted three-quarters of the total number of the realm’s
amirs.139 Tajiks continued to play a key role outside the administrative
72 Challenges and Responses: Abbas I
sphere as well, and alliances with Northern notables were more firmly
established in this period.
In addition to the ghulam as a new constituency, Twelver clerics, from
home and abroad, now also appeared at the centre in numbers sufficient
to constitute a distinct, loyal, interest group, their loyalty and integration
into Iranian society further encouraged by key marriages and appoint-
ments. Armenians, and especially the great long-distance trading elem-
ents, also now figured as a constituency important to the life of the
realm, that importance further attested by the centre’s efforts to smooth
their settlement in Isfahan and the freedom of religious expression
accorded them there. In response, the Armenians, and Jews, returned
loyalty (and financial support) to the shah and the project itself.140 Even
the foreign trading companies, official and unofficial political delega-
tions, missionaries and other foreign travellers may be said to have con-
stituted further constituencies of potential political and economic allies
clustered about, if further away from, the court.
One by one these elements openly professed their loyalty to the larger
Safavid project as headed by the shah, and together they participated in
the demarcation of a politically stable, physically larger and economic-
ally more vibrant polity whose makeup was significantly more complex
than it had been when Ismail I entered Tabriz over a century before.
That the vizier, sadr and qurchibashi were related to the house via
connections to Abbas himself, demonstrates the perceived importance in
this turbulent period of the loyalty of those related by blood ties. Their
loyalty was seen as increasingly indispensable to the good fortunes of the
polity and to the manner in which the family, as a constituent of and like
the centre itself, continued to expand in Abbas’ reign. This expansion, as
before, was to secure the project’s fortunes by linking the realm’s con-
stituencies both to itself and, thereby, to each other. In the midst of
turmoil personal loyalty was the key to promotion to and longevity in
these offices. Although both the latter might also turn on competence
and popularity, loyalty to the person of the shah bespoke loyalty to the
larger polity itself and, it followed, to the multi-constitutional project
which underlay it.141
Could the configuration of both familiar and newer constituencies, all
of whose traditions and discourses were recognised and encouraged over
the period and which underpinned Abbas’ rule, outlast the single figure
around whom it had coalesced where, earlier in the dynasty’s history,
less complex configurations had failed to do so?
 5
Shifts at the Centre and a
Peace Dividend
Shah Safi (1629–1642)

A smoother accession? Turmoil at the centre

Abbas died in January 1629, at his summer palace in Mazandaran. The
key officials present, several related to the house itself by marriage,1 with
no immediate alternatives available and to forestall potential problems
caused by any delay in the succession, quickly agreed on the son of
Abbas’ eldest son, the eighteen-year-old Sam Mirza, whom Abbas had in
fact designated his heir just days before his death.2 These officials sent
news of Abbas’ death and his grandson’s succession to senior court offi-
cials in Isfahan who, also forseeing possible trouble if the accession was
delayed, acceded to the move. In February 1629, just weeks after Abbas’
death, Sam Mirza was elevated to the throne as Shah Safi at a ceremony
at Isfahan’s Ali Qapu palace.3
Even with several new appointments the coterie of those at the polit-
ical centre following Safi’s accession was essentially that which had rep-
resented the coalition of the traditional and newer of the polity’s key
constituencies whose allegiance underpinned Abbas’ reign and whose
presence at the centre now attested to their support for the new ruler.4
These individuals oversaw Safi’s accession ceremonies. These both fol-
lowed distinctly traditional Sufi customs and included as participants
key clerical associates of Abbas’ court, and thereby attested to recogni-
tion of the continued key role of both Sufi and Shi
i discourse in the
Safavid project.5 Financial inducements secured the support of other key
palace and provincial elements.6
Despite such measures external and internal challenges were perhaps a
foregone conclusion at such a juncture. Indeed, within six months of
Safi’s accession, the Ottomans under Murad IV (reg. 1623–40), their
own Western borders secured by a treaty, moved East and occupied
Hamadan in 1630. An Ottoman attack on Baghdad was repulsed,7 but
Irivan was lost and, in 1635, Tabriz was plundered. The former was
retaken but, in 1638, the same year the Mughals seized Qandahar, the
74 Shifts at the Centre: Shah Safi
Ottomans took Baghdad and the shrine cities. To the East Safi’s reign
also witnessed some eleven Uzbek incursions into Iran, some involving
large numbers of Uzbek troops, although none resulted in significant
territorial gains or losses. In the Gulf, the Portuguese attacked and plun-
dered the town of Qishm on the Gulf island of the same name.8 Intern-
ally, Abbas’ death also occasioned minor risings among Arab tribes near
Baghdad and Khurasan.
The centre also faced a series of domestic challenges to Safi’s accession
which focused on other members of the Safavid house and were encour-
aged by the lack of a clear father-to-son succession. Abbas’ son Imam Quli,
blinded by his father in 1626–7, and the eldest son of Isa Khan, whose wife
was a daughter of Abbas, were associated with such claims, although Isa
Khan himself had supported Safi’s succession.9 Imam Quli was executed
in June 1630 and a month later Zaynal Khan Shamlu was murdered and
Abul-Qasim Evughlu lost his post as chief officer of the haram, both
now clearly suspect in a series of plots against Safi. When Safi fell ill the
following summer, 1631, rumours spread as to possible successors.
In February 1632, the remaining figures at the centre who owed their
positions to Safi’s grandfather and whose loyalties were therefore appar-
ently suspect, were violently displaced. All further potential claimants to
the throne were eliminated,10 retainers and associates at court were
deposed,11 and a new ‘centre’ – dominated by a different configuration of
Abbasid loyalists drawn from the Turk, Tajik and ghulam constituencies
– was briefly established.12
This configuration itself quickly gave way to a new alliance dominated
by Mazandaran’s vizier, Saru Taqi, who in August 1634, with Safi now
aged twenty-two, was appointed grand vizier. Although the personnel
which made up the configuration of Turks, Tajiks and ghulam in his
vizierate differed only slightly from that which had immediately pre-
ceded it,13 its rise sealed the fate of the immediate alliance of family
members, tribal, ghulam and Tajik alliance – known as the Shaykhavand
– which had dominated the centre during Abbas’ later years but whose
commitment to the young Safi had become problematic.14

The renewal of spiritual unrest

At Abbas’ death the realm did not, therefore, descend into civil war on
the scale which followed the deaths of Ismail and Tahmasp. The political
machinations which eventually brought Saru Taqi to the fore were
largely confined to the centre itself and mainly involved, as during
Tahmasp’s reign, manoeuvring for control of the centre.
If the transition between Abbas I and Safi was relatively smoother than
earlier transitions, marked spiritual tensions did surface at Abbas’ death.
These continued apace, and were no doubt encouraged by, both the
political tensions arising from the lack of a direct father-to-son accession
and foreign invasions.
 Shifts at the Centre: Shah Safi 75
In the immediate aftermath of Abbas’ death, Gilan witnessed a
messianic rising by one Gharib Shah which attracted thousands of
followers. Gharib, a descendant of the former ruling family, was pro-
claimed Gilan’s ruler and led the plundering of Rasht and Lahijan which
caused a fall in silk production and, hence, in government revenues.
The revolt was crushed, with the help of Saru Taqi, then vizier of
Mazandaran. Although Gharib himself was executed with some 2,000
followers in Isfahan’s new square in June 1629, a follower who claimed
to be Gharib’s brother led another rising in Mazandaran.15
Two years later, in July 1631, a year after the Ottoman occupation of
Hamadan and in the same month as the murders of Isa Khan Safavi’s
children and a number of Safavid princes, occurred the rising of one
Darvish Riza in the former capital of Qazvin. The Darvish, an Afshar
married to the daughter of a Safavid general, proclaimed himself ‘Lord
of the Age (Sahib al-Zaman)’, a distinctly Shi
i reference to himself as the
Hidden Imam which, combined with a overtly Sufi discourse, recalled
and revived aspects of the messianic millenarianism prevalent during
the reigns of Ismail I and Tahmasp. The local governor rejected the
Darvish’s claims and the rebels retreated to the city’s famous shrine
where the predicted imminent revival of a dead Marashi sayyid guardian
of the shrine by the self-proclaimed ‘mahdi’ drew considerable crowds.
Although this rising was quickly crushed – the Darvish’s head was dis-
played in Isfahan’s main square – it attracted the support of a cross-
section of Safavid society, including a prominent ghulam and the son of
a provincial governor. Indeed, some eight years later a follower rose
proclaiming himself the reincarnated Darvish, suggesting, as with the
discourse of such earlier Nuqtavis as Darvish Khusraw, a degree of
acceptance of the transmigration of souls, a heresy among orthodox
Shi
a.16
Darvish Riza’s rising occurred against the background of the con-
tinued resurgence of the messianic veneration of Abu Muslim, dating at
least to 1629, particularly among Isfahan’s artisnal and merchant classes
and kept alive by ‘popular’ storytellers based in the city’s growing num-
ber of coffee houses. This Sufi millenarianism was also evident in the
provinces.17

Changing responses of changing centres: searching for legitimacy

The political configurations underpinning Safi’s rule – identified here
by reference to their respective viziers Khalifa Sultan and Saru Taqi –
adopted a variety of responses to these internal and external challenges.
Khalifa Sultan and those who promoted Safi’s accession strove to
solidify the support of the same configuration of Turk, Tajik and ghulam
elements, and their clerical associates, which had achieved pre-eminence
at the centre during Abbas’ later years. In the face of the internal and
external challenges described above, with the messianic challenges in
76 Shifts at the Centre: Shah Safi
particular attesting to rising spiritual disquiet, the centre, following a
familiar pattern, promoted the new shah’s close association with both
the faith18 and such of its chief practitioners, including Mir Damad, as
had been among Abbas’ clerical associates.19
At the same time, the impact of Safi’s payments to central and provin-
cial elites, the Ottoman wars and Gharib Shah’s rebellion and the result-
ant respective reduction in overland trade and silk production forced a
financial rethink. Cancelled were Safi’s grandfather’s very expensive
effort to divert the waters of the Karun river to Isfahan as well as the
court’s silk export monopoly, the latter likely in return for a large,
needed, financial gift from Isfahan’s Armenians.20 Indeed, enough Cas-
pian silk continued to move overland to the Levant ports that the centre
remained more interested in its ties with those Armenian merchants who
oversaw that trade than in cultivating the foreign trading companies.21
Following his promotion to the vizierate, the efforts of Saru Taqi’s
alliance to maintain its pre-eminence were given added urgency both by
the continued Sufi messianism at home and the continued territorial
losses to the Ottomans, including the plundering of Tabriz in 1635, fol-
lowing which the court vainly sued for peace,22 and the 1638 loss of
Baghdad and the Shi
i shrine cities. Saru Taqi was even more interested
than the Khalifa Sultan alliance in pursuing further cost-cutting and
revenue-raising measures. The vizier is credited with having persuaded
Safi to convert Fars to crown land following Imam Quli Khan’s execu-
tion. He also imposed heavy taxes throughout the realm, including on
Isfahan’s Armenians, and investigated revenue flows of the previous
governor of Gilan.23 Such measures were coupled with, and made all the
more necessary by, a series of tax concessions to various elements
throughout the realm in an obvious effort to garner domestic support.24
With two brothers and one of their sons serving as consecutive gov-
ernors of Mazandaran, Saru Taqi, himself formerly that province’s viz-
ier, was able to keep especially close touch with the state of the realm’s
silk production and trade. To the centre’s advantage the vizier also con-
tinued to play off the foreign trading companies against each other and
against the Armenian masters of the overland trade.25 Ultimately, how-
ever, an oversupply of silk in Europe in the 1630s caused the Dutch to
seek cheaper Bengali and Chinese silk and, later in the decade, to explore
the possibility of exporting Iranian specie to Surat in place of silk to
facilitate the company’s purchase of items in India which would bring
higher prices in Holland.26
Perhaps most importantly, both for the enhancement of Safi’s author-
ity and the well-being of the realm for the decades to come, in May,
1639, three years before Safi’s death in 1642, the peace treaty of Zuhab
was signed, bringing an end to the wars with the Ottomans.
The price of the treaty, as with previous such treaties with the
Ottomans, was heavy. Zuhab acknowledged loss to the Ottomans of
Eastern Iraq, including Baghdad and the shrines.
 Shifts at the Centre: Shah Safi 77
Also as with previous Ottoman-Safavid treaties, however, the domestic
benefits of Zuhab were soon apparent.
Following the treaty the overland route to the Levant ports, briefly
reopened in 1636 and porous even in wartime, was formally reopened
for business. Export of silk by that, now more reliable, route, and con-
trolled by Isfahan’s rich Armenian merchants, had been and continued
to be more profitable than the Persian Gulf route. As a result, just as the
Dutch were reducing their purchases of Iranian silk for export via the
Gulf the Julfans were sending out more silk via the Levant.27 Not co-
incidentally, as the fortunes of the Armenian merchants reached a high
point in Safi’s reign their taxes were, as mentioned above, increased,28
although otherwise the centre continued extremely attentive to Armenian
interests.29 The continuing importance of India as Iran’s major trad-
ing partner in the period and the overland route via Qandahar, not
transhipping via the companies’ ships in the Gulf, as the key transit route
for this trade30 further reduced the importance of the Gulf trade.
The Saru Taqi alliance adopted a complex response to the period’s
messianic Sufi challenges. The 1631 death of Mir Damad and the 1632
fall of Khalifa Sultan left in place the sadr, Habiballah Karaki, son of
Sayyid Husayn Karaki and son-in-law of Lutfallah Maysi, who remained
in the post to his death in 1653, eleven years after Safi ‘s own death in
1642.31 Karaki’s overt hostility toward Sufism was well known, as was
that of Mir Damad’s son-in-law Ahmad Alavi, the Shirazi qadi Alinaqi
Kamrai (d. 1650), and even Abdallah Shushtari’s son Hasan Ali, himself
a student of Abbas I’s close associate Shaykh Bahai.
This hostility checked Safi’s initial interest, during the earlier Khalifa
Sultan vizierate, in enhancing his spiritual legitimacy by rekindling the
alliance between the court and the philosophically minded scholar-
clerics who had served his grandfather and only further encouraged
the anti-Sufi diatribe which had emerged during the latter years of
Abbas’ reign. Indeed, in the two decades beginning in 1633–4, coinci-
dent with the rising fortunes of Karaki and Saru Taqi’s accession to the
vizierate, some twenty essays appeared refuting the messianism of the
Abu Muslim tradition, attacking the urban-based story-tellers for
promoting the tradition and singling out Taqi Majlisi and defending
the Tajik sayyid Muhammad Sabzavari (d. after 1672), known as Mir
Lawhi, who had attacked Majlisi in the latter years of Abbas’ reign for
Majlisi’s public association with the Abu Muslim tradition and who
claimed he had been physically assaulted in the streets by Majlisi’s
supporters.32
This religious polemic was the vehicle by which the clerical associates
of the Saru Taqi configuration moved to challenge the religious legitim-
acy which Abbas’ court had derived from its own clerical associates,
displayed their own spiritual credentials and, given that the messianism
of the revived Abu Muslim discourse bespoke a challenge to the position
of Safi himself, declared their loyalty to the realm’s legitimate ruler.
78 Shifts at the Centre: Shah Safi
Nevertheless, the Saru Taqi alliance simultaneously remained attentive
to the Safavid project’s own, very Sufi roots. Thus, in September 1633,
following the fall of the Khalifa Sultan alliance and as a new wave of
anti-Sufi polemics was getting underway, Safi visited the family shrine at
Ardabil. Following Saru Taqi’s 1634 appointment as vizier, Safi visited
the shrine again in 1635, the year Irivan and Tabriz fell to the Ottomans,
and in 1636, the year the former was retaken.33 A 1641 manual listing
various Qizilbash offices included, for example and in particular, the
post of khalifa al-khulafa whose holder, as the deputy of the order’s
leader, i.e. the shah himself, could, for example, forgive sins and perform
executions. In the latter capacity the khalifa was called upon especially
to dispatch such tribal elements whose behaviour, sometimes described
in the sources as ‘un-Sufi’, in fact comprised any expression of disloyalty
to the shah as head of the order, and, by extension, to the broader
Safavid project. Decrees were in fact issued over this period attesting to
the importance of the khalifa within the Safavid order.34
Various ‘popular’ religious practices were also officially encouraged, as
they had been under Abbas. Olearius, secretary to a mission sent by
Frederick II Duke of Holstein which arrived in Iran in 1637 seeking to
reroute the silk trade through Russia, recorded the funerary processions
and the self-mutilations marking Ashura in Ardabil. Members of the
mission were also invited to watch the illuminations staged on the last
day of the month of Muharram. In Isfahan, at least from this period,
separate mourning ceremonies for the notables and the common people
were organised on the new maydan: the notables, including Safi himself,
were accommodated at the Ali Qapu and the common people at the main
gate to the bazaar. On the urban scene also Safi continued to encourage
the ritualistic clashes between the Nimati and Haydari factions.35
In the context of the gradually improving economic situation which
obtained after Zuhab the centre also gradually recommenced material
efforts to strengthen the links between Safi and the faith. In 1639, the
year the treaty was signed and some six years after Darvish Riza’s revolt
in Qazvin, Safi visited the former capital city and ordered improvements
to the shrine.36 In Isfahan Saru Taqi himself, clearly keen to associate
himself with both the faith and the shah after such a bloody path to
power, commenced work on a mosque which was completed in 1643–4,
just after Safi’s death. Saru Taqi commenced work on a second mosque,
along with an adjacent sarai and bath, which was unfinished at his death
in 1644–5.37
Indeed, like key personalities associated with Abbas, members of the
Saru Taqi configuration established palatial residences for themselves in
the capital itself, thereby projecting their power and authority, and
growing wealth, as associates of the court. Saru Taqi himself worked for
nearly two decades to complete a mansion in the Hasanabad section of
the city, near the Shah Mosque; attached to it were a bazaar and a small
mosque. Having given that mansion to Safi, Saru Taqi then built himself
 Shifts at the Centre: Shah Safi 79
another mansion in the Abbasabad quarter, on the no-longer-extant
Imperial Canal, and surrounded it with a bathhouse and a bazaar.38 The
Georgian Rustam Khan, made head of the ghulams at Safi’s accession
and vali of Georgia in 1632, built himself perhaps the largest of the city’s
mansions.39 Safi’s Tajik physician is associated with a garden on the
Chahar Bagh and the son of the governor of Qandahar who surrendered
that city to the Mughals in 1638 also built himself a mansion in the city.40
The continuing patronage of Persian cultural discourse over this
period bespeaks an effort to maintain Tajik support of the Safavid project
in the context of the above internal and external challenges. The court
painter Riza Abbasi was active until his death in 1635 and some of his
work, and that of his student Muin Musavvir, points to a commission of
Nizami’s Khusraw and Shirin between 1632 and 1636, a period of con-
siderable political disorder at the centre when Tajik loyalties would have
been at a premium. Too, attesting to growing disposable wealth among
non-elites, Muin and others continued to produce the single-page illus-
trations which had been popular for some years, Muin in the style of his
master but with a tall, narrow-page format and fewer large-scale figures.
The works of Muhammad Shafi – dubbed Shafi Abbasi in the reign of
Safi’s successor – especially his flower painting, some perhaps associated
with textile production but others done for an album owned by Safi
himself, reveal European, Persian and apparently Mughal influences, as
does the work of Bahram Sufrakish, dated to 1640–1.41
Non-Iranian influences are also visible in the pottery of this period,
as potters combined Indian, especially North Indian, style shapes with
Chinese-style decoration. This process was encouraged by the demand
of Iran-based Indian merchants and money-lenders if not also the wider
local growth in the taste for Indian styles stemming from the influx of
Indian goods into Iran. Chinese motifs clearly inspired the continuing
production of blue and white ware although domestic styles, with floral
patterns associated with both Kirman and Mashhad, were still popular.
In the 1630s, although very fine glass products, including water pipes
used for smoking tobacco, were imported from Venice in the 1630s,
perhaps by Armenian merchants, Shiraz also possessed several loca-
tions for the making of glass. As with the production of single-page
illustrations, production of these items suggests a strong, non-court/
non-elite demand for the relatively cheaper domestically produced
items.42
Provincial capitals also furnished patronage for artists of Safi’s reign:
Manuchir Khan, the governor of Mashhad, was likely the commissioner
of a Persian translation of the Arabic-language Suvvar al-Kawakib,
a project dated to between 1630 and 1632, to which the father of
the above-named Muhammad Ali contributed. The involvement of the
Khan, son of the Armenian ghulam Qarachaqay Khan, and previously
governor and one of the realm’s twenty-one ghulam amirs at Abbas’
death, in such an undertaking yet again affirms the successful integration
80 Shifts at the Centre: Shah Safi
of the ghulam into the broader Safavid project whose predominant
cultural discourse was Persian.43

Summary and conclusion

Almost without exception Western writers have accepted Chardin’s
verdict, which opens the present volume, to adjudge Abbas I’s successors
as failures.44
In fact, however, the policies pursued by the Khalifa Sultan and Saru
Taqi alliances at the realm’s centre over Safi’s reign secured the project in
the face of the external and internal challenges which arose with Abbas’
death. Notably also, while the external challenges were severe, the realm
experienced far less widespread domestic disorder both at Safi’s acces-
sion and over his reign than had obtained during transitions between
earlier rulers.
On balance, the Saru Taqi alliance may have been the more ‘success-
ful’ of the two configurations, in particular maintaining sufficient domes-
tic support to acquiesce to the terms of the Zuhab treaty with the
Ottomans which acknowledged the loss of Eastern Iraq and to project
the court’s identification with each of, and thus to transcend, the realm’s
conflicting spiritual tendencies. The growing prosperity resulting from
the treaty – attested by the gradual resumption of court-sponsored build-
ing projects and the growing purchasing power of non-court elements –
can only have further assisted the Saru Taqi alliance in retaining its
influence at the centre, its own quite representative composition relatively
intact, through Safi’s death in May 1642.45
 6
The Peace Dividend
Consolidated
Shah Abbas II (1642–1666)

A smoother accession and a ‘new’ vizier

Muhammad Mirza – Abbas I’ great-grandson by Safi and the Circassian
Anna Khanum – was about nine years old when he ascended the throne
as Abbas II in May 1642. Members of the Saru Taqi alliance, pre-
eminent at the centre since 1634, presided over the accession process,
attended the coronation ceremony itself1 and, as at Safi’s accession,
arranged distribution of significant largesse among key sectors of the
population.2 The alliance remained intact and in control throughout
the process.3
As at Abbas’ death the widespread civil wars which marked the
fragmentation of the ruling configuration, between and among key con-
stituencies, which occurred with the deaths of Ismail I and his son and
successor Tahmasp, did not obtain at Safi’s death.
What internal disorder did occur following the accession was, as in the
years immediately following Safi’s accession, confined mainly to the
court and involved struggles for control of the centre. The young shah’s
mixed blood apparently presented no problem to any of the centre’s
major constituents.
In early 1643, in alliance with a woman at court, Saru Taqi secured a
decree to execute his personal rival the ghulam sipahsalar Rustam Bek,
who was in Mashhad to organise an effort to retake Qandahar from the
Mughals, for having refused to obey a direct command from the centre.
Rustam was executed and his brother, the divanbeki Ali Quli, was dis-
missed from his post. The move was supported by Jani Khan Shamlu,
qurchibashi since 1638, and the Shamlu ishikaqasibashi.
A marriage between Jani Khan’s daughter and Saru Taqi’s nephew, i.e.
between Turk and Tajik, failed to secure a permanent alliance between
the two, however.4 The vizier was then implicated in a plot to replace the
sitting shah with another relative. In 1645, supported by the elements of
the military – whose financial situation had deteriorated following the
82 Peace Dividend: Shah Abbas II
Zuhab treaty as Saru Taqi sought to maximise the centre’s finances – Jani
Khan and Shamlu, Shaykhavand and Ustajlu supporters, with the young
shah’s approval, killed the vizier. Several days later the Shamlu divanbeki,
two ghulams and several Chagatai amirs, in turn, murdered Jani Khan
and his Shamlu and Ustajlu accomplices and their retainers, including a
Qajar, on the grounds that they had plotted to do away with the shah’s
grandmother. Other associates of both Saru Taqi and Jani Khan Shamlu
were beheaded in the days that followed.
By November 1645, a new coalition was in place at the centre: Abbas II
bestowed large gifts on a new Shamlu qurchibashi, the ghulam
qullaraqasi Siyavush Bek and the head of the musketeers, the latter two
having held their posts under Saru Taqi.5 Khalifa Sultan, the Tajik sayyid
son-in-law of Abbas I, the young shah’s great-grandfather and hence
a relative of the young shah, was now appointed vizier, the post he
had held from 1624 to 1632.6 Although the balance of power between
the realm’s core constituencies – Qizilbash, Tajik and ghulam – was
little different to that which had obtained under Saru Taqi,7 just as
during Abbas I’s reign so now family connections would seem to have
portended greater reliability.

Silk and specie

Perhaps especially because the realm did not descend into widespread
internecine strife at Safi’s death its Eastern and Western borders remained
generally quiet. There were, nevertheless, other ‘foreign policy’ issues
which demanded, and received, attention.
Over Saru Taqi’s vizierate, the interest of the European trading com-
panies in Iranian silk seems to have diminished. The Safavid centre, with
the overland route through Ottoman territory to the Levant ports secured
by the still-intact 1639 Zuhab treaty and aware of the fluctuating nature
of the companies’ interests in trade with Iran, adopted a firmer attitude
toward the granting of concessions and privileges to the companies and
the exploitation of their remaining interests in the Iranian market. The
Dutch, therefore, continued frustrated with being required to pay for
Iran’s silk in cash, at prices higher than non-Iranian silk.8 The team nego-
tiating Iran’s terms of trade initially remained unchanged after Abbas II’s
accession, and Saru Taqi remained adamant on the terms of trade. Unable
to agree a lower price the VOC, conscious of the price differentials
between the Gulf and Levant routes, decreed Iranian silk was to be pur-
chased in the Levant, specie was not to be sent to Iran and cheaper Chinese
silk was to be purchased to fill any excess demand. The specie profits of
any trade in Iran were to be sent to India, a process calculated to gener-
ate greater profit than using the cash to buy the more expensive Iranian
silk. The VOC’s direct export of Iran’s specie commenced c. 1643, the
year after Abbas II’s accession, with the Indian merchants resident in
Iran, the Banyans, playing an increasingly prominent role in this trade. In
 Peace Dividend: Shah Abbas II 83
1644, a year before his death, Saru Taqi – clearly conscious of this turn
of events – formally banned the export of all specie to India.9
Continued Dutch frustration with the terms of trade was a prime
reason for the 1645 Dutch bombardment of the Gulf port of Bandar
Abbas and the occupation of the island of Qishm. Saru Taqi responded
with a softened Iranian position but, although his murder in late 1645
was much welcomed by the VOC, economic realities prevailed: the com-
pany purchased no silk from Iran from 1645 to 1651 while its export of
specie continued apace.10
The EIC, whose purchases of Iranian silk had, except for 1630, been
comparatively minimal and inconsistent, purchased no silk at all after
1642 preferring, as the Dutch, to export profits from trade in Iran trade
as specie.11
With local Armenian, and Banyan and Jewish merchants heavily,
and prominently, involved in the continuing export of specie, Khalifa
Sultan, a month after his return as vizier, moved to force their conver-
sions to Islam. In the same year, 1645, and again c. 1648, he also
devalued the coinage. The new vizier also maintained his predecessor’s
tough bargaining position toward the Dutch.12
With the Zuhab treaty still in force on Iran’s Western borders, the
centre now attempted to retake Qandahar, a key city on the overland
trade route to India, Iran’s main trading partner. Qandahar had been
taken by the Mughals in 1638 and its recapture portended increased
customs revenue and a further chance to inspect caravans moving East
for hidden specie. Spearheaded by a force as mixed as those under
Abbas I, the cost of the short and successful venture (February 1649)
was apparently so high13 that in its aftermath the centre moderated
its attitude toward the VOC’s trade demands. Nevertheless, in 1652,
the first year of the two-year First Anglo-Dutch War, VOC directors
resolved to suspend all purchases of Iranian silk. Thus despite a new
treaty agreed in 1652, which continued curbs on specie export, the
Dutch generally so minimised their silk purchases – increasingly meeting
the demand with Bengali silk while exporting greater amounts of specie
earned in to India – that the court never pressured the VOC to buy the
agreed silk quota.14

A balanced approach to spiritual turmoil

The large number of essays attacking Abu Muslim which appeared
during Khalifa Sultan’s second vizier-ship attests to the continued mes-
sianic veneration of Abu Muslim and interest in Sufi doctrine and prac-
tice at the ‘popular’ level. This was most likely especially prevalent
among urban lower orders least able to stave off the combined effects
of specie outflow, currency devaluations and price inflation especially in
the context of continued wrangling at the political centre.15 Indeed, that
Khalifa Sultan’s above-mentioned campaign against minority merchants
84 Peace Dividend: Shah Abbas II
included the closing-down of taverns and the banning of certain forms of
coffee house entertainment points to the continued role of, and the
centre’s concern with, these as focal points for the capital’s ongoing
‘popular’ spiritual movements over the period.16
The anti-Abu Muslim and anti-Sufi sections inserted in Hadiqat al-
Shi
a, a work attributed to Ahmad Ardabili (d. 1585) – himself well
known for his critique of the Safavid political institution, but in fact
the work was written in the 1640s in the Deccan – suggest sympathy
for these doctrines and practices among distressed urban elements.
‘Ardabili’ denounced some twenty-one named Sufi groups for such heret-
ical beliefs as ascribing partnership to Allah (musharika), abandoning
prayer and fasting, dancing (raqs), singing (ghina), and listening to
poetry or music (sama),17 suggesting these elements were forsaking the
intercessory and interpretative authority claimed by orthodox elements
to seek solace and meaning in a more direct, immanent and intimate
relationship with the divine. Muhammad Tahir (d. 1687), a native of
Shiraz who spent his formative years in Najaf and, newly arrived there-
from, may well have composed the anti-Sufi sections of Hadiqa. In any
case under his own name Muhammad Tahir attacked both the Abu
Muslim tradition and the heretical practices attributed to both con-
temporary and past Sufi groups in his Persian-language treatise Radd-i
Sufiyya, as part of an exchange with Taqi Majlisi,18 and thereby made
common cause with the Iran-based critics of these ‘radical’ discourses
such as the sayyids Mir Lawhi and Ahmad Alavi. The continued high
profile of such open opponents of Sufism as Habiballah Karaki, who
remained sadr until his death in 1652–3, and Alinaqi Kamrai, appointed
the capital’s Shaykh al-Islam in this period and also a known oppo-
nent of singing,19 no doubt further encouraged this anti-Abu Muslim,
anti-Sufi discourse.
Khalifa Sultan, if at least publicly critical of ‘popular’ religious prac-
tices,20 nevertheless strove, as had Saru Taqi, to achieve a balance in the
identification of the court with these conflicting spiritual polemics, and
thereby transcend, and maintain the centre’s legitimacy in the face of,
them all. With the hostile Karaki and Kamrai remaining in post, the
vizier appointed Muhammad Baqir Sabzavari (d. 1679) to a teaching
post at the capital’s Abdallah Shushtari School, replacing Abdallah’s
own son Hasan Ali (d. 1664–5). Hasan Ali was a well-known opponent
of Friday prayer during the Imam’s occultation, in contrast with his own
father and such clerical associates of the court in Abbas I’s later years
as Mir Damad, Shaykh Bahai and their students Taqi Majlisi, Fayz
Kashani, Sabzavari and Khalifa Sultan himself. At the deaths of the cap-
ital’s Shaykh al-Islam Kamrai in 1650 and the sadr Habiballah Karaki in
1653, Sabzavari was appointed Isfahan’s Shaykh al-Islam and Imam
Juma, in charge of the capital’s Friday prayer. However, in balance
Karaki’s son Mirza Muhammad (d. 1671), whose mother was Lutfallah
Maysi’s daughter, was appointed sadr.21
 Peace Dividend: Shah Abbas II 85
The vizierates of Muhammad Bek and Muhammad Mahdi Karaki:
familiar centres and familiar policies
Khalifa Sultan died in 1654, during a harsh winter marked by severe
famine and price inflation. The new vizier was an Armenian ghulam,
Muhammad Bek. Having worked his way up through the ranks as Saru
Taqi and other elites had done in the seventeenth century,22 Muhammad
Bek now ‘presided’ over a centre whose composition continued to rec-
ognise and reflect the importance of the allegiance of the polity’s three
key constituencies to the ruling shah and the larger Safavid project.23
With the new vizier an experienced trade negotiator, in 1657 an
additional Ottoman-Safavid trade agreement was reached which, build-
ing on the Zuhab treaty of 1639, further assured the importance of the
Anatolian trade routes and the Armenians’ role in the overland silk
trade. As the volume of Iranian silk on the Anatolian routes rose mark-
edly, the VOC, the only company still exporting Iran’s silk to Europe via
the Gulf, further reduced its Gulf silk exports.24
Nevertheless, the twin, and associated, problems of continued specie
outflow and urban spiritual unrest continued as did the centre’s com-
plex response thereto. In 1655, the winter in which Khalifa Sultan
died and Muhammad Bek was appointed his successor, was marked
by famine and inflation. The new vizier dismissed Isfahan’s Georgian
darugha whose unpopularity had sparked demonstrations spearheaded
by the city’s guilds. Two years later, in 1657, the Qajar divanbeki,
who had held the post since 1645, was dismissed, also at the behest
of the city’s guilds.25 The same year, 1657, Abbas II also issued a
decree forbidding the export of gold coins and bullion. In 1657 also
Muhammad Bek, an Armenian by birth and formerly the darugha of
the Julfan Armenians, launched a campaign against local Jews and
Armenians – to convert the former and expel the latter from Isfahan
proper – thus singling out both as prominent participants in the coun-
try’s economic life and, especially, the continued export of specie, as
‘scapegoats’ for the hardships being suffered by Iran’s population, espe-
cially the lower-ranking urban elements, as Khalifa Sultan had done
during his second vizier-ship.26 Notwithstanding these measures, the
next year the VOC spirited record amounts of specie out of the country.
In 1659, some five years after Muhammad Bek’s appointment, the centre
undertook a survey of taxable income, including that of the trading
companies, and brought additional lands into the khassa system.27 The
vizier also sought to raise revenue by continuing to curb some military
expenditures.28
No doubt accentuated by ongoing economic problems, ‘popular’ Sufi
discourse continued to attract the attention of urban artisnal and mer-
chant elements whose livelihoods were the most directly disrupted
thereby. Even while addressing these economic issues, in true Safavid
fashion, the centre also continued to pursue a two-track, balanced
86 Peace Dividend: Shah Abbas II
response to this ongoing spiritual discord, which attempted to identify
itself with both sides to, and thus transcend, the discourse.
On one hand, now in his twenties, Abbas II espoused a more public
interest in Sufism, openly associating with a number of prominent figures
clearly linked to such ‘popular’ discourse.29
At the same time, the shah also invited to court several key clerics
associated with higher, philosophical inquiry but of proven loyalty to the
centre in a clear effort to reconstitute Abbas I’s court-clergy alliance and
encourage these clerics, as had his great-grandfather, to promulgate
orthodox discourse in Persian, and thereby still the polity’s troubled
spiritual waters. These clerics, as those at Abbas I’s court, also supported
an expanded role for the senior clergy during the absence of the Imam.
Their number included Taqi Majlisi – himself earlier attacked for associ-
ating with popular religious discourse and veneration for Abu Muslim –
and Mulla Sadra’s own son-in-law, Fayz Kashani, who had declined a
similar invitation from Safi during the years immediately following his
accession. Abbas II asked the latter to lead the city’s Friday prayer ser-
vices, clearly hoping that Fayz, whose hostility to ‘popular’ Sufism was a
matter of record, might exert a moderating, if not controlling, influence
over Isfahan’s various vociferous groups.30 By his own admission, how-
ever, Fayz’ efforts only exacerbated the city’s spiritual tensions,31 and
soon thereafter he resigned the post. As after the death of Ali Karaki in
the previous century, Friday prayer may have also been discontinued.32
In 1661, as spiritual strife persisted in the capital, if not also through-
out the realm,33 Muhammad Bek, who had also succeeded in alienating a
number of key officials and the shah himself, was dismissed. The sayyid
and sadr Muhammad Mahdi – son of Habiballah Karaki and the daugh-
ter of Lutfallah Maysi, and descendant of Ali Karaki – was appointed
vizier, retaining the post until 1669, several years into the reign of Abbas
II’s successor Sulayman.34 With minor personnel changes at the centre
during Muhammad Bek’s vizierate, the overall multi-constitutional
dynamic at the centre remained intact35 over the remainder of Abbas II’s
reign.36
The new vizier continued to try to check the export of specie and
encourage trade via the overland route to the Levant.37 From the 1660s
on, however, a series of domestic crises compounded the effects of the
ongoing specie drain. These included, for example, widespread drought
in 1663 in Iranian Azerbaijan, as well as, from 1665 – the first year of the
two-year Second Anglo-Dutch War – a series of bankruptcies among
local merchants, likely compounded by the specie outflow.38
Karaki, whose father Habiballah’s hostility to Sufism was well known,
abandoned the policy of his predecessors to attempt to identify the
court simultaneously with the realm’s opposing spiritual discourses.
Indeed, no doubt encouraged both by Muhammad Bek’s dismissal and
Muhammad Mahdi’s appointment, the anti-Sufi tirade only continued
apace, suggesting the continued strength of ‘popular’ spiritual doctrines
 Peace Dividend: Shah Abbas II 87
and practices over this period as well, especially in the context of the
domestic crises noted above. Muhammad Tahir continued his critiques
of Sufi-style practices and philosophical inquiry.39 Shaykh Ali Amili, a
descendant of Zayn al-Din Amili killed by the Ottomans in 1559, and,
like Tahir, a recent arrival from the Iraqi shrine cities, maintained a
vociferous anti-Sufi polemic as well, focusing on singing in particular in
1662–3. The next year Shaykh Ali denounced the former vizier, sayyid
and relative of the shah, Khalifa Sultan, dead some ten years, for criti-
cisms he had levelled against Shaykh Ali’s ancestor.40 Such criticisms
amounted to an implicit attack on Khalifa Sultan’s relative the shah
himself. The public fate suffered by those who explicitly and openly
attacked Abbas II41 certainly warned such clerics of the dangers inherent
in overstepping their mark. The court did not, for example, move against
Tahir, who was especially careful to make clear his overall allegiance
to Safavid project and moderate his polemic, or Shaykh Ali.42 But the
widespread appeal of the anti-Sufi polemic in this period was such that
Fayz, for example, continued to distance himself from ‘popular’ Sufism,
even as he condemned overzealous attacks on truly ascetic individuals.43

The economics of legitimacy

The 1639 Zuhab peace treaty, formally reopening overland trade, cou-
pled with the 1657 Ottoman-Safavid trade agreement, brought long-
term peace to Iran’s Western borders. The resulting ‘peace dividend’
permitted both officials and private individuals to accumulate consider-
able wealth44 and to spend considerable sums on both public and private
projects of benefit to the realm’s spiritual infrastructure on a scale more
familiar from earlier in the century. The extent of such undertakings
both suggests the limited nature of the realm’s economic crises over the
period and points to efforts to project the identification of the centre and
its allies with, and establish a monopoly over, what constituted orthodox
doctrine and practice in the face of the ongoing spiritual disorder among
the lower orders of the time.
The shah and members of the royal family were associated with a
number of activities in promotion of the faith. Safi was buried in Qum,
site of the shrine of Fatima (d. 816), the sister of the eighth Imam, and
Abbas II himself ordered repairs to the shrines in Ardabil, Qum
and Mashhad, and to the Friday mosques in Kashan, Qazvin, Qum and
Isfahan.45 Dilaram Khanum, the mother of Safi and Abbas II’s grand-
mother, built two schools, in 1645–6 and 1647–8. Maryam Bekum,
Safi’s daughter, built a school and a mosque.46 Kashan’s Vizier Mosque,
which dates to this period, may have been built by Safi’s grandmother.47
In the immediate aftermath of Zuhab the vizier Saru Taqi had com-
menced a number of religious building projects in the last years of Safi’s
reign; some of these were only completed after Abbas II’s accession.48
Between 1656 and 1663 the Tajik Hakim Daud, Abbas II’s physician,
88 Peace Dividend: Shah Abbas II
erected a large mosque which retained the standard four ayvan plan and
a two-storey arcade. However, it also featured a simpler structural pat-
tern and brick and tile surface, which marked an interesting variation on
the style which had predominated under Abbas I.49 Other court officials
made similar contributions to the capital’s spiritual landscape.50
Private individuals, some with familiar names, also made notable con-
tributions to the city’s spiritual infrastructure,51 thereby endorsing the
legitimacy of Safavid association with, and monopoly over, the faith and
proclaiming their association therewith.
If his vizier Muhammad Mahdi was not himself keen on ‘popular’
discourse, Abbas II, as earlier shahs, continued the centre’s sponsorship
of the annual Muharram rituals and permitted the public fractional
fighting between the Haydari and Nimatis throughout the realm’s cities
which reached its height at Ashura. Indeed, Abbas encouraged Shi
i fes-
tivals and celebrations of all sorts, many involving illuminations of
bridges or portions of the city, and many of which he himself actively
stage managed. Such activities, also encouraged outside the capital,
enhanced the spiritual legitimacy among the populace both of the court
as their sponsor and of those clerics who took leading roles in their
organisation.52 These clerics, in the midst of the spiritual strife and eco-
nomic crises described above, could not have misunderstood the practical
benefits of association with such court-sponsored activities.
Officials and private individuals also actively participated in the
development of the realm’s economic/commercial infrastructure in the
aftermath of Zuhab, and enjoyed the benefits therefrom. Abbas II built
two new sarais in this period, both just North of the imperial palace;
from one, which housed Ottoman merchants, the shah himself is said to
have received an annual rent of 135 tumans.53 His grandmother Dilaram
Khanum, whose two schools have been mentioned above, also built two
sarais in the city. The first housed merchants from Qum, Kashan,
Natanz, and specialised in dried fruit and carpets. The second, with some
490 rooms over two stories, housed rich Indian merchants from Bandar
Abbas – Sunni, Shi
i and Hindu – who sold, among other things, turbans
threaded with gold and silver. These sarais appear part of Abbas II’s
effort to make his own mark on the city by developing a new maydan
just northwest of that established by his great-grandfather and by embel-
lishing and expanding the imperial bazaar linking Abbas I’s maydan and
the older, traditional Maydan-i Harun-i Vilayat.54
Saru Taqi too built sarais during his tenure as vizier and dedicated the
revenues therefrom to the mosque he built.55 Ali Quli Khan, the governor
of Tabriz, also built a sarai in the capital in this period, near the bazaar of
the Multani gold-lace-makers; this sarai and the bazaar were reserved
for Hindu merchants, including money-changers, bankers and cloth
merchants.56
Two further bridges were constructed in this period, the Hasanabad,
which could be raised and lowered and connected the Hasanabad gate
 Peace Dividend: Shah Abbas II 89
with the Shiraz road, and the Rivulet Bridge which, with its seventeen
arches, connected the two sections of the Saadatabad Chahar Bagh.57
Other infrastructural undertakings further projected the centre’s
authority. In this period the Ali Qapu assumed its final form, with the
forebuilding and the great hall being commenced in 1643, just years after
Zuhab, during the vizierate of Saru Taqi, and completed, under the viz-
ier’s supervision, soon afterward.58 In 1643–4, at the shah’s order, Saru
Taqi completed a hall facing the maydan. The audience hall of Chihil
Sutun in the imperial palace was completed in 1647, during the vizierate
of Khalifa Sultan.59 Too, in a virtual repudiation of the violence at the
centre which marked the early years of Safi’s reign, Abbas II ordered a
mausoleum built for the three sons of Isa Khan Safavi killed in 1632, all
of whom, as children of a daughter of Abbas I, were princes and his own
relatives.60 In 1659–60, during Muhammad Bek’s vizierate, the shah also
established one of the city’s great gardens, Chahar Bagh-i Saadatabad,
laid out on both sides of the Zayanda Rud West of the Hasanabad bridge
built some ten years before. The great amirs built their own gardens on
all sides of this great high-walled structure outside of which were located
baths, a mosque and shops.61
Others followed suit. After ‘giving’ his first mansion, built in the
Hasanabad quarter, to Safi, Saru Taqi built another in the Abbasabad
quarter. Ali Quli Khan, the governor of Tabriz who also built a sarai
in the city, had a household of some 1,500 cavalry, 300 eunuchs and
other officials and workshops for jewellers, tailors, saddlers and sword-
makers.62 The magistrate of Isfahan built a mansion next to that of Saru
Taqi in Abbasabad as did Najaf Quli Bek who, in 1664, was sent by
Abbas on mission to India. Maryam Bekum, Safi’s daughter, had a man-
sion near the Hasanabad gate. Mirza Razi, a grandson of Abbas I who,
though clumsily blinded by a eunuch, was nevertheless skilled in algebra
and astronomy, built a grand mansion South of the Hasanabad quar-
ter.63 Indeed, such quarters as the Abbasabad section and the Khaju
suburb underwent substantial development during Abbas II’s reign.
The latter housed a number of the mansions named above and others
as well.64
Despite the hardships endured by the Armenian community as a
whole, like other elites its wealthier elements, especially those involved
in the long-distance trade, retained sufficient wherewithal to embellish
the area to which the community was moved between 1655 and 1659.65
In 1655, nearly twenty years after Zuhab, work commenced on the fam-
ous All Saviour’s Cathedral, often known in the Persian sources as the
Vank Cathedral. The Cathedral was completed in 1664, three years after
Muhammad Bek’s dismissal and in the midst of Muhammad Mahdi
Karaki’s vizierate. In fact, between 1658 and 1666 six new Armenian
churches were built, making a total of twenty-four in the area. Wealthy
Armenians also built a number of grand mansions along the river.66
Indeed, its scapegoating aside, the court generally continued attentive
90 Peace Dividend: Shah Abbas II
to the community, allowing Armenians to manage their own affairs
and responding to Armenian complaints of pressure from Catholic
missionaries.67

‘The Persian interlude’

Developments in other realms of the cultural expression also attest to
the widespread accumulation of wealth in the century’s middle years and
the continued widespread interest in, and the vitality of, Persian as the
realm’s dominant cultural discourse.
Court-sponsorship of things Persian continued apace over the period.
The career of Muin Musavvir, a student of Riza Abbasi, spanned the
period 1635 to 1697. His contributions to some five Shahnamas, other
manuscript and single-page illustrations consistently feature his distinct-
ive style – his round-faced figures, for example, being slimmer than
others of the period – itself rooted in that of his master.
Non-court demand for such output was also strong in this period but
exhibited an interest in the more traditional. The artists of the day con-
tinued able to accommodate themselves to all tastes. One Afzal al-
Husayni produced both a popular style of figure illustration and was
working on a Shahnama between 1642 and 1651. Muhammad Qasim,
Malik Husayn Isfahani and others completed a number of miniatures for
a 1648 Shahnama, now at Windsor. Malik Husayn’s son, Muhammad
Ali, however, produced pictures of young men seated with bottles of
wine and fruit, of the popular single-page type in the style of Riza
Abbasi. Muhammad Yusuf produced illustrations both for that same
Shahnama and portraits of young dandies.68
Artists’ receptivity to the non-Iranian highlights the contemporary
eclecticism. The works of Bahram Sufrakish, two dated to 1640–1, two
years before Abbas II ascended the throne, depict Indian figures and
utilise distinctly European styles, particularly in their landscape back-
grounds. The flower paintings produced by his contemporary Shafi
Abbasi, present at the courts of both Safi and Abbas II, exhibit European,
Persian and apparently Mughal influences. Indian figures and settings
also figured in the works of Shaykh Abbasi, who may have been a stu-
dent of Bahram and whose earliest work dates to 1647.69 The post-
Qandahar wall paintings of Chihil Sutun, some completed by Shaykh
Abbasi and some depicting standing figures and seated groups in
European costumes, display a similar coexistence of styles.70
From late in Abbas I’s reign in particular ceramics production was, as
already noted, infected with a similar dynamism. A new taste for inscrip-
tions or ornamental bands scratched through a black background, seen
in works from Kirman, revived a technique of late fifteenth century
Northwestern Iran. A water pipe dated to 1658–9 displays vegetation
similar to that in the paintings of Riza Abbasi and Afzal al-Husayni while
the arabesque medallions on another are familiar from contemporary
 Peace Dividend: Shah Abbas II 91
manuscript illumination. Too, under the influence of Chinese imports,
domestic ceramic wares incorporated blue and white Chinese themes
and Chinese-style landscapes with arabesque medallions, a style which
had not marked ceramic production prior to the turn of the century
which had featured more distinctly ‘Persian’, especially animal and
floral, motifs. The use of additional colours also dates to this period.
These styles and the Kirmani ware continued popular into the century’s
later decades, suggesting their status as import substitutes. Production of
such items, like that for single-page illustrations noted above, reflects
healthy domestic, non-elite demand. Indeed, the indigenous demand
for single-page illustrations made itself felt in contemporary ceramics
production as single-figures appeared on small dishes, bottles and multi-
neck vases produced in this period.71
The Kirmani ceramics were, in fact, of sufficient quality to attract the
attention of Dutch and English traders based in Bandar Abbas seeking
alternatives to Chinese porcelain when, following the Ming dynasty’s
collapse in 1643–5, porcelain exports were curtailed until c. 1683.72
Kirman also continued as a centre of carpet production in this period.
Some carpets utilised the vase-carpet technique and, like the Kirmani
ceramics, were produced for both the court and non-court Iranian mar-
ket as well as further afield, particularly India.73 Isfahan and Kashan also
continued as centres for the production of Polonaise carpets in silk with
gold and silver brocade. Persian silk-weaving featured familiar, and trad-
itional, scenes of wine-drinking as well as flowers. That the figures in the
former are attired in clothes similar to those in the figures in the paint-
ings of both Afzal al-Husayni and Muhammad Yusuf suggests continued
interaction between the two crafts; the silk or cotton painted trousers
worn by women in the former’s illustrations seem typical of contempor-
ary higher fashion. Similarly, the brocaded silk on metal ground at Imam
Ali’s shrine in Najaf, produced after 1642, is reminiscent of the silver
door facing the Ardabil shrine dated to the 1630s and 1640s.74
Although the literary output of the period has yet to be well studied,
the mid-seventeenth century is known for the further refinement of the
Indian style of poetry at the hands of such poets of the period as Saib
Tabrizi (d. 1676–7).75 Typical of the regional sweep of Persian culture,
Saib, son of a Tabrizi merchant who accompanied his father to Isfahan,
spent his youth in India before returning to and settling in the Safavid
capital. Saib was especially well known for his panegyric poetry during
the reigns of Safi, Abbas II and Sulayman.76

Summary and conclusion

Such challenges as the admittedly unquantifiable outflow of specie
and as well as ongoing, and associated, spiritual strife, ought not to
overshadow the positive features of Abbas II’s twenty-four-year reign.
Although four individuals held the post of vizier over the period, their
92 Peace Dividend: Shah Abbas II
respective administrations exhibit notable continuity of both com-
position and policy. There are as many, if not more, signs of a healthy,
dynamic economy, and culture, than not.
Indeed, the centre’s own self-confidence is mirrored in the period’s
court chronicles. The authors of these texts continued, as Quinn noted
with regard to the chroniclers of Abbas I’s reign, to commence their
narratives from early in the Safavid period itself, but left out the lengthy
political or spiritual/familial lineages from which the shahs of the previ-
ous century had derived much needed legitimacy. Abbasnama, the court
history of the Tajik Qazvini, begins, after a preface which is mainly
personal in nature, with Abbas II’s own birth.77 In his Qisas al-Khaqani
Shamlu but very quickly traces the connection between the Safavid
house and Imam Musa, the seventh Imam; similarly the main account
commenced with a very brief recounting of Safavid history from Ismail
to the end of Safi’s reign.78 Even those of Chihil Sutun’s wall paintings
which were completed following the retaking of Qandahar, connected
this ‘Eastern’ victory of Abbas II with the ‘Eastern’ ventures of Ismail,
Tahmasp and Abbas I.79
Overall, there are many grounds on which to suggest that, in marked
contradiction to Chardin’s famous, and oft-quoted, declaration, at Abbas
II’s death in 1666 the realm was at least as prosperous as, and as stable,
and its prospects as bright as they were in 1629, at the death of his
great-grandfather, if not more so.
 7
Meeting the Challenges
Shah Sulayman (1666/68–1694)

The smoothest accession to date

In the later hours of the morning in which Abbas II died of an unspecified
illness, the yuzbashi Sulaman Aqa called together the ‘amirs and not-
ables’ of the inner circle then travelling with the shah. With the doors
closed he informed them both of Abbas II’s death and of the necessity of
choosing the new shah before they left the building.1 The two most direct
and available candidates for succession were Abbas II’s two sons, the
nearly twenty-year-old Safi Mirza and the seven-year-old Hamza. Some
argued for the younger son but the vizier – a sayyid and descendant of
Ali Karaki – argued for the older. Safi was selected and his accession took
place in November of 1666.
Two very bad harvests, a violent earthquake in Shirvan and Cossack
raids in the Caspian area, however, all suggested that the ceremony had
been performed at an inauspicious time.
A second accession ceremony was therefore held in March 1668 in the
capital itself: Sabzavari, Isfahan’s Shaykh al-Islam, officiated at the
ceremony at the Chihil Sutun palace. This was attended by ‘all the amirs
and notables and learned men and ulama (religious scholars)’, all of
whom stood when Sabzavari gave the khutba, in Arabic and Persian.
Sabzavari thereupon went to the minbar of the Royal Mosque where he
delivered the khutba for the people of the city. Although the crowd
grumbled at being called together when, in the khutba, Sabzavari substi-
tuted the name of the new shah for that of the old, they understood there
was a new ruler; indeed, the second accession also saw the shah take a
new name, as Safi II became Sulayman.2
The transition between Abbas II and Sulayman was the smoothest
in Safavid history to date. Indeed, that he, like his father the son of a
Circassian woman, was put forth and accepted, without challenge, by
the centre’s key constituencies – Qizilbash, Tajik and ghulam – demon-
strates the extent to which these different elements could work with each
other to insure the future of the broader Safavid project.3
The realm’s borders also remained peaceful. Despite entreaties from
94 Meeting the Challenges: Shah Sulayman
anti-Ottoman interests in Mesopotamia, Basra and several European
powers, and even with the Ottomans occupied in Europe and their stun-
ning defeat at Vienna in 1683, the centre made no move to break the
1639 Zuhab treaty. Indeed, with merchants continuing to pass unchal-
lenged between the two realms, the treaty was observed ‘scrupulously’
until the 1720s, and certainly contributed to a diminished sense of
military urgency throughout the period.4
Further contributing to a sense of security, the minor incursions on the
Eastern front over the period mainly originated from tribes not strictly
under the influence of the Uzbek court, with which the Safavids other-
wise enjoyed reasonably good relations in this period. Although the
Cossack raids did considerable damage to silk-producing regions and an
Iranian force sent against them was defeated, the Cossacks in turn were
defeated by the Russians. When Turkman elements moved toward
Astarabad they were defeated by Iranian troops in 1676–7.5

Socio-economic crises and responses

What crises afflicted the polity during Sulayman’s reign were mainly
domestic and, as earlier, of natural, socio-economic and spiritual origin.
Natural disasters in fact afflicted the realm during most of Sulayman’s
reign. In Isfahan the effects of the poor harvests of 1666 and 1667 were
accentuated by the royal party’s return to the city before measures for its
provisioning could be fully organised, and prices in the city rose sharply.
There was another poor harvest in 1669 and plague. The 1670s wit-
nessed drought, harsh winters, locust swarms, famine and earthquakes.
In 1678–9 some 70,000 were said to have perished from famine in
Isfahan alone and officials were stoned by angry crowds. In 1681
Armenia and Azerbaijan were struck by famine. Plague broke out in
Gilan in 1684–5, spread to Ardabil, where some 80,000 were said to
have died, and thence to Hamadan. In 1686–7 plague struck Azerbaijan,
Mazandaran, Astarabad and Isfahan itself. In 1689 plague was said to
have killed thousands in Shiraz, and struck areas from Baku to Basra,
Mosul and Baghdad. The early 1690s saw plague strike the North and
West, especially Baku and Tiflis, Basra, and Baghdad where 1,000 per
day were dying in 1691. Southeast Iran was also struck, and, two years
after Sulayman’s death, in 1696, Fars was hit by drought and famine.6
In 1667–7, in response to the initial crisis, the shah himself moved to
control price inflation in the capital. Two years later, in 1669, the year
after the second coronation, Muhammad Karaki, vizier since 1661, was
replaced by Shaykh Ali Khan of the Zangana Kurds; the latter, although
in fact Sunnis, had a long record of service to the Safavid project which
Shaykh Ali had himself also continued.7 Having, as Muhammad Bek
before him, moved many family members and other Kurdish elements
into key positions of authority,8 Shaykh Ali embarked on a series of
measures designed to cut costs and raise revenues. Quickly realising the
 Meeting the Challenges: Shah Sulayman 95
impossibility of completely curtailing the outflow of specie, in 1670, the
year after his appointment, he instituted a 5% tax on silver sent from
Isfahan to the Gulf and thence to India. He also attempted to extend
control over the sugar, used at court and by the common people.9 The
vizier also imposed a tax on the capital’s Armenian churches and, in
the 1670s especially, continuing earlier scapegoating policies, renewed
efforts to convert Armenians.10
Although, coincident with an especially harsh winter and resulting
high prices and food shortages in 1672, Sulayman briefly dismissed
Shaykh Ali11 he was reappointed some fourteen months later, in the
midst of rumours of a possible war with the Ottomans. Resuming his
efforts to enhance the realm’s revenues, the vizier moved to curb military
expenditures and sent tax-collectors to the provinces demanding taxes
and imposed fines where these were in arrears. With customs revenues
having been higher under Abbas II, in 1674 the shah instituted the farm-
ing out of the collection of customs duties which led to a measurable
decline in fraud. He also reaffirmed the policy of taxing Armenian
churches and, in 1683, ordered a census of Kirman’s Zoroastrians to
reassess their poll tax liability.12
As to foreign trade Shaykh Ali attempted to reform the administrative
arrangements for the supply of Caspian silk to Isfahan and to require
contractually that the Dutch buy whatever amount of silk actually
arrived therefrom in the capital. The vizier rejected Dutch negotiating
strategies and, following the Dutch seizure of Qishm in 1684 as part of
an effort to get out of treaty obligations, a Dutch team arriving in
Isfahan to negotiate a new treaty was refused a royal audience until the
island was evacuated. The new treaty was favourable to the VOC, but
contained provisions for submission to Iran of detailed lists of VOC
imports and exports.13 As the bulk of Iranian silk continued to move
through Ottoman territory to Europe, not via the Gulf or Russia, and as
India remained Iran’s main trading partner,14 the court overall evinced
increasingly less interest in meeting Dutch demands.
Although some of Shaykh Ali’s measures were apparently successful,15
ultimately the natural disasters, regional and such world-wide economic
developments which affected trade over the period were out of Iran’s
control.16 In addition, Iranian efforts to control the export of specie
continued to be widely circumvented by the English and the Dutch com-
panies – in the midst of yet a third war from 1672 to 1674 – which
moved specie out either to Basra or via the Gulf. The court responded
with continued devaluations of coinage but the 5% bullion tax, likely
unworkable anyway in view of the foreign evasion, appears to have
lapsed.17 Other internal measures, especially those which threatened to
disrupt domestic political arrangements, were abandoned.18
At Shaykh Ali’s death in 1689, five years before that of Sulayman, his
post remained vacant for nearly two years before Muhammad Tahir,
Tajik Qazvini notable and author of Abbasnama, was appointed vizier.19
96 Meeting the Challenges: Shah Sulayman
The new vizier continued to try to stem the loss of specie, seizing
Armenian exports on Dutch ships and devaluing the realm’s coinage. As
for the Persian Gulf silk trade, continuing Dutch anger with the court
suggests ongoing efforts by the centre to maximise Iran’s own revenue
position; in any case VOC silk purchases over these later years appear
to have been minimal.20

Spiritual challenges and complex responses: Baqir Majlisi and

Safavid Shi
ism
By this period, at least, Abbas I’s new maydan had become a centre for
wealthier merchants and tradesmen and the court’s own social, eco-
nomic and political activities21 while, from at least mid-century, the ‘dirt-
ier’ or messy crafts and trades were generally located in and around the
older Harun-i Vilayat square and the old Congregational Mosque.22
While for the former business was apparently booming,23 the general
deterioration and run-down appearance of the latter noted by Chardin24
signalled a downturn in the old maydan’s fortunes which certainly dated
from Abbas I’s establishment of his new maydan to the southeast and the
later establishment, by court and private figures, of sarais, bazaars,
schools, mosques and private dwellings in and around this new centre,
elsewhere in the city and in the suburbs as well.25 The natural and eco-
nomic calamities of the second Safavid century, Sulayman’s reign in par-
ticular, seem to have accentuated this decline: in 1704, ten years after
Sulayman’s passing, the Dutch painter de Bruyn spoke of the old maydan
as being used mainly as stables, with only the poorer guilds still carrying
on any business there.26
The old maydan was also therefore a major focal point of such venues
of ‘popular’ entertainment as the coffee-house, open from dawn until
late into the evenings, where people met to drink coffee or different sorts
of cordials, smoke tobacco and opium, listen to recitations of poetry and
stories and, relatively freely, discuss the affairs of the day. The area
was also where the ‘popular’ classes traditionally celebrated the main
religious festivals.27 Given the connection between the polity’s urban
commercial and artisnal/craft classes and darvish-oriented, that is ‘popu-
lar’, forms of Sufi inquiry and practice, from earlier in the century at
least,28 the old maydan and especially its coffee-houses were certainly
venues for the telling of tales from the Shahnama, the Abu Muslim tradi-
tions and other messianic stories together with various practices associ-
ated with ‘popular’ Sufism. The latter’s ongoing appeal is suggested by the
continued anti-Sufi polemic during Sulayman’s reign and points to these
elements’ continued search for spiritual meaning outside ‘orthodox’
parameters, a search only heightened by the natural and socio-economic
adversities described above.29
The centre’s response to this ongoing spiritual unrest was to resume
the multi-level, balancing approach of Khalifa Sultan and his successor
 Meeting the Challenges: Shah Sulayman 97
Muhammad Bek in which the latter’s successor Karaki had been less
interested. Although the centre’s own preferences in the argument were
clear, that policy continued to aim to identify it with both/all sides to,
and thus transcend, the dispute.
The prominent role played by which Muhammed Baqir Sabzavari in
Sulayman’s accession signalled an effort by the centre to identify with, if
not outright favour the side of, the philosophically minded clerical elite,
as it had during the reigns of Abbas I and Abbas II. Indeed, the court also
honoured the philosophically oriented Husayn Khvansari (d. 1687–8) –
a student of Mir Damad, Taqi Majlisi, and Sabzavari, whose daughter
he married, and who had taught at the Maysi school – and Sulayman
entrusted him with some court assignments. At Khvansari’s death, the
shah erected a mausoleum for him. Khvansari’s son by Sabzavari’s
daughter, Aqa Jamal (d. 1710), also a student of Taqi Majlisi,30 and other
prominent practitioners of philosophical inquiry. Many of these were
themselves students of the philosophically minded clerical associates of
earlier courts, and were also active during Sulayman’s reign.31 Debates
on issues of law and philosophy among and between these scholars were
vigorous over the period.32 Some of these discussions even addressed the
permissibility of practices at court.33
Sabzavari, as his associate Fayz Kashani before him, in fact himself
attempted to steer a middle course on the question of Sufi discourse.
In c. 1676, for example, Sabzavari penned an essay on singing in which,
on one hand he asserted the authority of the senior clerics trained in the
rationalist religious sciences during the occultation, including himself
and, on the other, charted a position which fell just short of the complete
condemnation of singing offered by pseudo-Ardabili, Muhammad Tahir,
Mir Lawhi and Shaykh
Ali Amili.34 Other court associates also took up
the debate.35
Shaykh Ali Khan’s twenty-year vizierate also witnessed special
attentiveness to various Hijazi sayyids who visited the capital36 and to
the polity’s own Tajik sayyids.37 The centre also took pains to stress its
identification with the faith: a miniature showing Ismail proclaiming
Twelver Shi
ism as the realm’s established faith is associated with a his-
tory of Ismail I dated to the late 1670s, whose author greatly embellished
this event.38
The anti-Sufi discourse continued apace, however. Muhammad Tahir
continued his own tirades against philosophical inquiry, although he
was careful, as he had been under Abbas II, to demonstrate his loyalty to
the larger Safavid project by dedicating various essays to the shah him-
self.39 Mir Lawhi continued his polemics40 and, undaunted by Sabzavari’s
court connections, Shaykh Ali Amili, in an essay composed in 1676–7,
three years before Sabzavari’s death in 1679, attacked Sabzavari’s essay
on singing.41 At least one of the several attacks on Sabzavari’s pro-court
position on Friday prayer originated among opponents of singing and
Sufism42 and represented at least an indirect attack on the revival of the
98 Meeting the Challenges: Shah Sulayman
court-clerical alliance which had marked the reigns of Abbas I and
Abbas II.
The appointment of Taqi Majlisi’s son Muhammad Baqir (d. 1698–943)
as Isfahan’s Shaykh al-Islam in 1687,44 eight years after Sabzavari’s
death and during Shaykh Ali Khan’s vizierate, indicates the centre’s con-
tinued preference for an approach to this continued spiritual strife which
attempted to identify the court with, and thus transcend and maintain its
authority in the face of, such arguments.
The Majlisi family, Lebanese in origin, was by this time well estab-
lished on the capital’s clerical scene,45 and Taqi Majlisi’s nine daughters,
at least one of whom was herself a prominent legal scholar, contracted
marriages with Iranian clerics, including sayyids, who were, or sub-
sequently became, well-established scholars in their own right, as did
their children.46
Baqir Majlisi himself was himself both personally aware of and con-
nected to the period’s opposing currents of thought. On one hand, he
had studied with such key figures on the capital’s spiritual scene as Fayz
Kashani, a key target of opponents of Sufism and philosophy, and Khalil
Qazvini, whose philosophical, if not ‘popular’ Sufi, tendencies were well
known, and both of whom had accepted commissions from Abbas II at
the same time as his own father.47 Via these and his father’s own teachers
and associates, Baqir Majlisi was in fact linked to all the major scholars
associated with the court–clerical alliance which had underpinned the
reigns of Abbas I and Abbas II and such scholars of Sulayman’s reign as
Sabzavari and Husayn Khvansari. Majlisi had also continued the legacy
of the scholars of both the first and second court–clerical alliance, includ-
ing his father, as a promulgator in Persian of the faith’s key doctrines and
practices.48 Too, well prior to his appointment, his loyalty to the Safavid
project, like that of his father and his father’s associates, was well estab-
lished.49 Indeed, as a sign of the court’s favour he had received financial
assistance from the court for the project of hadith compilation which
eventually resulted in Bihar al-Anwar, parts of which he dedicated to
Shah Sulayman.50
On the other hand, before his own father’s death Majlisi had also
studied with Shaykh Ali Amili and Muhammad Tahir, both fierce
opponents of popular Sufism and, certainly in the latter’s case, philo-
sophical inquiry generally. Majlisi also studied with Hurr-i Amili, whose
own anti-Sufism was well known, and was himself on record with some,
albeit perfunctory, reservations about ‘popular’ religious doctrines and
practices.51
With such connections Majlisi was better positioned than his father,
Fayz or Sabzavari to strike a middle ground between the contemporary
spiritual extremes. This he did by grounding his discourse firmly in the
revelation of the Imams themselves. Thus Bihar,52 drawing on his earlier
‘primers’, focused squarely on the Imams as the ultimate sources of
knowledge on all matters of doctrine and practice.53 As such Majlisi
 Meeting the Challenges: Shah Sulayman 99
challenged contemporary polemics focusing on alternative messianic
personages, reinforced the position of senior clerics, including himself, as
delegated by the Imam to interpret issues of jurisprudential and theo-
logical import and to undertake such matters of daily practical import to
the community as the conduct of Friday prayer and the collection and
distribution of religious taxes, during the occultation54 and firmly linked
these clerics to, and thereby legitimised, the broader Safavid project.55
Indeed, even Majlisi’s exposition of issues in medical theory and practice
in Bihar also bespoke both an effort to reconcile potentially conflicting
elements of the Galenic, ‘rationalist’, medical tradition with the under-
standing of illness and wellness on offer in the Imams
hadiths and,
thereby, attests to the continued popularity of each.56
Simultaneous with this focus on the Imams, however, Sulayman’s court
continued, and expanded on, its role as chief promoter of all manner of
‘popular’ religious practices. The court’s involvement in Muharram
ceremonies insured that these, especially, were festivals of ‘public enter-
tainment’ rather than purely ‘devotional’ in nature. Elaborate cere-
monies were also mounted in the provincial capitals. Yazid was ritually
cursed and burned, and the Ottomans were also cursed. Lavish banquets
were also organised for such events as Ghadir Qumm – marking the
Prophet’s designation of Ali as his successor.57 The shah himself also
embellished several of the capital’s imamzadas and other ‘popular’
religious sites.58 Additionally, suggesting continued attention to the
shah’s status as head of the Safavid Sufi order, such court chronicles as
Nasab Nama-yi Safaviyya, completed in 1679 by a descendant of Safi al-
Din’s own spiritual guide (murshid) Shaykh Zahid of Gilan, accorded
special attention to the Sufi origins of the Safavid project.59
The court’s continued ‘redirection’ of ‘popular’ dissatisfaction with
existing socio-economic and political circumstances to the most visible
of the realm’s religious and ethnic minorities, as during the earlier vizier-
ships of both Khalifa Sultan and Muhammad Bek, may be counted as
part of this struggle for the hearts and minds of the ‘popular’ classes.
Thus, following his appointment as the capital’s Shaykh al-Islam and
still during the vizierate of Shaykh Ali Khan, whose anti-Armenian
measures have been noted, Majlisi, otherwise tolerant of Christians and
Jews – as ‘People of the Book’ – ordered the destruction of the idols of
Isfahan’s Indian community. The latter’s presence as financiers and mer-
chants in the city had, in fact, only been growing concomitant with, if
they were not the direct cause of, the realm’s economic problems, and
widespread popular resentment with the Indians in this period was noted
by contemporary resident foreigners.60
At the same time as the centre was moving to associate itself publicly
both with philosophical, Sufi discourse and with ‘popular’ practices the
court also moved to associate itself openly with well-known opponents
of both Sufi doctrine and practice and of philosophical inquiry.
Muhammad Tahir who, no doubt mindful of the fate of Mulla Qasim,
100 Meeting the Challenges: Shah Sulayman
had continued to moderate the tone of his criticisms – he also reportedly
visited Fayz in Kashan where the latter had removed himself after resign-
ing his Isfahan post. Muhammad Tahir was appointed Qum’s Shaykh al-
Islam in this period. Hurr-i Amili, like Shaykh Ali, an Arab outsider who
came to Iran late in life, was appointed Shaykh al-Islam in Mashhad.
Like both Shaykh Ali and Muhammad Tahir, with whom he studied,
Shaykh Hurr was well-known opponent of Sufi doctrines and practices
and, just as Muhammad Tahir had moderated his own rhetoric, he had
also studied with Husayn Khvansari, a philosophically minded associate
of the court and, like Muhammad Tahir, supported the performance of
Friday prayer during the occultation, the pro-court position.61
In the context of these policies, together with the physical separation
of Muhammad Tahir and Shaykh Hurr from the capital and the sub-
sequent deaths of both, as well the deaths of Mir Lawhi and Shaykh
Ali,62 in the years following Majlisi’s appointment as Shaykh al-Islam the
vociferousness of the polemics against ‘popular’ Sufi tendencies and
philosophical inquiry began to abate to the extent that its nature and
scope as an ongoing discourse independent of these scholars is harder to
trace.63 Moreover, to the extent that the realm’s alternative spiritual, and
especially messianic, polemics had, if only implicitly, questioned the
legitimacy of the Safavid shahs, foreign travellers’ consistent reports of
Sulayman’s popularity among the people64 also point to the success of
the centre’s spiritual balancing policies.

The discourse of architecture and art

All of the centre’s various constituencies, ‘old’ and new, continued their
involvement in both spiritual and secular ‘cultural’ undertakings, attest-
ing to their successful integration into the larger project whose spiritual
discourse was officially Shi
i and whose cultural discourse was Persian.
As earlier, the centre led the way. Like Safi before him, Abbas II
was buried in Qum, site of the shrine of Fatima. From 1677 to 1680,
Sulayman ordered repairs to a number of extant buildings in Mashhad,
including the shrine of Imam Riza, damaged during an earlier earth-
quake, and several schools.65 Sulayman’s Circassian mother and daugh-
ter endowed property to the Shi
i shrines in Iraq, under formal Ottoman
control since 1639, as did other female courtiers. Abbas II’s mother built
a mosque and a nearby school in the capital’s Abbasabad suburb. In
1679–80 the vizier Shaykh Ali Khan, who in 1678 had built a sarai
Northwest of the city, built a mosque in the city’s Khaju quarter. The
vizier also built a school in Hamadan to which he dedicated as vaqf the
revenues of various villages, sarais, and shops.66 Another court official
erected a marble mihrab in a mosque in Isfahan’s Imamzada Ismail in
1688,67 and the same year the daughter of the court physician Nizam al-
Din Muhammad erected the famous Ilchi Mosque. The governor of
Fars made endowments in Shiraz.68 Ghulams69 and wealthy non-court
 Meeting the Challenges: Shah Sulayman 101
figures, including women,70 also built schools and made endowments in
the period.
Other, apparently more minor figures were also active in their contri-
bution to the realm’s religious infrastructure in this period. In 1677–8
one Hajji Mirza Muhammad donated the revenues of three shops to the
repair of a public water foundation adjacent to the Abdallah Shushtari
School, attesting to a confluence of interests between merchants and
clerics. In 1688–9 one Muhammad Qasim, apparently a darvish of some
sort, built a mosque and an alleyway to connect the Hakim Mosque and
the Imperial Bazaar.71 Other contributors are difficult to identify.72
Such undertakings represented pledges of loyalty to the project but also
attested to both the prominence of non-court elements on the local scene
and to the limited impact of the above-mentioned financial/economic
crises on the polity.
Projecting political authority, the ‘secular’ buildings erected in this
period included the capital’s spectacular Hasht Bihisht (Eight Paradises)
palace, built between 1666 and 1669 in the Northeastern end of the
Chahar Bagh. As many other Safavid structures, this palace exhibited
aspects of both the new and the familiar: Canby notes that the structure’s
‘elevation and divisions of spaces’ attest to ‘the continuing originality of
Safavid architects’ while its irregular, octagonal plan recalled a late
fifteenth-century khanga (Sufi lodge) found elsewhere in the city, and a
pavilion built by Tahmasp in Qazvin. The palace’s vaulted small rooms
were decorated in a style which recalled the Ali Qapu’s hunting scenes.
The roof, with its huge vault pierced at its apex by a high drum with an
inner dome, had its Timurid predecessors. Indeed, the ‘Eight Paradises’
design – eight rooms with a central hall, the latter representing the sun
and the former the eight paradises of the Islamic tradition – was remin-
iscent of structures in Aqquyunlu Tabriz. The colour scheme of bright
yellow glaze combined with bright apple green, turquoise and cobalt
blue of the stone paste tile was popular in the 1660s and is found also in
those parts of the Shah Mosque which Sulayman refurbished as well as
the city’s Armenian Church of the Holy Mother of God. The spandrels
featuring flowers and insects recall those in drawings found in the
albums of Shafi Abbasi and are rendered in the style of Riza Abbasi’s
student Muin Musavvir.73
In c. 1690, toward the end of Sulayman’s nearly thirty-year reign, the
Talar-i Ashraf was built to the Southwest of the Ali Qapu and became
the site of extravagant receptions.74 Sulayman also undertook substantial
additions to the Abbasabad Chahar Bagh.75
A number of court figures built especially lavish mansions in the cap-
ital over this period. Hajji Hedayat, an amir who kept order during
Isfahan’s great famine of 1669, built such a mansion in a small suburb
on a branch of the Zayanada Rud; this area, by Chardin’s time, con-
tained some 150 houses and four bazaars. The sadr, who had married a
sister of Abbas II, built a mansion as well.76
102 Meeting the Challenges: Shah Sulayman
Despite the vicissitudes visited upon the Armenians as one of the most
prominent of the capital’s minority groups, the community, and espe-
cially its merchants, continued to enjoy a singular position at court and
in the realm’s commercial life, no doubt owing to their continued dom-
inance of the overland route to the Levant ports, the realm’s most
important trade outlet to the West, over this period.77 The community
accumulated sufficient wherewithal to continue to build and to embellish
churches over this period, including the All Saviour’s Cathedral, com-
pleted during the reign of Sulayman’s predecessor.78
Sulayman’s court was also noted for its patronage of major painters.
The latter’s output exhibited an ability to move between traditional
Persian and European themes and styles of expression and, moreover, to
mix the two. European influences are visible in the works of Shafi
Abbasi, Ali Quli Jabbadar, whose career continued until 1716, and
Muhammad Zaman, in court employ from at least 1674–5. A Shahnama
copied between 1663 and 1669 and illustrated between 1693 and 1698
contains both traditional and European-style paintings. The illustrations
which embellished histories of the dynasty, including several versions of
the Alam Ara-yi Shah Ismail completed in this period, featured both
traditional and ‘European’ styles.79 The same artists were sufficiently
skilled also to satisfy the varied tastes of the non-court market80 and, as
their predecessors, to work in such other media as lacquer penboxes,
mirror covers and caskets.81
The fine carpets produced over this period reveal a similar ability to
greet the foreign. Carpets continued to be exported to Europe still utilis-
ing the Polonaise style, the latter visible in a 1671 carpet produced for
Abbas II’s tomb in Qum. Indeed, the carpets, cotton covers and clothes,
including fur-lined coats, robes and waistcoats, visible in paintings com-
pleted in the 1660s and 1670s, show a taste for Indian cloths, including
cotton, silks and jewels both at court and outside court circles, as well as
fine glassware imported from Venice. The latter was popular both at and
outside the court.82
The continuing strength of non-court demand over the period, despite
the economic crises noted above, is further attested by the continued
production of blue and white ware by Kirmani and Mashhadi potters,
with styles of pottery decoration continuing to exhibit interaction with
other media, including illuminated manuscripts, carpets and book-
bindings.83 The domestic market also supported the production of
lustreware, based in Kashan or Isfahan, which incorporated distinctly
novel shapes – such as ‘tulip vases’ – and designs. These items utilised a
technique of manufacture featuring the application of a coppery lustre
over cobalt blue, yellow, turquoise or transparent glaze, with decoration
of landscape, with or without animals, suggesting demand for such items
among those aware of, but unable to afford, the gold and silver vessels
produced for the court and other elites.84
The ‘Persian interlude’ also continued over Sulayman’s reign: Iranian
 Meeting the Challenges: Shah Sulayman 103
ceramics remained in great demand abroad, even after China resumed
porcelain exports c. 1683. Indeed, Iranian potters’ development of the
colour grisaille (grey) and their dynamic use of patterns in this period
reflect continued attention to, and the ability to satisfy, the export
market.85 Local metalworkers also worked from Mughal and Deccan
products to develop new items to satisfy domestic demand.86

Summary and conclusion

The dearth of contemporary Persian-language sources on the reign of
Sulayman87 has encouraged reliance, often uncritical, on the Western
sources. These uniformly depict Sulayman as a pawn in the hands of the
haram, as cruel, fond of women and alcohol, indifferent to political and
administrative matters, and portray his twenty-eight years of rule as
a period in which corruption and bribery were ‘rife’ and flourished
alongside pomp and ceremony.88
In fact, however, the realm itself experienced its smoothest transition
between rulers to date and, in the face of a series of natural, socio-
economic and concomitant spiritual challenges, the centre and its associ-
ated elements mounted a credible, and varied, series of responses.
Throughout the period the realm’s different key constituencies displayed
only continued and, indeed, expanded ability to interact with each other
in the interests of the larger project. Such interaction and loyalty was
certainly further encouraged by the prosperity experienced by a number
of sectors of Safavid society – more than court and non-court elites alone
– due, at least in part, to the ‘long peace’ of the latter half of the seven-
teenth century. Indeed, Chardin waxed eloquent in his physical descrip-
tion of Isfahan and its suburbs in this period, noting its thousands of
palaces, forty-eight ‘colleges’, 162 mosques, 1,800 ‘spacious caravan-
sarais’, and ‘really fine bazaars’, and drew comparisons between the
Iranian capital’s population and that of London.89
 8
Denouement or Defeat
The Reign of Shah Sultan Husayn
(1694–1722)

The institutionalisation of transition

Shah Sulayman died in his bed from illness, at the age of forty-seven,
having reigned a few years short of three decades. Less than two weeks
later, in August 1694, with Sulayman’s body on the way to the shrine of
Fatima in Qum for burial – where both Safi and Abbas II were also
interred – the eldest of Sulayman’s seven sons, twenty-six-year old Sultan
Husayn acceded to the throne with the help of his aunt Maryam Bekum,
herself the wife of the sadr, and other court attendants. Pomp marked
the coronation: drums and trumpets sounded and lions and elephants
paraded in Abbas I’s illuminated square, and robes of honour were
bestowed on various notables.1
The smoothness of Sultan Husayn’s accession, like that of his father,
underlines the degree to which, between and among each other, the
realm’s various key constituencies were still co-operating more than
competing.
At the same time, the external challenges which had, for example,
followed the deaths of Ismail and Tahmasp were also not an issue at this
point. As at Sulayman’s accession and during his reign, notwithstanding
the 1697–1701 occupation of Basra by pro-Persian forces, Ottoman-
Persian relations remained peaceful. Safavid-Mughal relations over Shah
Sultan Husayn’s reign were also for the most part peaceful and the
Afghan risings and subsequent movements, c. 1709, owed nothing to
Indian encouragement. To the North, although Peter the Great railed
against the treatment of Russian merchants, a Russian naval squadron
threatened Baku in 1700 and the Russians may have encouraged the
revolt of a local commander in Shirvan in early 1709, there were no
formal hostilities between Russia and Iran over this period. Indeed a
formal treaty with Russia concluded in 1717, five years before the
Afghan capture of Isfahan, rectified some of these perceived injustices.2
Elsewhere a series of Baluchi incursions into Kirman and Yazd
 Denouement or Defeat: Shah Sultan Husayn 105
beginning c. 1698–9 were turned back by Georgian levies which also re-
pelled a Baluchi attack on Qandahar in 1704. A rising in Kurdistan during
the midst of the Baluchi raids into Kirman and Yazd was also put down.3
In fact, at the outset of Sultan Husayn’s reign the realm comprised
roughly the same territory as that at the death of Abbas I, minus Baghdad
and its environs and some Eastern areas lost during Safi’s reign.

The balancing of interests: Safavid pluralist discourse continued

The several administrative manuals composed in this period, two written
after the 1722 Afghan seizure of Isfahan to be sure, suggest the presence
of a relatively developed, formally structured administrative bureaucracy
at the central and provincial levels.4
Nevertheless, throughout Sultan Husayn’s reign, and despite the vari-
ous challenges facing the centre, the centre apparatus itself continued to
reflect the same multi-constitutional (Turk, Tajik, ghulam) bases, and the
informality, familiar from earlier in the century. Thus, of the period’s
five viziers, the Tajik sayyid Mirza Muhammad Tahir, appointed vizier in
1694, served until 1699. He was succeeded by a Shamlu who served until
1707, followed by Shah Quli Khan Zangana (d. 1715), son of the former
vizier and Sunni Kurd Shaykh Ali Khan. He was followed by Fath Ali
Khan, the former’s son-in-law, who served to 1720, and then a Bekdilu
Shamlu until the fall of Isfahan. The many sipahsalars of the period were
drawn from tribal groups, mainly the Shamlu, and the ghulam. The
qurchibashis remained tribal in origin, mainly Shamlu and the Zangana
Kurds. The qullaraqasis were both tribal and Georgian ghulam, after the
Sunni Fath Ali Khan. The several sadrs continued to be Tajik sayyids,
and one, the grandson of the former vizier Khalifa Sultan and husband
of Safi’s daughter Maryam Bekum, served for twenty-six years.5 The
centre’s other high offices were peopled by tribal elements6 even as other
key posts were occupied by Tajiks, including many sayyids.7
The provincial bureaucracy for the most part continued to mirror the
central during this period, being dominated by members of prominent
local Tajik, and often sayyid, families8 even as the governorships were
occupied by a variety of individuals, including tribal figures.9 The fre-
quency with which the Shamlu appear at both this and the centre sug-
gests their continued pre-eminence among the Qizilbash, first apparent
during the reign of Abbas I.
The provinces were formally obliged to send cash and goods to the
centre, maintain locally based troops and acknowledge various centrally
appointed officials such as a vizier, and local fief-holders may have held a
post at, or were appointed by, the centre.10 Nevertheless, local officials
continued to exercise considerable autonomy of the centre, even fre-
quently exercising control over key local posts.11 Too, revenues from
khassa lands were usually directed toward meeting local expenses,
though financial assistance from the centre could be forthcoming.12
106 Denouement or Defeat: Shah Sultan Husayn
The period’s various military expeditions continued to comprise the
mixture of tribal and non-tribal elements familiar from earlier in the
century.13 The Safavid force sent against Afghan forces at Gulnabad in
March 1722, for example, included Arab cavalry, Georgians, qullar
elements, and tribal cavalry, and was commanded by the Shamlu vizier,
the Georgian qullaraqasi, the local rulers of Arabistan and Luristan and
a chief of the Qizilbash Kuhgilu.14
The court’s policies toward non-Muslim Iranians continued as nuanced
as before. As earlier in the century, so this period also witnessed sporadic
campaigns for the conversion of Armenians and Zoroastrians, thus
focusing blame for economic and other ills on these and other minorities
whose involvement in the specie export, for example, was well known.15
Nevertheless, the rich Armenian merchants who continued to dom-
inate the realm’s overland trade, especially the silk trade, also conti-
nued to enjoy the centre’s backing in foreign trade negotiations, the
indigenous Armenian Church consistently enjoyed the court’s support
against Catholic missionary efforts – though this angered the Pope and
the French – and the community was permitted to manage its own
affairs.16 Moreover, some of the harsher measures, additional taxes and
humiliations visited on the Armenian population more generally, which
caused some to leave the city and the realm, were subsequently with-
drawn17 and Sultan Husayn, as his predecessor, is known to have visited
All Saviour’s.18 The various improvements made to the community’s
churches over the period suggest the continuing good health of the
community’s position, as well as its wealth.19

Foreign and domestic challenges and responses

The challenges which presented themselves during Sultan Husayn’s reign
were familiar.
Specie outflow remained a matter of concern, as attested by the
centre’s continued efforts to check its export, ranging from outright bans
– in 1699 and 1713 – to the imposition of duties on its export.20 The
companies’ continued flouting of such measures was rooted in the profits
to be made in the export of specie which greatly outweighed those from
trade in such other items as silk. Indeed, with world market conditions
continuing to determine demand for Iranian silk, at Sultan Husayn’s
accession the VOC had purchased no silk at all since 1691. Between
1697 and 1710, despite a new treaty in 1702, the VOC bought silk only
in 1703 and 1704, and bought only small amounts in 1711 and 1713.
Although the amount purchased in 1714 was markedly higher, this was
the final year in which the VOC purchased Iranian silk. In fact, as Iran’s
best silk was being delivered to private concerns, especially for shipment
West via the Levant, a trade still controlled by the Armenian long-
distance merchants, there was little silk of adequate quality for the com-
panies anyway. The centre’s relative lack of interest in dealing with the
 Denouement or Defeat: Shah Sultan Husayn 107
companies therefore continued, the more so given their complicity in the
specie outflow; usually only lower-ranking officials attended any trade
negotiations with, for example, the Dutch.21
Certainly aggravated by the specie outflow, widespread famine was
said to have caused riots in Isfahan during the shah’s year-and-a-half
sojourn outside the capital to visit the shrine and tombs of Safavid rulers
in Qum and a subsequent lengthy stay in Mashhad, beginning in August
of 1706, some twelve years after his accession.22 During this same period,
perhaps taking advantage of such adversities, Lazgi tribes raided Georgia
from the North and, in 1709, a local commander in Shirvan rose against
the centre. Foreign sources refer to agitation in Kurdistan, Luristan and
Mashhad and, c. 1713, Baluchi raids into Kirman, Uzbek moves toward
Mashhad and Mughal and Afghan movements around Qandahar.23
The centre responded quickly to all these challenges. Sultan Husayn
himself dispatched readily available Georgian forces which speedily
crushed the unrest in Isfahan, and all was quiet when the royal party
returned to the capital the following year.24 Also, however, the court
replaced a number of officials at the central and provincial levels,
ordered Isfahan’s clerics to undertake a variety of special measures to
address the root causes of the riots and itself redirected income from its
rented properties for the same purpose.25 A 1704 Qandahar rising by the
Ghalzai Afghans was put down but the rebellion’s leader, Mir Uvais,
was pardoned. In 1709, however, Mir Uvais rose again and defeated a
mixed Persian-Georgian force sent from Isfahan allied with local Abdali
Afghans. Although a further punitive expedition against him fizzled out,
as Mir Uvais thereafter caused no further trouble he was left alone and
died in Qandahar in 1715.26
In 1715 wheat prices in Isfahan hit new highs and caused further
unrest.27 The following year pestilence broke out in the silk-producing
areas along the Caspian, a rising by Gilani peasants against local author-
ities curtailed the availability of silk from the region and food riots were
reported in Tabriz and Isfahan. In 1718 the pestilence spread further.
Concomitantly, Uzbeks, Arabs and Baluchis launched various incursions
and Tartar elements invaded Khurasan.28
Once again the centre did not fail to respond. In the context of the
1715 food crisis, in Isfahan the capital’s darugha was fired. In 1715, at
the death of the Sunni Kurdish vizier, Shah Quli Khan Zangana, his
son-in-law Fath Ali Khan Daghistani, previously the qullaraqasi29 was
appointed vizier and immediately undertook a series of measures to raise
revenue.30 These included additional levies on merchants and renewed
efforts to force non-Muslim subjects, including the Banyan traders and
at least one prominent, previously exempted, Armenian family, to pay
the jizya tax.31 With some success, the centre also strove valiantly to
make headway on both specie export and the silk trade.32 At the same
time, however, Iranian silk continued to move West via the overland route
at a price which still produced a better return to such private merchants
108 Denouement or Defeat: Shah Sultan Husayn
as the Julfans than the Gulf route. With the centre consequently still
relatively uninterested in the Gulf silk trade, VOC representatives were,
as before, consistently and conspicuously slighted during many of the
period’s trade negotiations.33

Maintaining the spiritual balance

The most vociferous opponents of philosophical inquiry and Sufi doc-
trine and practice were gone from the scene by the time of Sultan
Husayn’s accession. Nevertheless, low-level sniping by like-minded fig-
ures continued,34 as did criticisms of those Twelver scholars, dead and
living, who advocated an expanded authority for senior clerics as arbiters
of issues of doctrine and practice during the Imam’s occultation, and
those of the living who enjoyed close ties to the court.35 The socio-
economic problems discussed above can only have encouraged the
ongoing recourse to Sufi inquiry to which this sniping attests.
Coupled with the above responses to the economic problems, the
centre also strove to maintain its spiritual authority by continuing
to balance its identification with the various opposing parties to the
realm’s spiritual discourse and thus maintain its image as transcending
particularist polemics.
On one hand, the centre further expanded its public association with
the faith, and especially its more orthodox interpretations. For a start,
Sulayman’s body was sent to Qum for burial. Then, with prompting
from Baqir Majlisi, the capital’s Shaykh al-Islam, who was accorded a
prominent role in both the ceremonies marking Sulayman’s burial and
Sultan Husayn’s accession – including delivering the khutba in Sultan
Husayn’s name – the new shah issued a firman banning wine, ordering the
destruction of all wine in the royal wine cellars and forbidding other
excessive practices and displays.36 Although this firman soon went the
way of its many predecessors, attesting to the limits of both the clerical
and court power in the face of human shortcomings, Sultan Husayn’s
reign apparently witnessed noticeably fewer public, and certainly fewer
official, displays of such excess.37
Maryam Bek, Safi’s daughter and Sultan’s Husayn’s aunt and the wife
of the sadr, is identified with a mosque and school dating to 1703, to
whose endowment she added continuously until 1718. In a bow to the
opponents of philosophy the endowment deed for the school forbad the
teaching of several works of Ibn Sina.38
In 1704–5, six years after Majlisi’s death and ten years after his own
accession, the shah commenced the building of the Chahar Bagh school,
bazaar and a three-storey sarai complex, located along the Eastern side
of the Chahar Bagh south of the Hasht Bihisht Palace. The entire com-
plex, this period’s most spectacular project, was paid for, in the tradition
of Timurid, Turkish and Safavid female patronage, by the shah’s mother.
The school’s dome was modelled on that of the Royal Mosque of Abbas
 Denouement or Defeat: Shah Sultan Husayn 109
I and, if the quality of the tile-work did not equal that of earlier projects,
it nevertheless incorporated some unusual building features which
recalled and, in some ways, actually surpassed various individual struc-
tures dating to the reign of Abbas I, arguably including the Royal
Mosque itself.39
Attesting to the larger historical context of the undertaking, the ori-
ginal vaqf deed was dated to 1706 and the school was officially
inaugurated in 1710–11, respectively simultaneous with and in the
aftermath of the 1706 disorders in the capital, the Uzbek attacks of the
same year, and the large number of personnel changes at the central and
provincial levels. The school’s opening ceremony was attended by key
officials and members of the polity’s chief domestic constituencies, from
court eunuchs to Tajik sayyids to Twelver clerics. Each thereby, in the
midst of the above-mentioned challenges, reaffirmed its loyalty to the
shah, to the larger Safavid project of which he was head and, and,
especially as well, that project’s distinctive association with Twelver
Shi
ism.40
Further acknowledging the influence of the ‘orthodox lobby’, the
study of philosophy was banned at the school in favour of concentration
on hadith, fiqh and Qur
an commentary (tafsir).41 Indeed, the 1706 vaqf
document named the school’s first chief teacher as Sayyid Muhammad
Baqir Khatunabadi (d. 1715). Sayyid Muhammad was descended from a
family said to have come to Iran from Madina in the 1470s. Both Sayyid
Muhammad and his father Sayyid Ismail (d. 1703–4) were close associ-
ates of the court during Sultan Husayn’s reign. At Sayyid Ismail’s death
both his son and their relative Muhammad Salih, a son-in-law of Baqir
Majlisi, were given robes of honour by the shah. Baqir Khatunabadi,
who had been named Shaykh al-Islam of Isfahan in 1703, frequently
attended the shah, accompanied the royal party on its sojourn to
Mashhad in 1706–7, and was gifted with 100 tumans by Sultan Husayn
in 1707.42 In 1712 Baqir Khatunabadi was made the realm’s first mul-
labashi, chief cleric, and accorded complete authority over all the realm’s
religious affairs, a scope of authority equivalent to that accorded Ali
Karaki during Tahmasp’s reign.43
The Chahar Bagh complex was completed c. 1714, when a door
costing some 800 tumans and containing great quantity of silver was
added to the structure, but the court continued to add vaqfs until at least
1716. There were also endowments to cover expenses relating to the
school and such non-school expenses as stipends for the faithful in
Najaf, for several to perform the hajj, for expenses associated with
Muharram ceremonies and for the maintenance of both male and female
sayyids. In keeping with the centre’s attention to the public welfare,
excess revenues were directed to the city’s hospices.44
The court also continued attentive to the religious infrastructure out-
side the capital, in both Qazvin and the shrine cities, for example.45 In
1712 a daughter of Shah Sulayman was married to the superintendent
110 Denouement or Defeat: Shah Sultan Husayn
of Imam Riza’s Mashhad shrine, further cementing links between the
Safavid house and key Tajik Twelver sayyids.46
The contributions to Isfahan’s religious landscape by others at the
centre also advanced the centre’s identification with the faith. A sister of
Sultan Husayn built a two-storey school, to the Northwest of Abbas I’s
maydan in the bazaar, and a bathhouse; revenues from the latter were
dedicated to the school’s upkeep.47 The link between a number of prom-
inent clerical associates of the court – including Baqir Khatunabadi,
Shaykh al-Islam and the realm’s first mullabashi, and Muhammad
Husayn Tabrizi, the last mullabashi – with a school built c. 1695 by the
black eunuch Aqa Kamal, denotes an active working relationship
between these two key constituencies in this period, one familiar and the
other a ‘new’ element. Indeed the presence of Aqa Kamal, who in 1695–6
became, in effect, the finance minister and is also associated with the
Chahar Bagh school project, along with the above-mentioned adminis-
trative manuals produced in this period, further attests to the relative
bureaucratisation of the Safavid project.48 The large number of promin-
ent officials, including eunuchs, who performed the hajj in this period
also demonstrates the concern of the Safavid elite across constituencies
with their spiritual credentials.49
Other elites and non-elites – including doctors,50 merchants51, and
small craftsmen52 – made similar contributions, such affirmations of
their loyalty to the faith attesting to their commitment to the centre and
the project itself. A variety of other vaqf endowments, apparently pri-
vate, anonymous or otherwise unidentifiable, for the religious infra-
structure are also dated to this period.53 In fact, the great expansion of
vaqf endowments over this period itself attests also to an effort by court
and private donors alike to enhance the health of the polity’s cultural,
economic and social life,54 all the more important in such troubled times.
It is noticeable also that the titles accorded Sultan Husayn in the
period’s building inscriptions, in projects undertaken both by court-
based and non-court sponsors, gave special prominence to the ‘grander’
claims. Thus, for example, Sultan Husayn is variously referred to as the
‘shadow of Allah (zill Allah)’ and as ‘the just sultan . . . the spreader of
the precepts of Islam (al-sultan al-adil . . . nashir ahkam al-Islam)’.55 He
is also described as the ‘shadow of Allah’ in a court chronicle completed
by a Tajik sayyid for the shah in 1703–4, suggesting continuing support
of this constituency for the Safavid project. This text in particular seems
to have revived the tradition of the universal history which distinguished
such chronicles as Habib al-Siyar of Ismail’s reign and Lubb al-Tavarikh
and Nusakh-i Jahan Ara of Tahmasp’s. These had sought to link the
Safavid shahs directly both to earlier kings and to the Imams and thereby
further enhance their legitimacy and authority but were superseded by
dynastic histories during the reign of Abbas I.56
If all these undertakings projected the centre’s identification with the
anti-philosophical dimensions of the faith, simultaneous efforts were
 Denouement or Defeat: Shah Sultan Husayn 111
made to identify with the Hellenic legacy, philosophical inquiry and Sufi
activity, none of which can be said to have been dead over the period.
In his massive hadith compilation Bihar al-Anwar Baqir Majlisi, the
capital’s Shaykh al-Islam who had officiated at Sultan Husayn’s acces-
sion and won a ban on wine from the shah, attempted to reconcile elem-
ents of Greek medical discourse with the statements of the Imams on
medicine and health. Shaykh Muhammad Jafar, who briefly held the
post at Majlisi’s death, was interested in philosophical and irfani inquiry
as was Jamal Khvansari (d. 1710), son of Husayn, who penned a number
of essays to the shah57 and accompanied Sultan Husayn and Baqir
Khatunabadi, the future rector of the Chahar Bagh school – whose
founding documents proscribed the teaching of philosophy – on the
shah’s journey to Mashhad in 1706–7. Indeed Jamal’s father Husayn
Khvansari, also a proponent of philosophical inquiry, had been a student
of both Baqir Khatunabadi and his father Sayyid Ismail at the Lutfallah
Maysi school, and Sayyid Ismail. Sultan Husayn spent long hours in
conversation with the latter, who had been interested in both philosophy
and theology, having studied with Rajab Ali Tabrizi, himself a student of
Mir Findiriski.58
The contemporary critiques of Sufism and philosophy/irfan only fur-
ther attest to the continued presence of both in this period and confirm
suggestions of an increasingly active distinction between the two by this
period.59 Indeed, although the inscriptions of such schools as that of the
Potters, built in 1693–4 near the Harun-i Vilayat square, whose vaqf
document mentioned Baqir Majlisi, and the above-mentioned endow-
ments of merchants and craftsmen, proclaimed loyalty to the Safavid
project, the buildings were clearly directed to ‘popular’ elements seeking
spiritual explanations for the crises, natural and otherwise, afflicting the
realm and the city.
The court itself was continually, and visibly, mindful of this latter
constituency. Sultan Husayn continued the centre’s patronage of the cap-
ital’s ‘popular’ religious edifices.60 The same Ismail Khatunabadi who,
with his son Muhammad Baqir, were such close associates of Sultan
Husayn’s court – the latter being the first rector of the Chahar Bagh
school where teaching in hadith, fiqh and tafsir were the rule – further
embellished the tomb of Baba Rukn al-Din, dating from the Abbas I
period. This was a popular gathering place during festivals, and the
location of Mir Findiriski’s tomb and Sayyid Ismail’s own final resting
place.61 A yuzbashi funded work on Isfahan’s Imamzada Ismail, to
which the shah himself had ordered repairs.62
Contemporary sources attest to the shah’s careful attention to certain
distinctively Sufi practices historically associated with the Safavid order
and to Tajik acceptance of the Safavid-Sufi connection.63 Contemporary
travellers’ accounts further attest to the sponsorship, both by the court
and realm’s economic elite, of other ‘popular’ rituals distinctive to the
faith.64 These and the shah’s above-mentioned dedication of vaqf to
112 Denouement or Defeat: Shah Sultan Husayn
sponsor Muharram ceremonies, as during earlier reigns, bespeak the
centre’s efforts to influence, via sponsorship, the style and substance of
spiritual discourse of such key distinctive ceremonies.
The development of the city’s non-religious landscape further
advanced the authority and legitimacy of the shah and the larger Safavid
project.
The best-known of the court’s achievements in this regard was the
Farahabad Chahar Bagh, dated to c. 1711, when the shah is said to
have travelled to the area outside Isfahan’s city centre and ordered the
yuzbashi, Ibrahim Aqa, involved also in repairs to the Imamzada Ismail,
to construct a new garden and commanded others build houses nearby.
Just as the Chahar Bagh complex outshone Abbas I’s Shah Mosque, this
new garden complex, certainly took its name from, and dwarfed, Abbas
I’s Caspian garden palace of the same name.65 By this time Sultan
Husayn also had already carried out repairs to the Chihil Sutun complex
and redesigned and redecorated a garden complex associated with his
father Sulayman’s Hasht Bihisht.66 Other members of the family fol-
lowed suit: the school and mosque built by Maryam Bek c. 1703–4
were associated with a mansion she built herself, located outside the
walled city, near the Hasanabad gate.
Merchants emulated the centre: the chief merchant, on whom see
below, had a large mansion in the Abbasabad suburb of the city.67

An economic snapshot: a plethora of taxes

The centre’s devotion of financial resources to such projects, especially
in the aftermath of the 1706 disturbances, is universally lamented in
the secondary sources as evidence of the shah’s indifference both to
the events of the day and to his own duties, and responsibilities, as
ruler.68
Detailed data on the centre’s budget, let alone the polity’s overall
income and expenses, balance of payments or even specie outflow is
lacking, to be sure.69 However, the combined notes of such travellers to
and residents in Iran as Olearius, du Mans, de Thévenot, Chardin,
Kaempfer and Sanson, and other sources, suggest that by this time the
centre had recourse to a myriad of measures with which to tap the chief
sources of the realm’s wealth – agriculture, artisnal/craft production and
short and longer-distance trade/commerce.70
In rural areas, where the bulk of the population still resided, taxes – in
cash and kind – were levied on animals, pastures, gardens, orchards and
trees, houses, wells and mills. There were also additional levies or ser-
vices required when the centre mounted a military campaign. Corvee
labour could also be requisitioned from peasants on crown and private
land. By this period the centre was also promoting sharecropping agree-
ments and maintaining and regulating the irrigation system, all to boost
further production on crown and non-crown land.
 Denouement or Defeat: Shah Sultan Husayn 113
In the steadily growing cities71 craft/artisnal and commercial life func-
tioned on both a private, independent basis, but also as sponsored by the
court. The latter itself maintained some thirty-two workshops of artisans
and craftsmen, each headed by a chief (bashi) who also administered the
corresponding guild in the town.72 There were nearly thirty other non- or
semi-skilled ‘professions’ – from camel-drivers to grave-diggers – whose
trades, considered ‘dirty [and] immoral’, were not organised profession-
ally. Wrestlers, jugglers, beggars, acrobats and puppet-show operators
were supervised directly by a central official, while coffee-houses and
brothels, as well as dancers and singers, gambling house operators,
pigeon-trainers and keepers of cannabis and wine shops were supervised
as a group by another department. Blood-letters and circumcisers were
supervised by the shah’s personal barber.73
Iranian merchants were organised into groups based on their common
line of business, religion, place of origin and nationality; the chief mer-
chant (malik al-tujjar) was appointed by the shah from one of their
number.74 As with the centre’s involvement with rural irrigation, on the
urban scene the centre’s building of bazaars both promoted economic
activity and allowed the centre to oversee the affairs of these professions.
All of these elements were liable for a host of direct taxes in cash and
in kind as well as the corvee, organised by their guild chief or merchant
leaders.75 The centre also used the guilds to influence, if not control, the
quality and flow of goods, their prices and weights and measurements
and to force sales of its own goods at artificially low or high prices.76
Through guild leaders the centre also acquired its own finished products.
There was a personal head tax and a house tax. Religious minorities paid
the jizya, the non-Muslim head tax.77
In lieu of regular cash salaries,78 local and central government officials
were often given assignments on sources of revenue – land, customs
duties, etc. – a system in place since early in Islamic history.79 These
officials also charged fees for their services.80
All ranks of officials also gave an annual ‘gift’, in cash or kind, to their
superiors and similar ‘gifts’ on such special occasions as Nawruz, the
Persian New Year. Holders of the above-mentioned assignments on rev-
enue, and even small landowners, were expected to make extra gifts.
Tribal elements might include in their gifts cash and/or military forces for
use by the centre. Foreign companies were also expected to provide gifts,
pay fees and render services to local and central officials. The latter
included provision of ships for transport of the court’s goods. Indeed the
royal workshop system produced luxury items both for the court itself
and for export to Europe and India; all profits accrued therefrom passed
directly to the court. The court also received one-fifth of all booty taken
in war and the shah was heir to the estates of those who died without
heirs or who went bankrupt.81
Taken together, such a variety of means to extract wealth both min-
imised the centre’s need to raise and have on hand, let alone spend,
114 Denouement or Defeat: Shah Sultan Husayn
substantial amounts of cash to finance day-to-day central or local admini-
strative ‘running’ costs let alone any of the great architectural projects of
the day. Indeed, the Farahabad project in particular made extensive use
of corvee labour.82 Such a system also allowed the centre to spread the
costs of such undertakings among a variety of sources, depending on the
strength or weakness of one or the other sector.
Perhaps more importantly, such projects – undertaken on such scale
as to equal if not outshine those of Abbas I – complemented both the
variety, already detailed, of short-and longer-term ‘practical’, i.e. eco-
nomic and political, responses of centre to the misfortunes of the time
and the centre’s already-discussed enhancement of the realm’s spiritual
legitimacy and secular/political infrastructure.
Taken together, all these undertakings bespeak simultaneous efforts to
project both power and legitimacy, all the more important following the
disturbances which had rocked the capital in 1706 and 1715, not to
mention the other largely internal economic and political challenges to
both the realm’s stability and his authority in 1706. In this instance
Sultan Husayn’s efforts recalled the extent of similar, and ultimately
successful, projects undertaken during Abbas I’s reign which illustrated
the centre’s perception of the challenges it faced in that period. The
secular and non-secular projects undertaken by both non-court elites
and non-elites over the period, in turn, projected their reciprocal loyalty,
as individuals and representatives of larger constituencies, to both the
person of the shah and, hence, to the larger project itself.

Creativity and consumption

Indeed the strength of activity, and creativity, on other ‘cultural’ fronts
does not suggest a system under fundamental social or economic chal-
lenge but rather the continued strength of elite and non-elite purchasing
power and, therefore, the limited impact of the various economic crises
discussed above. Nor is there any suggestion of the sudden appearance
of, let alone any innate, hostility to things foreign, let alone Christian
and/or Western.
Court-sponsored painting, for example, flourished over the period,
both addressing and incorporating the European, as it had during
the reign of Sultan Husayn’s predecessors, and evolving new styles.
Indeed, although Muhammad Zaman died c. 1700, the work of his son
Muhammad Ali displayed advances on his father’s work and his debt to
European styles; his figures, for example, are more ‘delicately modelled’,
‘not puffy-eyed and ponderous like those of his father’, and his painting
of Sultan Husayn reflects a different use of lighting.83
Styles and techniques continued to cross media boundaries. By the
mid-1690s the above and other artists are associated with a new style
of pen box,84 the lush floral motifs evident in early eighteenth-century
border-illuminated manuscripts feature also in the 1714 silver door of
 Denouement or Defeat: Shah Sultan Husayn 115
the Chahar Bagh school85 and a ewer of the period is decorated with
panels of tulips of the type found in album covers. Lustreware was
clearly influenced by metalworking patterns and these, in turn, by
manuscript illumination and bordering.86
Evidence from court paintings also attests to the continued production
both of such luxury items as textiles and objects made of precious met-
als, such as dagger sheaths and jewelled hilts, for the socio-economic
elite.87
The continued presence of lustreware, enamel work and steel objects
points to both the continued strength of purchasing power of both court
and non-elite elements, the realm’s continued productive capacity and,
in particular, producers’ awareness of, and ability to adapt to, changing
domestic and foreign tastes.88

Denouement or defeat?
Sultan Husayn is uniformly disparaged in the European and secondary
sources and blamed for the fall of the capital and, by extension, the
dynasty itself to the Afghans in 1722, albeit three decades after he
assumed his throne.89
At the outset of his reign, however, there was little hint that he might
be the ‘last’ ruler of the longest-ruling dynasty in Iran’s Islamic history.
Even given the diversity of actions taken by the centre in response to the
challenges discussed above, there was no evidence of continuous, wide-
spread and profound discontent among the populace generally or, more
importantly, the realm’s key politico-military and socio-economic con-
stituencies sufficient to present a serious challenge to the broad configur-
ation of interests behind the ruling house, let alone the latter’s legitimacy
in particular.
As for foreign threats, there was little hint of any renewed threats from
the realm’s traditional enemies, the Ottomans or the Uzbeks. Indeed,
the Safavid military, comprising some centre-based elements with the
bulk of the troops dispersed throughout the provinces, was best suited
to respond to just such large-scale ground expeditions as had been
launched by these enemies in the early seventeenth and sixteenth centur-
ies, their well-heralded approach having always allowed adequate time
for the assembly of a sufficiently credible Safavid force to, eventually,
repel the invaders. Following the initial Safavid offensive strategy which
carved out the Safavid realm this essentially defensive military strategy,
together with fortuitous turns of events among the Safavids’ opponents
and such peace treaties as that of Amasya, in 1555, and, especially,
Zuhab in 1639, had secured the realm against its traditional external
enemies for more than two hundred years. As for minor incidents of
unrest and incursions in border areas, in the early, and even later, years
of Sultan Husayn’s reign, the deployment of local forces had usually
proved sufficient.90
116 Denouement or Defeat: Shah Sultan Husayn
In 1717, in the aftermath of food riots in Tabriz and Isfahan and with
treaties with Russia and the VOC secured, in Qandahar Mir Uvais’ son
Mahmud murdered and seized power from Mir Uvais’ successor and
brother. The centre, occupied with a Kurdish rising in Hamadan and the
seizure of Persian islands in the Gulf by Omani Arabs, opted for the
short-term measure of recognising Mahmud as the local potentate.
When Mahmud sacked Kirman in November of 1719,91 as the Omani
threat fizzled out, the centre turned its attention East. Despite the fall of
the vizier Fath Ali Khan in December 1720,92 an expeditionary force was
raised and, at its approach, the Afghans – as had the Uzbeks so often
in the past – withdrew. The relief force, under Qajar leadership, was
thereupon directed against the rather too-independent ruler of Sistan.
Following the Sistanis’ defeat of this force, in the late summer of 1721,
Lazgi tribesmen seized the capital of Shirvan and, in October, Mahmud
reappeared at Kirman. Stiff local resistance caused Mahmud to with-
draw toward Yazd. Driven off by the Yazdis as well, in March 1722
Mahmud reached Gulnabad, less than 18 miles to the East of Isfahan.
There the Shamlu commander’s apparent failure to capitalise on the
initial successes of his much larger force allowed Mahmud to exploit a
narrow opening and Safavid forces, snatching defeat from the jaws of
victory, fled to Isfahan. Three days later, the Afghan, realising the extent
of his victory, commenced his siege of the city.93
The shah’s continued presence in the capital throughout the sub-
sequent half-year siege served as a rallying point for tribal and non-tribal
military forces based near to and far from the capital. These forces
responded to the centre’s messages for assistance and penetrated the
Afghan lines to enter the city.94 The population of Isfahan, including
those who, spurred on by stories of the brutality of advancing Afghan
forces, had retreated to the city from outlying areas, showed no signs of
defecting but rather protested vigorously the court’s failure to counter
the Afghan threat.95
Nevertheless, the siege could not be broken and six months later, in
October, with the English East India Company reporting that all hopes
of its being raised had faded, Mahmud received Sultan Husayn at the
latter’s own Farahabad palace where the shah named the Afghan leader
as his successor. This ceremony was thereafter repeated at the royal
palace in the city centre, with the shah being brought from prison to
reprise his earlier performance.96
 Epilogue
Poetry and Politics –
The Multiplicity of Safavid Discourse

In his perceptive analysis of the panegyrics of the great Safavid poet

Saib Tabrizi, Jafariyan notes Saib’s poetry described the shahs of his
day as leaders of the Safavid Sufi order, as promoters and propagators
of Twelver Shi
ism, as Alid sayyids, as defenders of Iran from its
Uzbek and Ottoman enemies, as the Shadow(s) of Allah on earth, as
defenders of the shar (the law) and as providers of adl (justice) and
security.1 References to the ruler as Shadow of Allah on earth were
not unique in pre-Safavid Iranian history. Too, many other rulers were
portrayed as defenders of the law and as providers of justice and
security. However, these references together with Saib’s additional ref-
erences to the shahs’ roles as Sufi leaders, promoters of the faith,
sayyids and defenders of the realm against these particular enemies,
highlight features unique to the centre’s public discourse during the
Safavid period and point up its distinctly multi-faceted, inclusive
nature and broad appeal.
Efforts to project such a broad appeal were in evidence from early on.
Ismail’s own poetry spoke simultaneously to aspects of Sufi and Shi
i,
Tajik Persian, and even Christian, discourse widely extant on the urban
and rural scenes in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Indeed,
Ismail portrayed himself, and was portrayed, simultaneously as the ser-
vant and embodiment of each of these traditions, mediator between and,
therefore, transcendent ruler over them all. Appeals to, and thus recogni-
tion of, any one element did not therefore entail the exclusion of any of
the others, and hence facilitated the transfer of the allegiances of Turk
and Tajik affiliates of the region’s earlier tribal polities to the Safavid
project. Moreover, for more than a quarter-century of his leadership of
the order and the polity itself, after the 1501 capture of Tabriz, Ismail’s
‘words’ were matched by practical actions. Marriages, appointments,
grants of land and/or recognition of existing local rulers’ autonomy so
successfully aligned Turk and Tajik to each other and to the ruling house
that the resulting, broadly based polity was sufficiently strong to survive
118 Epilogue
domestic and foreign challenges, especially given the fortuitous Ottoman
turn to the Southwest after Chaldiran.
So dependent on a single personality was the Safavid project to this
point, however, that the hierarchical configuration of Turk and Tajik
interests arranged around Ismail at the polity’s centre could only have
fractured with his death. During the half-century reign of Ismail’s son
Tahmasp, therefore, the polity experienced, first, a decade or more of civil
disorder and consequent foreign invasion. There followed, however, the
rise of a reconstituted, and familiar, Turk-Tajik alliance, hierarchically
organised, together with a reconstituted, and similarly familiar, broad and
inclusive discourse and actions/policies which centred on the person and
presence of the new shah as spokesman, mediator and transcendent ruler
in whom both Turk and Tajik could see their discourses mirrored, their
interests expressed and thus legitimised. As with Ismail’s death, however,
so the death of his son Tahmasp, in 1576, voided these arrangements.
The subsequent fourteen years of civil war which threw up, and
marked the reigns of, his sons Ismail II and Khudabanda, brothers by a
single Mawsillu woman, revealed the extent to which interests in and
loyalty to the broader project had, in less than a century, broken down
particularist interests. Turk, Tajik and now also more recently arrived
Northerners struggled both between and against but also, and more
importantly, alongside and with each other for mastery of the political
centre. Indeed, that Ismail II’s Sunni flirtation, intended to reach out to
still-strong Sunni sympathies among Tajiks and placate the Ottomans
and thus solidify his own personal position, received such short shrift
from the military-political centre, reveals the depth of commitment of
the polity’s key constituencies to Twelver Shi
ism as the realm’s estab-
lished faith. This commitment persisted despite the fact that few were
conversant with more than its very basic doctrines and practices, as other
forms of spiritual expression contined to remain popular at the elite and
non-elite levels – as one aspect of the broader Safavid project’s hitherto
overall successful discourse.
The scale of the internal and external military-political and domestic
spiritual challenges which faced Khudabanda’s son Abbas at his 1587
accession called forth perhaps the most wide-ranging and transformative
responses of the period. On one hand, although long-standing Qizilbash
tribal elements retained their military, and thus, political predominance
throughout, non-Qizilbash tribal and newly arrived ghulam constituen-
cies were now accorded greater, and in some cases formal, status and
positions in the realm’s military-political and administrative spheres.
The newly expanded centre oversaw both a series of successful domestic
and foreign military undertakings and a similarly large-scale programme
of secular and non-secular building projects which reinforced the
transcendent political and spiritual authority of the shah, and thus
the larger Safavid project itself, in the face of considerable challenges
to both.
 Epilogue 119
The enlarged centre also embarked on an effort to connect with elem-
ents outside the region. The latter included Armenian and Western polit-
ical, commercial-economic and religious constituencies, Arab clerics and
even Chinese potters.
As manifested in particular by their acceptance of political and
administrative appointments, or the funding of religious and cultural
undertakings, indigenous elites and non-elites in particular declared their
loyalty to the shah, and thereby each other’s traditions and discourse
and, thus, the broader, inclusive, fundamentally multi-constitutional
nature of the project itself. The military-political stability and economic
growth and the new foundations laid for the faith itself by additions in
material infrastructure and personnel which marked the later years of
Abbas’ reign generated a new self-confidence at the centre. This was
reflected in the diminishing preoccupation of the period’s court chron-
icles with the distant, pre-Safavid past in favour of grounding the roots,
and legitimacy, of the polity in the very distinctly, and distinctive,
more-recent Safavid past.
The success with which the newer elements were incorporated into,
and came to identify with, the broader project without displacing those
already in place is most clearly manifest in the increasing smoothness
which marked subsequent transitions between rulers and the degree of
continuity in the domestic and foreign policies which were pursued and
spirituo-culture discourse which was projected by subsequent, different
configurations of Turk, Tajik and ghulam at the centre. Indeed, the bal-
anced allocation of key posts at the centre among these three constituen-
cies was the chief common and continuous feature of Safavid politics
for the duration, even if the personalities themselves changed, or were
changed. This process was certainly facilitated by the growing wealth
accruing to the realm over the century, especially in the aftermath of the
1639 Zuhab treaty, which both elites and non-elites clearly enjoyed.
These later years were hardly trouble-free, to be sure. In addition to
the clashes at the centre during the reigns of Abbas I’s first two successors
there were certainly bursts of officially sanctioned religious and/or ethnic
intolerance, especially against Armenians, Jews and Banyans. These lat-
ter outbursts – during the vizierates of Khalifa Sultan, Muhammad Bek
and Shaykh Ali Khan especially – were almost always associated with
larger economic crises either alone, or in combination with other, ‘nat-
ural’, disasters, however, and these minority elements served as scape-
goats to deflect ‘popular’ attention from the centre’s own inability,
despite its best efforts, to resolve problems whose causes, in fact, were
essentially outside its influence but whose impact on ‘popular’ elements
was especially telling.
But, during Sultan Husayn’s reign in particular – as witnessed by the
riots in Isfahan during the second decade of his reign, the torching of
Baqir Khatunabadi’s house in the third or, during the Afghan siege of
Isfahan, the riots over the court’s inability to defend the city – not all
120 Epilogue
of the people were fooled all of the time. Too, some senior clerics
objected to this official intolerance: aside from his actions against Indian
idols abetted, if not initiated, by the same Shaykh Ali Khan vizierate,
even Baqir Majlisi was certainly more tolerant of Christians and Jews
than is usually assumed. In fact, moreover, the Safavid centre generally
sided with indigenous, especially elite, Armenian interests against those
of foreign Christians. And, if these Armenians, owing to the crucial role
of some, at least, in long-distance trade, had been forcibly brought to
Isfahan, ongoing Armenian church-building and embellishment attests
that they enjoyed, and were officially encouraged in their, freedom of
worship. Even Christian ghulam were permitted to continue their own
distinct rites and practices just as in the first Safavid century nominal
Shi
ites had been permitted to give expression to Sunni historical inter-
pretations of Islamic history. As for the Indians, though their rising num-
bers in the later seventeenth century attracted attention and, in the midst
of economic crises, animosity, in the same time frame various court and
non-court elites, including eunuchs and clerics, entrusted their funds to
Isfahan’s Indian merchants. On balance, the Safavid record on minorities
certainly stands in favourable contrast to that of contemporary Europe.2
Over the period there were also both episodic and ongoing spiritual
challenges to Safavid spirituo-religious legitimacy. Early in the period
the messianism of these movements mainly attracted tribal elements,
especially when the deaths of Ismail and Tahmasp removed the key fig-
ures around whom the elites and levies of the polity’s different tribes had
become organised. Over the sixteenth century and during the second
Safavid century especially, commensurate with urban expansion, polit-
ical disarray at the centre and socio-economic and natural crises, such
messianic discourse attracted the support of some tribal but also, and
increasingly, elements of the expanding urban population. In Isfahan the
worse affected of the latter were those located around the city’s trad-
itional centre, the Harun-i Vilayat square. Least able to weather the
combination of external economic and internal ‘natural’ misfortunes
over the seventeenth century, they sought meaning and solace in mes-
sianic ‘Sufi’ discourse and practice. The growing popularity of such
movements in turn provoked middle- and lower-ranking clerics who
turned also on court-based clerics whose philosophical interests and per-
sonal associations appeared to encourage such unorthodox discourse,
but whose associated theological and jurisprudential writings both legit-
imated both their own affiliation with the established political institution
and the exclusivity of their leadership position within the community
during the Imam’s absence. The resulting domestic spiritual disorder,
which grew coincident with the polity’s economic problems, was of
increasing concern to the centre.
Overtly alternate messianic discourse was anathema, and over the
period those tribal or urban elements which went so far as to question
the legitimate rule of their pir/the shah paid the ultimate price. However,
 Epilogue 121
over the seventeenth century in particular, except for brief moments the
centre, adhering to its traditional tendency to strive to transcend particu-
larist polemics, attempted to forge and maintain links with all parties to
those ongoing, opposing spiritual polemics which fell short of such overt
challenges to the larger project rather than moving brutally to crush such
movements.
On one hand, court-associated clerics were sent to preach in Isfahan’s
mosques, many strategically located in the precincts of the bazaar itself.
Senior clerical associates of the court provided a growing body of
Persian-language resources on the basics of Twelver doctrine and prac-
tice for use in such campaigns. Some also undertook regular preaching.
Others turned to scholarship in the religious sciences both to advance the
cause of the Safavid project itself in the face of such discord but also to
enhance both their own authority in the community during the Imam’s
absence and the legitimacy of their involvement with the political
establishment. All of these clerics were well-known for their interests in
philosophical inquiry, if not also ‘high’ Sufism.
Simultaneously, however, by means of appointments to various polit-
ical and religious posts the centre both undertook to associate itself with
some of the more vocal critics of ‘popular’ Sufi-style and philosophical
discourse and to sponsor, and thereby identify with, ‘popular’ religious
and spiritual discourse, structures, events and practices – even during
Saru Taqi’s vizierate though not during that of Muhammad Mahdi
Karaki – and thereby to offer ‘official’ alternatives to contemporary
messianic polemics.
Taken together these efforts, aided by the timely passings of key
opponents of Sufi and philosophical doctrine and practice and the
centre’s ongoing ‘material discourse’ in support of its authority, the ‘pol-
icy of transcendence’ succeeded in lowering the volume of the realm’s
competing polemics by the end of Sulayman’s reign while maintaining
the legitimacy of the latter’s authority; hence, the policy was continued,
with similar success, during the reign of Sultan Husayn.
Much attention has been paid to the centre’s ‘foreign’ trade relations
and, especially, movements of silk and specie, this especially in the light
of the recent, and much-needed, mining of the records of the Gulf-based
foreign trading companies. To be sure, efforts over the second Safavid
century in particular bespeak the centre’s continued concern with maxi-
mising silk exports and checking the export of specie. Too, this material
suggests that of far greater importance to the realm’s well-being over the
period was the continued vitality of both the overland trade routes, from
the Eastern Mediterranean through Iran to India, and domestic eco-
nomic activity – agriculture, especially, and domestic production and
trade. Also clear is the initial apparently compatible politico-economic
expectations, and needs, of the court and the foreign trading companies
which then increasingly diverged as the centre realised that company
representatives, beholden both to tiers of ‘higher-ups’ abroad and to the
122 Epilogue
exigencies of the world market, could not set their own political and
economic/commercial agendas and policies, or even purchases, let alone
act as spokesmen for their home governments’ policies in the region.
Attempts by Abbas to construct an anti-Ottoman alliance with the
European powers, as similar efforts both by Ismail and the Safavids’
Aqquyunlu forebearers, therefore came to nought. Hence, if the Safavid
centre appeared to foreign observers to grow a tad inward-looking in the
latter part of the century, particularly after the 1639 Zuhab treaty
with the Ottomans, this is understandable given the centre’s growing
understanding that the domestic and the regional mattered, and would
continue to matter, more.3 Compared to dealing with company represen-
tatives, usually impotent and often petulant, peace on the Western
marches was attainable, if at a price, and promised, and produced, better
and broader political and economic returns.
Any such inward focus did not obtain in all spheres of life. Safavid
artists and artisans were consistently well attuned to growing demand
from and changes in the increasingly sophisticated domestic and external
markets, and proved interested in and capable of incorporating ‘the for-
eign’ over the period. Overseas and domestic markets remained inter-
ested in their output, and, that the latter included elite and non-elite
points to the economic benefits enjoyed by a number of sectors of Safavid
society in the aftermath of Zuhab.
If, despite its many and varied efforts, the centre was unable to control
specie outflow it was hardly oblivious to the domestic damage wrought
by changes in Iran’s place in the period’s world trade patterns, especially
as these were exacerbated by similarly uncontrollable natural calamities.
During the reign of Sultan Husayn, for example, the centre’s response
was as nuanced and complex as that adopted in response to the domestic
spiritual discord. Aside from the scapegoating of indigenous minorities,
a policy not unknown in the West in our own age, the centre was alert to
the interests and demands of key merchant/commercial and producing
elements, sacking incompetent officials, pursuing tax measures and
undertaking, and encouraging others to undertake, appropriate social
welfare activities and seeking to spread the financial burdens thereof
widely and broadly. Paralleling, and presupposing, these ‘practical’
measures, concomittant centre-sponsored secular and non-secular build-
ing projects further advanced the centre’s claims to continued political
and spiritual authority and legitimacy.
Even if it was, or tried to be, more than the sum total of its component
elements, the centre emerges not as the sole actor on the military-
political, socio-economic, or the ‘cultural’ and spiritual spheres but
rather, and perhaps merely, the largest and most important one.
Comprised of multiple constituencies itself, the centre set the tone
in different spheres of the realm’s activities, articulating a discourse
intended to transcend those of its, and other, individual constituents.
Short of such direct, overt challenges to the authority of the shah as the
 Epilogue 123
projected apex of this transcendent discourse, or key, individual com-
ponents thereof, the centre generally tolerated different discourses and
expressions and limited its intervention in affairs outside the capital. To
be sure, changing tastes and preferences at the centre might mean that
patronage of some activities was limited or curtailed. In such cases, how-
ever, provincial elites and the realm’s non-elites often replaced the court
elites as patrons thereof.
As large as the centre and its associated bureaucracy became over the
project’s second century, however, Safavid Iran can hardly be equated
with a modern nation-state. Such a term connotes a highly centralised
adminstrative apparatus with a monopoly on military and, in its totali-
tarian versions, political power and formal lines of administrative prac-
tice and procedure, as well as fixed, internationally agreed upon borders,
a single language, and a generally homogeneous population.4
Instead of ‘state’, therefore, such terms as ‘project’, ‘polity’ and ‘realm’
appear herein. The first in particular has been intended to suggest
disparate groups engaging in a broader, common activity but whose
interests and agendas are potentially, if not inherently, in conflict.
Consequently also, the term ‘shah’, with its absolutist connotations, has
been used sparingly. At all times the Safavid project was, and was ‘run’
by, a composite of precisely such disparate groups. Indeed, over the
period the number of both the realm’s constituencies and those constitu-
encies which enjoyed a ‘place at the table’ of the project’s centre only
grew. In the early sixteenth century the project was dominated by the
military-political power of the Turk and the administrative expertise and
broader cultural discourse of the Tajik united in loyalty under, by and to,
the heterodox spiritual and Persian cultural discourse with which Ismail
I projected his own identification. By contrast, at his peaceful accession
in the last years of the seventeenth century Sultan Husayn and the larger
project of which he was now acknowledged as head commanded the
recognition, if not always the continuous affection, of an array of
foreign commercial, political and religious interests as well as indigenous
Muslim, Christian and foreign artisnal and commercial and religious
classes, and more importantly, enjoyed the allegiance of Turk and non-
Turk tribal, Tajik, and ghulam military, political and administrative and
other court elements. The fortunes of all of these had benefited from
long-term internal and external peace and stability and concomitant
economic growth delivered by the Safavid project. Great clerical families
– Karaki and Majlisi – administrative families – Jabiri, Khuzani and
Kujuji – and sayyid families – Marashi, Shahristani – owed the origins or
enhancement of their fortunes to their participation in the Safavid pro-
ject, as did families of historians, medical practitioners, astrologers and
artists.
Binding all these together was Twelver Shi
i spiritual and Persian cul-
tural discourse – the former itself, subject as it was to its own internal
tensions, sufficiently complex to lie much less heavily on the populace
124 Epilogue
than later Persian and most Western secondary sources would have it. At
the apex of this diverse, multi-constitutional, multi-discourse project
stood the ruling shah himself, less an absolute, or absolutist, ruler
than the mediating embodiment of the discourse of, and therefore the
transcendent figure over, the realm’s increasingly larger number of com-
ponents. The narrow, particularist interests of the latter had been stead-
ily overcome over the period: where disorder had followed the deaths of
Ismail I and Tahmasp, concomitant with the broadening of the number
of its component constituencies, increasing institutionalisation and eco-
nomic growth noted above, the smooth successions of Sulayman and
Sultan Husayn show that the Safavid project itself had succeeded in
becoming bigger than any one of its rulers and associated key political
personalities.
Saib’s panegyrics thus accurately reflected the complex, multi-
constitutional nature of the broader Safavid project as it had evolved to
this point, broad enough so that each of the realm’s individual consti-
tituent elements, rural and urban, elite and non-elite, Muslim and non-
Muslim, indigenous or foreign, perceived itself to have a vested interest
in the present, and future, thereof.

Aftermath
Small wonder, then, that for most the capture of Isfahan and Sultan
Husayn and even the crowning of Mahmud the Afghan did not herald
the project’s end. Sultan Husayn’s third son, the young Tahmasp
(1704–32), appointed crown prince by the shah during the siege, broke
out of the city and fled to the former capital of Qazvin. There, in
November, after Isfahan’s fall, and supported by Bakhtiyari elements
and troops based in various provincial cities, Azerbaijan, Georgia and
Luristan, as well as Shahsevan and Qajar elements, he proclaimed him-
self Tahmasp II.5 Although he fled Qazvin at the approach of an Afghan
force and the city was occupied, the Qazvinis themselves rose up against
the Afghans who thereupon withdrew to Isfahan. There Mahmud, fear-
ing a uprising, ordered the murder of Sultan Husayn’s key supporters
and officials and later also a number of other princes, including the
former shah’s sons and brothers. A number of villages near Isfahan con-
tinued to hold out against the Afghans, however, as did, for some nine
months, the city of Shiraz.
Another refugee from Isfahan, Mirza Ahmad, a descendant of Sulay-
man’s daughter by the Marashi sayyid administrator of the Mashhad
shrine, fled to Kirman and Fars with an army which at one point is said
to have numbered some 6,000. Pursued by Tahmasp’s and Afghan
forces, he made his way to Bandar Abbas but was eventually captured by
the Afghans and executed in 1728. Several figures rose claiming to be
Tahmasp’s younger brother, Ismail. One of these, based in Lahijan, is
said to have raised an army of 12,000, including some Qizilbash elem-
 Epilogue 125
ents who defected from the Ottomans. Another pretender appeared
among the Bakhtiyari and attempted to establish a base at Shushtar, a
key base of the Safavids’ sixteen-century rivals the Mushasha.6
Even as the Afghans were struggling against such continued resistance,
the Ottomans, in co-ordination with the Russians, sent forces through
Georgia toward Kirmanshah and Hamadan – ostensibly on the side of
Tahmasp II. Local communities were as opposed to the Ottomans as to
the Afghans and, although the Ottomans finally took Tabriz in 1725,
they faced fierce local resistance both there and at Irivan, which they
finally seized in 1724. Tahmasp II, still locked in struggle with the
Afghans, tried in vain to save Hamadan, itself defended by a nephew of
Sultan Husayn. With Hamadan’s conquest in 1724, the Ottomans
were, finally, masters of Western Iran, including the long-coveted silk-
producing regions. An Ottoman-Russian treaty concluded the same year
divided Western Iran and limited the movements therein of Tahmasp II,
who had defeated an Afghan force near Qum. Throughout the occupa-
tion local tribal elements, including Bakhtiyari, Lur and local Arab elem-
ents kept up their resistance to the Ottomans, as did both Tahmasp II
and the Afghans.7
In 1726 Mahmud was assassinated, victim of internal Afghan intrigues,
and was succeeded by his cousin Ashraf. Faced with the Ottoman threat,
Ashraf turned to the Safavid legacy to rally the opposition, ingratiating
himself with Sultan Husayn and accepting service from some Safavid
commanders against Ottoman forces. The Ottomans, attempting to
trade on the same legacy, proclaimed their intention to restore Sultan
Husayn to power, at which Ashraf sanctioned the shah’s murder.8
Although Ashraf subsequently defeated an Ottoman force near Hamadan
later in 1726, the continued tenuousness of the Afghan position in the
country and, especially, the continuing threat posed by Tahmasp II
forced Ashraf to cede most of Western Iran to the Ottomans. In 1729,
following the 1726 capture of Mashhad and in the context of the 1729
occupation of Herat and Qandahar by Tahmasp II’s forces led by his
new vakil Nadir Quli Bek Afshar, the future Nadir Shah, Ashraf agreed a
treaty with the Russians which allowed Russian traders to reside in Iran.9
The Afghans retreated toward Isfahan where Ashraf, unsure of the popu-
lation’s loyalty, ordered the execution of many prominent figures and
even maltreated the representatives of the foreign trading companies. In
the ensuing Afghan-Safavid confrontation at Isfahan, the former were
decisively defeated and, in November 1729, but seven years after its
capture, the forces of Sultan Husayn Safavi’s son Tahmasp II, led by
Nadir Afshar, entered Isfahan. Ashraf’s forces were defeated again near
Shiraz, and melted away, some travelling East and others moving toward
the Gulf. Ashraf himself apparently perished near Qandahar. Tahmasp
subsequently moved against Ottoman forces in Azerbaijan and laid siege
to Irivan. He withdrew from the latter to seek the enemy in Iraq where he
was defeated. The Ottomans, yet again not following up on their success,
126 Epilogue
opted for a treaty in which, concluded in its final version by Nadir in
1733 after he had deposed Tahmasp, recognised the border as specified
by the terms of the Zuhab treaty nearly a century before. A treaty
concluded with Peter the Great the year before, ten years after Isfahan’s
fall, had returned to Iran all territories the Russians had seized in the
intervening years.10
The retaking of Isfahan fulfilled popular expectations and hopes.
Indeed, by all indications, especially as attested by the extent of urban
and tribal resistance, the populace at large was genuinely convinced, or
at least hoped, that the Afghan ‘interlude’ would, in fact, amount to no
more than that. Even the Dutch continued to accept the validity of treat-
ies reached with the Safavids.11 In fact, three years later, in 1732, when
the Afshar Nadir deposed Tahmasp, he did so in favour of the latter’s
infant son who, as Abbas III, ‘ruled’ for some four years. Nadir further
aligned himself with the Safavid name by contracting marriages for him-
self and his son into the Safavid house, in the manner of the many earlier
marriages between prominent Qizilbash tribal elements and members of
the Safavid house. Thus, in the aftermath of Nadir’s 1736 own ascent to
the throne as Nadir Shah, his 1738–9 retaking of Qandahar and his
subsequent, spectacular invasion of Mughal India and the 1740 execu-
tion of both Tahmasp and Abbas III, Nadir and his family were well
affiliated to the house, both by marriage and by membership of one of
the original Qizilbash tribes, and could project themselves, at least, as
well within the Safavid tradition, if not as heirs.12 If Nadir disestablished
Shi
ism, recalling the similar, if similarly unfruitful, effort of Ismail II in
the context of a need to broaden his domestic support, at the same time
Nadir was careful to devote considerable attention to, and designate as
his new capital Mashhad, home of the shrine of the eighth Shi
i Imam, to
whose chief officials, given their own intermarriage with the Safavid
house, he was related.13 That in 1747 Nadir was assassinated, an experi-
ence enjoyed by English and French kings but no sitting Safavid shah, by
fellow Afshar and rebel Qajar elements, suggests his marked failure to
project the combined aura of legitimacy, authority and transcendence with
the same degree of success as more than two centuries of Safavid shahs.
Indeed, throughout the period from Nadir’s claiming of the throne, his
1743–6 wars with the Ottomans and his assassination – after but eleven
years as shah – there continued to be no shortage of Safavid pretenders.
The number thereof attests to the continued appeal of the Safavid project
in the region and discontent with some of Nadir’s policies, especially
around Ardabil, in Daghistan/Shirvan region and in Tabriz, let alone
rejection of his legitimacy.14
Following Nadir’s murder, even as Iran experienced political fragment-
ation, the Safavid name retained its prestige: Ali Mardan of the
Bakhtiyari tribe established a measure of authority in Central Iran in
the name of Ismail III (d. 1773), another grandson of Sultan Husayn.
The Zand leader Karim Khan (d. 1779) captured this Ismail, styled him-
 Epilogue 127
self the latter’s vakil, as Nadir had been to Tahmasp II and, in 1765,
established himself in Shiraz. Only when, soon thereafter, Karim Khan
changed his official title to that ‘vakil of the people’ and rejected
attempts to be declared shah, may overt lip-service to the idea of Safavid
dynasty be understood to have ended.15 Within but a few decades, how-
ever, the Qajars, another of the original Qizilbash tribes, commenced
their rise to power.
That chroniclers throughout the years immediately following 1722
and even into the Qajar period continued to refer to the Safavid period
and, unsurprisingly, disparaged the reigns of the last several shahs only
further attests to the continued power of the Safavid project, if increas-
ingly as an historical ideal whose legacy could be contested and claimed
as subsequent rulers strove to bolster their own positions.
That legacy was contestable precisely because the Safavid project was
more than just a political undertaking, encompassing achievements in all
the realms of human endeavour. To be sure, the impact of that legacy on
later times is still not well understood. Eighteenth-century Iran, even on
on its terms, remains poorly studied.16 Floor has discussed some aspects
of the Safavid economic legacy. The Safavid artistic and architectural
legacy has yet to be addressed specifically in any great detail, but Canby,
for example, citing oil painting on canvas, lacquer ware, glass, European
styles of painting, and carpet production, has noted that Iranian art of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ‘developed on the foundations
that were laid in the Safavid period’. Although her study ends at 1738
Crowe has noted that Iranian potters, for example, remained aware
of the Qing ceramic legacy, even as the latter came under Japanese
influence.17
By contrast, the legacy of Safavid-period developments in religion has
been better studied. As the first period since the disappearance of the
Imam in which Twelver Shi
ism was not merely tolerated but given safe
haven, the Safavid emerges as a key period in the faith’s history. These
two centuries witnessed the development of an elaborate infrastructure
of schools, mosques and shrines – in Isfahan, Mashhad and Qum, where
the last four Safavid shahs were buried, for example – which allowed the
country to develop as a major centre of Twelver scholarship alternative
to, albeit not eclipsing, the centres of scholarship, and population,
located outwith Safavid domains. As a result, where the few major
Twelver clerics of the sixteenth century were still resident outside Iran
the much larger number of the faith’s chief figures of the seventeenth
century were based in Iran, either by birth or immigration. The realm’s
consequent vibrant, dynamic spiritual life gave birth to a reinvigorated
Usuli dynamic and Akhbari rejoinder. New life was given also to philo-
sophical/metaphysical discourse and an opposition thereto also emerged.
Subsequent polemics and developments in Usuli doctrine and practice,
which culminated in the doctrine of ‘the deputyship of the legist (vilayat-
i faqih)’ have attracted growing interest18. By contrast, the study of
128 Epilogue
post-Safavid Iran-based philosophical/metaphysical discourse is rela-
tively much less advanced.19
This is to address developments in but a few of post-Safavid Iran’s
realms of human activity which, as with the Safavid story itself, being
led by both the textual and even most ‘non-textual’ sources, is over-
whelmingly slanted toward the urban. Developments outside the major
centres of population and particularly among the majority, non-literate
population await further study and, in particular, detailed consideration
of a broader range of such non-textual sources as are mentioned
in the Introduction which may well correct much of our current
understanding.
In considering precisely such different realms of human activity, how-
ever, it is worth remembering that the pre-modern period, whatever the
geography, was not, perhaps by definition, afflicted by the ‘division of
knowledge’ as we are. The latter encourages consideration of events and
trends separately to each other rather than against the background, and
as aspects, of a larger whole, in the manner in which, in reality, they
unfolded.
Taking such broader parameters into account, the Safavids inherited
from previous establishments the political control of a region long accus-
tomed, from pre-Islamic times, to a diversity of both composition and
discourse. Indeed, the present volume commenced with references to the
longevity and diversity of the Achaemenian empire. The formal concept
of Iranzamin or Iranshahr, dates at least from the Sassanians
(c. 221–651), who created a polity as large in area and size, and as
diverse, as that of the Achaemenians.20 The term, insofar as it can be
defined by an outsider, reflects an effort to assert the reality of the dis-
tinctly Iranian, or Persian, experience without regard to such transient
political realities as individual rulers and dynasties, changing borders
and boundaries. The term ‘Persianate’ used by Marshall Hodgson (d.
1968)21 perhaps captures something of the meaning of Iranzamin in Eng-
lish, although the term refers to the period after the Islamic conquest of
the mid-seventh century and much of Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage
remained influential throughout the region for centuries thereafter.22
The Safavid polity was never as large physically as those of the
Achaemenians or Sassanians. Nor do Safavid historians seem to have
taken special inspiration from these pre-Islamic polities. Nevertheless,
the longevity of the Safavid project may be most usefully explained in
terms of the success with which Safavid society, as these earlier undertak-
ings, expanded to recognise, include and transcend the diverse elements
and discourses extant in the region at the time. If this tendency is not
distinctly Persian, it is nonetheless familiar over the history of many of
the peoples who have dwelt in and around that plateau which extends
from the Mesopotamian lowlands to the Oxus river and South to the
Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.
 Appendix I
Key Dates

1334 death of Shaykh Safi al-Din, ‘founder’ of the Safavid order

1456–9 marriage of sister of Uzun Hasan Aqquyunlu to Junayd
Safavi
1460 death in battle of Junayd, succession of his son Haydar as
head of the Safavid Sufi order
1467 death of Jahan Shah Qaraquyunlu
1471–2 marriage of daughter of Uzun Hasan to Haydar Safavi
1473 Ottomans defeat Aqquyunlu at Bashkent
1478 death of Uzun Hasan Aqquyunlu
1487 birth of Ismail, third son of Haydar Safavi
1488 death in battle of Haydar, succession of Ismail as head of
Safavid Sufi order
1501 Ismail captures Tabriz
1508 fall of Baghdad to Safavid forces
1510–11 fall of Khurasan to Safavid forces
1512 Uzbeks defeat Safavids in Khurasan; loss and recapture of
Herat; rising of Ismail’s half-brother in Tabriz
1514 Ottomans defeat Safavids at Chaldiran; loss and recapture
of Tabriz
1515 Portuguese consolidate control over Hormuz island in
Persian Gulf
1517 Ottomans enter Cairo
1524 death of Ismail; accession of Tahmasp
onset of first civil war
Uzbeks commence series of five incursions into Khurasan,
lasting to 1540
1532 first of series of Ottoman invasions, lasting until 1555
1533 Tahmasp’s firman naming Ali Karaki deputy of the
Imam
1533–4 Tahmasp’s first repentance (tawba)
1534 death of Ali Karaki
Ottomans take Arab Iraq, including Baghdad, Najaf and
Karbala
130 Appendix I: Key Dates
1536 revolt of Alqas, half-brother of Tahmasp; end of first
civil war
1555 Amasya treaty with Ottomans cedes Arab Iraq to
Ottomans
1555–6 Tahmasp’s second repentance
1556 arrest of future Ismail II
c. 1556 completion of Chihil Sutun palace in Qazvin
1557 execution of Shaykh Zayn al-Din Amili by the Ottomans
1561–2 Tahmasp returns the rebel Bayazid to the Ottomans
1563–4 following a dream in which he sees the Imam, Tahmasp
issues firman banning tamgha and other practices
1567 Tahmasp sends Shahnama to Ottoman Sultan Selim II
1574 Nuqtavi risings at illness of Tahmasp
1576 death of Tahmasp
onset of second civil war
accession of Ismail II
1577–8 death of Ismail II; accession of Muhammad Khudabanda
1578–90 Ottoman incursions into Safavid territory
1579 murder of Khudabanda’s wife Khayr al-Nisa Marashi,
mother of Abbas I
1585 fall of Tabriz to the Ottomans
1587 accession of Abbas I
1590 peace treaty signed with Ottomans
Abbas’ moves against risings of his two brothers in Isfahan
and the defeat of Yaqub Khan Dhul-Qadr mark end of
second civil war
Isfahan designated capital (?)
1592 rising of Nuqtavi Darvish Khusraw in Qazvin
1594 Mughals take Qandahar
1595 death of Muhammad Khudabanda
1596–7 purging of Takkalu
1598–9 Eastern Khurasan (including Mashhad and Herat) retaken
from Uzbeks
1599 work on Abdallah Shushtari school commences
1602 work on Lutfallah Maysi Mosque commences
1602–3 Azerbaijan (including Tabriz) retaken from Ottomans
work begins on Naqsh-i Jahan maydan in Isfahan
1604–5 Armenians forcibly deported from Julfa to Isfahan
1606–7 further Armenian deportations to Isfahan
1607–8 Shirvan retaken from Ottomans
1611 work on Royal Mosque commences
1613 Armenian Church of Mary built in Isfahan
1620–1 death of Shaykh Bahai
1622 Qandahar retaken from Mughals
1623–4 Kurdistan, Eastern Iraq (including Baghdad and Shi
i shrine
cities) retaken from Ottomans
 Appendix I: Key Dates 131
1624 Khalifa Sultan, son-in-law of Abbas, appointed vizier
1627–8 Bethlehem Armenian Church built in Isfahan
1629 death of Abbas I; accession of his grandson as Safi
rising of Gharib Shah in Gilan
1630 Ottomans occupy Hamadan
1631 rising of Darvish Riza in Qazvin
death of Mir Damad
1632 fall of Khalifa Sultan alliance at court
1633–4 two decades of anti-Abu Muslim essay-writing commences
1634 Saru Taqi becomes vizier
more than twenty Armenian churches now active in
Isfahan
1635 Ottomans plunder Tabriz; Safavids sue for peace
death of Riza Abbasi
1637 Olearius arrives in Iran
1638 Ottomans capture Baghdad and Shi
i shrine cities
Qandahar lost to the Mughals
1639 treaty of Zuhab signed with Ottomans
rising of reincarnated Darvish Riza
Safi visits Qazvin
1640 death of Mulla Sadra
1641 last year of EIC purchase of Iranian silk
1642 death of Shah Safi; accession of his son as Abbas II
c. 1643 VOC begins export of Iranian specie to India
1643 work commences on Ali Qapu
1643–5 China curtails exports of porcelain
1645 Dutch bombard Gombroon and occupy Qishm
Saru Taqi killed
Khalifa Sultan reappointed vizier
new vizier launches campaign against minorities and
immorality and devalues currency
1647 completion of audience hall of Isfahan’s Chihil Sutun
1648 further currency devaluation
1649 Safavids retake Qandahar from Mughals
1650 death of Isfahan’s Shaykh al-Islam Alinaqi Kamrai
Muhammad Baqir Sabzavari appointed capital’s Shaykh
al-Islam
1651–2 Hasanabad/Khvaja bridge in Isfahan built
1653 death of the sadr Habiballah Karaki
his son Mirza Muhammad Karaki appointed sadr
1654 Abbas II invites Fayz Kashani to lead Isfahan’s Friday
prayers
Abbas II commissions work from Taqi Majlisi
1654–5 severe winter; death of Khalifa Sultan
Armenian ghulam Muhammad Bek appointed vizier
Georgian official in Isfahan dismissed from post
132 Appendix I: Key Dates
1655 work commences on All Saviour’s Cathedral in Isfahan
1657 further Ottoman-Safavid trade agreement reached
Muhammad Bek launches anti-minority campaign
and forbids export of specie, which bans lasts until 1661
Qajar official dismissed from post
1657–8 Rivulet bridge completed in Isfahan
1658 VOC exports record amount of Iranian specie
between 1658 and 1666 six new Armenian churches built
in Isfahan
1659 death of Taqi Majlisi
1659–60 Chahar Bagh-i Sa
adatabad laid out in Isfahan
1661 dismissal of Muhammad Bek, the vizier
appointment of Mirza Muhammad Karaki, the sadr, as
vizier
1663 widespread drought in Azerbaijan
1665–6 series of local bankruptcies
1666 death of Abbas II and first accession ceremony of Safi II
Chardin arrives in Iran
poor harvest
work on Hasht Bihisht palace commenced
1667 poor harvest
1668 second accession ceremony of Safi II as Sulayman
1669 poor harvest; plague; famine in Isfahan
Muhammad Karaki, the vizier, replaced by the Kurd Ali
Khan Zangana
new vizier adopts anti-Armenian measures
1670 tax on exported silver imposed
1672 harsh winter, inflation and food shortages
vizier briefly dismissed from post
1674 tax farming of customs duties
1678–9 famine in Isfahan as result of decade of drought, harsh
winters, locusts
1679 death of Baqir Sabzavari, Isfahan’s Shaykh al-Islam
1680 death of Fayz Kashani
1681 famine in Armenia and Azerbaijan
c. 1683 China resumes export of porcelain
1684 Dutch seize Qishm
1684–5 plague in Gilan spreads to Ardabil and Hamadan
1687 Baqir Majlisi appointed Isfahan’s Shaykh al-Islam
death of Muhammad Tahir, opponent of Sufism
1689 death of the vizier Ali Khan
1689–91 plague in Shiraz, Eastern Iraq
c. 1690 Talar-i Ashraf built in Isfahan
1691 Muhammad Tahir Qazvini appointed vizier
death of Shaykh Ali Amili
1693 death of Shaykh Hurr-i Amili
 Appendix I: Key Dates 133
1694 death of Sulayman; accession of Sultan Husayn
firman issued banning wine
Carmelites expelled from Isfahan
1696 Fars struck by drought and famine
1697 Carmelites allowed to return to Isfahan
1699 death of Muhammad Baqir Majlisi
Shamlu appointed vizier
specie exports banned
1703 Baqir Khatunabadi named Isfahan’s Shaykh al-Islam
1704–5 commencement of work on Chahar Bagh complex
1706 Sultan Husayn embarks on visit to Qum and Mashhad
food riots in Isfahan
1707 the Sunni Kurd Shah Quli Khan Zangana (d. 1715), son of
the former vizier Shaykh Ali Khan, appointed vizier
1709 second rising of Mir Uvais
1710–11 inauguration of Chahar Bagh school
c. 1711 Farahabad Chahar Bagh built outside Isfahan
1712 firman issued forbidding Catholic missionary efforts among
Armenians
Baqir Khatunabadi named first mullabashi
1713 specie exports banned
1714 last VOC purchase of Iranian silk
1715 rises in wheat prices cause unrest in Isfahan
1716 pestilence in Gilan, food riots in Tabriz and Isfahan
certain harsh measures against Armenians withdrawn
Isfahan’s darugha replaced
death of vizier the Kurd Shah Quli Khan Zangana,
appointment of Fath Ali Khan Daghistani
1717 Russo-Iranian treaty
Mir Uvais’ son Mahmud seizes power in Qandahar
1719 Mahmud sacks Kirman
1720 fall of the vizier Fath Ali Khan
1722 March – battle of Gulnabad
fall of Isfahan
November – Tahmasp II proclaimed in Qazvin
1724 Russians seize Hamadan
1725 Ottomans seize Tabriz
1726 Mahmud the Afghan assassinated; succeeded by Ashraf,
defeats Ottoman force near Hamadan
Ashraf executes Sultan Husayn
Tahmasp II takes Mashhad
1728 Mirza Ahmad Marashi captured and killed by
Afghans
1729 Tahmasp II takes Herat and Qandahar from Afghans
November – Tahmasp II enters Isfahan
Russo-Iranian treaty
134 Appendix I: Key Dates
1732 Nadir deposes Tahmasp II in favour of the infant Abbas III
Russo-Iranian treaty returns to Iran all territories seized
since 1722
1733 Iranian-Ottoman treaty
1736 Nadir Afshar becomes Nadir Shah
1738–9 Nadir retakes Qandahar, invades India
1740 Nadir executes Tahmasp II and Abbas III
1747 Nadir assassinated
1750 Sulayman II proclaimed in Khurasan
 Appendix II
Key chronicles and travellers

Below is a list of the key chronicles and travellers mentioned in the text,
together with their dates of composition, however approximate, and the
standard published versions thereof, if available. Further references to
these sources may be found via the index. On the chronicles, see also
Quinn, Historical, 13–29, 145–8. For other contemporary and, espe-
cially, earlier primary sources, see also Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 215–35.
For an introduction to some of period’s foreign travellers, see Stevens,
‘European Visitors’, and Lockhart, ‘European Contacts’. Matthee’s bib-
liography of primary sources (The Politics, 254–61) contains a listing of
Persian and European-language source materials. For a more extensive
listing of Persian sources, including local histories, etc., see Savaqib’s
bibliography, cited in the Introduction, above, n8.

Pre-1501 sources
1479–80
Treatise of the Hanafi cleric Ahmad Pakaraji. See 2002 paper of
A. Morton (in the bibliography).
Fazlallah Khunji Isfahani (d. 1521), Tarikh-i Alam Ara-yi Amini,
covers up to 1491. This was published by V. Minorsky as Persia in AD
1478–1490, An Abridged Edition of Fazlallah b. Ruzbihan Khunji’s
Tarikh-i Alam Ara-yi Amini (London, 1957) and by Woods as Khunji-
Isfahani, Fazlallah b. Ruzbihan, Tarikh-i Alam-Ara-yi Amini, with the
abridged English translation by Vladimir Minorsky, edited, revised and
augmented by J. Woods (London, 1992).

1497–1508
Sanudo, Venetian traveller.
136 Appendix II: Key Chronicles and Travellers
Reign of Ismail I (1501–1524)
1508
Edition of Safvat al-Safa, originally completed in 1358 by Tavakkul b.
Ismail b. Hajji Ardabili, known as Ibn Bazzaz. This is a history of the
Safavid house but the 1508 copy portrayed the family as descended from
Imam Ali. Tahmasp commissioned a further edition in 1533 (see Quinn,
Historical, 13–14). See also reference to the 1542 manuscript below, as
noticed by Togan. The work, edited by G. R. Tabatabai, was published
in Ardabil in 1373/1994. It has appeared in German, edited and trans-
lated by H. Zirke (Berlin, 1987). A lithographed edition by A. Tabrizi
was published in Bombay in 1329/1911.
Ismail Safavi, divan of poetry. Excerpts have been published in English
by V. Minorsky, and see also Thackston (both in the bibliography). For
editions, see also Tourkhan Gandjei, Il Canzoniere di Sah Ismail Hata’i
(Naples, 1959), and Ibrahim Aslanoghlu, Sah Ismail Hatayi (Divan,
Dehname, Nasihatname ve Anadolu Hatayileri) (Istanbul, 1992).

Reign of Tahmasp (1524–1576)

Tarikh-i Habib al-Siyar, completed in 1524, by Ghiyas al-Din Khvan-
damir (d. 1535–7). The standard edition is that edited by J. Humai, in
4 vols, 3rd ed. ([Tehran], 1362), and earlier editions, including 1333/
1954. See also W. Thackston’s translation (Cambridge, MA, 1994). The
author’s grandfather was himself a historian and his son Amir Mahmud
composed a 1550 ‘sequel’ to the Habib, on which see below.

1539–42
Membré, the Venetian envoy. See A. Morton’s translation of his
travelogue cited above under Membré.

1542
Yahya b. Abd al-Latif Husayni Qazvini, Lubb al-Tavarikh. The standard
edition is that edited by J. Tehrani [Tehran], 1314/1937. An edition
edited by A. Navai was published in 1985. There is also a lithographed
edition published in [Tehran] in 1363.

1542
Mir Abul-Fath’s revision to Safvat al-Safa.

1550
Amir Mahmud, son of the above Khvandamir, completed a continuation
of his father’s work. This has been published as Iran dar Ruzegar-i Shah
Ismail va Shah Tahmasp, Gh. R. Tabatabai, ed. (Tehran, 1370/1991). A
less reliable edition is Tarikh-i Shah Ismail va Shah Tahmasp (Zayl-i
Tarikh-i Habib al-siyar), M. A. Jarrahi, ed. (Tehran, 1991).
 Appendix II: Key Chronicles and Travellers 137
1552
Qadi Ahmad b. Muhammad Ghaffari Qazvini, Nigaristan. This has
been published as Tarikh-i Nigaristan, A. M. Mudarris Gilani, ed.
(Tehran, 1340/1961, 1404). See also reference to his 1563–4 Nusakh-i
Jahan-Ara below.

1563–4
Ahmad b. Muhammad Ghaffari Qazvini, Nusakh-i Jahan-Ara. This has
been edited by H. Naraqi and published as Tarikh-i Jahan-ara (Tehran,
1342/1963).

1564–5
Khurshah b. Qubad Husayni was the Indian envoy to Tahmasp’s court
between 1545–7 and remained there until 1564. He completed his
account thereof in Calcutta. The British Museum MS Add 153 copy was
completed in 1564–5 (Jamali, xxvi). The work was published as Tarikh-i
Ilchi-yi Nizam Shah, M. R. Nasiri and K Haneda, eds (Tehran, 2000).

1570
Abdi Bek Shirazi, Takmilat al-Akhbar. The published text is cited.
Tahmasp Safavi, Tadhkira-yi Shah Tahmasp. This has been edited and
published by A. Safari, ed., 2nd ed. (Tehran, 1363). See also P. Horn, ed.,
‘Tazkirah-i Shah Tahmasp’, ZDMG 44 (1890), 563–649; 45 (1891),
245–91.

The Second Civil War (1576–1587)

1576–7
Budaq Qazvini, Javahir al-Akhbar. The published text is cited.

1577
Hasan Rumlu, Ahsan al-Tavarikh, 1577. This has been translated as A
Chronicle of the Early Safawis, being the Ahsan al-Tavarikh of Hasan-i
Rumlu, C. N. Seddon, transl. (Baroda, 1934), though without ‘the
poetry, Quranic quotations, and exaggerated descriptive passages (v)’.
The standard Persian edition is that edited by A. Navai and published in
Tehran in 1349/1970 but Seddon also edited a Persian edition which
appeared with the English translation.
after 1584
Qadi Nurallah Shushtari, Majalis al-Muminin 2 vols (Tehran, 1354).

1586
G. B. Vechietti, Italian traveller. His ‘A Report on the Conditions of
Persia in the year 1586’ (in Italian), was published by H. F. Brown in
English Historical Review (1892), 314–21.
138 Appendix II: Key Chronicles and Travellers
1590–1
Qadi Ahmad Qummi, Khulasat al-Tavarikh. The standard edition is that
edited by I. Ishraqi, 2 vols (Tehran, 1359–1363/1984). It has been trans-
lated into German and edited by H. Müller as Die Chronik Hulasat al-
tawarih des Qazi Ahmad Qumi (Wiesbaden, 1964) and by E. Glassen as
Die frühen Safawiden nach Qazi Ahmad Qumi (Freiburg, 1970). See
also his Calligraphers cited below.

Reign of Abbas I (1587–1629)

1596
Sharaf Khan Bidlisi, Sharafnama, 2 vols (Cairo, nd).

1598
Mahmud b. Hedayatallah Afushta Natanzi, Nuqavat al-Asar. This has
been published by I. Ishraqi, and is cited.

c. 1606
Qadi Ahmad Qummi, Gulistan-i Hunar. This has been translated and
published as Calligraphers and Painters, A Treatise by Qazi Ahmad, son
of Mir Munshi (c. AH 1015/AD 1606), V. Minorsky, ed. and transl.
(Washington DC, 1959). A Persian edition, edited by A. S. Khvansari,
appeared [in Tehran] nd.

1611–12
Jalal al-Din Munajjim Yazdi, Tarikh-i Abbasi. The author was the court
astrologer. This has been published and is cited.

1616–29
Iskandar Bek Munshi completed volume one of his Alam Ara-yi Abbasi
in 1616 and the final volume in 1629. This has been edited and trans-
lated by R. Savory as History of Shah ‘Abbas the Great, 2 vols (Boulder,
Co, 1978). Vol. 2 has a short index but a longer, more extensive English-
language index, compiled by R. Bernhard, appeared as vol. 3 of the
work in New York, 1986. The standard Persian edition is that edited
by I. Afshar, 2 vols, (Tehran, 1350/1971) but has no index. The
Bernhard index (343–55) includes a comparative table for Afshar’s
Persian edition. A new, less reliable, three-volume Persian edition, edited
by M. I. Rizvani, was published in Tehran in 1377/1998–9. Munshi’s
additions to his chronicle, until his death in 1633, have been published
as part of Zayl-i Tarikh-i Alam Ara-yi Abbasi, on which see below
ad 1633.

1617–21
Pietro della Valle. See Delle conditioni di Abbas Ré di Persia (Venice,
1628; Tehran, 1976); I viaggi di Pietro Della Valle: lettere dalla Persia, a
 Appendix II: Key Chronicles and Travellers 139
cura di F. Gaeta e L. Lockhart (Rome, 1972); Viaggi di Pietro della Valle,
il pellegrino, 2 vols (Venice, 1681; Brighton, 1843).

1624–5
The Russian traveller Kotov was in Isfahan. His account was edited and
translated by Kemp, in his Russian Travellers, cited in the bibliography.

1625–26
Mirza Hasan Junabadi, Rawzat al-Safaviyya. This has been edited by
G. R. Tabatabai Majd and published in Tehran, 1378/1999.

Reign of Safi (1629–1642)

1633
Iskandar Beg Munshi’s addition to his earlier chronicle ends with his
death. This material, together with material from Khuld-i Barin on Safi,
was edited by S. Khvansari and published as Zayl-i Tarikh-i Alam Ara-yi
Abbasi (Tehran, 1317/1938). See n1 of Chapter 5.

1635–9
Fazli Isfahani Khuzani, Afzal al-Tavarikh, a three-volume history of the
Safavids to the death of Abbas I. The text was begun in 1616–17, and the
second volume of which was being revised in India in 1639 and the third
in 1635. The work has not been published but Melville, Morton and
Abrahams are collaborating on further work with the text, and Melville
is directing production of a CD version of the text. See the articles on the
text by Melville and the Edinburgh thesis of Abrahams.

1637
Adam Olearius. The standard edition is Vermehtre newe Beschreibung
der Muscowtischen und Persichen Reyse sodurch gelgenheit einer hol-
steinischen Gesandschaft an den Russichen Zaar und König in Persien
geschehen (Schleswid, 1656; fasc. reprint, Tübingen, 1971).

Reign of Abbas II (1642–1666)

1641–2
Muhammad Masum Isfahani, Khulasat al-Siyar. This has been pub-
lished in Tehran in 1368/1989, and is cited. The texts covers the period
1627 to 1641–2.

1660
Raphael du Mans, superior of Capuchin mission in Isfahan, lived in Iran
between 1664 and 1696. See his Estat de la Perse en 1660, Ch. Scheffer,
ed. (Paris, 1890).
140 Appendix II: Key Chronicles and Travellers
Reign of Sulayman (1666–1694)
1664
Jean de Thévenot. See his Relation d’un Voyage fait au Levant 2, Suite du
Voyage de Levant (Paris, 1674).

1664–74
Valiquli b. Daud Shamlu, historian and poet, composed Qisas al-Khaqani
and died after 1674. This has been published in 2 vols and is cited.

1666
Muhammad Tahir Qazvini, Abbasnama. The text covers the years 1642
to 1666. It has been published and is cited. Muhammad Tahir’s
brother composed Khuld-i Barin.

1666–7, 1669, 1672–7.

Jean Chardin. The standard edition of his account is Voyages du cheva-
lier Chardin, en Perse, et autres lieux de l’Orient L. Langlès, ed., 10 vols
and map (Paris, 1810–11). See also Ferrier’s abridgement, cited above.
Contemporary to Chardin
John Ogilby. See his Asia, The First Part: An Accurate Description of
the Empire of the Great Mughal (London, 1673).

1667
Muhammad Yusuf Valih Qazvini, Khuld-i Barin. That part of this lengthy
chronicle covering the reign of Ismail to the end of the second civil war,
was edited by M. H. Muhaddath and published in Tehran in 1372. The
sections which cover the reigns of Safi and Abbas II have been edited by
M. R. Nasiri and published as Iran dar Zaman-i Shah Safi va Shah Abbas-
i Duvvum (1038–1071), a single volume, in Tehran in 1380/2001; the
latter was not available to the present author at the time of writing. M. H.
Muhaddath edited and published in a single volume the sections on the
Timurids and Turkish dynasties (Tehran, 1379/2000). The author was the
brother of Mirza Muhammad Tahir, the author of Abbasnama.

1668
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who, between 1632 and 1668 made some six
trips in Iran. See his multi-volume Les Six Voyages de J. B. Tavernier . . .
en Turquie, en Perse et aux Indes which has been published in Paris in
1676, 1679, 1682; 3 parts, Utrecht, 1712; Le Haye, 1718, among others.

1673/4–1679
Muhammad Tahir Nasrabadi, Tazkira-yi Nasrabadi. The standard
edition is cited.
 Appendix II: Key Chronicles and Travellers 141
1674
The Venetian traveller Bembo. His account has yet to be published. A.
Welch is preparing an English translation. See his ‘Safavi Iran’, cited.

1675–6
Anonymous, Alam ara-yi Safavi. This work, edited by Y. A. Shukri, was
published in Tehran in 1350/1971. See the entry below on Alam ara-yi
Shah Ismail.

After 1675–6
Anonymous, Alam ara-yi Shah Tahmasp. This has been edited by
I. Afshar and published in Tehran in 1370/1991.

1677–8
John A Fryer. See his A New Account of East India and Persia, being
9 Years Travels, 1672–1681, (London, 1698; 3 vols, W. Crooke, ed.
London, 1909–15; New Delhi, 1992).

1678
S. Nimatallah Jazairi, al-Anvar al-Numaniyya. This is cited in the
bibliography.

1679
Shaykh Husayn b. Abdal Zahidi, Nasab Nama-yi Safaviyya, or Silsilat
al-Nasab-i Safaviyya. This was edited by Kazimzadah and published in
Berlin in 1342/1924.

1680s
Anonymous, Alam ara-yi Shah Ismail. This work, edited by A. M. Sahib,
was published in Tehran in 1349/1970. McChesney (‘Alam Ara-yi Shah
Ismail’, EIr, 1 (1985), 796) suggests this is the same as the also anonym-
ously authored Alam ara-yi Safavi. See, however, Quinn, Historical, 145;
Wood, ‘The Tarikh-i Jahanara’, 91. Shukri, edited of Safavi, argues for
differences between the two texts.

1680s
Ross Anonymous. See Morton’s ‘The Date and Attribution’. The author
was one Bijan. This has been published as Jahangusha-yi Khaqan:
Tarikh-i Shah Ismail, A. D. Muztarr, ed. (Islamabad, 1984).

1683–4
E. Kaempfer, a German doctor who lived in Isfahan and was in the service
of the VOC until 1688. See his Am Hofe des persischen Grosskönigs:
1684–1685, published in Leipzig in 1940; Tübingen, W. Hinz, ed., in
1977 and 1984. See the paper by Brakensiek cited in the bibliography.
142 Appendix II: Key Chronicles and Travellers
1683–91
Nicolas Sanson. See Voyage ou relation de l’état présent du Royaume de
Perse (Paris, 1695).

1686
Sayyid Abd al-Husayn Husayni Khatunabadi, Vaqai al-Sinin val-Avvam
(Tehran, nd), 508–9. The author died in 1693. Not a court chronicle per
se, this Persian language text records events after 1686 as added by the
author’s descendants.

Reign of Sultan Husayn (1694–1722)

1692–1700
Muhammad Nasiri, Dastur-i Shahryaran. This has been published, as
noted in the bibliography of primary-language sources. The last date
cited herein is 1700.

1703–4
Sayyid Hasan Astarabadi, Tarikh-i Sultani, (I. Ishraqi, ed., 2nd ed.,
Tehran, 1366).

1704
Cornelius de Bruyn (various spellings). See Reizen over Moskovie, door
Persie en Indie (Amsterdam, 1711, 1714). English translations from the
French original were published in London in 1737 and 1759. The French
version – Voyages de Corneille Le Brun par la Moscovie, en Perse, et aux
Indes Orientales – was published in Amsterdam in 1718 and – as Voyage
au Levant – in Paris in 1725.

After 1712
Mirza Rafia Ansari, Dastur al-Muluk. There is little known of the
author, except that he was likely of the capital’s well-known Jabari
family which had served the court from Ismail’s reign. The last date
cited in the text is 1712. This has been published by Danishpazhuh, as
noted in the bibliography. C. Marcinkowski has recently completed a
translation of Ansari’s text, as Mirza Rafia’s Dastur al-Muluk. A Man-
ual of Later Safavid Administration. English Translation, Comments on
the Offices and Services, and Facsimile of the Unique Persian Manu-
script (Kuala Lumpur, 2002). I. Afshar is scheduled to produce a new
version of this text based on the recent discovery of the remainder of
the manuscript of which Marcinkowski has indicated he will produce a
new translation.

1717
John Bell. See Travels from St. Petersburg to Various Parts of Asia
(2 vols, Glasgow, 1763; 1 vol., Edinburgh, 1805).
 Appendix II: Key Chronicles and Travellers 143
Post-1722 sources
Judasz Tadeusz Krusinski (d. 1756), the Polish procurator of the Jesuits,
in Isfahan from 1704. Close to the Afghan court after capture of Isfahan,
he left the capital for Europe in 1725. There are a number of French
editions and English translations of his account. Matthee (258) cites The
History of the Revolutions of Persia, 2 vols (London, 1728), but see also
Lockhart, The Fall, 516–25, who notes the alterations of du Cerceau,
whose translation The History of the Late Revolutions of Persia has also
been repeatedly published from Paris, 1728 to New York, 1973.
Mirza Ali Naqi Nasiri, Alqab va Mavajib-i Dawrah-i Salatin-i
Safaviyya, Y. Rahimlu, ed., Mashhad, 1372. This was completed during
the reign of Tahmasp II (d. 1732), the son of Shah Sultan Husayn, who
proclaimed himself shah in Qazvin following the 1722 fall of Isfahan.
M. S. Tehrani (Varid), Mirat-i Varidat, M. Sefatgol, ed. (Tehran, 1383/
2004). The author was born in 1676 in India, and there had strong Sufi,
especially Chishti, connections. He was alive at least as late as 1705, and
the text includes references from as early as 1688 to Nadir Shah’s 1738–9
invasion of India. The work addresses the rise of the Safavids and, espe-
cially, their fall, including the fall of Isfahan, Tahmasp II, and Nadir
Shah. It is epecially interesting for its apparently first-hand information
on Khurasan and Sistan in this period, and the capture of Mashhad by
Malik Mahmud Sistani.
Qutb al-Din Nayrizi, Fasl al-Khittab, written after 1722. Portions
appear in Jafariyan, ed., Ilal, 259f, and idem, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din,
3: 1355–81. The author, a Dhahabi shaykh, died in 1759.
Mukafatnama written by an anonymous former court official between
two and four years after Isfahan’s fall, and published by R. Jafariyan, in
his Ilal, 63–169; idem, ed., Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 3: 1191–297.
Tadhkira al-Muluk, an administrative manual written sometime after
the 1725 assassination of Isfahan’s conqueror Shah Mahmud, for Shah
Mahmud’s nephew and successor Ashraf (1725–9); Lockhart (The Fall,
513–14) dates it to 1726. This has been published as Minorsky, V., ed.
and transl., Tadhkirat al-Muluk, A Manual of Safavid Administration,
(c. 1137/1725), London, 1943.
Qutb al-Din Nayrizi, Tibb al-Mamalik, written after 1729 and pub-
lished in R. Jafariyan, ed., Ilal, 215–35; idem, ed., Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi
Din, 3: 1324–37.
Shaykh Ali Hazin, The Life of Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hazin, F. C.
Belfour, transl. (London, 1830). The author was born in 1692, left Iran
for India in 1734, completed his memoirs and died there in 1742 and
1779 respectively. The Persian text, entitled Tazkirah-i Hazin, was
144 Appendix II: Key Chronicles and Travellers
published in Isfahan in 1334/1955. Belfour’s edition of the Persian was
published in London in 1831.
Muhammad Muhsin, Zubdat al-Tavarikh, I. Afshar ed. (Tehran,
1375). The author was an official at Nadir Shah’s court, and wrote this
account at Nadir’s command for the latter’s eldest son in 1741–2.
Mirza Muhammad Mahdi Kawkabi Astarabadi, Tarikh-i Nadiri, com-
posed c. eleven years after Nadir Shah’s 1747 assassination. This text
was published in Iran in 1282/1865 and 1293/1867. A French transla-
tion, Histoire de Nader Chah, undertaken by W. Jones (d. 1794) at the
order of the king of Denmark, was published in London in 1770. Tarikh-
i Jahangusha-yi Nadiri, reproducing a 1757 illuminated manuscript by
the same author, with an introduction by Abd al-Ali Adib Burumand,
was published in Tehran in 1991/2.
Mirza Muhammad Marashi, Majma al-Tavarikh, A. Iqbal, ed.
(Tehran, 1362). The author was a descendant of Shah Sulayman. The
chronicle covers the period 1708–9 to 1792–3.
Abul-Qasim Qazvini, Favaid al-Safaviyya, M. Mir Ahmadi, ed.
(Tehran, 1990). The account was completed in India c. 1796.
Muhammad Hashim Asaf, Rustam al-Tavarikh. The author completed
the text in 1831. An edition done by M. Mushiri has been published at
least three times in Tehran (1348/1969, 1352, 2538).
Muhammad Tanukabuni (d. 1884–5), Qisas al-Ulama (Tehran, nd), a
Persian-language clerical biography.
M. A. A. Pashazada, (d. 1310/1892), Inqilab-i Islam bayn al-Khavass
val-Avvam, R. Jafariyan, ed. Qum, 1379.
 Notes

Preface and Acknowledgements

1 L. Lockhart, The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of
Persia (Cambridge, 1958), 32–33, 70, 71n1, 72–3, the latter citing Browne, A
Literary History of Persia, 4 (Cambridge, 1924, 1953), 120.
2 Newman, The Formative Period of Period of Shi
i Law: Hadith as Discourse
Between Qum and Baghdad (Richmond, Surrey, 2000).

Introduction
1 Lockhart, The Fall, 16; R. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids (Cambridge, 1980)
103, 226; R. Stevens, ‘European Visitors to the Safavid Court’, Iranian Studies,
7(3–4) (1974), 441.
2 A collection of Savory’s articles on early Safavid political history appeared as
Studies on the History of Safawid Iran (London, 1987).
3 Volume 6 of The Cambridge History of Iran, ‘The Timurid and Safavid Periods’,
P. Jackson and L. Lockhart, eds, appeared from Cambridge University Press in
1986, but the bulk of the volume’s article had been written in the previous
decade. Earlier, papers from a colloquium on Isfahan, the Safavid capital from
the early seventeenth century, held at the Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard
University, were published in 1974 as a special issue of the Society for Iranian
Studies’ journal Iranian Studies (IS).
4 This account draws on Browne, esp. 103f, 118–20, 372–3, 403–4, 406–10,
426f; Tadhkirat al-Muluk, A Manual of Safavid Administration, (c. 1137/
1725), V. Minorsky, ed. and transl. (London, 1943), esp. 13–14, 16–19, 23–6,
30f, 41; Lockhart, esp. 16–18, 21–34, 70–9; Savory, Iran Under, 76–103, esp.
93–95, 216–20, 226–54, esp. 226–8, 233–4, 238–41. See also Savory, ‘The
Safavid Administrative System’ in Peter Jackson, et al., eds, The Cambridge
History of Iran, 6: 351–72, and his more recent ‘Safawids: Dynastic, political
and military history’, EI2, 8: 765–71. Savory’s analyses parallel those of Minorsky
(23–4), and both, in turn, presupposed the work of Browne (4: 84–120, esp.
116f); indeed, in The Fall Lockhart (esp. 16f) paid special tribute to Browne and
Minorsky. See also M. Dickson’s review of The Fall in Journal of the American
Oriental Society, 82(4) (1962), 503–17.
5 The 1988 papers were published as Études Safavides, sous la direction de Jean
146 Notes to pages 4–6
Calmard, (Paris-Teheran, 1993). The 1993 papers appeared as Safavid Persia,
The History and Politics of an Islamic Society, C. Melville, ed. (London, 1996).
In 1998 some forty specialists in this period based in Russia and Asia, contin-
ental Europe, the UK, the US and Iran attended the Third International Round
Table in Edinburgh. Abstracts of the latter papers may be viewed at: http://
www.arts.ed.ac.uk/eisawi/events/RoundTable.html, and a selection thereof has
been published as Society and Culture in the Early Modern Middle East: Studies
on Iran in the Safavid Period, A. J. Newman, ed. (Leiden, 2003).
6 Papers presented that year at the British Museum by some twenty-four scholars
from Iran, Russia, Europe and the US have been published as Safavid Art and
Architecture, Sheila R. Canby, ed. (London, 2002). Safavid Iran and Her
Neighbours, M. Mazzaoui, ed. (Salt Lake City, 2003) stems from a gathering of
some fourteen, mainly US-based, scholars in the same year.
7 The Iran Heritage Foundation, the University of Manchester’s Centre for
Historical Research on the Middle East and the Centre for Near and Middle
Eastern Studies at the University of London organised ‘Iran and the World in the
Safavid Age’ in London in September 2002. Bert Fragner convened the Fourth
International Round Table in Bamberg, in July 2003. In November 2003, the
Armenian Educational Foundation, the Armenian Society of Los Angeles and the
G. E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies (University of California,
Los Angeles) sponsored ‘New Julfa: The Fourth Centennial, 1604/5–2004’. The
Fifth International Round Table is set to meet in Italy.
8 See their works as referenced herein. See also M. Mir Ahmadi, Din va Madhhab
dar Asr-i Safavi (Tehran, 1984) and idem, ed., Abul Hasan Qazvini, Favaid al-
Safaviyya (Tehran, 1990). See also the work of M. K. Yusuf Jamali and
N. Ahmadi cited below. Special mention should be made of the special issues of
Kitab-i Mah, Tarikh va Jugrafiyya devoted to the Safavid period, the most recent
being 68–69 (1382/2003), edited by M. Sefatgol. Note should also be made of
M. Parsadust’s recent Shah Ismail-i Avval (Tehran, 1375), Shah Tahmasp-i Avval
(Tehran, 1377) and Shah Ismail-i Duvvum va Shah Muhammad (Tehran, 1381).
In his Tarikhnigari-i Asr-i Safavi va shinakht-i manabi va maakhiz (Shiraz, 2001),
J. Savaqib offers an extensive listing of sources on the period in many languages.
9 References in both Browne (4: 46n2) and Lockhart (e.g. 26n1, 28n2) to the 1815
History of Persia of Sir John Malcolm (d. 1833) suggest aspects of this frame-
work were on offer in the previous century. On disagreement as to the nature
and meaning of khassa and mamalik lands in the seventeenth-century European
sources, let alone the Persian sources, see n14 of Chapter 2.
10 Such sources include The Life of Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hazin, F. C. Belfour,
transl. (London, 1830), whose author was born in 1692, left Iran for India in
1734, and completed his memoirs and died there in 1742 and 1779 respectively;
Zubdat al-Tavarikh, I. Afshar, ed. (Tehran, 1375), written in 1741–2 by
Muhammad Muhsin, an official at Nadir Shah’s court, at Nadir’s command for
his eldest son, and several years after which Nadir Shah engineered his own
designation as monarch; Majma al-Tavarikh, A. Iqbal, ed. (Tehran, 1362) writ-
ten by Mirza Muhammad Khalil Marashi, a descendant of Shah Sulayman,
which covers the period 1708–9 to 1792–3; Favaid al-Safaviyya, M. Mir
Ahmadi, ed. (Tehran, 1990), by Abul Hasan Qazvini, completed in India
c. 1796; Rustam al-Tavarikh by Muhammad Hashim Asaf, completed in 1831,
and published at least three times (Tehran, 1348, 1352, 2538); and the
Persian-language clerical biography Qisas al-Ulama (Tehran, nd) of Muhammad
 Notes to pages 6–7 147
Tanukabuni (d. 1884–5). On Rustam al-Tavarikh as ‘not a reliable historical
account’, see B. Hoffmann, ‘A Nineteenth Century Glimpse of Safavid Persia’,
paper presented at the Fourth International Round Table on Safavid Studies,
Bamberg, July 2003.
The Mukafatnama, written in jail by a former court official between two and
four years after Isfahan’s fall while members of the Safavid family were being
executed around him, and recently published by R. Jafariyan, and post-1722
works by the Sufi shaykh Qutb al-Din Nayrizi (d. 1759), also contain reflections
on reasons for the realm’s collapse. Less negative, pre-1722 accounts, if historic-
ally problematic for different reasons, are only infrequently consulted by Western
scholars. See the reference to Abu Talib Mir Findiriski in n37 of Chapter 8.
11 See S. Quinn, Historical Writing during the Reign of Shah Abbas (Salt Lake
City, 2000), an exemplary study of the political-religious ‘agendas’ of various
sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century court chroniclers, and her other
works listed herein.
12 In the seventeenth century such foreign residents include, particularly, for
example, the Frenchman Jean Chardin, who was in Iran in 1666–7, 1669 and
between 1672 and 1677 and whose Voyages en Perse features prominently in
Western accounts of the period. I. McCabe, P. Loloi and J. Ghazvinian have
begun to explore the varied agendas of such foreign residents as Chardin and
Père Judasz Tadeusz Krusinski (d. 1756), the procurator of the Jesuits in Isfahan.
McCabe, for example, has suggested that Chardin’s writings reveal more about
the religio-political climate of contemporary France than Safavid Iran, and that
his critique of the Safavid court was a less-than-veiled attack by Chardin, a
Huguenot and, as such, an arch opponent of the established Catholic Church in
France, on French absolutism. See J. Ghazvinian, ‘British Travellers to Iran,
1580–1645’; P. Loloi, ‘The Image of the Safavids in English and French Literature
of the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century’; I. McCabe, ‘Beyond the Lettres
Persanes: Safavid Iran in the Political Discourse of the French Enlightenment’, all
presented at Iran and the World in the Safavid Age, London, September 2002.
See also n44 of Chapter 5. On Chardin’s ‘greedy and imperious’ character,
according to a Venetian contemporary, see A. Welch, ‘Safavi Iran Seen Through
Venetian Eyes’, in Newman, ed., Society and Culture, 105. On Krusinski, see
also n26 in Chapter 8, below, and on E. Kaempfer, a German doctor who lived in
Isfahan in 1683–4, see n70 of the same chapter. A list of these foreign accounts
appears in Appendix II. On the dates of Chardin’s sojourn in Iran, see J. Emerson,
‘Chardin’, Encyclopaedia Iranica (EIr) 5(4): 369–70. Comments by all foreign-
ers in Iran over this period on the affairs of the court and the haram merit special
care, as neither was routinely accessible by the public, let alone Westerners.
For conflicting accounts of 1690s’ events based on French-Dutch enmity, see
Matthee, ‘Negotiating Across Cultures: The Dutch Van Leene Mission to the
Iranian Court of Shah Sulayman (1689–1692)’, Eurasian Studies 3(1) (2004),
50f, 56n62 and esp. 61–2. The same article addresses conflicting European and
Iranian expectations and perceptions more generally.
13 The early work of Wallerstein (b. 1930) dealt especially with African politics.
‘World system theory’, an outgrow of ‘dependency theory’ as initially enunciated
by Andre Gunder Frank (b. 1929), underlay the work of Samir Amin (b. 1931)
on ‘unequal development’, the 1976 establishment of the Braudel Center at
SUNY, Binghamton, the founding of the Center’s journal Review and, for
Ottoman studies especially, such works as Wallerstein, et al., ‘The Incorporation
148 Notes to pages 7–9
of the Ottoman Empire into the World Economy’ in H. Islamoglu-Inan ed., The
Ottoman Empire and the World Economy (Cambridge, 1987), 88–100.
In the Safavid case in particular, concern with foreign trade has come to over-
shadow domestic economic activity although the latter, W. Floor has argued, was
far more important to the Safavid economy. Similarly, although the rural pro-
portion of the population far outnumbered the urban, which stood at between
10 and 15% of the total of c. nine million, the available primary sources are
overwhelmingly skewed toward life among the latter. See Floor, ‘Commerce, vi.
From the Safavid Through the Qajar Period’, EIr, 6: 69; idem, The Economy of
Safavid Persia (Wiesbaden, 2000), 2–5 and 301, where he suggests that ‘agri-
culture, and its ancillary activities, was the most important sector of the econ-
omy in Safavid Persia employing about 80% of the population.’ See also nn70,
71 of Chapter 8.
14 On ‘Ottoman decline’ theory, see H. Inalcik and D. Quataert, eds, An Economic
and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914, 2 vols (Cambridge,
1994), especially S. Faroqhi’s ‘Crisis and Change 1590–1699’ (411–636) on the
stereotypical view that the Ottoman empire reached its peak during the reign of
Sulayman ‘the Magnificent’ (reg. 1520–66). See also, more recently, H. Lowry,
The Nature of the Early Ottoman State (Albany, 2003). Thanks to S. Blake and
G. Garthwaite for directing my attention to these sources.
15 See, for example, W. L. Cleaveland, A History of the Modern Middle East
(Boulder/Oxford, 1994), 52–6; B. Lewis, The Middle East, 2000 Years of History
from the Rise of Christianity to the Present Day (London, 1995), 117–19.
16 Contemporary with the Safavids only the Ottomans and Romanovs and, in
China, both the Ming and its successor the Qinj, and, in Japan, the Tokugawa
shogunate, endured longer.
17 This notion of constituency builds on G. R. Garthwaite, ‘An Outsider’s View
of Safavid History: Shah Ismail Reconsidered’, paper delivered at the Third
International Round Table on Safavid Persia, Edinburgh, August 1998. Thanks
to the author for making available a copy of his paper and for providing refer-
ences to Pamela Crossley’s discussion of ‘simultaneous rulership’ on which he
himself drew. See Crossley, ‘The Rulerships of China’, The American Historical
Review, 97 (December 1992), 1468–83; idem, A Translucent Mirror, History
and Identity in Qinj Imperial Ideology (Berkeley and London, 1999), esp. 9–29.
Our discussion above of simultaneous, universal rulership in Iran under the
Achaemenians draws on Garthwaite’s The Persians (Malden and Oxford, 2005).
On Zoroastrianism, see ibid., 93f.
18 The Ilkhanid Sultan Uljaitu (d. 1316) was a Buddhist, became a Sunni Hanafi,
a Shafii, and then, supposedly upset with intra-Sunni disputations, a Twelver
Shi
ite; he is said to have reconverted to Sunnism before his death. See M.
Mazzaoui, The Origins of the Safawids, Shi
ism, Sufism, and the Ghulat
(Wiesbaden, 1972), 38, 40. Gawhar Shad, the wife of Timur’s son Shah Rukh
(d. 1446), built a mosque next to the shrine of the eighth Shi
i Imam, Ali Riza
(d. 818), in Mashhad. See also J. Calmard, ‘Le Chiisme Imamite sous Les
Ilkhans’, in D. Aigle, ed., L’Iran Face à La Domination Mongole (Tehran, 1997),
261–92. See also G. Lane, Early Mongol Rule in Thirteenth-Century Iran: A
Persian Renaissance (London, 2003). Members of Iran’s native Christian com-
munity, the Nestorians, were sent as ambassadors to Europe by the Ilkhans and
intermarried with the ruling family. See Garthwaite, The Persians, 104, 142,
146. See also ‘Christianity’, EIr, 5: 523f.
 Notes to page 10 149
19 J. Woods, The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire, rev. ed. (Salt Lake
City, 1999), 82–3, 89, 102–3, 105–9, 259n77, n78, n79. See also L. Hunarfar,
Ganjinah-i Asar-i Tarikhi -i Isfahan (Isfahan, 1344), 95; A. Godard, ‘Isfahan’ in
Athar-i Iran, Annales du Service Archeologique de l’Iran (Paris, 1937), 26. On
Jahan Shah, who had also claimed divine approbation for his rule and also dis-
played a healthy interest in Shi
ism, see V. Minorsky, ‘Jihan Shah Qaraquyunlu
and his Poetry’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS)
16(2), (1954) 271–97, esp. 281; a descendant of Jahan Shah founded the Shi
i
Qutbshah dynasty in India in 1481. See also F. Sümer, ‘Kara-koyunlu’, EI2, 4:
584–8, esp. 588; J. Calmard, ‘Les rituels shiites et le pouvoir. L’imposition du
shiisme safavide: eulogies et malédictions canoniques’, in Calmard, ed., Études
Safavides., 113. Although Timur also had claimed divine approval for his rule
and his discourse evoked associations which attested to the importance of his
Turco-Mongol constituency, he and his immediate successors were known for
their patronage of Shi
i shrines. On Timur’s projection of the legitimacy of his
rule across different particularist discourses, and the consequent notion of ‘sim-
ultaneous rulership’, see Garthwaite, ‘An Outsider’s View’; Woods, ‘Timur’s
Genealogy’ in M. Mazzaoui and V. Moreen, eds, Intellectual Studies on Islam,
Essays Written in Honor of Martin B. Dickson (Salt Lake City, 1990), 85–125;
H. R. Roemer, ‘The Successors of Timur’, in Peter Jackson, et al., eds, 6: 142;
R. Pinder-Wilson, ‘Timurid Architecture’, in Peter Jackson, et al., eds, 6: 745–6.
For an introduction to Twelver Shi
ism, see M. Momen, An Introduction to
Shii Islam (New Haven and London, 1985). On ‘the just sultan’ and ‘the just
Imam’ as references to the hidden twelfth Imam, see our ‘The Myth of the
Clerical Migration to Safawid Iran: Arab Shi
ite Opposition to Ali al-Karaki and
Safawid Shi
ism’, Die Welt des Islams, 33 (1993), 71n13; n4 of the following
chapter. On Davani, see n56 of the following chapter.
20 The names, dates and geographical boundaries with which these messianic
movements came to be identified – the Babai-Biktashis in Anatolia; the Hurufis,
influential from Khurasan to Anatolia and Syria; Shaykh Badr al-Din in Western
Anatolia; Ahl al-Haqq in Kurdistan; the Nurbakhshi in Southwestern Iran and
the Mushasha in Southern Iraq – were often bestowed by both later adherents,
and later scholars, and suggest a greater clarity of doctrine and practice, let alone
sharp distinctions between them in both, than probably obtained at the time. On
these orders see I. P. Petrushevsky, Islam in Iran, H. Evans transl., (London,
1985), 260–4, 291–300; B. S. Amoretti, ‘Religion in the Timurid and Safavid
Periods’, in Peter Jackson, et al., eds, The Cambridge History of Iran, 6: 610–29;
J. Baldick, Mystical Islam (London, 1989), 71–7, 94, 96, 100–4, 111; Woods, 3f.
Useful contributions on individual movements include J. Birge, The Bektashi
Order of Dervishes (London, 1937), 32f; H. Norris, ‘The Hurufi Legacy of
Fadlullah of Astarabad’, in L. Lewisohn, ed., The Legacy of Medieval Persian
Sufism (London, 1992), 87–97; S. Bashir, ‘Enshrining Divinity: The Death and
Memoralisation of Fazlallah Astarabadi in Hurufi Thought’, The Muslim World
90 (Fall, 2000), 289–308; idem, ‘The Imam’s Return: Messianic Leadership in
Late Medieval Shi
ism’, in L. Walbridge, ed., The Most Learned of the Shi
a
(New York, 2001), 21–33; T. Graham, ‘Shah Ni
matullah Wali, Founder of the
Ni
matullahi Sufi Order’, in Lewisohn, ed., The Legacy, 173–90; B. G. Martin,
‘A Short History of the Khalwati Order of Dervishes’, in N. Keddie, ed.,
Scholars, Saints, and Sufis (Berkeley and London, 1978), 275–305; H. Algar,
‘Naqshbandis and Safavids: A Contribution to the Religious History of Iran and
150 Notes to pages 10–14
Her Neighbors’, in M. Mazzaoui, ed., Safavid Iran and Her Neighbors (Salt
Lake City, 2003), 7f. On the geographical distribution of these movements, see
also Woods, 3. On these and other movements’ various millenarian risings
throughout the region, see also Adel Allouche, The Origins and Development of
the Ottoman–Safavid conflict (906–962/1500–1555) (Berlin, 1983), 39–41.
21 Woods, 108–9.
22 Woods, 9, 83–4, 107, 150, 211; Allouche, 48f; G. Sarwar, History of Shah Ismail
(Aligarh, 1939), 24f, 30f, 94–5. See also V. Minorsky [C. E. Bosworth], ‘Uzun
Hasan’, EI2, 10: 963–7, esp. 967; idem, Tadhkirat, 190. A daughter of Junayd
married a tribal notable of Ardabil. See M. Szuppe, ‘La participation des
Femmes de la Famille Royale à l’Exercice du Pouvoir en Iran Safavide au XVIe
Siècle (première partie)’, Studia Iranica, 23(2) (1994), 235.
23 Sarwar (17–43, esp. 33–9) offers an account of the events of this period based on
the often-indiscriminate use of Safavid sources composed over the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Allouche’s (39–64) account is somewhat more careful. See
also Woods, 280n41 and 281n44 on the date of Ismail’s entrance into Tabriz.
For later reports that Ismail ordered his followers to eat the body of the defeated
Uzbek chief Shaybani Khan, see n89 of Chapter 2.
On Tabriz as an important trade entrepot even before the rise of the Safavids,
see n75 of Chapter 4.

1 Laying the Foundations: Ismail I (1488–1524)

1 Fazlallah Khunji Isfahani (d. 1521), the ferociously anti-Safavid and anti-Shi
i
Sunni historian to Uzun Hasan’s son Yaqub (d. 1490), wrote that the order’s
members praised Junayd as ‘the Living One, there is no God but he’ and that
followers from Anatolia and elsewhere viewed Junayd’s successor Haydar as
Allah and neglected such daily religious duties as prayer. See Khunji’s Persia in
AD 1478–1490, An Abridged Edition of Fadlallah b. Ruzbihan Khunji’s Tarikh-
i Alam Ara-yi Amini (London, 1957), V. Minorsky, ed., 4, 61–80, 1f. J. Woods has
produced a new edition of the text (London, 1992), which includes Minorsky’s
original abridged translation and additional notes. On Khunji, see also
A. Jacobs, ‘Sunni and Shi‘i Perceptions, Boundaries and Affiliations in Late Timu-
rid and Early Safawid Persia: an Examination of Historical and Quasi-Historical
Narratives’, unpublished PhD dissertation, School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London, 1999, 81–103. On a similarly anti-Safavid
Arabic-language treatise composed in 1479–80 by a contemporary Hanafi cleric
and the latter’s role in expelling Junayd from Syria, see A. Morton’s ‘Maulana
Ahmad Pakaraji and the Origins of Anti-Safavid Polemic’, paper presented at
Iran and the World in the Safavid Age, University of London, September 2002.
2 Minorsky, ‘The Poetry of Shah Ismail I’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies (BSOAS), 10 (1942), 1006a–1053a, esp. 1042a, 1043a, 1044a,
1047a, 1048a. See also G. Garthwaite, ‘An Outsiders View’, citing Minorsky
(1047a); W. Thackston, ‘The Diwan of Khata
i: Pictures for the Poetry of Shah
Ismail’, Asian Art, I(4) (Fall 1988), 37–63. Thanks to G. Garthwaite for direct-
ing me to the latter source. See also J. Calmard, ‘Popular Literature Under the
Safavids’, in Newman, ed. Society and Culture, 317–18; A. Karamustafa,
‘Esma
il I. His Poetry’, EIr, 8. On the taj being adopted under Haydar, as noted
by Khunji, see Persia in AD 1478–1490, Minorsky, ed., 73; Woods, ed. 260,
 Notes to page 14 151
265, 282. There is no reference to such headgear in an earlier history of Diyar
Bakr completed for Uzun Hasan between 1469 and 1478; see H. R. Roemer,
‘The Safavid Period’, in Peter Jackson, et al., eds, 6: 207; Woods, The Aqquyunlu,
219–20. On representations of the taj as early as 1503, see B. Schmitz, ‘On a
Special Hat Introduced during the Reign of Shah Abbas the Great’, IRAN, 22
(1984), 103–12. My thanks to G. Garthwaite for directing me to this source.
For editions of Ismail’s divan, see T. Gandjei, Il Canzoniere di Sah Ismail
Hata  i (Naples, 1959), and I. Islanoghlu, Sah Ismail Hatayi (Divan, Dehname,
Nasihatname ve Anadolu Hatayileri) (Istanbul, 1992).
Yazid (d. 683) was the Umayyad caliph during whose rule the third Shi‘i imam,
Husayn, grandson of the Prophet, was killed at Karbala in 680, on the tenth day,
Ashura, of the Muslim month of Muharram. Khidr was the companion of Moses
(Qur
an, 18: 62–83) whom the Shi
a identify as the Hidden Imam.
3 Other than references to the taj, Khunji’s history contains no evidence of Safavid
identification with any distinctively, let alone exclusively, Twelver discourse to
1490. Indeed, had this been otherwise, Khunji – an avowed opponent of Shi
ism
– would certainly have referred to them as such; instead he repeatedly refers to
Haydar’s followers as ‘Sufis’. See also nn5, 62 below. Hasan Rumlu’s 1577
account (Ahsan al-Tavarikh, Tehran, 1357, 86), that at Ismail’s profession of
faith in Tabriz no book of Twelver doctrine or practice was immediately avail-
able, if not absolutely accurate, certainly reflects the leadership’s unfamiliarity
with the details of the faith. In a further indication of poor Safavid familiarity
with key texts of the faith to this time, Qavaid al-Islam, attributed to Hasan b.
Yusuf, Allama Hilli (d. 1325), eventually located according to Rumlu, is not a
title listed as a work of Hilli. Mazzaoui (The Origins, 80, 6, 28n2) suggested this
work was Allama’s Qavaid al-Ahkam. For a translation of Rumlu’s chronicle,
see n10 below.
4 See the Arabic preface to a firman inscribed in Isfahan’s Congregational Mosque
in 1505, four years after Tabriz’ capture, wherein, although no specifically Shi
i
claims were made, nor was there allusion to descent from the Imams, Ismail was
described as ‘the successor of the age (khalifat al-zaman) the spreader of justice
and beneficence, the just Imam (al-imam al-adil)’. See Hunarfar, 86–8. A coin
minted in Kashan in 1506 referred to him as ‘the just sultan’; see H. L. Rabino,
‘Coins of the Shahs of Persia’, Numismatic Chronicle, IVth series, 1908, 357–73,
ad 368; idem, Coins, Medals and Seals of the Shahs of Iran, 1500–1941 (Dallas,
TX, 1973), 26–9; S. Schuster-Walser, Das Safawidische Persien im Spiegel
Europäischer Reiseberichte, 1502–1722 (Hamburg, 1970), 45. S. Canby (The
Golden Age of Persian Art, 1501–1722, London, 1999, 28) cites a similar
inscription on a crimson velvet belt dated to 1507–8. See also the reference to al-
sultan al-adil in a copy of Jamal va Jalal dated to Tabriz c. 1504 in n31 below.
The Twelver Shi
i scholar Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Tusi (d. 1067) had referred
to the absent, or Hidden, Imam variously as ‘Sultan of the Time (sultan al-waqt)’
and ‘Lord of the Age (sahib al-zaman)’. See our ‘The Myth’, nn13, 65.
5 Although in his divan (Minorsky, 1043a), Ismail had claimed to be a Husaynid,
such claims were absent in the 1505 firman cited above. Indeed not all of the
coins minted in the period even contained avowedly Shi
i formulas, let alone the
Imams’ names. See Rabino, 1973, 26–8. See also n3 and Allouche, 34–5, 76–7;
Sarwar, 17; J. Aubin, ‘Études Safavides. I. Shah Ismail and les Notables de l’Iraq
Persan’, JEHSO, 2 (1959), 43f. A 1508 manuscript copy of the Safavid family
history Safvat al-Safa, originally completed in 1358, portrayed the family as
152 Notes to pages 14–15
descended from Imam Ali. Working independently, the Iranian historian
A. Kasravi (d. 1946) and Z. V. Togan (d. 1970) concluded the Safavids were
Kurdish in origin. See Togan, ‘Sur L’Origine des Safavides’, Melanges Louis
Massignon 3 (Damas, 1957), 345–57. Allouche (157–66) reviews the literature
on the Safavids’ origins and cites Ottoman sources dating such claims to the time
of Junayd, Ismail’s grandfather. Quinn (Historical, 83f) notes the importance of
genealogy within the broader Turco-Mongol tradition of historical writing. See
also Mazzaoui, 47n3; Quinn, Historical, 13–14.
6 For the Biktashis Abu Muslim was the link between the Prophet, Ali and the later
Imams. Qizilbash elements apparently venerated that order’s eponymous foun-
der Hajji Biktash who, like Ismail himself, had a Christian mother. See Birge,
33–69; K. Babayan, ‘The Waning of the Qizilbash: The Spiritual and the
Temporal in Seventeenth Century Iran’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Princeton
University, June 1993, 200–11, 219 citing, especially, I. Melikoff, Abu Muslim:
Le ‘Porte-Hache’ de Khorassan Dans la Tradition Epique Turco-Iranienne
(Paris, 1962); idem, ‘The Safavid Synthesis: From Qizilbash Islam to Imamite
Shi
ism’, IS, 27(1–4) (1994), 143–7; idem, ‘Sufis, Dervishes and Mullas: the
Controversy over the Spiritual and Temporal Dominion in Seventeenth-century
Iran’, in C. Melville, ed., Safavid Persia, 124–5; Calmard, ‘Popular Literature’,
318–22, 327, 333.
7 On the distinct appeal to Tajik Persians in Ismail’s poetry, see also K. Babayan,
Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran
(Cambridge, MA, 2002), xxviii–xxxi. On the appeal to Christians, L. Ridgeon
notes that by the time of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273) Jesus had become ‘interior-
ised . . . to the extent that he became an ideal symbol of spiritual resurrection’.
Ridgeon also discusses the religious pluralism of such earlier prominent mystical
figures in the region as Rumi, Suhravardi (d. 1191) and Aziz Nasafi (d. 1300), in
his Crescents on the Cross (Oxford, 1999), 32f.
8 A modern-day Iranian commentator has suggested Ismail’s claims to being the
Imam or the Prophet were allegorical, even if his followers may have understood
otherwise (R. Jafariyan, Safaviyya, Az Zuhur ta Zaval, Tehran, 1378, 65–7). See
also Allouche, 155. The Venetian chronicler Sanudo, reporting on the period
from 1497 to 1508, noted that Ismail himself said he was descended from the
Prophet and ‘that he is God’. Garthwaite, author of the above quote, suggests
that the exact ‘interpretation is left to the “reader” [of Ismail’s poetry]’, with ‘the
text’ encouraging and allowing for variant readings. See Garthwaite, ibid., espe-
cially his citation of Crossley’s ‘The Rulerships’, wherein Crossley argues that
such simultaneous rulership, as a phenomenon of the early modern era, can be
observed in Louis XIV’s France, Peter the Great’s Russia, the Qing’s China and
among the Ottomans. See also Woods, ‘Timur’s Genealogy’. On Ismail’s dis-
course, see also Browne, 4: 61; Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 13; Allouche, 79–80, 155,
148n2; B. S. Amoretti, ‘Religion in the Timurid and Safavid Periods’, in Peter
Jackson, et al., eds, The Cambridge History of Iran, 6: 638n1, 640n1; Savory,
‘The Principal Offices of the Safavid State During the Reign of Ismail I (907–30/
1501–24)’, BSOAS 23(1) (1960), 91; J. Aubin, ‘L’Avènement des Safavides
Reconsidéré (Études Safavides. III)’, Moyen Orient et Ocean Indien 5 (1988),
129; Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 217.
9 Woods (199) offers a map of Turkish and Kurdish tribes in the region
c. 1400–50. Use of this particular dialect set Ismail’s poetry apart from the
Persian dialect which his ancestor Safi al-Din had utilised in his poetry and, in
 Notes to pages 15–16 153
Ismail’s own time, the Turkish and Persian poetry of the Herat-based Timurid
ruler Sultan Husayn Bayqara and the Persian poetry composed by contemporary
Ottoman rulers. See also n34 below and the sources in n2.
10 After its conquest in 1508, Khan Muhammad Ustajlu, whose brother had
already married a sister of Ismail, was designated governor of Diyar Bakr. At his
death, that brother succeeded him as governor and tribal khan. Another Ustajlu
was governor of newly captured Tabriz. See Hasan Rumlu, A Chronicle of the
Early Safawis, being the Ahsan al-Tawarikh of Hasan-i Rumlu, C. N. Seddon,
transl. (Baroda, 1934), 41; Sarwar, 53; M. Haneda, Le Chah et les Qizilbash, Le
Systeme militaire safavide (Berlin, 1987), 86–7; K.-M. Röhrborn, Provinzen und
Zentralgewalt Persiens im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1966), transl by
K. Djahandari as Nizam-i Iyalat dar Dawrah-yi Safaviyya (Tehran, 1978),
43; Szuppe, ‘La participation’, 1994, 215–16, 215n19, 220n42, 221, 224;
Woods, 197.
As for the Shamlu, before Tabriz Ismail’s father Haydar had married the
daughter of Abdi Bek Shamlu. Abdi Bek married another sister of Ismail and
their two sons from this marriage were later governors of Herat and Khurasan.
One son, Durmish Khan, in 1503 became the first Safavid governor of Isfahan,
fought at Chaldiran in 1514, suppressed a revolt by the governor of Rasht in
1518, was appointed guardian to Ismail’s third son, Sam Mirza (b. 1517), and
was sent to Khurasan as its governor where he died in 1525–6. His brother
Husayn succeeded him both as governor of Khurasan and Sam Mirza’s guardian
– a post of great standing – and his daughter married Sam Mirza. Another
Shamlu was made governor of Herat in 1513–14. See Szuppe, 224, 220–1,
where she notes that Durmish Khan’s descendants remained governors of Herat,
itself a key provincial posting as it was the traditional capital of Khurasan and
usually the seat of the crown prince, into the next century. See also Sarwar, 46;
Haneda, 86–90; Röhrborn, 146. See also Szuppe, ‘The “Jewels of Wonder”:
Learned Ladies and Princess Politicians in the Provinces of Early Safavid Iran’, in
G. Hambly, ed., Women in the Medieval Islamic World, Power, Patronage and
Piety (London, 1998), 325–47; idem, ‘Status, Knowledge and Politics: Women in
Sixteenth-Century Safavid Iran’, in G. Nashat and L. Beck, eds, Women in Iran
from the Rise of Islam to 1800 (Urbana and Chicago, 2003), 141–69.
11 The former Diyar Bakr Mawsillu chief was made the shah’s sealkeeper, and two
others served as governor of Baghdad and guardian to Tahmasp. See Sarwar,
52–3, 70; Szuppe, ibid., 234; M. Dickson, ‘Shah Tahmasb and the Uzbeks (The
Duel for Khurasan with Ubayd Khan: 930–946/1524–1540)’, unpublished PhD
dissertation, Princeton University, 1958, 120; Woods, 191–3.
12 Haneda, 93, unsourced; Szuppe, 215–16, 220–1, 224; Woods, 195–6.
13 A Dhul-Qadr was made governor of Fars at its conquest in 1503, and the
tribe ‘retained’ it until 1594–5. The Afshar, having participated in the conquest
of Qandahar, received and held Kirman province for some generations. At
Baghdad’s 1508 conquest a Talish was made governor of the city and later of all
of Arab Iraq; another member of this tribe was governor of Astarabad/Gurgan.
See Rumlu, 47; Haneda, 75–6, 93; Szuppe, 215–16, 220–1, 224; Sarwar, 46–7,
50, 68–71; Röhrborn, 46–7; Aubin, ‘Revolution Chiite et Conservatisme, Les
soufis de Lahejan, 1500–1514’ (Études Safavides. II.)’, Moyen Orient et Océan
Indien, I (1984), 5, 22; Woods, 198, 183. On the Dhul-Qadr, see P. Oberling,
‘Dhul -Qadr’, EIr, 7.
14 The seven ‘Sufis’ whom later chroniclers identified as companions of Ismail
154 Notes to page 16
included leading Shamlu, Qaramanlu, Talish and Dhul-Qadr figures. See, for
example, Haneda, 72f, citing Khuzani’s Afzal al-Tavarikh, completed in the late
1630s; Aubin, ‘Les soufis’, 3n12, citing Alam Ara-yi Shah Ismail, dated to after
1675–6; Sarwar (33) and Allouche (61) citing Ross Anonymous, the British
Library manuscript dated by Morton to the 1680s, from which the dustjacket of
the present volume is taken.
By contrast, Ghiyas al-Din Khvandamir’s 1524 account (Tarikh-i Habib al-
Siyar, J. Humai, ed. ([Tehran], 1362), 4: 448–9) mentions only two by name. His
son Amir Mahmud, in his 1550 Tarikh-i Shah Ismail va Shah Tahmasp, M. A.
Jarrahi, ed. (Tehran, 1991, 43–4), neither notes nor numbers Ismail’s com-
panions, nor does Abdi Bek Shirazi in his 1570 Takmilat al-Akhbar, A. Navai,
ed. (Tehran, 1369, 36). See also Rumlu’s 1577 Ahsan (12) and Iskandar Bek
Munshi, History of Shah  Abbas the Great, R. M. Savory, transl. (Boulder, CO,
1978), 1: 42, the first volume of which was completed in 1616. Budaq Qazvini’s
1576 Javahir al-Akhbar, M. Bahramnizhad, ed. (Tehran, 1378), 112, mentions,
but does not name, seventeen individuals as having accompanied Ismail. In his
1590 Khulasat al-Tavarikh [E. Eshraqi, ed. Tehran, 1359), 1: 47–9], Qummi
speaks of the ‘Sufis of Lahijan’ but neither names or numbers them. In his
1703–4 Tarikh-i Sultani (E. Eshraqi, ed., 2nd ed., Tehran, 1366, 33) Sayyid
Hasan Astarabadi gives seven, but does not name them. M. Szuppe (Entre
Timourides, Uzbeks et Safavides (Paris, 1992), 57–8, 58n211, 13) has noted the
unreliability of the Jarrahi edition above. A better edition is published as Iran dar
Ruzagar-i Shah Ismail va Shah Tahmasp, Gh. R. Tabatabai, ed. (Tehran, 1370/
1991).
On Khuzani, see also A. Morton, ‘The Early Years of Shah Ismail in the Afzal
al-tavarikh and Elsewhere’, in Melville, Safavid Persia, 27–51, esp. 32f;
S. Abrahams, ‘A Historiographical Study and Annotated Translation of Volume
2 of the Afzal al-Tavarikh by Fazli Khuzani al-Isfahani’, unpublished PhD disser-
tation, University of Edinburgh, 1999; C. Melville, ‘A Lost Source for the Reign
of Shah Abbas: the Afzal al-tawarikh of Fazli Khuzani Isfahani’, IS, 31/ii (1998),
263–5; idem, ‘New Light on the Reign of Shah Abbas: Volume III of the Afzal al-
Tavarikh’, in Newman, ed. Society and Culture, 63–96; Sarwar, 6; M. Haneda,
‘La Famille Khuzani Isfahani (15e–17e siècles)’, SIr, 18 (1989), 77–92; n29
below. On Ross, see A. Morton, ‘The Date and Attribution of the Ross
Anonymous. Notes on a Persian History of Shah Ismail I’, in C. Melville, ed.,
Pembroke Papers I (Cambridge, 1990), esp. 187–8, 201; Quinn, Historical, 146.
The work has been published as Jahangusha-i Khaqan: Tarikh-i Shah Ismail, A.
D. Muztarr, ed. (Islamabad, 1984). On this work see also E. Sims, ‘A Dispersed
Late-Safavid Copy of the Tarikh-i Jahangusha-yi Khaqan Sahibqiran’ in S.
Canby, ed., Safavid Art and Architecture (London, 2002), 54–7. On Alam Ara-yi
Shah Ismail, see R. McChesney, ‘Alam Ara-ye Shah Ismail’, EIr, 1:796–7,
wherein McChesney urges that the work be treated with caution, and suggests it
is the same as the also anonymously authored Alam Ara-yi Safavi which, edited
by Y. A. Shukri, was published in Tehran, 1350/1971. See, however, Quinn,
Historical, 145. Shukri, editor of Safavi, argues for differences between the two.
The former has been published as Alam ara-yi Shah Ismail, A. M. Sahib, ed.
(Tehran, 1349/1970). In his ‘A Note on Iskander Bek’s Chronology’, Journal of
Near Eastern Studies, 39(1) (1980), 53–63, McChesney also notes the need for
caution with Munshi’s dates. On Budaq Qazvini, see n20 of chapter 3.
15 See references to the Afshar, Dhul-Qadr, Mawsillu, Qajar, Qaramanlu, Rumlu,
 Notes to page 16 155
Shamlu, Talish, Takkalu and Ustajlu in, especially, Haneda, Le Chah, 30–47,
citing Khuzani and Ross. On these battles compare, for example, Sarwar
(37–8, 62, 67, 78–9) with Rumlu (18–20, 28–9, 52–4, 69–70). See also
Allouche, 61.
16 Woods, 183f. On the Takkalu, whose name suggests Takka in Southern Anatolia,
see R. Savory, ‘Takkalu’, EI2, 10: 136–7. Khunji’s account (59), in addition to
mentioning tribal amirs and followers from Rum, Talish and ‘Siyah-kuh’, also
mentioned the Shamlu, a term suggesting Syrian connections. The Talish are
spoken of by Khunji (71) as ‘clad in blue’ which, as Minorsky notes (Khunji,
71n5), suggests peasant origins. Ottoman sources confirm Haydar’s appeal in
Rum (Allouche, 54–5). See also Woods’ map (199) of tribal elements between
1400 and 1450.
Here we do not propose to investigate the notion of ‘tribe’, let alone ‘Turk’.
On both, however, Woods’ discussion (10–23) in particular repays attention.
17 Röhrborn, 112–29; W. Floor, Safavid Government Institutions (Costa Mesa,
2001), 85f. On the Mushasha, see also Sarwar, 55–6, Rumlu, 47, Roemer, 6:
216–17, 245, and our discussion below. On Luristan, see also M. K. Jamali, The
Life and Personality of Shah Ismail I (907–930/1489–1524) (Isfahan, 1998),
198–9.
18 On other family members and associates who served Ismail and Tahmasp, see
Savory, ‘Offices . . . Ismail, 102; Aubin, ‘Shah Ismail’, 60–3; Roemer, 6: 213;
Floor, Safavid Government, 35.
19 Another, a judge in Rayy, was on close personal terms with Ismail. Aubin, ibid.,
47f, 64–5; Savory, ibid., 98; Floor, ibid. See also Woods, ibid., index s.v.
20 Aubin, ibid., 76–7; Floor, ‘The Secular Judicial System in Safavid Persian’, SIr,
29(1) (2000), 48; Munshi, 1: 256. An ancestor of the Isfahani family of Khvaja
Afzal al-Din Muhammad Turk was made judge in the city and supervisor of the
city’s Congregational Mosque under Ismail; a descendant was a court poet
known not to have been complimentary to Abbas II’s vizier Saru Taqi. See
Hunarfar, 48. On the Khaki Shirazi family whose members had also served the
Aqquyunlu, see Aubin, ibid., 77. The continuity between the policies of the
Turkish dynasties and Ismail’s reign in such administrative matters as tax policy,
as noted by W. Floor (A Fiscal History of Iran in the Safavid and Qajar Periods,
1500–1925, New York, 1998, 149–50, 216–17), was likely the result of such
administrative continuities.
21 It is mainly later sources which report the harshness of the new faith’s imposition
throughout the realm. In his 1577 chronicle Rumlu reported (26) that at the
capture of Tabriz seven decades before Ismail commanded the prayer sermon
(khutba) be read in the name of the twelve Imams and that the first three caliphs
‘be cursed in the bazaars, on pain of death to him who refused’. See also
the 1564–5 Tarikh-i Ilchi-yi Nizamshah, authored by an Indian emissary to
Tahmasp’s court who arrived in Iran only in 1545 and stayed until 1564 (Jamali,
xxv–xxvi), Junabadi’s 1625–6 Rawzat al-Safaviyya, and Pashazada’s mid-
nineteenth century Inqilab-i Islam, as discussed by Jamali (299–302). The latter,
whose author died in 1892, has been published by R. Jafariyan as Inqilab-i Islam
bayn al-Khavass val-Avvam (Qum, 1379). The Indian source has been published
as Khurshah b. Qubad Husayni, Tarikh-i Ilchi-i Nizam Shah, M. R. Nasiri and
K. Haneda, eds (Tehran, 2000). Ilchi and Ross each cite 30,000 as the number of
Sunnis killed at Firuzkuh, a ten-day long battle in 1504 against a local ruler
(Sarwar, 47), where the more contemporary Khvandamir (4: 476), gives no
156 Notes to page 17
figure and the 1542 Lubb al-Tavarikh, whose author was actually present,
(Quinn, 16) cites 1,000; Rumlu (33) has no figure. See also Jamali, 200 and, on
Firuzkuh, n89 of the following chapter. Compare also later sources on the sever-
ity of forced conversion of Heratis to Shi
ism following its capture in 1510
(Jamali, 309–11 citing the later Alam Ara-yi Shah Ismail, contemporary with
Ross) with Khvandamir (4: 514–15). M. Szuppe, Entre Timourides, Entre
Timourides, Uzbeks et Safavides. Questions d’Historie politique et sociale de
Hérat dans la première moitié du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1992), 128, noting but
nominal persecution of Herat’s Sunnis, suggests that gaining a share in Sunni
property may have encouraged denunciations.
In her ‘The Tabarraiyan and the Early Safawids’, IS, 37/i (2004), 47–71, esp.
56–60, Stanfield-Johnson analyses the ritual cursing as addressed in eight of the
period’s chronicles, and notes that the later the chronicle the more elaborate
the description of Ismail’s measures to institute the practice. Unsurprisingly, the
account of the practice in Tahmasp’s reign by the Sunni Mirza Makhdum Sharifi
(on whom see Chapter 3 below) is especially hostile. See ibid., 60–5.
Later sources also charge that Ismail ordered the desecration of the tombs of
the poet Jami (d. 1492) and Fakhr al-Din Razi (d. 1208–9) in Herat (Jamali,
305–6, citing Bustan al-Siyaha of Zayn al-Abidin Shirvani (d. 1837–8). Jami’s
apparent hostility to Shi
ism (Algar, ‘Naqshbandis’, 24–5, 28–31; n21 of the
previous chapter), albeit promulgated whilst based at the Sunni Timurid court,
did not inhibit Ismail from association with Jami’s nephew Hatifi (d. 1520–1),
on which see below. See also n33 that Herat’s artists remained in the city after its
capture by the Safavids. Ross (Jamali, 173) also refers to Ismail’s massacre of
thousands of Sunnis at the capture of Tabas in 1504. Rumlu refers (36) to this as
retribution for Chagatai attacks, not as an anti-Sunni action per se and Munshi
(1: 49) raises an eyebrow to Rumlu’s figure of 7,000 killed; Khvandamir (4: 480)
had cited 3,000 or 4,000. During the capture of Baghdad in 1508 the tomb of the
famous Sunni jurist Abu Hanifa (d. 767) was also apparently damaged. See our
‘The Myth’, n33. See also R. J. Abisaab, Converting Persia, Religion and Power
in the Safavid Empire (London, 2004), 16.
By contrast, the relative ease of conversions to the new faith is suggested by the
account of Nurallah Shushtari (d. 1610–11), composed in India after 1584, that
at the Safavid capture of Kashan in 1503 the Shi
i cleric accompanying Ismail,
Ali Karaki, on whom see below, endorsed the rulings of a local Sunni judge
(qadi) and allowed the latter to keep his post after he cursed the three caliphs. See
Nurallah Shushtari, Majalis al-Muminin (Tehran, 1354), 2: 233–4.
22 Aubin, ibid., 55–7; Munshi, 1: 239, 244. On Abd al-Vahhab, a Naqshbandi
who, it appears, kept his Sufi tendencies secret, see also Algar, ‘Naqshbandis’,
9–13. On another such Sunni Naqshbandi who returned to Tabriz after its
conquest, see Algar, 13–14.
23 Newman, ‘The Myth’, n44.
24 H. Mudarrissi Tabatabai, Bargi az Tarikh-i Qazvin (Qum, 1361), 22–3, 55,
59–60. Another sayyid who served both Sultan Husayn Bayqara and the
Safavids was Ghiyas al-Din Khvandamir (d. 1535–7), author of Habib al-Siyar.
Khvandamir’s grandfather, Mir Khvand, also had served Sultan Husayn, as had
Sultan Ibrahim Amini, author of Futuhat-i Shahi, a work completed in 1531 but
commissioned by Ismail. On Khvandamir and Amini and their overt acceptance
of Safavid legitimacy, see the following chapter ad n25.
25 As many key contemporary sources contain little or no such detailed information,
 Notes to pages 17–18 157
Savory, Haneda, Floor and others identify the period’s office holders by recourse
to a number of, occasionally much later, sources.
26 Savory, ‘Offices . . . Ismail, 100; Floor, Safavid Government, 17–21.
27 Savory, ibid., 101; Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 32, 116–17, 126, 188; Sarwar, 80;
Floor, Safavid Government, 137–40; Haneda, Le Chah, 74–5, 144–5, 178–9.
28 Newman, ‘The Myth’, n25; Savory, ibid., 103. Aubin, ibid., 69: J. Calmard, et
al., ‘Sadr’, EI2, 8: 748–51; Floor, ‘The sadr or head of the Safavid religious
administration, judiciary and endowments and other members of the religious
institution’, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft (ZDMG)
150 (2000), 461–500, esp. 478; Floor, ‘Judicial’, 19, 21f. Another sadr, Sayyid
Sharif al-Din Ali, was a descendant of the well-known Sunni theologian Sharif
Jurjani (d. 1413) who had served Timur.
The Tajiks did not always get along with each other. See, for example,
accounts of the feuds between the vakil Najm-i Thani, on whom see the follow-
ing note, and Sayyid Sharif al-Din and his intended replacement Astarabadi, and
the post-Chaldiran feud between the ‘civil’ vakil – on which post see below – Mir
Shah Husayn Isfahani and the sadr Astarabadi in the sources cited herein, espe-
cially Savory, and our discussion of the Uzbek campaign in Khurasan, below. On
the office of mustawfi al-mamalik, see Floor, Safavid Government, 35, 42, and
the following note.
29 Najm al-Din was replaced in 1509 by the Isfahani notable Yar Ahmad Khuzani,
mustawfi al-mamalik from c. 1501. The latter had received land grants from
Ismail in the Isfahan area in 1503, confirming his family’s prominence therein.
Indeed, the presence of the Khuzani family in Isfahan can be dated to the 1440s.
Given the title Najm-i Thani (The Second Star) Khuzani commanded Safavid
forces at their 1512 defeat by the Uzbeks, in which battle he was killed. The Yazdi
notable and sadr Sayyid Abd al-Baqi, on whom see further below, was thereupon
appointed vakil but was killed at Chaldiran. At Amir Yar’s appointment, his
brother was appointed Isfahan’s darugha (Prefect of Police). Haneda, ‘La Famille
Khuzani’, 78, 80, 82. As noted above, a descendant authored Afzal al-Tavarikh
in the next century (Haneda, 83–4). Jamali (220) cites the much later Ottoman
chronicle Inqilab-i Islam stating that Amir Yar married a daughter of Ismail. See
also Savory, ‘Offices . . . Ismail’, 94–6; Floor, Safavid Government, 12, 42. On
the post of darugha, see also M. Keyvani, Artisans and Guild Life in the later
Safavid Period (Berlin, 1992), 70–1; Floor, Safavid Government, 115–22.
30 Canby, 16.
31 A copy of Muhammad Asafi’s Jamal va Jalal was executed in Herat in 1502–3
but, brought to Tabriz c. 1504, underwent very Tabrizi embellishments and the
addition of the taj. The miniature entitled ‘Jalal before the Turquoise Dome’
features a doorway bearing the inscription al-sultan al-adil (the just ruler).
Canby, ibid., 16–17, 29–31, 34–5; B. Brend, ‘Jamal va Jalal: a Link Between
Epochs’, in S. Canby ed., Safavid Art and Architecture (London, 2002), 32–6.
See also B. Gray, ‘The Arts in the Safavid Period’, in Peter Jackson, ed., 6: 880;
J. Bloom, ‘Epic Images Revisited: An Ilkhanid Legacy in Early Safavid Painting’,
in Newman, ed., Society and Culture, 237–48; A. Welch, ‘Art in Iran ix. Safavid
to Qajar’, EIr, 2: 622.
32 A 1514 copy of the Gulistan of the Iranian poet Sadi (d. 1292) featured elements
traditional to fifteenth-century Shirazi paintings. Canby, 35. On the involvement
of the Kazeruni mystical order in the production of such manuscripts in Shiraz,
see n45.
158 Notes to pages 18–19
33 Canby, 36, 39, citing, on metalworking, A. Melikian-Chirvani, Islamic Metal-
work from the Iranian World: 8–18th centuries (London, 1982), 260, 279–80,
283–5. Most of Herat’s artists who remained in the city after its fall to the
Uzbeks in 1507 and its 1510 capture by the Safavids were forcibly removed from
the city by the Uzbeks at their retaking of the city in 1528. See the sources cited in
n21; E. Bahari, Bihzad, Master of Persian Painting (London, 1996), esp. 179–88;
idem, ‘The Sixteenth Century School of Bukhara Painting and the Arts of the
Book’, in Newman, ed., Society and Culture, 251–64.
34 E. Yarshater, ‘Persian Poetry in the Timurid and Safavid Periods,’ in Peter Jackson,
ed., 6: 978; H. R. Roemer, ‘The Türkman Dynasties’, in Peter Jackson, ed., 6:
165; Z. Safa, ‘Persian Literature in the Safavid Period’, in Peter Jackson, ed., 6:
957. Ismail’s ancestor Safi al-Din had composed his poetry in Persian. See
Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 189n4. Minorsky (‘Jihan Shah’, esp. 282–3) notes Jahan
Shah’s Turkish poems were written to Persian metre. Yarshater (6: 967f), dis-
cusses the basic forms of poetry in this period – the masnavi (couplet) form, used
for narrative, mystical and ethical works; the qasida, a monorhyme usually
between twenty-five and seventy lines, but occasionally longer, used mainly for
panegyrics; and the ghazal, used for lyric poetry – and the rise in the fifteenth
century of the ‘Indian style’. The latter sought to establish new links between
previously unrelated notions and ‘orchestrate’ associated meanings between
words, ideas and images; in essence, focusing on uncommon relationships such
that the more subtle is the more ingenious.
35 Hatifi did begin, but never completed, such a poem. See Canby, 33; Z. Safa,
‘Persian Literature in the Timurid and Türkman Periods’, in Peter Jackson, ed.,
6: 920; Yarshater, 6: 957f; J. T. P. de Bruijn, ‘Safawids.III. Literature’, EI2, 8:
774–7, esp. 775. On Hatifi, see also n58 of the following chapter. On Jami see
also ad n19 of the previous chapter.
Jami inducted into the order Husayn b. Ali Vaiz-i Kashifi (d. 1504–5), author
of the famous Alid martyrological work Rawzat al-Shuhada, completed in
1502–3, and also a recipient of the favour of Sultan Husayn and Mir Ali Shir.
The recent special edition of IS, 36(4) (December, 2003), M. E. Subtelny, ed.,
examines Kashifi and his legacy. See also Babayan, Mystics, 165f; n126 of
Chapter 4.
36 These included: Fighani Shirazi (d. 1519), Shihab al-Din Bayani (d. 1525), Ahli
Shirazi (d. 1535–6), and Fuzuli Baghdadi (d. 1562–3). See De Bruijn, ibid.;
Jamali, 122f; Yarshater, 6: 979–81. To be sure, not all of these poets’ composi-
tions earned the approbation of the shah or others at the centre. See, for
example, Jamali, 146–7. For a more recent discussion of Persian poetry in this
period, centring on Fighani, see P. Losensky, Welcoming Fighani, Imitation and
Poetic Individuality in the Safavid-Mughal Ghazal (Costa Mesa, 1998).
37 Pinder-Wilson, 6: 745, 728f.
38 The same year inscriptions in the name of the twelve Imams were, however,
added to Isfahan’s main Congregational Mosque, which dates to the Saljuk
period and to which Ismail’s grandfather Uzun Hasan had made additions.
Hunarfar, 90–1.
39 Canby notes that the Saljuk style of the brickwork decoration, the Kufic script
and the arabesque all evoke early Islamic heritage as the thin glazed strips in the
facade evoke Timurid Khurasan and as the motif of the glazed insets against
plain brick suggest Jahan Shah’s Blue Mosque, built in Tabriz in 1465 for his
daughter. The arabesque itself appears on later metalwork of this period as well.
 Notes to pages 20–21 159
A small school attached to the complex was built at the same time. Canby, 26–8;
R. Hillenbrand, ‘Safavid Architecture’, in Jackson, ed., 6: 761–4, citing Hunarfar,
368, 360–9; Godard, 63–9; S. Blake, Half the World: The Social Architecture of
Safavid Isfahan, 1590–1722 (Costa Mesa, CA, 1999) 104, 169–70. For Ismail’s
presence in Isfahan, see Sarwar’s index, s.v. On the pre-Safavid history of
‘Chinese’ clouds in Iranian art see Y. Kadoi, ‘Aspects of Iranian Art under the
Mongols: Chinoiserie Reappraised’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of
Edinburgh, 2005, especially Chapter 1.
40 Ismail visited Ardabil on several occasions, notably in the spring of 1500, on his
way from Lahijan to Irzinjan. In c. 1509–10 Ismail ordered the remains of his
father Haydar reburied at the shrine. See C. Melville, ‘Shah Abbas and the
Pilgrimage to Mashhad’ in Melville, ed., Safavid Persia, 221n12; Sarwar, 34, 94,
57; Canby, 12–13. See also C. E. Bosworth, ‘Ardabil’, EIr, 2: 357–60, esp.
359–60. In his own lifetime Ismail also laid plans for his own tomb at Ardabil so
close to that of his ancestor Safi al-Din as to suggest that the resulting small size
thereof was less an issue than its proximity to the order’s eponymous founder.
See R. Hillenbrand, ‘The Tomb of Shah Isma
il I, at Ardabil’, in S. Canby, ed.,
Safavid Art and Architecture (London, 2002), 3–8. For others of Ismail’s contri-
butions to the shrine, see also K. Rizvi, ‘The Imperial Setting: Shah Abbas at the
Safavid Shrine of Shaykh Safi at Ardabil’, in Canby, 9–10.
41 Coins with distinctly Twelver inscriptions were minted in 1508 by the Mushasha
governor of Shushtar. These murders provoked anti-Safavid outbursts among
Mushasha adherents in Basra and al-Ahsa. See J. H. Shubbar, Tarikh al-
Mushashaiyin wa Tarajim Alaihim (Najaf, 1385/1965), 216–17, 85–7.
42 Petrushevsky, 324; Calmard, ‘Popular Literature’, 336–7.
43 F. Daftary, ‘Ismaili-Sufi Relations in early Post-Alamut and Safavid Persia’, in
L. Lewisohn, and D. Morgan, eds, Late Classical Persianate Sufism (1501–1750),
The Safavid and Mughal Period (Oxford, 1999), 275–89, esp. 287, citing,
however, Qummi’s 1590 Khulasat al-Tavarikh, on which see Chapter 4 below.
44 Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 202–3; idem, ‘Sufis, Dervishes and Mullas’, 124.
45 Arjomand, The Shadow, 115, citing Khvandamir, 4: 611–12; Shushtari, 2:
149, 152–3, 521; Munshi, 1: 145. On Abd al-Baqi, see also P. Soucek, ‘Abd al-
Baqi Yazdi’, EIr, 1: 105–6. In this period the continued involvement of the
Shiraz-based Kazeruni mystical order in the production of traditional illustrated
manuscripts including, for example, a Khamsa, perhaps accounts for the order’s
continued existence. See F. Cagman and Z. Tanindi, ‘Manuscript Production at
the Kazeruni Orders in Safavid Shiraz’, in S. Canby, ed., Safavid Art and
Architecture (London, 2002), 43–8. See also n32. Cf. Algar (‘Naqshbandis’, 26)
that the order was wiped out after Ismail conquered Fars in 1503.
46 The Talish chief eventually received a pardon and a robe of honour, another
Shamlu was appointed Herat’s new governor and a Mawsillu was made gov-
ernor of Qayin and given the title ‘Sultan’. See Savory, ‘Offices . . . Ismail’, 96,
citing Sharaf Khan Bidlisi, Sharafnama, (Cairo, nd) 2: 130f, a source completed
in 1596, and the later Ross; Sarwar, 66–71. Cf. the shorter version of the story in
Khvandamir (4: 527); Aubin, ‘Les soufis’, 22. On Bidlisi, see Woods, 228.
47 The Ustajlu commander later became governor of Tabriz. See Sarwar, 71;
Allouche, 105–6, 106n9; Jamali, 233–5, citing Rumlu (66), the later Alam Ara-yi
Shah Ismail and Ross. Khvandamir’s 1524 account carries no report on this
rising but see such later sources as Rumlu (66) and Qummi (Khulasat, 1: 128).
48 Allouche, 120–1.
160 Notes to pages 21–22
49 Browne, 4: 57; Sarwar, 50–1, 65–6, 73, 78–82; Allouche, 86–7, 91, 94–6, 111–12,
114–20, 170–3; Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont, ‘Études Turco-Safavides, I.
Notes sur le Blocus du Commerce Iranien par Selîm Ier’, Turcica, 6 (1975), 74–5.
On Ottoman-Safavid relations generally, see idem, Les Ottomans, les Safavides,
et leurs Voisins (Istanbul, 1987); Haneda, 41–6. Ismail’s loss of his Tabriz-based
metalworkers ended the city’s role as a key metalworking and weapons-making
centre. See J. Allan, ‘Safavid Loss, Ottoman Gain – Metalworking Across the
Two Empires’, paper presented at Iran and the World in the Safavid Age,
University of London, September, 2002; J. Allan and B. Gilmour, Persian Steel,
The Tanavoli Collection (Oxford, 2000), 23, 142.
50 Rumlu, 71, 74; Sarwar, 86.
51 In 1519, Ismail also lent assistance to the Jalali rebellion in Anatolia. Sarwar, 86,
88–92, Allouche, 122, 128–32; Bacqué-Grammont, Les Ottomans, 272–5;
Floor, Safavid Government, 11, 178–9. On military ‘reforms’ undertaken after
Chaldiran, see Floor, ibid., 11; R. Matthee, ‘Unwalled Cities and Restless
Nomads: Firearms and Artillery in Safavid Iran’, in Melville, ed., Safavid Persia,
391.
52 Rumlu, 84–7, 255; Sarwar, 86, 89, 91–3.
53 His alliance-buildng efforts came to nought, however. Indeed, in 1522, two years
after the Spaniard Magellan circumnavigated the globe, a new treaty between
the Portuguese and the ruler of Hormuz further tightened the former’s grip on
the island. The Portuguese were also approached with a request to use their ports
based in India to evade the Ottoman trade blockade of the overland trade from
Iran and transport silk to the West. The Portuguese did, indeed, seize the Bahrayn
islands from local Arab chiefs as specified in the 1515 treaty but, instead of
turning these over to Iran, retained them for some eighty years. In 1543, the
Portuguese also seized Hormuz’ customs revenues and the island became a
staging post for shipment of Caspian silk to Portuguese trading stations in India.
On other, failed, Safavid efforts to win European assistance against the Ottomans,
see Savory, ‘Ismail I’, EI2, 4: 186–7; L. Lockhart, ‘European Contacts with Persia,
1350–1736’, in Peter Jackson, ed., 6: 380f, 410–11; R. Ferrier, ‘Trade from the
Mid-14th Century to the End of the Safavid Period’, in Peter Jackson, ed., 6:
420–6. See also Allouche, 122; Floor, The Economy, 210–13; R. Matthee, The
Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran, Silk for Silver 1600–1730 (Cambridge, 1999),
20, 27–8. On contacts between Ismail and Russia, see Matthee, ‘Anti-Ottoman
Concerns and Caucasian Interests: Diplomatic Relations Between Iran and
Russia, 1587–1639’, in M. Mazzaoui, ed., Safavid Iran and Her Neighbors (Salt
Lake City, 2003), 105, 107.
54 Floor, Safavid Government, 12, 20–1, 140; Haneda, 179–80. Muhammad
Bek’s brother, the governor of Tabriz, had crushed the earlier rising of Ismail’s
half-brother.
55 Tabrizi was murdered by Rumlu elements at Ismail’s death. See Khvandamir, 4:
598; Rumlu, 88–9, 90–1; Sarwar, 93–4, 104; Savory, ‘Offices . . . Ismail’, 93–9,
102; Aubin, ‘Shah Ismail’, 60–5; Floor, Safavid Government, 6–13, 20, 35; idem,
‘The sadr’, 478. On Qadi Jahan, see also Munshi, 1: 237.
56 Sayyid Jamal al-Din Astarabadi, appointed to the post after Chaldiran, had
studied with the same Davani who both praised Uzun Hasan and his son Yaqub,
the latter well known for his anti-Safavid, anti-Shi
i tendencies, and had rejected
Ismail’s claims to be the ‘Imam of the Age’. Davani’s rather perfunctory Nur al-
Hidaya is often cited as evidence of his ‘conversion’ to Shi
ism. See our ‘Jalal
 Notes to pages 22–24 161
al-Din Davani’, EIr, 7: 132–3, and nn21, 28. Sayyid Ghiyas al-Din Mansur
Dashtaki, sadr toward the end of Ismail’s reign, who had dedicated an early
essay to the Ottoman Sultan Bayazid II (reg. 1481–1512), was also at best only
nominally Shi
i. See our ‘Ghiyas-al-Din Dashtaki’, EIr, 7: 100–2; Savory,
‘Offices . . . Ismail’, 103. Aubin, 69. See also Floor, ‘sadr’, 478; Newman, ‘The
Myth’, n25, n72. A member of Isfahan’s Shahristani family of sayyids was mus-
tawfi al-mamalik from 1514 to 1523. Floor, Safavid Government, 42; Munshi,
1: 257.
57 Rumlu, 82; Sarwar, 91; Szuppe, 217–18, 229. On Ismail’s five daughters, see
Szuppe, 216, 231; idem, ‘La participation des Femmes de la Famille Royale è
l’Exercice du Pouvoir en Iran Safavide au XVIe Siècle (seconde partie)’, Studia
Iranica 24(1) (1995), 106; Sarwar, 94. Jamali (257) lists six daughters, but notes
some sources give fifteen.
58 Sarwar, 91, 25, 94; Szuppe, 1994, 229–30; Jamali, 278–9. The Shirvanshah were
certainly not Shi
ites at this time. See Röhrborn, 143. Cf. Woods (16) that inter-
marriage between Aqquyunlu Turkish tribal elements and native Iranians was
rare.
59 In c. 1518 a foreign merchant reported that ‘the Sophy is loved and reverenced by
his people as a god and especially by his soldiers, many of whom enter into battle
without armour expecting their master Ismail to watch over them in the fight’.
Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 13. Compare Allouche, 156, and Savory, ‘Ismail’, 91.
60 Shaykh Muhammad Al-Hasan al-Yasin, Tarikh al-Mashhad al-Kazimi (Baghdad,
1387/1967), 71. A coin minted in Mashhad in 1518 referred to Ismail as ‘the just
sultan’. On the latter term see n4 and n31 above.
61 Hillenbrand, 6: 764–5; Hunarfar, 369–79; Godard, 69–72. See also Pinder-
Wilson, 6: 756f; Blake, 104, 153.
62 Szuppe, 1994, 250–1; 1995, 71. Although Khunji’s earlier history of the
Aqquyunlu is notably devoid of references to Safavid identification with Shi
ism
(n2 above), in a work completed in 1514 Khunji clearly associates the Safavids
with the faith (Jacobs, 96f).
On Qum as a Shi
i centre from early in Islamic history, see our The Formative,
32f.
63 These included Imamzadas in Tehran in September 1514, the month after
Chaldiran, and in 1519 in Amul. Work was done in 1518 in Qum, where Ismail
frequently wintered, and in 1520 in Damavand’s Congregational Mosque.
These, and scattered carvings and tombstones, the latter including one at Natanz
in 1515, also delineated territorial claims, as did Ismail’s firmans. See those
added in 1512 in Isfahan’s Congregational Mosque, in mosques in Kashan in
1516 and in Simnan in 1519. See Hillenbrand, 6: 767–8; H. Naraqi, Asar-i
Tarikhi-yi Shahristanha-yi Kashan va Natanz (Tehran, 1348/1969), 399. On the
imamzada, the tomb of a member of the family of the one of the Imams, and
listings thereof, see H. Algar, et al., ‘Emamzadeh’, EIr, 8.
64 Canby, 31, 34; Rumlu, 87; B. Gray, ‘The Arts in the Safavid Period’, in Jackson,
ed., 6: 880f. Canby (29–35) notes the freedom of stylistic expression artists of
the period enjoyed throughout the region. On Bihzad, see also Behari, ‘The
Sixteenth Century School’; idem, Bihzad. Bihzad’s death date is variously given
as 1514 and 1535, with the latter date favoured. See also Welch, ‘Art’, 622.
65 R. Hillenbrand, ‘The Iconography of the Shah-nama-yi Shahi’, in C. Melville,
ed., Safavid Persia, 53–78, esp. 59, 60. On this Shahnama see also M. B. Dickson
and S. C. Welch, The Houghton Shahnameh (Cambridge, MA and London,
162 Notes to pages 24–25
1981); S. C. Welch, A King’s Book of Kings, The Shah-nameh of Shah Tahmasp
(New York and London, 1972). See also Gray, ‘The Arts in the Safavid Period’,
6: 880f.
66 R. Jafariyan discusses pre-Safavid Iranian Shi
ism in his ‘The Immigrant Manu-
scripts: A Study of the Migration of Shi
i Works From Arab Regions to Iran in
the Early Safavid Era’, in Newman, ed., Society and Culture, 351–69. The fol-
lowing discussion derives from our ‘The Myth’, which questioned the long-
accepted notion that large numbers of Arab Twelver scholars flocked to Iran
following the Safavids’ establishment of Twelver Shi
ism as the realm’s official
faith.
67 When the Safavids captured Baghdad in 1508, Karaki and the local Twelver
leader Sayyid Kamuna, both of whom had been jailed by the local governor, were
released and joined the shah. The latter was killed at Chaldiran. Karaki was with
Ismail at the 1510–11 capture of Herat. See Rumlu, 46–7; Sarwar, 54–5, 79, 81;
W. Madelung, ‘al-Karaki’, EI2, 4: 610.
The equation of the naib of the Hidden Imam with a senior cleric empowered
to undertake certain specific duties of absent Imam had been available for some
centuries, although Karaki was the first Twelver cleric to articulate the concept
of niyaba amma (general deputyship) by which those prerogatives generally
could be exercised by such clerics in the former’s absence. See N. Calder, ‘Zakat
in Imami Shi
i Jurisprudence, from the Tenth to the Sixteenth Century, ad’,
BSOAS, 44(3) (1981), 468–80; idem, ‘Khums in Imami Shi
i Jurisprudence,
from the Tenth to the Sixteenth Century, ad’, BSOAS, 45(1) (1982), 39–47.
68 Newman, ‘The Myth’, 108n90. Karaki’s most vociferous opponent in this
period, Sulayman Qatifi (d. after 1539), rebuked Karaki in person in Mashhad
c. 1510 for associating with, and accepting gifts from, the court. However,
Qatifi completed his well-known essay on the subject only after Chaldiran, in
1518, at the urging of fellow clerical critics based outside Safavid territory to
whom Chaldiran certainly gave more confidence to voice criticisms more openly.
In that essay Qatifi also challenged the rulings of those clerics who argued the
deputy might also collect and distribute believers’ alms on behalf of the Imam.
The public cursing of the Sunni caliphs, endorsed by Karaki both in 1503 in
Kashan, as noted above, and in a 1511 essay dedicated to Ismail, also angered
Twelvers in the Hijaz who were, they complained to Iranian coreligionists, ‘chas-
tised for this cursing and reviling’. On Karaki as the only known Lebanese
migrant to Safavid Iran during Ismail’s reign, see also D. Stewart, ‘Notes on the
Migration of Amili Scholars to Safavid Iran’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies,
55(2) (1996), 85, 87–9.
69 Woods, 169, citing Aubin, ‘La Politique Religieuse des Safavides’, in Le Shi
isme
Imamite, T. Fahd, ed. (Paris, 1970), 235–44.
70 Given the notion of stages in the attainment of human perfection – down to the
inclusion of such ‘falls’ as those experienced by such earlier personages as Adam
– evident in the discourse of such earlier Sufi figures of the region as Aziz Nasafi
– and the notions of spiritual resurrection on offer in the religious discourse of
the time (Ridgeon, 71), Chaldiran may have been viewed as a, perhaps necessary,
step on the path of a longer, but ultimately successful, journey.
 Notes to pages 26–28 163
2 Reconfiguration and Consolidation: The Reign of Tahmasp (1524–1576)
1 On Tahmasp’s date of birth as 1513 or 1514, see Browne, 4: 84; Sarwar, 70,
citing Khvandamir; Savory, ‘The Principal Offices of the Safavid State During
the Reign of Tahmasp I (930–984/1524–1576)’, BSOAS, 24, part 1 (1961), 65;
idem, ‘Safavids’, EI2, 8: 768; Roemer, 6: 233; Allouche, 133n114; Szuppe, 1994,
234; Rumlu, 91. Ismail had either four (Szuppe, 1995, 106; Sarwar, 94) or six
(Jamali, 239f) sons.
2 Illustrating the extent of intra-Qizilbash strife, in 1528–9 the Mawsillu governor
of Baghdad was killed by his nephew who ordered the khutba read in the name
of the Ottoman Sultan Sulayman. When the latter was killed by his own brothers
the rebellion fizzled out. See Allouche, 137, citing later sources. Tahmasp’s
mother was a Mawsillu.
3 Many secondary sources miss the Ustajlu co-regency, but see C. J. Beeson, ‘The
Origins of Conflict in the Safawi Religious Institution’, unpublished PhD thesis,
Princeton University, 1982, 35. Beeson was a student of Dickson. On the Ustajlu
see also n12.
4 Dickson, 295, 342–3. Savory (‘Offices . . . Tahmasp’), 65; idem, ‘Safavids’, EI2, 8:
768), Allouche (134) and Roemer (6: 233) all suggest the civil war lasted ten
years. Dickson (265–95) and Beeson (ibid.) suggest twelve, to include Sam
Mirza’s return to court and the execution of his Shamlu supporters. Compare
Savory, ‘The Safavid Administrative System’, 6: 361–2; Szuppe, 1995, 106.
Dickson’s account of the civil war, although drawing on sources composed over
the entire Safavid period, is the most exhaustive. Dickson (199–201) disputes
Tahmasp’s self-portrayal in his memoirs as in complete control of these events.
See also Floor, Safavid Government, 12, 21.
5 Munshi, 1: 251–2; Aubin, ‘Shah Ismail’, 65, 47f; Abrahams, ‘A Historio-
graphical Study’, Chapter 1; Savory, 73f; Dickson, 200; Haneda, ‘La Famille’,
84. On Nur Kamal and his family, see also Munshi, 1: 252; Szuppe, 1995, 67;
Jafariyan (Safaviyya, 74) notes that Qadi Jahan’s son was vakil for a short time.
Floor, Safavid Government, 12, 35–6.
6 Safavid forces mounted counter-attacks coincident both with turning points in
the period’s intra-Qizilbash struggles and Ottoman movements in the West. See
Dickson, 212f.
7 On Tahmasp’s 1561–2 return to the Ottomans of Sulayman’s son Bayazid who
fled to Iran after his 1559 revolt against his father, see Allouche, 145; Roemer, 6:
244.
8 Allouche, 143–4; Roemer, 6: 243–4.
9 On the various dates proposed for the move to Qazvin, see Eshraqi, ‘Le Dar al-
Saltana Qazvin, deuxième capital des Safavides’ in Melville, ed., Safavid Persia,
105; Röhrborn, 8; Savory, Iran Under, 63; M. Membré, Mission to the Lord
Sophy of Persia (1539–1542), translated with Introduction and Notes by A. H.
Morton (London, 1993), xxiv; Roemer, 6: 243; M. Mazzaoui, ‘From Tabriz to
Qazvin to Isfahan: Three Phases of Safavid History’, ZDMG, Supp. III, 1. XIX.
Deutscher Orientalistentag, Wiesbaden, 1977, 514–22, esp. 517–19; Floor, The
Safavid Economy, 197. Jacobs (167n18) discusses all the proposed dates. Qazvin
appears to have been the capital by 1559, when the Ottoman prince Bayazid
arrived in Safavid territory (Rumlu, 179).
10 Later sources’ descriptions of the Safavid forces which repulsed Uzbek and
Ottoman attacks during the civil war have been used to chart the changing
164 Notes to page 28
struggle for predominance at the political centre. See, for example, Haneda, Le
Chah, 104f, citing Rumlu and Khuzani on Safavid forces during the third
Uzbek invasion (1529–31). Dickson (102–3n1) carefully notes the ‘frequently
contradictory’ nature of his – mainly non-contemporary – sources.
11 Contemporary office-holders themselves are, in fact, often identified in the (later)
sources as the civil war’s main protagonists. Thus, for example, with the ascend-
ancy of the Shamlu-Ustajlu coalition, c. 1531, Husayn Khan Shamlu (d.
1534–5) was vakil and amir al-umara jointly with Abdallah Khan Ustajlu; both
were Tahmasp’s nephews. In 1531–2 Husayn Khan Shamlu married a sister of
Qara Khan Ustajlu, Abdallah Khan’s father, who had married a sister of Ismail.
Abdallah Khan, later amir al-umara and minister of justice (divanbeki), was
governor of Shirvan from 1549 until 1566 or 1567, the year of his death. See
Szuppe, 1994, 221–2, 224, 238; Floor, Safavid Government, 12. The post of
amir al-umara disappears from 1534 to 1567–8, when it is occupied, unsurpris-
ingly, by an Ustajlu, the governor of Azerbaijan. The post of vakil followed the
same pattern. The office of qurchibashi was held by Takkalu, one of whom was
killed by a fellow Takkalu in 1529 and the second in the 1531 Takkalu massacre.
The Shamlu held the post during the Shamlu-Ustajlu period, but thereafter the
Afshar held the post until c. 1584. See Savory, 77–9; Floor, Safavid Government,
12, 21. On the qurchibashi, see Savory, ‘Offices . . . Tahmasp’, 79; Savory, ‘The
Safavid’, 361–2; Floor, Safavid Government, 140–1; and, especially, Haneda,
144–53, 171–80, 105–10, where he also discusses the relative influence of the
qurchis in this period. On the suggestion that Tahmasp himself ‘appointed’ or
‘conferred’ such posts on specific individuals (e.g. Savory, ‘Offices . . . Tahmasp’,
78), see Dickson, 199–201, and Savory, who notes that the amirs appointed
Husayn Khan as amir al-umara and only later informed Tahmasp. See also n4.
12 Röhrborn, 28; Haneda, 120; Szuppe, 1994, 236n112. On Tahmasp’s nine, or
twelve, sons see Rumlu, 209; Munshi, 1: 206–18; Szuppe, 1995, 107. Savory
(‘Tahmasp’, EI2, 10: 110) says Tahmasp had thirteen sons. Haneda (127–9) also
calls attention to Ustajlu dominance and their influence over Tahmasp from the
outset. Changes in the tribal hierarchy under Abbas I best explain why Munshi
(1: 222), writing in 1616, hailed the Shamlu as ‘the greatest of all Qizilbash
tribes’. See also Rumlu, 195, 197; n20 of Chapter 4.
13 In 1576 the Shamlu were governors of Mashhad and Hamadan; the Mawsillu
held Tun and Tabas; the Rumlu held the posts of amir al-umara of Shirvan and
the administrative head of the Safavid Sufi order (khalifa al-khulafa); the
Dhul-Qadr, seal-keeper, and the governorships of Astarabad and Shiraz. The
Afshar held the post of qurchibashi and were governors in Kirman and Sava and
their traditional fief of Kuh Giluya; they were also guardians to two sons of
Tahmasp by concubines; Qajars held the posts of divanbeki and governor of
Damghan and Bistam. The Takkalu, although some were related to Tahmasp
and one was guardian to Tahmasp’s son Muhammad Khudabanda in Herat,
apparently held two minor holdings in Gilan and one in Khurasan, suggesting
some, at least, continued to be distrusted. See Haneda, 117f, citing Munshi’s
listing of the realm’s amirs at Tahmasp’s death (1: 222f), and Minorsky,
Tadhikirat, 14–8. A Mawsillu and three Afshars were guardians of several
Safavid princesses. Szuppe, 1994, 242–3; 1995, 107. On Abbas and his brothers,
see Munshi, 1: 208f, and on the sons of Tahmasp’s full-brother Bahram, see
Munshi, 1: 219–21; W. Floor, ‘The Khalifeh al-Kholafa of the Safavid Sufi
Order’, ZDMG 153(1) (2003), 55.
 Notes to pages 28–29 165
On concubines and ‘slavery’, see the excellent introduction in Babaie, et. al.,
Slaves of the Shah, 1f.
14 In this period little of the realm’s land was under the direct administration of
the court/family itself; such land was called khassa, or sometimes khalisa,
land. During Tahmasp’s reign these lands included Tabriz, the former capital,
Qazvin, the new capital, Isfahan and Simnan. Kashan was khassa from the mid-
dle of Tahmasp’s reign until his death in 1576, briefly again in 1579 and from
1585 to the death of Hamza Mirza. Yazd was khassa from the middle of
Tahmasp’s reign until 1586. Röhrborn (169–71) notes much disagreement
about the nature and meaning of khassa and mamalik lands in the seventeenth-
century European sources, let alone the Persian sources and (195–9) that
before Abbas I the difference was not that distinctive or important. Cf. Floor,
Safavid Government, 80–1, 85–90; idem, A Fiscal, 107f. Chardin (cited by
Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 26) famously said that Shah Safi (reg. 1629–42) first
introduced the khassa system. Röhrborn (169–71) is especially critical of for-
eign residents’ discussions of the categories of land and notes that no Persian
sources define these categories of land in the manner on offer in the foreign
sources.
15 In theory, these lands would have had a separate administrative system at the
centre, but information on such structures in this period is scanty and contra-
dictory. Röhrborn, 177, 183f. On provincial autonomy, see Röhrborn, 40, 69,
81, 92, 103–4, 108–9, 111. The centre did attempt to influence the appointment
of local officials where maladminstration was an issue. See, for example, Röhr-
born, 147, citing Munshi, 1: 147–50, 161. Röhrborn (152f) notes that the
centre’s power to hire and fire the local vizier in Khurasan, a key province as seat
of the crown prince, was exceptional. See also n41. Floor, Safavid Government,
80–123.
16 Szuppe, 1994, 234, 236–7, 238n115, 240.
17 Szuppe, 1994, 218–19, 236n112, 223–4, 236–7, 239, 242–3; idem, 1995, 110,
113, and further below. Compare Savory, ‘Tahmasp’, EI2, 10: 110; Munshi, 1:
218–19. Both princes became major land-owners in Sistan and Qandahar.
According to a later source, Ibrahim was later appointed vakil c. 1570–1; see
Haneda, 140–1. Cf. Floor, Safavid Government, 12.
18 Tahmasp’s sons, brothers and cousins held the governorships of Shirvan,
Qarabagh, Ardabil, Hamadan, Kashan, Fars – where the Dhul-Qadr were
the guardians – Qandahar, Sistan, Qain, Mashhad, Sabzavar, Astarabad,
Mazandaran and Lahijan, though with guardians nearly always drawn from the
leading tribes. See Röhrborn, 59f; 62–8. See also Haneda, 111n20; Savory,
‘Ismail II’, EI2, 4: 188. On Ibrahim, born in 1543–4 and sent East in 1556–7, the
year after his marriage to his uncle Tahmasp’s daughter Gawhar Sultan, daugh-
ter of a concubine, see Qadi Ahmad Qummi’s Gulistan-i Hunar, published as
Calligraphers and Painters, A Treatise by Qadi Ahmad, son of Mir Munshi
(c. AH 1015/AD 1606), V. Minorsky, ed. and transl., (Washington, DC, 1959),
3–4; Munshi, 1: 219–20; Szuppe, 1995, 113.
19 Masum Bek was named divanbeki and then vakil c. 1550–1, and led exped-
itions in 1551–2 against the Ottomans at Irzirum and 1563–4 in Mazandaran.
On the Takkalu rising, those Takkalu who remained loyal and the Takkalu lands
Masum Bek received thereafter, see Rumlu, 184–5; Szuppe, ‘Kinship Ties
Between the Safavids and the Qizilbash Amirs in the Late-Sixteenth Century: a
Case Study of the Political Career of Members of the Sharaf al-Din Ogli Tekelu
166 Notes to pages 29–30
Family’, in Melville, ed., Safavid Persia, 83–6, 84n23; Szuppe, 1994, 237. See
also Szuppe, Entre Timourides, 109f.
20 Munshi, 1: 213–14.
21 In c. 1530, during the Takkalu period, Tahmasp’s brother Bahram was
appointed governor of Herat, with a Takkalu guardian and Tajik vizier; a prom-
inent Herati Tajik was Bahram’s guardian (Dickson, 188–9). After the 1533
retaking of Herat, during the Shamlu-Ustajlu period, the Shamlu governor
thereof appointed Ruhallah Khuzani Isfahani vizier for Mashhad and the affairs
of the shrine; the latter’s grandson authored Afzal al-Tavarikh. Other Khuzanis
included the vizier of Azerbaijan and governor of Shirvan and Shakki and Ghar-
jistan, and another who served an Ustajlu governor. See Röhrborn, 158–9;
Qummi’s 1590 Khulasat, 1: 94; Haneda, ‘La Famille Khuzani’, 84–6, 88. On the
Savji and Kujuji family, see Aubin, ‘Shah Ismail’, 63–4; Munshi, 1: 253. On
Qummi, see n23 below; Quinn, Historical, 19.
22 Munshi, 1: 229–30; 233–4, 237–9, 240–1, 244; Qummi, Khulasat 2: 1002;
Röhrborn, 189; Aubin, 56, 57nn1, 63, 79–80. All the chief accountants of this
period, the overseers of the royal workshops, secretaries and others in the royal
retinue as well as the physicians of the day were Tajiks. Many were sayyids.
Munshi, 1: 254–9, 261–6; Aubin, ‘Shah Ismail, 57n1, 78. In c. 1573 a member
of Isfahan’s Shahristani sayyid family was mustawfi al-mamalik, as a predecessor
had served Ismail after Chaldiran. See Floor, Safavid Government, 42.
23 Röhrborn, 160. The family of Ahmad Qummi, a Husayni sayyid and author of
Khulasat al-Tavarikh, had long served the Safavids. His father, known as Mir
Munshi (d. 1582), had studied with Mansur Dashtaki (d. 1541), Tahmasp’s
nominally Shi
i Tajik sayyid sadr who had opposed Ali Karaki. Mir Munshi
served three years on the staff of Nur Kamal Isfahani and then, for some eleven
years, he served the vakil Qadi Jahan Qazvini and then held various provincial
posts. He eventually became vizier in Mashhad under Ibrahim, son of Tahmasp’s
brother Bahram. See Qummi’s Calligraphers, 1–10, 76–9.
24 Röhrborn, 151f, 156, 160, 163, 167–8; Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 74.
25 Khvandamir embellished accounts of the dreams of Shaykh Safi al-Din so that
these foretold Ismail’s rule and the adoption of the distinctive Safavid taj. That
he completed the chronicle in India, having fled repeated Uzbek attacks after
Ismail’s death, suggests Khvandamir even endorsed such discourse when outside
Safavid territory. See Quinn, Historical, 15–16, 63f, 72–3, 78–9; idem, ‘The
Historiography of Safavid Prefaces’, in Melville, ed., Safavid Persia, 1–25, esp. 4;
Jacobs, 104–65. In c. 1474 Khvandamir’s grandfather, Sayyid Muhammad,
known as Mir Khvand (d. 1498), commenced for Sultan Husayn Bayqara’s viz-
ier Mir Ali Shir what would become Rawzat al-Safa fi sirat al-anbiya which
reflects some Shi
i sympathies. Jacobs, 12–49; Quinn, Historical, 14; Babayan,
Mystics, 298–9.
Like Mir Khvand, Sultan Ibrahim Amini had also served Sultan Husayn.
c. 1519–20, he accepted a commission from Ismail to undertake what he finally
delivered to Tahmasp in 1531 as Futuhat-i Shahi, a world history whose second
section covered the birth and reign of Ismail to 1513, the year before Chaldiran.
Amini’s interpretations of Shaykh Safi’s dreams endowed Ismail with both spir-
itual and political legitimacy. See Quinn, Historical, 15, 70–1. See also ibid., 80,
84, 90, 151–2.
26 Amir Mahmud included a detailed accounting of Ismail’s ancestors, portraying
the early Safavid shaykhs as devout Twelver Shi
ites and the house itself as
 Notes to pages 30–31 167
descended from Imam Musa, though in a manner which paid homage to certain
pre-Islamic notions of Persian kingship. He also equated the reign of Ismail with
the caliphate itself, reflecting the competing claims to Muslim legitimacy extant
in the region as a whole, the Ottomans under Sulayman especially. See Quinn,
17, 65, 73–4, 79. Babayan (Mystics, 301) notes that Amir Mahmud also referred
to Ismail as sahib qiran (master of an auspicious conjunction), a title which
emphasised that military successes were the result of divine favour and which
was also given Ismail by Tahmasp’s brother, and Amir Mahmud’s contemporary,
Sam Mirza (d. 1567).
27 Jacobs, 166–81, Quinn, 16–17, 84. Although Qazvini was denounced as a leader
of the city’s Sunnis in 1552, died in jail several years later and his sons fled to
India, such denunciations and such treatment were unusual. See also n93
below. On Qazvin’s Sunnis, see also n35 of the following chapter. See also
R. McChesney, ‘The Central Asian Hajj-Pilgrimmage in the Time of the Early
Modern Empires’, in M. Mazzaoui, ed., Safavid Iran and Her Neighbors (Salt
Lake City, 2003), 129–56, esp. 133, discounting Ottomanists’ suggestions that
the rise of the Savafids per se accounts for Sunni Central Asian pilgrims’ difficul-
ties in performing the hajj in this period in particular, and over the Safavid period
more generally. On calligraphy albums assembled for Bahram, see n74 below.
28 Togan, 355.
29 Jacobs, 182–99, esp. 186; Quinn, 17, 86–7; Babayan, Mystics, 302–3. Nigaristan
has appeared as Tarikh-i Nigaristan, A. M. Mudarris Gilani, ed. (Tehran, 1340/
1961, 1404). Nusakh-i Jahan-Ara has been published as Tarikh-i Jahan-ara, H.
Narqi, ed. (Tehran, 1342/1963).
30 Blake, 153; Hunarfar, 380, 384–5. For similar inscriptions dating to 1548 and
1554 in other mosques, see Hunarfar, 386–8.
31 An effort to appoint a governor in Mazandaran succeeded only temporarily, but
Tahmasp did secure payment of regular tribute from Gilan. Roemer, 6: 245;
Röhrborn, 112f, 142; Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 170.
32 Rumlu, 270n2; Roemer, 6: 245; Savory, Iran Under, 64.
33 Georgia had been an area of interest for the Ottomans, the earlier Turkish dynas-
ties, and the early Safavids, as the province of mainly Christian rulers whose
palaces and churches held great riches. As in the past both booty and Georgian,
Circassian and Armenian prisoners were brought back. Some of the latter con-
verted and received military training, but the military and political importance of
these elements, called ghulam, over Tahmasp’s reign was, by all accounts, rela-
tively insignificant, especially vis-à-vis Qizilbash levies whose numbers are esti-
mated as c. 100,000. See Röhrborn, 71–6; Cf. Savory, Iran Under, 65–6;
Savory, ‘Tahmasp’, EI2, 10: 109; Roemer, 6: 246–7. Members of more promin-
ent families in the region in fact chose to enter into ghulam service. See
H. Maeda, ‘On the Ethno-Social Backgrounds of the Four Gholam Families
from Georgia in Safavid Iran’, SIr, 32(2) (2003), 243–78, and our discussion of
the ghulam during Abbas I’s reign in Chapter 4 below.
34 Tiflis retained autonomy until c. 1569 and Kurdistan until Abbas I’s reign. The
Lurs, perhaps in return for autonomy under Ismail, fought with Tahmasp against
the Uzbeks; even under the Ottomans they retained some freedom of action.
Some Kurds and Lurs had Shi
i connections. Röhrborn, 112–18, 120–3, 143.
35 Intermarriages between Turk and Tajik were unusual during the Qaraquyunlu
and the Aqquyunlu periods. Woods, 16.
36 On the children of Ismail by the Mawsillu Tajlu Khanum, including Tahmasp,
168 Notes to pages 31–32
see Szuppe, 1994, 234; idem, 1995, 107. On Tahmasp’s eight daughters, see
Munshi, 1: 218f; Szuppe, 1994, 216, 231, 239–40. Savory (‘Tahmasp’, EI2, 10:
110) notes Tahmasp had thirteen daughters. Szuppe (1995, 111–18) lists the
marriages of members of the Safavid house in the seventeenth century. See also
idem, 1994, 236n113. Khan Ahmad would be defeated in battle in 1592 by
Tahmasp’s grandson Abbas I but his daughter by that marriage, Yakhan Bekum
(b. c. 1586–7), would marry Abbas. On Amira Dabbaj, see also below ad n51.
37 A sister of Tahmasp who married Abdallah Khan Ustajlu (d. 1566–7), himself a
grandson of Shaykh Haydar, had previously been married to the Shirvanshah
Sultan Khalil who had also married a daughter of Ismail. Their grandson, Salman
Khan, was governor of Qazvin, and married back into the family in the 1580s.
See Szuppe, 1994, 216, 221–2, 223–4, 229–31, 238–9; idem, 1995, 90f, 110,
114, 118; Savory, ‘Offices . . . Tahmasp’, 78; Munshi, 2: 1063. On the Marashi
family, see Calmard, ‘Marashis’, EI2, 6: 510–18. On Abdallah Khan see also n11
above.
38 Membré, the Venetian envoy in Iran between 1539 and 1542, notes that local
sayyids and Qadi Jahan Qazvini wore the taj. See Membré, xiv, xvii, xx, 41;
Morton, ‘The Chub-i Tariq and Qizilbash Ritual in Safavid Persia’, in Calmard,
ed., Études Safavides., 241n57.
39 Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 139, 203–6, idem, ‘Sufis, Dervishes’, 124–5; idem, ‘The
Safavid Synthesis’, 143–7; idem, Mystics, 145f. On heterodox beliefs among
some Takkalu which may have encouraged these traditions, see below ad n91.
40 On the first repentance, see Rumlu, 113; Röhrborn, 105; Bidlisi, 2: 160; Qummi,
Khulasat, 1: 224–6; Dickson, 277–8, citing Tahmasp’s own memoirs, Tadhkira-yi
Shah Tahmasp, A. Safari, ed., 2nd ed. (Tehran, 1363), 30, which do not mention
the specific prohibitions but record a dream in which Tahmasp received com-
mands on certain matters. For a text of this firman inscribed in a Kashan mosque
in 1534, see A. Navai, ed., Shah Tahmasp Safavi, Majmua-i Isnad ba Mukatibat-i
Tarikhi . . . (Tehran, 1368), 513–14. See also Matthee, ‘Prostitutes, Courtesans,
and Dancing Girls: Women Entertainers in Safavid Iran’, in R. Matthee and B.
Baron, eds, Iran and Beyond, Essays in Middle Eastern History in Honor of
Nikki R. Keddie (Costa Mesa, 2000), 145; Keyvani, 129, 133n30; Naraqi, 203f,
esp. 211–13, 216–18; Membré, xvi. On the second repentance see Jacobs, 167,
167n18; Qummi, Khulasat, 1: 386; Bidlisi, 2: 184; Rumlu, 173; Röhrborn,
105–6, 118. See also n63. Thanks to Dr Sefatgol and Dr Floor for their assist-
ance in checking these dates. For similar firmans in 1571 and 1573 in Kashan’s

Imadi mosque, see Naraqi, 214–15, 219–20; A. Kalantar Zarrabi (Suhayl
Kashani), Tarikh-i Kashan, I. Afshar, ed. (Tehran, 2536), 531–2.
41 Röhrborn, 104, 154–5, Rumlu, 173; Qummi, Khulasat, 1: 392, 438, 2: 974,
987; Bidlisi, 2: 183. An Isfahani sayyid had been appointed administrator
(mutavalli) of the shrine and Mashhad’s Shaykh al-Islam in 1554 was recalled to
court. Röhrburn therefore suggests that provincial governors were charged with
the enforcement of religious edicts and that Ibrahim was therefore being charged
to act where the Qizilbash governor and these other officials had failed. See also
Rumlu, 192; Röhrborn, 106. In 1569–70 another local governor was admon-
ished about corruption and sinful behaviour. See Röhrborn, 106, and Rumlu,
192. The latter cites Tahmasp the same year as dismissing local authorities in
Jirun who were ‘doing much evil’. Röhrborn also refers (107) to an undated
firman of Tahmasp appointing the mutavalli at the Ardabil shrine and acknow-
ledging irreligious behaviour on the part of the public at large.
 Notes to pages 32–33 169
42 On the dream, firmans and their dates, see Qummi, Khulasat, 1: 449–50; Bidlisi,
2: 198. Tahmasp’s memoirs (30) link the earlier repentance with a dream. See
also Fragner, 6: 545. Floor (The Economy, 45) notes that Tahmasp’s successors
restored the tamgha. See also Floor, A Fiscal, 149–50, 163, 174, 217f; Woods,
13, 144–5. Thanks to W. Floor for his help in tracking down relevant references.
This was about the same time as the position of sadr was split, on which see
Floor, A Fiscal, 89. Babayan (Mystics, 309f) also discusses Tahmasp’s dreams.
43 In his 1667 Khuld-i Barin (M. H. Muhaddath, ed., Tehran, 1372, 280, 482–3),
Muhammad Yusuf Valih Isfahani cites Tahmasp as having banned parties at
court but may have been conflating this incident with Tahmasp’s comment on
panegyric poetry, discussed below. See also nn71, 72. See also our discussion of
the publishing history of this text in the appendix.
44 Qummi, Calligraphers, 163–4; n43 above. See also our discussion below.
45 Secondary sources suggest Tahmasp moderated or suppressed veneration of him-
self as divine; later copies of Tahmasp’s divan omitting earlier references proc-
lamation of himself as mahdi and similar claims of his predecessors. See, for
example, Arjomand, The Shadow, 110n9, citing Aubin, ‘La Politique’, 239, itself
unsourced, and later sources. See also Babayan, Mystics, 91–2, 100, 297, 312 and
343n60. Indeed, some firmans of the period lack the titles for Tahmasp which had
been ascribed to Ismail. See Hunarfar, 150–5 and a similar firman of 1525 in
Tabriz in Naraqi, 216–18. The 1533–4 firman cited below also lacked such titles.
46 Hunarfar, 91–4. Cf. Canby, 46; Hillenbrand, ‘Safavid Architecture’, 6: 770;
Blake, 150.
47 For a 1548 coin minted in Yazd, see Rabino, ‘Coins of the Shahs of Persia’, 370.
For an undated coin minted in Qazvin referring to Tahmasp as ‘the just sultan’,
see Rabino, ibid., 369. See also idem, Coins, Medals and Seals, 29–30, noting the
distinct Shi
i message of the coins, bearing the names of the Imams. On con-
temporary poetry equating Tahmasp and the Imam, see n70.
48 A. K. S. Lambton, State and Government in Medieval Islam; An Introduction to
the Study of Islamic Political Theory; the Jurists (London, 1981), 266; Arjomand,
The Shadow, 179.
49 Canby, 47–9; Hillenbrand, 6: 771. The well-known ‘Ardabil carpets’ derive their
name among Western scholars for likely having been commissioned for the new
building. See S. Blair, ‘The Ardabil Carpets in Context’, in Newman, ed., Society
and Culture.
50 See further our discussion below, ad n91.
51 This woman, on whom see n54, had been offered to the grandson of the founder
of the Nurbakhshi order. She financed a mosque in Taft, in Yazd province,
next to a well-known Nimatallahi centre, further underlining the alliance
between the court and the order, if not also the dependency of the latter on the
former. See Szuppe, 1994, 226, 231, 238, 251; idem, 1995, 117. On Amira
Dabbaj, see above ad n36.
52 The son of this union was Mir Ghiyas al-Din Muhammad (d.1589–90). Known
as Mir Miran-i Yazdi, he built palaces and sarais in Yazd. His own son married
the daughter produced by the union of Ismail II with the daughter born from the
union of Tahmasp’s sister with Nur al-Din Baqi Yazdi. As brother-in-law Nur al-
Din Yazdi mediated between Tahmasp and his brother Alqas during the latter’s
revolt. Szuppe, 1994, 226, 225; Woods, 16; Graham, 192; Arjomand, The
Shadow, 116. See also Aubin, ‘Shah Ismail’, 39–40, 59; Rumlu, 36; Munshi, 1:
123–4.
170 Notes to pages 33–34
53 Ghaffari’s 1563–4 Nusakh and Abdi Bek Shirazi’s 1570 Takmilat al-Akhbar,
on which see n70, play down Abd al-Baqi’s Sufi connections, focusing only
on his political career. See Quinn, ‘Rewriting Nimatallahi History in Safavid
Chronicles’, in L. Lewisohn and D. Morgan, eds Late Classical Persianate
Sufism, 201–22, esp. 208–10, where she notes that in his earlier chronicle
Khvandamir had specifically discussed the order when recounting Abd al-Baqi’s
appointment as Ismail’s sadr and then vakil. Graham (192) notes that the fam-
ous Nimatallahi poet Vahshi Bafqi (c. 1532–83) even composed several poems
in honour of Tahmasp. On a Naqshbandi scholar of the time, see Algar,
‘Naqshbandis’, 16. See also Arjomand, The Shadow, 112–13; Babayan, Mystics,
114n91.
54 The sister subsequently married into the Nimatallahi order. Munshi, 1: 232. See
also Szuppe, 1994, 228; Arjomand, The Shadow, 115; Graham, 191.
55 Röhrborn, 144; Szuppe, 1995, 112.
56 Daftary, ‘Ismaili-Sufi Relations’, 275–89, esp. 287. Cf. Arjomand, The Shadow,
113–14.
57 Arjomand, 76–7; Shubbar, 85–7; Röhrborn, 118–20, noting Ahvaz’ independ-
ence later in the century; Roemer, 6: 216–17. In 1565–6 Tahmasp also sup-
pressed a messianic tribal rising. See Arjomand, 110n10, citing Qummi, Khulasat,
1: 455.
58 See M. Bernardini, ‘Hatifi’s Timurnamah and Qasimi’s Shahnamah-yi Ismail:
Considerations for a Double Critical Edition’, in Newman, ed., Society and
Culture, 3–18; B. Wood, ‘Shah Ismail and the Shahnama’, paper presented at the
Second Edinburgh Shahnama Conference, Edinburgh, March 2003. See also
idem, ‘The Shahnamah-yi Ismail: Art and Cultural Memory in Sixteenth-
Century Iran’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2002. On
Hatifi see also Abdallah Hatifi, I Sette scenari, M. Bernardini, ed. (Napoli,
1995).
The father of Muhammad Mumin, supervisor of Tahmasp’s library and the
renowned calligrapher who tutored Tahmasp’s son Sam Mirza in this art, had
also served Sultan Husayn. See D. J. Roxburgh, ‘Bahram Mirza and His
Collections’, in S. Canby, ed., Safavid Art and Architecture (London, 2002), 39.
59 Hillenbrand, in Melville, ed., Safavid Persia, 69.
60 The illustration ‘The Court of Gayumars’ occupied Sultan Muhammad for some
three years. Canby, 50–1, fig. 33, citing S. C. Welch, Wonders of the Age
(Cambridge, MA, 1979), 25, 50; Peter Jackson, ed., 6: plate 37 (between pages
808 and 809). See also Welch, ‘Art’, 623.
61 Hillenbrand, 54–6. This project occupied only a handful of artists whose illus-
trations are, therefore, more stylistically uniform and far fewer in number than
the Shahnama. Gray, 6: 885; Canby, 52–4; Welch, ‘Art’, 623.
62 Canby, 78, citing Munshi. On the dating of Qazvin as the capital, see n9.
63 Canby, 78, 96; Qummi, Calligraphers, 142–4, 182–3; Gray, 6: 893. Chihil
Sutun post-dates Tahmasp’s 1533–4 firman and his second tawba of 1555–6. On
Muzaffar Ali, see n72. The walls of a palace completed in Nain c. 1565–75,
whose owner remains unknown, feature similar scenes and poetry; indeed, six of
the eight subjects on these walls feature in Qazvin’s Chihil Sutun. Their form and
content recall Ilkhanid motifs. Gray, 6: 892–4; Canby, 69. On Muzaffar Ali, see
also Qummi, Calligraphers, 186, 191. On the palace, see also W. Kleiss, ‘Chehel
Sotun, Qazvin’, EIr, 6: 116–17.
64 Canby, 72, 74, 76; Gray, 6: 889f. On Ibrahim’s artists, see Qummi, Calligraphers,
 Notes to pages 34–35 171
78, 141–4; Gray, 6: 890. See also M. Shreve Simpson, Sultan Ibrahim Mirza’s
‘Haft Awrang’: A Princely Manuscript from Sixteenth-Century Iran (New
Haven, 1997); Welch, ‘Art’, 623–4.
65 Canby, 76, noting the distinctive Khurasani styles of manuscript illustration.
66 A Khamsa completed in Shiraz in 1548 exhibits the continuing tendency to
follow a mainly Timurid style of illustration; after 1560 styles become more
complex. See Qummi, Calligraphers, 28–9, 30–1, 67, 75, 188, 192–3, 32–4,
183–4, 80, 147, 165, 186, 190; L. Marlow, ‘The Peck Shahnameh: Manuscript
Production in Late Sixteenth-Century Shiraz’, in Mazzaoui and Moreen, eds, 230.
67 Canby, 77 and figs 62, 63. On carpet weaving in Kashan over the period, see also
Naraqi, 369–75. On similar patterns in contemporary metalwork, see Canby,
77–8, citing Melikian-Chirvani, Islamic metalwork, 263. Qummi’s Calligraphers
attests to the numerous skills of Safavid artisans: calligraphers worked in ceram-
ics, were painters and actively co-operated with builders. See, for example, 24,
60–2, 124–5, 147–8.
A simurgh in Persian legend is a gigantic, winged monster in the shape of a
bird with the head of a dog and the claws of a lion. By some accounts the
creature is immortal and has a nest in the Tree of Knowledge.
68 Canby, 60; Gray, 6: 885–6.
69 Canby, 56–8. See also Canby, 51f; Hillenbrand, 54; Gray, 6: 883.
70 Abdi Bek, an employee of the shah’s chancellery who eulogised Tahmasp’s
Chihil Sutun palace at Qazvin and dedicated his chronicle Takmilat al-Akhbar to
a daughter of Tahmasp, also authored poetry which equated the shah with the
Hidden Imam himself. See R. Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, Farhang, va
Siyasat (Qum, 1379/2000), 1: 493–503, esp. 496; Szuppe, 1994, 244; Quinn,
Historical, 18.
71 See Safa, 6: 954; Munshi, 1: 274–5; Qummi, Calligraphers, 135; n76 below.
Later scholars (e.g. Safa, 6: 955) claim Tahmasp’s censure of Muhtasham caused
a widespread exodus of Persian poets abroad. In fact, among skilled artisans
and scholars travel within the larger realm of ‘Persianate culture’, particularly
Mughal India where Persian was the language of the court, was quite common.
See Yarshater, 6: 980; de Bruijn, 774–7, esp. 775. S. Dale, in his ‘A Safavid Poet
in the Heart of Darkness: The Indian Poems of Ashraf Mazandarani’, IS, 36(2)
(2003), esp. 199–200, dismisses ‘Shi
i religious intolerance’ in favour of the
relative wealth and corresponding ‘scale of patronage’ as a reason for poets’
migration to India (a version of this article is available in Mazzaoui, ed., Safavid
Iran, 63–80). For other artisans who migrated across ‘borders’ of their own
volition in the later years of Tahmasp’s reign, see Qummi, Calligraphers, 165–6,
79–80, 81–2, 89, 102–3, 124, 126–31, 138–41, 168, 185, 190. See also Haneda,
‘Emigration of Iranian Elites to India During the 16th–18th Centuries’, in
L’Héritage Timouride. Iran-Asie Centrale-Inde XVe–XVIIIe siècles, M. Szuppe,
ed. (Tashkent/Aix-en-Provence, 1997), 135. Calmard (‘Shi
i Rituals and Power
II. The Consolidation of Safavid Shi
ism: Folklore and Popular Religion’, in
Melville, ed., Safavid Persia, 167) notes that Muhtasham in fact remained in
Safavid territory and continued to produce important non-religious poetry,
including a clever chronogram on the accession of Ismail II. See also Calmard,
‘Popular Literature’, 329–30; A. Ahmad, ‘Safawid Poets and India’, Iran 14
(1976), 117–32. On Muhtasham’s tomb in Kashan, see Naraqi, 191–3. On poets
still at court later in Tahmasp’s reign, see Qummi, Calligraphers, 94–5, 150–1,
154. On Iranian merchants travelling to India, see n10 of Chapter 4.
172 Notes to pages 35–36
72 Qummi, Calligraphers, 93. See Membré (32, 45) that the Shah’s tawba c.
1533–4 did not end revelry. See also Canby, 54–5, (citing Qummi, ibid., 186),
51–2, 55, 76, pl. 63; Peter Jackson, ed., 6, plate 67 (between pages 872 and 873).
In c. 1573, in Qazvin, Muzaffar Ali and two other younger artists, Zayn al-
Abidin and Sadiqi Bek Afshar, contributed to an illustrated manuscript of the
Garshaspnama, a story centring on a ruler in the Shahnama; the figures in the
illustrations recall the long-necked youths found in Qazvin-style portraits of
the previous decade. See Canby, 83–4; Gray, 6: 891–2. On Muzzafar Ali, who
taught the painter Siyavush, and his service to the court after Tahmasp’s sup-
posed disenchantment with the arts, see Canby, 51–5; Qummi, Calligraphers,
186, 191. The artist Shaykh Muhammad left Tahmasp’s court to serve the
latter’s nephew Ibrahim in Herat. See Canby, 72, 74, 76, 85, 88, 105–7.
73 The court at Yazd supported Vahshi Bafqi who wrote qasidas in praise of
Tahmasp. Shiraz and Kashan also supported literary circles. See the sources cited
in the preceding notes.
74 She died at Tabriz, owning lands in Shirvan, Tabriz, Qazvin, Rayy, Isfahan. See
Szuppe, 1994, 234, 238, 243, 244, 245, 247–9, 251; Mudarrissi, Bargi, 25;
Qummi, Calligraphers, 146–7. On her political activities, see Rumlu, 139;
Szuppe, 1995, 67, 76–7.
Calligraphy albums compiled for Mahin Banu and Tahmasp’s brother Bahram
by the same Dust Muhammad reflected an attempt to project a bridge of continu-
ity between practitioners of the art from the late seventh century to the late
1530s. See Gray, 6: 886; D. J. Roxburgh, ‘Bahram Mirza’, 37–42. On Dust
Muhammad, see also Gray, 6: 886; Hillenbrand, ‘The Iconography’, 71n3.
75 Szuppe, 1994, 240, 244.
76 Szuppe, 1994, 241, 244, 248–9, 250. She amassed a great fortune, had her own
court and was the recipient of Abdi Bek’s Takmilat al-Akhbar. Muhtasham’s
qasida to her generated her father’s disparaging comment about panegyric
poetry, cited above.
77 Qummi, Calligraphers, 93–4, 97–8, 133, 186, 190–1; Gray, 6: 891–2, 897;
Szuppe, 1994, 237–8; Munshi, 1: 34, 323, 339, 384, 421. The manuscript illus-
trator Sadiqi Bek was an Afshar. Muhammad Khan Takkalu (d. 1556–7), the
guardian of Muhammad Khudabanda whose sister-in-law was Tahmasp’s Maw-
sillu wife Sultanum Bekum, Khudabanda’s mother, sponsored the painting of the
inside of the shrine of the Imam Riza in Mashhad by a Herati painter. See
Szuppe, 1994, 237; Haneda, 111; Qummi, Calligraphers, 187.
78 Dickson, 127n1, 178, 147, 261, 277–8. Tahmasp would be buried in Mashhad.
See also Qummi, Calligraphers, 162; Rumlu, 207.
79 Mudarrissi, 21–2, 121f, 130–4. Although distinctly Shi
i in tone, the fullest
account of Tahmasp’s correspondence with the Uzbek Ubayd Khan, dated to
c. 1530, is found only in the later Afzal al-Tavarikh, authored by a Khuzani, and
hence, as with many such later accounts of earlier events, is to be treated with
some care. See Dickson, 180–7, esp., 180n1, and 191–3.
80 Calmard, ‘Shii Rituals and Power, II’, 142–3; Membré, 43, ad 1540; 25–6.
Although the woman is not identified, it is known that Tahmasp’s full sister
Mahin Banu never married. See above n74.
81 Mudarrissi, 22, 60f, 148f. Canby (154) notes that in 1540–1 Tahmasp presented
to the Mashhad shrine a set of gold plaques whose design recalled a 1524 set of
ivory cartouches of ivory produced for Ismail’s cenotaph at Ardabil.
82 Hillenbrand, ‘Safavid Architecture’, 6: 770.
 Notes to pages 36–37 173
83 Hillenbrand, in Melville, 69–70, 77n75 where the illustration is dated to the
mid-1530s, as the Shamlu-Ustajlu regency was giving way to that of the Ustajlu.
84 An illustration from a contemporary copy of Nizami’s Khusraw and Shirin also
features a banner on which is written ‘All victory is with God’ and a standard
with the words ‘Allah, Muhammad, Ali’. See U. al-Khamis, ‘Khusraw Parviz as
Champion of Shi
ism? a Closer Look at an Early Safavid Miniature Painting in
the Royal Museum of Edinburgh’, in B. O’Kane, ed., The Iconography of
Islamic Art, Studies in Honour of Robert Hillenbrand (Edinburgh, 2005), 202.
85 Mir Ala al-Mulk (d. 1582), onetime military chaplain to the shah and sadr of
Gilan after its conquest, was also buried there. Mudarrissi, 21–2, 23–5, 28, 42,
64–70, 121f, 147–50; Munshi, 1: 234.
86 N74 above; Rumlu, 184.
87 Blake, 153; Hunarfar, 369–78. The date of Minshar’s arrival in Safavid Iran is
not known, nor is his last place of residence. He is, however, known to have been
in India for some years. See our ‘The Myth’, n94. See also n95 and n23 of the
following chapter.
88 Blake, 170; Hunarfar, 362.
89 See our ‘The Myth’, 95f.
Reports of cannibalism during Ismail’s reign which began to circulate in this
period cannot have encouraged orthodox Twelver clerics. These reports are con-
tained in the 1564–5 Tarikh-i Ilchi-yi Nizamshah, on which see n21 of the previ-
ous chapter, and were repeated in such later sources as Mirza Hasan Junabadi’s
1625–6 Rawzat al-Safaviyya (Tehran, 1378/1999, 724). See S. Bashir, ‘Sacred
Power and Human Embodiment in Fifteenth Century Iranian Religion’, paper
delivered at the Fourth International Round Table on Safavid Studies, Bamberg,
July 2003. Jamali (211–14) cites Junabadi’s graphic account (241) of Ismail’s
command, a century earlier, to his followers to eat the body of Shaybani Khan
Uzbek following the Safavids’ 1510 defeat of the Uzbeks. By contrast, in his
1577 account Rumlu (54–5) mentions no such incident nor does Munshi, writ-
ing in 1616 (1: 62–3). See also Sarwar, 62–3, citing the later Ross. See also
N. Falsafi, Zindigani-yi Shah Abbas-i Avval, 2: 125–7, citing Junabadi who
opened the above account (241) by stating ‘it is related that’, in fact suggesting
this was a story he had heard.
Later sources state that after the 1503 battle of Firuzkuh (n21 of the previous
chapter) Safavid soldiers ate the flesh of a local commander but only after ‘sol-
emn and sworn oaths’ guaranteeing the safety of Safavid soldiers had been
broken. See, for example, Qummi, Khulasat, 83; Munshi, 47–8; Falsafi, 2:
125–6n2, citing Junabadi (177–9). In his earlier chronicle Khvandamir (4:
476–8), however, mentions no such incident. See also Szuppe, 1995, 83n129,
citing Ilchi, Amir Khvand’s 1550 Tarikh-i Shah Ismail va Shah Tahmasp and
Munshi. Thanks to Dr K. Babayan for directing me to Falsafi.
Standards carried into battle during Tahmasp’s reign seem to have featured
only the very basic Shi
i declaration ‘Ali is the vali of Allah; there is no god but
Allah’. Allan, Persian Steel, 258, citing Munshi, 114; Membré, 1994, 24. See,
however, Allan, ibid., 267f, on some standards with more explicitly Shi
i slogans
which may date to this period.
90 Not coincidentally, the prayer usually included an invocation of the ruler’s
name, thus legitimising his rule. On the Ottomans’ use of Friday prayer as such,
see Allouche, 137.
91 Tahmasp banned recitation of these stories and ordered that storytellers who
174 Notes to pages 37–38
refused were to have their tongues cut out. See Babayan, ‘Sufis’, in Melville, ed.,
124–5; idem, ‘The Safavid Synthesis’, 143–7; Calmard ‘Popular Literature’, in
Newman, ed., Society and Culture, 318–21. On Takkalu beliefs, see Calmard,
ibid., 336–7.
92 The firman is translated by Arjomand in his ‘Two Decrees of Shah Tahmasp
Concerning Statecraft and the Authority of Shaykh Ali al-Karaki’, in Arjomand,
ed., Authority and Political Culture in Shi
ism (Albany, 1988), 252–6. Cf.
Babayan, Mystics, 306–7. See also the discussion of Karaki’s formulation of the
‘general deputyship’ ad n67 in the previous chapter.
93 See our ‘The Myth’, 100–4. Although later Shi
i sources (‘The Myth’, n80) sug-
gest Karaki expelled all Sunni clerics from the realm, in fact many prominent
Sunnis remained, including Mirza Jan Shirazi (d. 1586), another student of
Davani. See Munshi, 1: 246; n37 of the following chapter. On the continued
presence of less prominent Sunnis in the capital Qazvin, for example, see n35 of
the following chapter.
94 See our ‘The Myth’, ibid. On Ottoman anti-Safavid-propaganda c. 1540, see
Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 1: 87f. In his ‘Husayn b. Abd al-Samad al-
Amili’s Treatise for Sultan Suleiman and the Shi
i Shafii Legal Tradition’, Islamic
Law and Society, 4(2) (1997), 156–99, esp. 167–8, D. Stewart suggests Shaykh
Husayn and Zayn al-Din’s recourse to dissimulation of their faith (taqiyya), to
pass as Sunni jurists, secured them Ottoman employment. See also Stewart’s
excellent ‘The Genesis of the Akhbari Revival,’ in M. Mazzaoui, ed., Safavid
Iran and Her Neighbors (Salt Lake City, 2003), 182f, especially his reference to
Zayn al-Din’s criticisms of Iranian scholars’ neglect of legal studies (186).
Shaykh Hasan Karaki (d. 1530), whom Stewart (‘Notes on the Migration’,
88–9) suggested did not visit Iran, is reported as having done so by Qummi in his
Khulasat (1: 75, 2: 931–2) a reference not, however, cited in ‘The Myth’, 92n59.
95 Zayn al-Din’s young son was not removed to Iran: he and an associate later
studied in the shrine cities with Abdallah Yazdi (d. 1573) and Ahmad Ardabili
(d. 1585); Yazdi left Iran between 1553 and 1558. See also Newman, ‘Towards a
Reconsideration of the Isfahan School of Philosophy: Shaykh Bahai and the Role
of the Safavid Ulama’, SIr, 15(2) (1986), 176n35; R. Jafariyan, ‘Munasibat-i
Isfahan va Hijaz dar Dawrah-yi Safavi’, paper delivered at the conference Isfahan
and the Safavids, Isfahan, February, 2002, 13–14. On these and Hijazi Twelvers
who avoided Safavid entanglements in this period, see our ‘The Myth’, 104–8.
Soon after his arrival in Iran Shaykh Husayn contracted a marriage alliance with
his fellow Arab Ali Minshar on whom see also n87 and n23 of the following
chapter. Shaykh Husayn’s son Shaykh Bahai (d. 1620–1), Minshar’s son-in-law,
also reported his father as having interpreted a hadith as referring to the appear-
ance of Ismail I (Qummi, Khulasat 1: 75). On scholarly criticisms of Zayn al-Din
and Ali Karaki, – the former as having adopted Sunni juristic methodologies –
see nn137, 138 of Chapter 4.
96 Shaykh Husayn, having pleaded for another post, was later appointed Shaykh
al-Islam of Mashhad and then, c. 1567, of Herat where he served some nine
years. He performed the pilgrimage but chose not to return to Iran and died in
Bahrayn in 1576. See D. Stewart, ‘The First Shaykh al-Islam of the Safavid
Capital Qazvin’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 116(3) (1996),
387–405; Newman, ‘Towards’, 169–72; Munshi, 1: 233. Stewart (394) quotes a
later poem written by Shaykh Husayn to his son Shaykh Bahai, who would have
been about thirteen when his father brought him to Iran and who was not
 Notes to pages 38–42 175
permitted to accompany his father on the hajj, in which Shaykh Husayn
appears to have regretted his Safavid associations. On Ali Karaki’s son, see
Stewart, 395, citing Munshi, 1: 244–5. Sayyid Husayn’s Lebanese father, who
died in 1530, never emigrated to Safavid territory (Newman, ‘The Myth’, 91–
4). On Shaykh Husayn’s supposed Akhbari tendencies, see Stewart, ‘The Gen-
esis’, 186–8. On the Karaki family see also Jafariyan, ‘Nufuz-i Davistsalih-yi
Khandan-i Muhaqqiq-i Karaki dar Dawlat-i Safaviyya’, paper presented at the
Fourth International Round Table on Safavid Persia, Bamberg, July 2003, 17f.
On Friday prayer, see further our ‘Fayz al-Kashani and the Rejection of the
Clergy/State Alliance: Friday Prayer as Politics in the Safavid Period’, in L.
Walbridge, ed., The Most Learned of the Shi
a, (New York, 2001), 34–52, esp.
34; Stewart, 398; Arjomand, ‘Two Decrees’, 253; n90.
97 Dickson, 247, citing Qummi’s 1590 Khulasat and Junabadi’s 1625–6 Rawzat
al-Safaviyya.
98 Budaq Qazvini, 231; A. Soudavar, ‘The Early Safavids and Their Cultural
Interactions with Surrounding States’ in N. Keddie and R. Matthee, eds, Iran
and the Surrounding World (Seattle and London, 2002), 103–5.
99 Rumlu, 176–7, 182, 184, 186–92, 195, 197–8; Keyvani, 154–5. Savory, ‘Ismail
II’, EI2, 4: 188; Munshi (1: 125) implies Tahmasp’s fear that his son might move
against him.
100 On Bashkent, see especially Woods, 87–9.

3 The Second Civil War: Ismail II (1576–1577) and Khudabanda (1578–1587)

1 Szuppe, 1994, 230; 1995, 107–8.
2 Haydar’s guardian was his relative Masum Bek Safavi, whose son took his
place at Masum Bek’s death.
3 Haneda, 131, 134. See also Szuppe, ‘Kinship Ties’, 82–3; idem, 1994, 234, 238;
1995, 107. The account herein is drawn from such contemporary sources as
Rumlu (202f, 292–3) and Qummi (Khulasat, 1: 609f, 2: 626–7). See also
Haneda, 128, citing W. Hinz, ‘Schah Esmail II. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der
Safaviden’, Mitteilungen des Seminars für orientalische Sprachen 26 (1933),
19–100, esp. 46–7; Szuppe, 1995, 77f; Savory, Iran Under, 69; Roemer, 6:
250–1.
4 Munshi, 1: 217.
5 Munshi, 1: 315f, 323, 327–8. Among the Takkalu, Musayyib Khan, related
both to the Safavid house by blood – his mother was Ismail II’s aunt – and to the
Mawsillu by marriage, was promoted to khan, affianced to a daughter of Tah-
masp, designated ruler of the tribe and given lands around Rayy. Other
Takkalu amirs held lands in nearby Hamadan, and the Turkman, related to the
Takkalu, held land in Kashan and Qum. See Szuppe, ‘Kinship Ties’, 86f; idem,
1994, 237–8; n 10. See also Munshi, 1: 34, 323, 339, 384, 421. Compare
Bidlisi, 2: 222.
6 Rumlu, 204–9. Qummi, Khulasat, 1: 603, 607, 609, 2: 615–33. See also
Szuppe, ‘Kinship Ties’, 82–3; Qummi, Calligraphers, 10–11. Szuppe (1995,
82–3) notes that in the Turco-Mongolian system any male family member
might claim succession. The murder of potential pretenders and their allies was
a ‘new’ feature of the period; indeed, Tahmasp had not ordered the murder of
his half-brother Alqas. The Ottomans also followed a policy of ‘political’
176 Notes to pages 42–43
murder. See Munshi, 2: 1288; Mazzaoui, ‘The Religious Policy of Safavid Shah
Ismail II’, in Mazzaoui and Moreen, eds, 54–5; Roemer, 6: 251. In her ‘Mirza
Makhdum Sharifi: A 16th Century Sunni sadr at the Safavid Court’ (unpublished
Ph D thesis, New York University, 1993), 105–7, R. Stanfield suggests that
Ismail II’s actions bespeak awareness of threats to his precarious hold on the
leadership posed by family members, his own experience of having been arrested
by his father and the earlier revolts of the Alqas and Sam Mirza. Rumlu (204–5)
notes Ismail was even suspicious of those who freed him from prison.
7 Rumlu, 210–11, 295; Szuppe, 1995, 83–4, 84n137; Qummi, Calligraphers,
10–11. Rumlu (211) notes Ismail took opium to relieve recurrent colic. See also
Munshi, 1: 336–41; Roemer, 6: 252–3; Savory, Iran Under, 69–70.
8 Rumlu, 212–13; Qummi, Khulasat, 2: 656–69; Munshi, 327–9; Szuppe, 1994,
ibid.; Bidlisi, 2: 223–4; Roemer, 6: 253–5.
9 Szuppe, 1995, 68–9. Other Shirazi allies of the Shamlu were among the key Tajik
administrators of Khudabanda’s reign (ibid., 68–70). Khudabanda’s first wife
was the granddaughter of Qadi Jahan Qazvini and a Gilani notable. See Szuppe,
1994, 230; idem, 1995, 108.
10 Khayr al-Nisa also had removed Kashan province from Turkman tribal control
and had executed a family rival who had been given protection from the Ustajlu
commander sent to quell his rebellion. Qummi, Khulasat, 2: 658, 662, 693–7;
Qummi, Calligraphers, 95n294; Szuppe, 1995, 84–100. Röhrborn (199) sug-
gests that Khayr al-Nisa also tried to seize other provinces for the centre. On the
careful role of Musayyib Khan Takkalu in these events, see Szuppe (‘Kinship
Ties’, 89–90). Szuppe notes (1995, 97n208) the Ustajlu complainants included a
relative of Tahmasp.
11 Bidlisi, 2: 228–9, 245–6; Savory, Iran Under, 73–5; Roemer, 6: 259–61;
Röhrborn, 200–1.
12 Szuppe, 1995, 108. Qummi, Khulasat (2: 848–63) and Bidlisi (2: 248–9) give
October 1587; compare Savory, 75; Roemer, 6: 261; McChesney, ‘A Note’, 63.
Some accounts suggest Khudabanda remained in Qazvin for a time and was then
blinded, with his other sons, Abbas’ younger brothers, Abu Talib and Tahmasp,
and died nine years later in the city. On a marriage alliance between Murshid
Quli Khan and the Turkman, see further below ad n47.
13 Bidlisi, 2: 223f; Roemer, 6: 257–8, 266; Savory, 71–5; n11.
14 Floor, Safavid Government, 12, 14–15.
15 Floor, ibid., 141. The post of sealkeeper was held mainly by the Dhul-Qadr into
the late 1630s. See Floor, ibid., 70–2 and our discussion on Pari Khan’s uncle
Shamkhal Sultan below.
The qurchis, not independent of direct Qizilbash control, were also not a
major military force. Over Tahmasp’s reign the total number of Qizilbash troops
numbered between 85,000 and 100,000. Since large numbers of these troops
were stationed in the provinces and mustering them took time, a smaller force,
c. 60,000, might appear. This force might in practice also include Kurdish,
Georgian and other non-Qizilbash tribal elements whose leaders owed allegiance
to the centre. By comparison, at Tahmasp’s death in 1576 Munshi (1: 228)
numbered ‘the qurchis of the royal bodyguard’ at c. 4,500; other sources cite
3,000. In this period Safavid princes also had their own qurchis whose com-
manders, like the centre’s qurchibashi, were all Qizilbash amirs. See Minorsky,
Tadhkirat, 15, 32; Röhrborn, 70–7; Haneda, 105–10, 144–53, 171f, esp.
176n57; Floor, ibid., 133–7.
 Notes to pages 43–44 177
16 Under Ismail II, Ali Quli Khan Shamlu (d. 1588–9), the grandson of Durmish
Khan Shamlu, who had married a daughter of Haydar (Szuppe, 1994, 224), and
himself was married to Abbas
aunt Zaynab Bekum (Szuppe, 1995, 118; Munshi,
1: 316), was sent to Herat as both governor and Abbas’ guardian with an order
from Ismail II and Khayr al-Nisa to murder his charge; this was voided by their
deaths. Ali Quli Khan was also married to another tribal daughter (Szuppe,
1994, 239), and both of his sons married into the Safavid household (Szuppe,
1994, 224). Bidlisi (2: 228–9) mentions an Ustajlu governor of Khvaf, a Qajar
governor of Mashhad and a Rumlu governor of Nishapur. That Rumlu, who
completed his universal history Ahsan al-Tavarikh just after the accession of
Muhammad Khudabanda in 1577, referred so highly to Ismail I, Tahmasp
and Khudabanda suggests continued tribal support for the house. See Quinn,
Historical, 18.
During Khudabanda’s reign Safavid Iraq was divided among tribal amirs. The
governor of Kashan was a Turkman (Röhrborn, 40, 43) and Ardabil and its
dependencies and Hamadan were held by Ustajlu chiefs (Qummi, Khulasat, 2:
851f). The Shamlu and Ustajlu held key areas in Khurasan in this period as well.
The Dhul-Qadr held the governorship of Qum and Kashan as well as Shiraz
(Qummi, Khulasat, ibid.). Khuy was held by a Mawsillu and Shirvan by a
Rumlu (Rumlu, 213; Bidlisi, 2: 225–6). In 1579–80, the Afshar governor of
Qarabagh and the Mawsillu governor of Tabriz beat back the Ottoman chal-
lenge (Bidlisi, ibid.). Provincial officials might reside outside their assigned
provinces (Röhrborn, 44).
17 Aubin, ‘Shah Ismail’, 76–7; Savory, Iran Under, 70–2, 74, 76; Munshi, 1: 256–7,
417–20; Roemer, 6: 254f; Floor, Safavid Government, 37. See also Szuppe,
1995, 84–5, 88–9, 95, 100; S. Gholsorkhi, ‘Pari Khan Khanum: A Masterful
Safavid Princess’, IS, 28(3–4) (1995), 143–56; K. Babayan, ‘The “Aqaid al-
Nisa”: A Glimpse at Safavid Women in Local Isfahani Culture’, in G. Hambly,
ed., Women in the Medieval Islamic World, Power, Patronage and Piety (London,
1998), 353f; Bidlisi, 2: 223–4; Floor, ‘Judicial’, 48. Jabiri was succeeded by
another Tajik. See Floor, 37; Munshi, 1: 259.
18 Shah Inayatallah Isfahani, member of a prominent Isfahani family of sayyids and
naqibs who had held the post of military chaplain under Tahmasp, was sadr
al-ikhassa under Ismail II. He was dismissed under Khudabanda but was allowed
to return to Isfahan. See Aubin, ‘Shah Ismail’, 79–80; Munshi, 1: 237–8; Floor,
‘sadr’, 480.
19 Floor, Safavid Government, 36, 42; Qummi, Calligraphers, 99; Munshi, 1:
254–6; Savory, ‘Offices . . . Tahmasp’, 76; Röhrborn, 156–7; Haneda, ‘La
Famille Khuzani’, 86. The son of the Tajik sayyid Shaykh al-Islam in Shiraz
under Tahmasp came to court during Khudabanda’s reign, was made military
chaplain and enjoyed the shah’s special favour. See Munshi, 1: 237.
20 Qummi, Calligraphers, 97, 97n304; Munshi, 2: 1319; Floor, Safavid Govern-
ment, 37. Another family member was vizier of the Takkalu sealkeeper and later
became vizier of Khurasan (Aubin, 63). A Husayni sayyid relative of the Abd al-
Vahhabi sayyids was inspector general (muhtasib al-mamalik), a post with roots
in early Islamic history, under Tahmasp and into the early years of Abbas I’s
reign (Munshi, 1: 239; Aubin, 56; Keyvani, 68–70). A relative was mayor
(kalantar) of Tabriz during Khudabanda’s reign under a Mawsillu governor
(Munshi, 1: 239–40). For other Tajik officials who kept their posts over this
period, see also Munshi, 1: 246, 257; Qummi, Calligraphers, 99. On physicians,
178 Notes to pages 44–45
poets, calligraphers, see Munshi, 1: 263–5, 266f. On the kalantar, see Keyvani,
65–6; Floor, ‘Judicial’, 45–9.
Budaq Munshi Qazvini, in his universal history to the year 1576, Javahir al-
Akhbar, having traced Tahmasp’s line back to Imam Musa (102–3), then dedi-
cated its conclusion to Ismail II (238), perhaps to secure an appointment under
the new ruler. See also Nizhad’s preface (17, 27, 30) and the text itself (58). The
published text commences with a history of the Qaraquyunlu. Qazvini’s grand-
father had served the Aqquyunlu and he himself served in minor official posts
during Tahmasp’s reign.
21 The Husayni sayyid Mirza Ibrahim Hamadani, for example, was a qadi in
Hamadan during Tahmasp’s last years, through the civil war and into Abbas I’s
reign. See Munshi, 1: 261, 1: 239, 1: 240–1.
22 Mudarrissi, Bargi, 151–2.
23 Munshi, 1: 233, 234–5; Newman, ‘Mir Damad’, EIr, 6: 623–6. As noted above,
Shaykh Husayn Amili had been dismissed as Qazvin’s Shaykh al-Islam in favour
of Sayyid Husayn Karaki. Stewart suggests that after the 1576 death of Ali
Minshar, Isfahan’s Shaykh al-Islam and Shaykh Husayn’s son-in-law, Shaykh
Husayn’s son Baha al-Din, known as Shaykh Bahai, succeeded Minshar. See his
‘The Lost Biography of Baha al-Din al-Amili and the Historiography of Safavid
Shah Ismail II’s Reign’, IS, 31(2) (1998), 187–8. See also Munshi (1: 234–6,
247). In 1577 Bahai declared his loyalty to Khudabanda by dedicating to him an
essay on weights and measures, a standard work. See Aqa Buzurg Muhammad
Muhsin Tehrani, al-Dharia ila Tasanif al-Shi
a (Tehran and Najaf, 1353–98), 23:
321. On Minshar, see also n87 of Chapter 2.
24 Several of Tahmasp’s daughters had married Georgians and Circassians. See also
n33 of the previous chapter; Szuppe, 1995, 84–9; Floor, Safavid Government,
72.
25 The fortunes of these elements fluctuated with those of their patrons: Shamkhal
Sultan fell as his niece Pari Khan was challenged. At Hamza’s murder Farhad
Bek was imprisoned and his palace was plundered by Khudabanda’s Afshar
troops. After Abbas I was enthroned Farhad Bek became agent of Murshid Quli
Khan Ustajlu, Abbas’ prime supporter. At the latter’s murder in 1588 Farhad
Bek was again jailed, lost all his goods, was poisoned and died; his mansion was
remade into a palace. See Munshi, 1: 493–5, 594–6; Qummi, Khulasat, 2: 852–3,
855–7, 873, 895; Blake, 86–8, citing, esp., Mahmud b. Hedayatallah Afushta
Natanzi, Nuqavat al-Asar, E. Eshraqi, ed., 2nd ed. (Tehran, 1373), 233–42. The
latter was completed in 1598. See Quinn, Historical, 20; R. McChesney, ‘Four
Sources on Shah Abbas’s Building of Isfahan’, Muqarnas 5 (1988), 105.
26 Szuppe, 1994, 224, 225–6, 233; 1995, 77f, 108, 111–13, 115–16; Haneda,
78n124.
27 Szuppe, 1994, 225, 239; 1995, 114–15, 117; Munshi, 1: 232. Khalilallah’s
father, Mir Miran (d. 1589–90), maintained ties to some rebel Afshar elements
supportive of Hamza when Abbas I’s star was in the ascendancy. Though he
himself paid for this error in judgement, as so often in Safavid history the centre’s
anger with the father did not visit itself on his sons: Khalilallah himself held a
post in Yazd and a son married two of Tahmasp’s daughters. Szuppe, 1994,
225–8, 237; 1995, 114, 117; Munshi, 1: 232. On a later Yazdi-Afshar marriage
alliance, see Chapter 4 ad n30.
28 The family had given refuge to the young Ismail when he was fleeing from the
Aqquyunlu. Maryam’s daughter would marry her cousin Abbas I – both were
 Notes to pages 45–46 179
grandchildren of Tahmasp. See Szuppe, 1995, 229, 229n86, 231, 239; 1995,
114. The marriage with Khan Ahmad Khan may have followed the short-lived
effort to appoint a governor in the area. See Roemer, 6: 245. See also Röhrborn,
163, on a 1567–8 firman attaching Gilan to Khurasan.
29 Szuppe, 1994, 219; 239–40.
30 Szuppe, 1994, 218, 222, 236n112, 240.
31 Szuppe, 1994, 219, 223–4, 237, 239; 1995, 116. On Tahmasp’s daughters, see
also Szuppe, 1994, 239; 1995, 110; Szuppe, ‘Kinship Ties’, 86. Compare Savory,
‘Tahmasp’, EI2, 10: 110; Munshi, 2: 1244.
32 Szuppe, 1994, 232; 1995, 115.
33 In their 1577 and 1590 chronicles respectively, Rumlu and Qummi consistently
refer to the Hidden Imam’s deputy solely with reference to the latter’s leading the
Friday prayer in place of the Imam, in which prayer the ruler’s name would have
been mentioned, and his position thus legitimised by, the Hidden Imam’s repre-
sentative. Absent are references to any other of the deputy’s jurisprudential and
practical duties and responsibilities, the latter including, for example, the collec-
tion and distribution of believers’ alms and tithes. See n90 of the previous
chapter; nn67, 68 of Chapter 1; Newman, ‘The Myth’, n55.
34 At his recovery Tahmasp treated both sons with leniency. See Qummi, Call-
igraphers, 164. The Nuqtavi rising was put down by the local Mawsillu governor.
After the Andijan rising the Nizari Ismailis adopted a form of dissimulation
(taqiyya) which allowed them to pose as Twelver Shi
a for the remainder of the
Safavid period; the imam of this period married a Safavid princess. In 1627
Abbas I exempted the Andijan Shi
a from certain taxes. Amoretti, 6: 644–6;
Arjomand, The Shadow, 198–9; Daftary, ‘Ismaili-Sufi Relations’, 287–8;
A. Amanat, ‘The Nuqtavi Movement of Mahmud Pisikhani and his Persian
Cycle of Mystical-materialism’, in F. Daftary, ed., Medieval Ismaili History and
Thought (Cambridge, 1996), 290. See also Eshraqi, ‘ “Noqtaviyya” à l’époque
Safavides’ in Newman, ed., Society and Culture, 341–9; Melville, ‘New Light’,
83–4, on the order’s suppression according to Khuzani’s Afzal al-Tavarikh.
35 Johnson, in her ‘Sunni Survival in Safavid Iran: Anti-Sunni Activities during the
Reign of Tahmasp I’, IS, 27(1–4) (1994), esp. 127–33, notes that in his later
years Tahmasp pursued a stricter anti-Sunni policy in the capital of Qazvin,
including, for example, a differential taxation policy for Qazvin’s Sunni and Shi
i
population. She also notes that those who could afford bribes could escape
harassment. See also Stanfield, 74–85. Kashan is also known to have been a
Sunni centre. See also R. A. Jurdi, ‘Migration and Social Change: The Ulama of
Ottoman Jabal Amil in Safavid Iran, 1501–1736’ (unpublished PhD disserta-
tion, Yale University, 1998), 146–7, 156, 158; Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi
Din, 1: 81. On the Naqashbandis’ continuing influence in Qazvin in this period,
see Algar, ‘Naqshbandis’, 21–3, 27.
36 Munshi, 1: 237, 2: 703, 703n9; Stanfield, 32f, 91–4. See also S. Gholsorkhi,
‘Ismail II and Mirza Makhdum Sharifi: An Interlude in Safavid History’, IJMES
26 (1994), 477–88; Jurdi, 144f; Aubin, ‘Shah Ismail’, 80; Jafariyan, Safaviyya
dar Arsa-yi Din, 1: 74–80, 452–64; Floor ‘sadr’, 480; n18 above.
37 Ismail II was said to have consorted with Sunni darvishes and, following his
accession, to have objected to the ritual Shi
i cursing of the first three caliphs and
the Prophet’s wife Aisha, to have ordered poetry praising the Imams erased from
the capital’s mosques, to have ordered protection for Mirza Makhdum when he
delivered a sermon, to have punished any who cursed the caliphs, to have shown
180 Notes to pages 46–47
favour to such other Iranian Sunni scholars as Mirza Jan Shirazi, to have
reclaimed land grants given to prominent sayyids and Shi
i clerics and to have
urged these to turn to the Sunni Shafii school. See Gholsorkhi, ibid.; Aubin,
‘Shah Ismail’, 79–80, 69–70; Qummi, Khulasat, 1: 607; Munshi, 1: 213–18,
237; 319–23; Szuppe, 1995, 108; Mazzaoui, ‘The Religious Policy’, 49–56, esp.
53, citing Rumlu; Stanfield, esp. 95f; Stanfield-Johnson, 65–67. On Mirza Jan, a
well-known Sunni teacher in Shiraz during Tahmasp’s reign who came to court
during Ismail II’s reign but fled to India at the latter’s death, see nn39, 40; n93 of
the previous chapter; Munshi, 1: 246.
When Sayyid Husayn Karaki opposed changing the Shi
i inscriptions on the
realm’s coins the shah is said to have plotted the death of both Sayyid Husayn
and Ali Karaki’s son. See D. Stewart, ‘The Lost Biography’, esp. 180–3, 196–203.
The latter work addresses Hinz, ‘Schah Esma
il II’, long the standard work on
Ismail II, and other primary-language sources on Ismail’s II anti-Shi
i activities.
See also Gholsorkhi, ‘Ismail II’, 480–5, esp. 482; Jurdi, ‘Migration and Social
Change’, 144–58; Stanfield, esp. 98–9; Munshi, 1: 214. Floor (The Economy,
78) notes that coins minted under Ismail II did not feature the formal Shi
i
profession of faith (shahada) but attested simply to the sufficiency of ‘Ali and his
family’ and that at Ismail’s death, the Shi
i shahada was reinstated. Cf. Munshi,
1: 324. For a cleric who fled to India as a result of Ismail’s pro-Sunni policy, see
Munshi, 1: 234.
38 Stanfield (103–4) cites Bidlisi (2: 222) that Ismail wanted to reconcile Sunnis and
Shi
is to each other. See also ibid, 105. On the treaty, see Roemer, 6: 252.
39 Munshi names some Mawsillu-Turkman and Takkalu amirs as concerned with
Ismail’s Sunni sympathies; based on their subsequent support for Ismail II as he
moved against Mirza Makhdum and for Khudabanda’s succession, Ustajlu,
Shamlu, Dhul-Qadr and Afshar elements may have expressed similar concerns.
See, especially, Munshi, 1: 317–30, esp. 320–3. See also Gholsorkhi, 480, 483–4;
Stanfield, 116; Stewart, 200; Qummi, Khulasat, 2: 648–9; Mazzaoui, ibid., 54.
Ibrahim b. Malik, whose father had served Ibrahim b. Bahram in Mashhad and
returned to Qazvin at Tahmasp’s request to embellish the palaces there, fled Iran
at this point as well (Qummi, Calligraphers, 145) as did Mirza Jan Shirazi, on
whom see n37. On Musayyib Khan Takkalu’s role, see Szuppe, ‘Kinship Ties’,
88–9. Stanfield (119–38) analyses Mirza Makhdum’s theological and juris-
prudential arguments with key Shi
i doctrines.
40 Ahmad Ardabili, who had himself studied under Mirza Jan Shirazi, remained in
the Ottoman-controlled shrine cities throughout the civil war, as did his two
prominent students Shaykh Zayn al-Din’s own son Hasan (d. 1602–3) and his
relative and associate Sayyid Muhammad Amili (d. 1600). Both later abandoned
a pilgrimage to Mashhad for fear Abbas I would press them into government
service. Ardabili also challenged Karaki’s writings on accepting remuneration
from the court but his departure from Iran likely stemmed from his rejection of
certain Sufi beliefs in the potential for unification with the divine and the mani-
festation of the divine in the human belief which Ismail I especially had encour-
aged. See J. Cooper, ‘Some Observations on the Religious Intellectual Milieu of
Safawid Persia’, in F. Daftary ed., Intellectual Traditions in Islam (London,
2000), 149; J. Cooper, ed. and transl., ‘The Muqaddas al-Ardabili on taqlid’, in
Arjomand, ed., Authority and Political Culture, 263–6. On Hijaz- and Gulf-
based scholars’ continued rejection of Safavid entanglements in this period, see
our ‘The Myth’, esp. 104–8; R. Jafariyan, ‘Munasibat’, 13–14. See also n95 of
 Notes to pages 47–49 181
Chapter 2. On the tolerance of the Ottomans to Shi
i clerics, see M. Salati,
‘Toleration, Persecution and Local Realities: Observations on the Shi
ism in the
Holy Places and the Bilad al-Sham (16th–17th centuries)’, Convegno sul Tema
La Shi  ’a Nell  Impero Ottomano (Roma, 1993) 121–48.
41 One of these movements proposed an attack on Ottoman territory. See R.
Savory, ‘A Curious Episode of Safavid History’, in C. E. Bosworth, ed., Iran and
Islam (Edinburgh, 1971), 461–73, citing Munshi, 1: 401f. Qizilbash tribes active
in crushing these risings included elements of the Afshar, Dhul-Qadr and
Takkalu.
42 Hillenbrand, ‘Safavid Architecture’, 6: 773–4. See Hunarfar, 164–5, 389–91. See
also Hunarfar, 134–5, for a distinctly Twelver Shi
i style inscription in Isfahan’s
Congregational Mosque dating to 1584. See also Blake, 150.
43 Tahmasp’s body was interred there before being moved to Mashhad. Some of the
princes killed at Ismail II’s accession were also buried in Qazvin. Ismail II’s body
remained in the Qazvin shrine until 1587 when Abbas I removed it to the shrine
of Imam Riza himself in Mashhad. Khayr al-Nisa was also buried in Qazvin,
until Abbas moved her also to Mashhad. The wife of Salman Khan Ustajlu, a
daughter of Tahmasp, was buried in the Qazvin shrine at her death in 1583. At
his death Khudabanda’s Inju sadr was also buried in the Qazvin shrine. See
Mudarrissi, Bargi, 25–8.
44 On these artists, see Qummi, Calligraphers, 191, 187, 191, 7, 188, 138–40.
Canby, 80f, esp. 83–5. On Shaykh Muhammad, see Canby, 72, 74, 76, 85, 88,
105–7, and our discussion in the previous chapter. Soudavar (105, citing Budaq
Qazvini), notes that Ismail II sent some fifty illustrated manuscripts to the
Ottoman Murad III who launched the series of incursions into Iran noted above,
probably, as with his Sunni ‘flirtation’, to forestall such incursions. See also
Welch, ‘Art’, 624. On Ismail II’s Shahnama, see B. Robinson, ‘Ismail II’s Copy of
the Shahnama’, Iran, 14 (1976), 1–8, esp. 1 and 6–7, where Robinson lists the
painters who contributed to the project.
45 Gray, 6: 891–2; Canby, The Golden, 89; 87; idem, The Rebellious Reformer.
The Drawings and Paintings of Riza-yi Abbasi of Isfahan (London, 1996), 23.
46 Canby, The Golden, 88–90; Gray, 6: 896.
47 Szuppe, 1995, 113; Canby, The Golden, 87–8; Haneda, 121; Qummi, Khulasat,
2: 1024. Ibrahim’s wife, Gawhar Sultan Khanum, Ismail II’s own half-sister,
destroyed much of her husband’s library to deny it to her half-brother. See
Qummi, Calligraphers, 184.
48 Canby, The Golden, 88–90. Evolution in carpet design is discernible over the
latter half of the century. In Herati carpets the appearance of Chinese scroll
clouds and large palmettes echoes similar ornaments on ceramics in the last
decades of the century. These suggest continued interaction between carpet
design and ceramics, bookbinding and manuscript illustration. See Canby, The
Golden, 90–1.
49 From 1576 to 1580 Qummi was vizier to the chief financial administrator. He
was vizier to a Takkalu amir when, in 1581, Khudabanda appointed him
administrator of vaqf. Qummi, Calligraphers, 12, 15; Haneda, 123–4. He
completed his Calligraphers c. 1596–7.
50 Savory, Iran Under, 67–8.
182 Notes to pages 50–51
4 Monumental Challenges and Monumental Responses: The Reign of Abbas I
(1587–1629)
1 Abbas’ Ustajlu patron Murshid Quli Khan was soon designated the sixteen-year-
old shah’s vakil. The Ustajlu chief – whose own Tajik vizier was designated
Abbas’ vizier – was allotted the province of Isfahan, which had been the personal
holding of Tahmasp and then of his grandsons Hamza and Abu Talib. The
Ustajlu were also entrusted with guarding Khudabanda and his son, Abbas’ full
brother, Abu Talib. See the sources in the following notes.
2 Munshi, 2: 557; 548–9; Szuppe, 1995, 113–14; Floor, Safavid Government, 13,
37.
3 Munshi (2: 559–60) suggests that many Shamlu and Shi
a were killed when
Herat fell. The Uzbeks approached Mashhad, where Murshid Quli Khan’s
brother was governor, but withdrew, as they often had during Tahmasp’s reign,
at the rumoured approach of a Safavid army.
4 Khudabanda died in 1595. Among the Tajik allies of Murshid Quli Khan killed
was Abu Talib’s Tajik vizier Mirza Muhammad Kirmani, of the Tabrizi Kujuji
sayyids, who was Abbas’ first vizier. Munshi, 2: 551–60, 577–81, 612, 1319;
Qummi, Khulasat, 2: 669.
5 Those who challenged Abbas included the governor of Shiraz, Yaqub Khan
Dhul-Qadr, in alliance with Takkalu, Turkman, Shamlu, and Afshar amirs. Even
the governor of Isfahan, Yuli Bek, the ghulam of Hamza who had replaced
Farhad Bek, associated himself with the claims of Abbas’ two brothers. In
c. 1593–14 Rustam Mirza (d. after 1616–17), a great-grandson of Ismail I via
the latter’s son Bahram, organised a revolt in Sistan. Deserted by his Qizilbash
supporters, Rustam fled to India where Akbar (reg. 1556–1605) encouraged his
anti-Abbas activities. Munshi, 2: 585, 591, 595–604, 612, 659–60, 692, 1177;
Natanzi, 374–5; Szuppe, 1995, 108.
6 On the role of the son of the sadr, Mir Miran, of the Nimatallahi sayyid family
which had provided administrators since Ismail I’s reign, see Munshi, 2: 551–5,
599–601. See also n120.
7 These were accused of collaboration with the Ottomans during the occupation
of Tabriz. See Savory, ‘A Curious Episode’, 469; idem, ‘The Office of Khalifat al-
Khulafa under the Safavids’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 85
(1965), 497–502, esp. 501. See also Floor, ‘Khalifeh’, 70; n122.
8 N34 of the previous chapter.
9 Eshraqi, 347–8; Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 46–64, noting (citing Munshi 2: 648)
the influence of astrology in these events; idem, Mystics, 3–6, 90–3, 103f. See
also Munshi, 2: 646–50; Natanzi, 514–28. Both Munshi (2: 647) and Natanzi
(515) attest to Darvish Khusraw’s widespread popularity.
10 Munshi, 2: 649–50. Babayan (‘The Waning’, 62) notes apparent Shamlu
involvement. See Amanat, ‘The Nuqtavi Movement’, 281–97, esp. 290f; Arjo-
mand, The Shadow, 198–9, 74; Babayan, ibid., 175f. On the later account of Fazli
Isfahani, who commenced his three-volume history of the Safavids in 1616–17,
see Melville, ‘New Light’, 83–4; Abrahams, ‘A Historiographical Study’, 103f.
A. Dadvar (Iranians in Mughal Politics and Society, 1606–1658 (New Delhi,
2000, 217) mentions several Nuqtavi poets who fled to India during this period
although elsewhere (203f, 211f) he suggests economic reasons for their flight.
Indeed, of those artisans and craftsmen whose reasons for travel to India are
known in this period most left for economic reasons (293–8). For a further
 Notes to pages 52–53 183
example thereof, see also E. Lambourn’s ‘Of Jewels and Horses: the Career and
Patronage of an Iranian Merchant under Shah Jahan’, IS, 36(2) (2003), esp. 221.
In his ‘Emigration of Iranian Elites to India During the 16th–18th Centuries’ (in
L’Héritage Timouride. Iran-Asie Centrale-Inde XVe-XVIIIe siècles, M. Szuppe,
ed. (Tashkent/Aix-en-Provence, 1997), esp. 131f, 135f, Haneda notes the high
percentage of Iranians among the Mughal elite, adding that such immigration
was not limited to a specific period in Safavid history and noting that many went
to India of their own free will and kept contact with their homeland. See also
n128 below and n49 of chapter six.
The details of contemporary Nuqtavi discourse provided by such hostile
sources as Munshi and Natanzi ought to be judged with some care. See, for
example, Babayan, Mystics, 19–20, 47–54. See also Babayan, ibid., 57f, 67f for
a reconstruction of that discourse based on later and unidentified Nuqtavi
sources.
11 See our ‘Towards’, 177–8.
12 Munshi, 2: 583–4, 587–8, 612f; Roemer, 6: 266–7. That the 1555 Amasya treaty
had stipulated similar restrictions suggests the reappearance of this practice,
perhaps following ‘the Sunni interlude’ discussed in the previous chapter.
13 Munshi, 2: 602f, 609f; Quinn, ‘The Historiography’, 14.
14 Munshi, 2: 597. Röhrborn (48–9) dated their creation as a corps under Abbas to
1587 or 1590, but such elements had formed a small force under Tahmasp. See
Floor, Safavid Government, 166f; n15 of Chapter; 3; n33 of Chapter 2; n33
below.
15 Pietro Della Valle, the Italian patrician who spent four years in Iran from 1617,
even meeting Abbas I, numbered the ghulams at 30,000, of whom half were
soldiers. See Floor, Safavid Government, 170; Röhrborn, 77. Chardin, however,
albeit later, estimated that 1,000 ghulams served the shah and 3,000 eunuchs
resided at the court. See Babaie, et al., Slaves of the Shah, 15. On Chardin’s
reliability, see n44 of Chapter 5 below, and n14 of our Introduction. The post of
qullaraqasi, head of the ghulams, held for some years by the Armenian ghulam
Allahvirdi Khan himself, receives decidedly little attention by Munshi; it is not
listed as one of the realm’s key posts (2: 1317f) and is mentioned only occasion-
ally in the text of his chronicle itself (e.g. 597). The other qullaraqasis of the
period included the first, a Dhul-Qadr chief, who held the post for a year and,
after Allahvirdi Khan, another Armenian convert Qarachaqay Khan (d.
c. 1624–5). Cf. Floor, Safavid Government, 172, 21. A Georgian Armenian
ghulam was sipahsalar for a decade, though a Shamlu succeeded him at his
death. Munshi, 2: 1260, 1120; Floor, ibid., 21. On Della Valle, see J. Gurney,
‘Pietro Della Valle: the Limits of Perception, BSOAS, 49(1) (1986), 103–16;
idem, ‘Della Valle, Pietro’, EIr, 7. See also n24.
16 Farhad Khan was especially prominent in the wars against the Uzbeks. On the
decidedly mixed composition of Safavid forces – including elements of the
Ustajlu, Bayat and Dhul-Qadr, Rumlu, Shamlu, Afshar, Qajar, qurchis and ghu-
lams and even ‘Isfahani’ musketeers – and their commanders sent against the
Uzbeks and revolts in Gilan, see Munshi, 2: 635–7, 689, 668, 674, 624, 633,
621, 711–12, 717–23, 748–64. On Farhad Khan, see Munshi, 2: 617–30, 638,
760–3. The Qaramanlu had figured in both the Qaraquyunlu and Aqquyunlu
confederations (Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 195–6). On the Ustajlu commander of
the 1603 expedition against the Ottomans, see below and n28.
17 Allahvirdi Khan featured prominently in later Ottoman campaigns. On the
184 Notes to page 53
1603, 1615 and other Ottoman campaigns, the different contingents which
made up the respective Safavid forces on each occasion, and their commanders,
see Munshi, 2: 825f, 839f, 851–2, 1103f, 1119f. On Allahvirdi Khan himself, see
ibid., 2: 578, 690, 719, 1083–4. On a campaign led jointly by Farhad Khan and
Allahvirdi Khan, see ibid., 2: 748–64. The 1602–3 campaign to take Bukhara
was jointly commanded by a ghulam and a Shamlu, but both Allahvirdi Khan
and Ganj Ali Khan, along with Ustajlu and Qajar forces, also participated. See
ibid., 2: 810–22. McChesney’s careful ‘A Note’ (53–63) argues for revisiting all
of Munshi’s dates. On Allahvirdi Khan, see also Maeda, ‘On the Ethno-Social
Backgrounds of the Four Gholam Families’, 262f.
Among other Armenians who, having converted, became prominent figures at
the centre was Yusuf Khan, governor of Shiraz who, in conjunction with tribal
amirs, commanded troops in a 1616–17 counterattack against the Georgians.
See Munshi, 2: 1260, 1113f. Qarachaqay Khan, the Armenian ghulam from
Georgia, led a mixed force against the Ottomans in 1616, and was governor of
Mashhad ‘and most of Khurasan’ at the time of his death in 1624–5; his son
Manuchir was appointed governor of Mashhad at his father’s death and was
counted by Munshi as one of the realm’s twenty-one ghulam amirs, on whom see
below. See Munshi, 1: 184; 2: 1120, 1260, 1316. On Ganj Ali Khan, see Munshi,
2: 1261–2.
18 Later campaigns clearly reflect this tribal predominance. See, for example,
details on the 1617–18 campaign against the Ottoman Khalil Pasha’s move East
in Munshi, 2: 1160f. The 1622–3 retaking of Baghdad involved a similarly com-
plex force; Baghdad’s new governor was a Georgian ghulam who was also the
governor of Hamadan, but the new governor of Mosul was of the Imanlu subclan
of the Afshar. See Munshi, 2: 1215f, 1229f.
19 A number of Takkalu were, as noted by Munshi (2: 707), purged c. 1596–7; see
also Munshi, 2: 1137f; Szuppe, ‘Kinship Ties’, 93–5. The Dhul-Qadr were dis-
ciplined by Abbas as were the Bayat and Mokri (Munshi, 2: 631, 1018). On the
heterodoxy of Takkalu religious beliefs and practices dating to the previous
century, see ad n91 of Chapter 2, citing Calmard, ‘Popular Literature’, 337. See
also Szuppe, ibid., 94.
20 Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 16–18, citing Munshi, 2: 1309–23. Both the order of
prominence in which Munshi lists these key tribes and their names – Shamlu,
Ustajlu, Dhul-Qadr, Qajar, Afshar, and Turkman, followed by such others as
the Rumlu, Bayat and Talish – are roughly familiar from the previous century.
Missing are the Takkalu, on whom see the previous note. The post of vakil was
empty after Murshid Quli Khan Ustajlu’s death. See Floor, Safavid Government,
13. Isa Khan, son of Masum Bek Safavi, was qurchibashi from 1612 to 1631,
where an Afshar and a Qajar held the post earlier in Abbas reign. Floor, ibid., 142.
By 1629 the Shamlu, whom Munshi describes as ‘the chief of the Qizilbash
tribes’, held seven of the seventy-three Qizilbash amir-ships, nearly 10%. The
Dhul-Qadr held six while the Ustajlu and the Afshar each held three (2: 1309f),
suggesting a diminution of Ustajlu pre-eminence over Abbas’ reign. Not surpris-
ingly, therefore, when discussing tribal positions at Tahmasp’s death in 1576,
Munshi also hailed Shamlu pre-eminence at Tahmasp’s death (1: 222) though
the Ustajlu in fact were dominant at the time (n12 of Chapter 2). See also n24
below. Based on a nineteenth-century Persian source, N. Kondo discusses the
Afshar in the Urmiyya in his ‘Qizilbash Afterwards: The Afshars in Urmiya from
the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century’, IS, 32(4) (1999), 537–56.
 Notes to page 53 185
21 Munshi, 2: 1309f. See also Minorsky, ibid., 16–17. On the designation and
incorporation of the ‘Shaykhavand’ as such a tribe, see below ad n27. The
Taji-buyuk tribe, on whom see ad n94 below, would also appear to have been
incoporated into the Qizilbash in this time period.
22 Munshi (2: 1316) listed fourteen ghulam amirs but noted that some twenty-one
had, in fact, become amirs during Abbas’ reign. Cf. Minorsky (ibid., 17–18,
17n7), who used the lower figure. Thus, of the total of ninety-four amirs in
Munshi’s list, twenty-one or 22% were ghulams and seventy-three, or 78%,
were drawn from the now-expanded Qizilbash confederation; Minorsky gives
20% and 83% respectively. The ranking of khan was also bestowed on non-
Qizilbash officials (Röhrburn, 40), clearly, like the granting of the taj (n38 of
Chapter 2) and the granting of amir-ships, attesting to efforts to incorporate
‘new’ elements into the larger project.
23 Röhrborn (50f) notes that Fars was the first to have such a governor, in 1595–6;
Astarabad had a ghulam governor in 1604–5. In 1592–3 a ghulam was governor
of Qazvin (Munshi, 2: 622), perhaps suggesting the latter was no longer the
capital city. See also n92.
24 The Shamlu, related to the house by marriage, and Dhul-Qadr each held seven
such key administrative posts at Abbas’ death (Minorsky, ibid., 18), further
hinting at the rising influence of the Shamlu over Abbas’ reign (see n20). When
the Georgian sipahsalar, who held the post for some ten years, died in 1626, a
Shamlu succeeded him (Floor, Safavid Government, 20–1). In the provinces
Röhrborn shows (51–7) that Herat was held by the Shamlu almost continuously
throughout Abbas’ reign; Farhad Khan Qaramanlu held it for a time, but
between Shamlu governors. Azerbaijan, another key front-line province, was
held in turn by the Shamlu, Qaramanlu and Turkman. Hamadan, which could
be a front-line province, was held by the Shamlu, Ustajlu and Bayat; the latter
also held Nishapur c. 1624–5. A Shamlu centurion was sent to India as ambas-
sador and another was governor of Rayy c. 1604. Mashhad, when not in Uzbek
hands, was held by the Ustajlu and the Qajar. Astarabad was held by the Afshar
and Turkman, Farhad Khan Qaramanlu and a Qajar before it was given to
ghulams c. 1603–4. The Afshar held Kirman, then the Ustajlu, then the Turk-
man. Ustajlu and Qajar chiefs held the governorships of Marv, Herat, Kirman,
Hamadan (Haneda, 201) as well as Astarabad. The Shamlu also held such key
central posts as the position of chief officer (ishikaqasibashi) of the haram
c. 1617. See Munshi, 2: 753, 773, 866, 768, 795, 114, 1315f; Haneda, 201.
Röhrborn, 51–8; Melville, ‘Shah Abbas and the Pilgrimage to Mashhad’, 214.
The Qajar and Qaramanlu held Fars briefly, but for the most part it was held
by the Dhul-Qadr from 1586 until the ghulam Allahvirdi Khan was given it in
1594–5. Although at his death in 1613 Allahvirdi’s son Imam Quli Khan became
its governor, Dhul-Qadr tribal levies continued to furnish the bulk of the prov-
ince’s military forces. See also Savory, Iran Under, 81–2. Although Haneda
(204f) suggests that at the provincial level tribal elements became mixed with the
ghulam and lost their distinct tribal identity, such that the qurchis represented
the only true, pure tribal element, Munshi, for example, identifies Safavid mili-
tary forces as members of a named tribe, as do contemporary European sources.
See also Haneda, 208. Röhrborn (75) dismisses Chardin’s figures on the numbers
of qurchis in the reign of Abbas I (Minorsky, ibid., 32).
25 Munshi, 2: 1295, 598, 613, 1068–9, 1309; see also Savory, ‘Offices . . . Tahmasp’,
79; Floor, Safavid Government, 141. The Afshar had held the post over
186 Notes to pages 53–55
Tahmasp’s reign. A Qajar held the post from 1591 to 1612, when he was
dismissed, and killed, for corruption. Isa Khan Safavi, grandson of Masum Bek
(d. 1569), then held the post until Abbas’ death in 1629.
26 Floor, ‘Judicial’, 22–3, 24. Of the two identifiable holders of the post in the
period, a Shamlu, the qurchi Ali Quli Khan, became divanbeki and ishikaqasi-
bashi during Abbas’ reign and held the post for two decades. Haneda, 201–2.
The Dhul-Qadr held the post of sealkeeper over the period. See Floor, Safavid
Government, 72.
27 Munshi, 2: 1309f; Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 16–18. On the marriage, see Munshi, 2:
1069, 1302; Hunarfar, 594.
28 Munshi, 2: 707, 1262. On the campaign itself, see Munshi, 2: 825f.
29 Gilan, of course, presented problems for Abbas throughout his reign, especially
his early years. Even after the betrothal, Khan Ahmad himself had revolted and
was defeated by the Qaramanlu commander Farhad Khan in 1592, after which
he fled to the Ottoman court and died there in 1597. See Munshi, 2: 621–4;
Szuppe, 1995, 114, 118. Khan Ahmad, on whom see also the previous chapter
ad n28, was a patron of the arts, poet and musician. See also Marlow, 240–2.
30 Szuppe, 1995, 117, 118, 114; 1994, 231, 225. The centre also continued its
patronage of the Nimatallahi order. On work done in 1589–90 and 1601 to the
Mahan shrine of Shah Nimatallah, see Hillenbrand, ‘Safavid Architecture’, 6:
792–3. See also Blair, ‘The Ardabil Carpets’. Mir Miran himself sided with the
Afshar against Abbas but a son who remained loyal was rewarded. See Munshi,
1: 232; 2: 606; n6. On this marriage, yet another example of such Turk-Tajik
alliances in the period, see Szuppe, 1994, 228. Even the grandson of Abbas’
eldest son Muhammad Baqir, the future Shah Safi, married a Circassian, Anna
Khanum.
31 Munshi, 1: 257; 2: 1147, 1170, 1261, 1234–5; Floor, ‘sadr’, 480–2; Babayan,
personal communication; H. Mudarrissi, Misalha-yi Sudur-i Safavi, Qum, 1353/
1974), 16; Floor, Safavid Government, 42. Thanks to K. Babayan for facilitating
access to Misalha. On the emigration of another Shahristani to, and his career in,
India, see Haneda, ‘Emigration’, 135–6.
32 Another of Abbas’ sons-in-law was the Shahristani warden of the shrine of Imam
Riza in Mashhad. On Abbas’ daughters, see Hunarfar, 594. See also Babayan,
‘The Waning’, 79–80, 114; Munshi, 1: 236, 238; 2: 1146, 1187, 1234–5, 1261,
1302, 1320. Khalifa Sultan’s grandson, sadr during the reign of Sultan Husayn,
would marry a daughter of Safi, Maryam Bekum. See Chapter 8, below. Many
thanks to K. Babayan for her help on the sayyid/sadr connections over this
period.
33 On the political benefits in the Caucasus accruing from Abbas I’s association
with Allahvirdi Khan, himself from a family of Georgian landed military elites,
see Maeda, ‘On the Ethno-Social Backgrounds of Four Gholam Families’, 262–6.
See also ibid., 247–53, on the service to the court of the Baratashvili clan, whose
lands were never formally subdued by the Safavids, and 255–7 on that of the
Mirimandze clan, others of whom married into the Safavid house and whom
Tahmasp had left in control of the Somkhiti region.
34 See, for example, the example of the Georgian Khusraw Mirza/Rustam Khan
(d. 1658) who, though head of the ghulams under Abbas’ successor Safi and later
divanbeki and sipahsalar, renewed churches and had a Christian marriage.
See N. Gelashvili, ‘Iranian Georgian Relations During the Reign of Rostam
(1632–1658)’, paper presented at ‘Iran and the World in the Safavid Age’,
 Notes to pages 55–56 187
London, 2002. See also H. Maeda, ‘Shah’s Slave or Georgian Noble? Unknown
History of Georgian ghulams’, paper presented at the Fourth International
Round Table on Safavid Studies, Bamberg, July 2003; idem, ‘On the Ethno-Social
Backgrounds of Four Gholam Families’, esp. 257f. Perhaps the very nominalism
of these Christians’ conversion precluded such formal liaisons as marriages with
Turks or Tajiks.
35 Floor, Safavid Government, 37, 42, 53, 56, 202; Munshi, 2: 913–17, 1034,
612–13, 915–16, 1318–21. See also A. H. Morton, ‘An Introductory Note on a
Safawid Munshi’s Manual in the Library of the School of Oriental and African
Studies’, BSOAS, 33(2) (1970), 357–8. See also Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 105–6,
313; Floor, ibid., 37. The Kujuji Tabrizi sayyids were also represented. After the
Urdubadis the next longest-serving vizier was the sayyid Khalifa Sultan, son of
the sadr and son-in-law of Abbas himself, who, like his qurchibashi relative Isa
Khan, held the post into the reign of Abbas’ successor Safi. Khalifa Sultan’s
predecessor as vizier was another relative, Salman Khan, Abbas’ brother-in-law
and a grandson of Tahmasp, who served from 1621 to 1624.
On Abbas’ recourse to ‘cabinet’ consultation, see Floor, Safavid Government,
31, and for such meetings during the reigns of his successors, see n4 of Chapter 7.
36 Munshi, 2: 1317–8, 1261; Floor, ‘sadr’ esp. 480–2. A Shirazi Inju sayyid,
unrelated to the house, was sadr for nearly ten years. The post of majlis nivis was
also held by Tajik sayyids in this period. Floor, Safavid Government, 56–7.
37 Munshi, 2: 1321–2; Floor, Safavid Government, 42–3. Hatim Bek Urdubadi had
briefly held this post before his promotion.
38 Mudarrissi, Bargi, 152–4, 154–8, 158–60, 160–4, 164–9. A prominent Marashi
was sent on diplomatic missions to the Ottomans and the Deccan in this period
(ibid., 22–3, 60). On the suyurghal, see Chapter 8.
39 Blake (Half, 15–27, esp. 18, 20–1) argues for 1590 as the date for the designa-
tion of Isfahan as the capital over the usually cited date of 1597–8. Compare
R. McChesney, ‘Four Sources’, 114–15, 117; Munshi, 2: 607–11, 724–5; Canby,
95, 95n5. See also C. Melville, ‘New Light’, 81; n72.
40 Blake, 22–3, citing Junabadi, 759. See also n131 below.
41 The Qaysariyya Gateway was begun in 1611 and, when completed in 1617–18,
after victories against the Ottomans, balanced out the gateway of the Shah
Mosque on the opposite side of the square finished the year before. The former,
completed by the premier court painter Riza Abbasi (see n49) and others,
included a now barely visible representation of the 1598 victory over the Uzbeks
and a giant likeness of the archer Sagittarius, under whose zodiac sign the new
square was founded in 1602. See Blake, 23–7, 107n35.
42 The same Riza Abbasi embellished the palace’s inner walls with portraits and
scenes of birds and animals in landscape reminiscent of book illumination and
with paintings which included scenes of drinking youths. Abbas installed therein
a door from Najaf. Cannon seized from the Portuguese at Hormuz in 1622 were
set on either side of the gate. Blake, 62–5, 82; Hunarfar, 416–26; cf. Hillenbrand’,
Safavid Architecture’, 6: 782–4; Canby, 96. On Chahar Bagh, see also Hunarfar,
465–7, 479–93; Hillenbrand, 6: 777; Godard, 88–94.
43 Blake, 95–7; idem, ‘Contributors to the Urban Landscape: Women Builders in
Safavid Isfahan and Mughal Shahjahanabad’, in Hambly, ed., 410; Haneda,
‘The Character of the Urbanisation of Isfahan in the Later Safavid Period’, in
Melville, ed., Safavid Persia, 369–87. On Hormuz, see also Floor’s forthcoming
The Persian Gulf in the Safavid Period, A Tale of Five Port Cities.
188 Notes to pages 56–57
44 Abbas remitted Tabrizi immigrants’ taxes for one year and built a market, sarai,
bazaar and houses, bought from local peasant cultivators some 1,000 jaribs of
land and provided the immigrants interest-free loans. See Blake, 185–6; Munshi,
2: 1025–34.
45 Hillenbrand (6: 789, 781–2) notes that the maydan itself can be seen as a huge
version of such a courtyard, as found in mosques, sarais, schools and even
houses. The four ayvans are the four portals centred on each side of the square,
two of which lead into mosques and two lead into the Ali Qapu and Qaysariyya
Bazaar respectively.
46 Canby, 96, 101–2, citing, on Mazandaran and Astarabad, Munshi, 2: 1059,
1065–6. See also Naraqi, 66; Zarrabi, 471–2. Melville (‘From Qars to Qandahar:
The Itineraries of Shah Abbas I’, in Calmard, ed., Études Safavides., 213f, 222f)
regards each of these sets of palaces as establishing ‘new capitals’ and, given
Abbas’ seemingly constant movement, suggests the realm had no real capital in
this period. Matthee (The Politics, 44) notes that Abbas moved Georgian Jews to
Farahabad and that Jews were involved in the silk trade; n85. See also ad n108.
47 Blake, 158; Haneda, 378; Hunarfar, 470–5. Godard, 123. Cf. Hillenbrand,
6: 796; Canby, 121.
48 Maysi (d. 1622–3), descendant of a cleric who had avoided association with the
Safavids in the previous century (Newman, ‘The Myth’, 91–2), had been given
an appointment to the Mashhad shrine by Tahmasp. Shushtari (d. 1612–13) had
studied in Najaf with the émigré Ardabili. See Munshi, 1: 249, 2: 1229–30,
1069–70; n138. The city’s other mosques included the 1602 Maqsud Bek
Mosque, the 1605 Sufrachi Mosque, the 1610 Jarchi Mosque, the 1624 Bagh-i
Khaji and the 1625 Aqa Nur Mosques, on which see further below.
49 Blake, 140, 147–50; Munshi, 1: 249, 2: 1229–30; Hunarfar, 401–5; Blake, 140,
147–50; Canby, 98–9; Hillenbrand, 6: 784–6. On Maysi, see also below.
The calligrapher Ali Riza Abbasi, responsible for a number of architectural
inscriptions, is not to be confused with the painter Aqa Riza, later known as Riza
Abbasi. See Babaie, et al., Slaves of the Shah, 116–17; n41.
50 The 1614 vaqf document, organised by the shah and Muhibb Ali Bek, a Shamlu
and ghulam head of the royal household and the imperial treasury, lists thirty-
seven students residing in the mosque, their stipends, twenty-three mosque offi-
cials and more than fifty servants. See Blake, 144–7; R. McChesney, ‘Waqf and
Public Policy: The Waqfs of Shah Abbas, 1011–1023/1602–1614’, Asian and
African Studies, 15 (1981), 178–81; Canby, 97. Blake notes that the Mosque’s
cash expenses exceeded cash income, but that the mosque’s income in-kind
exceeded that received in cash. On Muhibb Ali Bek, see also Munshi,
2: 1169–71.
Nearby also a pre-Safavid school was refurbished in this period and over the
century, owing to its proximity to the nearby Lutfallah Maysi Mosque, grad-
ually became known as the Lutfallah Maysi School. Blake, 158; Hunarfar,
657n1; M. Tabrizi, Faraid al-Favaid dar Ahval-i Madaris va Masajid, R.
Jafariyan ed. (Tehran, 1994), 297, 297n1. Tabrizi was a student of Baqir Majlisi,
Jamal Khvansari and Muhammad Salih Khatunabadi, on whom see below. I am
indebted to R. Jafariyan for directing me to this source and to Dr M. Sefatgol for
facilitating access to it. Maysi himself alludes to the school as having been built
for him in his ‘Risala-yi Itikafiyya’, A. A. al-Rizvanshahri, ed., Miras-i Islami, R.
Jafariyan, ed., 1 (Qum, 1373), 313–37. See also Abisaab, Converting Persia,
81–5.
 Notes to pages 57–59 189
51 Hillenbrand, 6: 786–9; Blake, 143–4. According to Chardin (Blake, 143) the
mosque contained a Qur
an said to have been copied by the eighth Imam, Ali
Riza, and the bloodstained robe of the third Imam, Husayn, martyred at Karbala,
which was believed to have magical powers. The Western school also contained
a sun-dial of Shaykh Bahai, the son of Shaykh Husayn Amili, on whom see
further below.
52 Hunarfar, 427–65, esp. 402, 429, 430–3; McChesney, ‘Waqf ’, 178–81. See also
Babayan, Mystics, 234–5, citing N. Khoury, ‘Ideologies and Inscriptions : The
Epigraphy of Masjid-i Shah and the Ahmediye in the Context of Ottoman-Safavid
Relations’, forthcoming in Muqarnas.
53 Munshi, 2: 955; Melville, ‘Shah Abbas and the Pilgrimage’, esp. 193, 196;
McChesney, ‘Waqf ’, 169–70, 181–2; Hillenbrand, 6: 789, 790–1.
54 Mudarrissi, Bargi, 28; Munshi, 2: 702f.
55 Mudarrissi, Bargi, 29; 83, 86.
56 Naraqi, 233–4, 385–6, 395. Hunarfar, 876. Repairs on the Natanz Congre-
gational Mosque date to this period. On Abbas’ Kashan tomb, see below.
57 Blake, 119; Melville, 216; Jafariyan, ‘Munasibat’, 16–17 (citing the text of the
vaqf from Vali Quli Shamlu, Qisas al-Khaqani, H. S. Nasiri, ed., Tehran, 1371/
1992, 1: 186f), 19. On the latter source, see Chapter 6 below. See also
McChesney, ‘Waqf ’, 171. A 1608 vaqf dedicated items to the shrine in Najaf
(McChesney, ibid., 173).
58 Munshi, 2: 1070. On an attack on the Ottomans Mir Damad composed for the
shah, see Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 1: 85–6; idem, ‘Nufuz’, 28.
59 See our ‘Towards a Reconsideration’, esp. 175f; Stewart, ‘A Biographical Note
on Baha al-Din al-Amili (d. 1030/1621)’, JAOS, vol. 111(3) (1991), 563–71;
idem, ‘Taqiyyeh as Performance: The Travels of Baha al-Din al-Amili in the
Ottoman Empire (991–93/1583–85)’, Princeton Papers, Spring 1996, Vol. IV,
1–70; McChesney, ‘Waqf ’, 174, 178. On reports that Bahai objected to official
efforts to convert Iranian Jews, see n140.
60 Qummi, Khulasat, 931–2. Shaykh Husayn cited the text from Sayyid Hasan b.
Jafar Karaki (d. 1531) who, in fact, had journeyed to Safavid territory but
returned to, and died in, Lebanon (Newman, ‘The Myth’, 108n90); n68 of
Chapter 1. On two prominent Arab clerics who avoided associating with Abbas,
see n40 of the previous chapter.
61 The original tomb dates to 1453–4, in the reign of Jahan Shah Qaraquyunlu. See
Blake, 171; Hunarfar, 341–53, esp. 346; Godard, 47–57; P. Varjavand, ‘Darb-i
Imam’, EIr, 7.
62 Blake, 171; Hunarfar, 521–40.
63 By Chardin’s time, Isfahanis were said greatly to have venerated the site. Many
prominent figures of the later Safavid period were buried there, including Mir
Findiriski (d. 1640–1), Mirza Rafi (d. 1671–2) and Sayyid Ismail Khatunabadi
(d. 1704–5), on all of whom see further below. See Blake, 170–1; Hunarfar,
493–500, 543–6, 631–3; Godard, 123–9.
64 Naraqi, 150f; Zarrabi, 430f. Naraqi (155f) describes inscriptions on the tomb.
See also Melville, ‘Shah
Abbas and the Pilgrimage’, 217, 228n117, where
Melville adds that Chardin noted that many believed Abbas was buried in
Ardabil and that Olearius claimed he saw Abbas’ tomb there. Cf. ‘Emamzada’
in EIr, which lists some 130 such sites throughout the country but identifies
the Imam in question as Imam Musa, from whom the Safavids claimed
descent.
190 Notes to pages 59–60
Abbas’ clear attempt to embellish further this shrine and thereby Kashan itself
came to naught, as all four of his successors were buried in the shrine of Fatima
in Qum. See n45 of Chapter 6.
65 Ayd-i qurban commemorates Abraham’s sacrifice of a ram to Allah instead of his
son. Travellers reported that the latter affair occasioned violent anti-Sunni dem-
onstrations. Calmard, ‘Shi
i Rituals’, in Melville, ed., Safavid Persia, 143–54;
H. Mirjafari, ‘The Haydari-Nimati Conflicts in Iran’, IS, 12(3–4) (1979), 135–
62; J. Perry, ‘Toward a Theory of Iranian Urban Moieties: The Haydariyyah and
Nimatiyyah Revisited’, IS, 32(1) (1999), 51–70. See also, more recently, B.
Rahimi, ‘The Rebound Theater State: The Politics of the Safavid Camel Sacrifice,
1598–1695 C. E.’, Iranian Studies 37(3) (2004), 451–78; Babayan, Mystics,
222, citing the account of Ashura by the Russian Kotov in the capital in 1624–5.
On Kotov, see n124 below.
66 On Abbas’ various vaqf donations to the Shrine and repairs and embellishments
ordered thereto, see Morton, ‘The Ardabil Shrine in the Reign of Shah Tahmasp
I’, Iran, 12 (1974), 36, 54–6; ibid., 13 (1975), 40, 42, 52–3, 54–7; Hillenbrand,
6: 792; Canby, 102, citing Munshi, 1: 536; 2: 873, 900, 955, 1033, 1057;
Canby, 115; McChesney, ‘Waqf and Public Policy’, 170f; Blair, passim, esp. 137;
M. Medley, ‘Ardabil Collection of Chinese Porcelain’, EIr, 2: 364–5; K. Rizvi,
‘The Imperial Setting: Shah Abbas at the Safavid Shrine of Shaykh Safi at Ardabil’,
in Canby, ed., Safavid Art and Architecture, 9–15. On the continuing influence
of the house itself in Ardabil in this period, as evidenced by the ongoing eco-
nomic activities of its women, see F. Zarinebaf-Shahr, ‘Economic Activities of
Safavid Women in the Shrine-City of Ardabil’, IS, 31(2) (Spring, 1998), esp. 257–9.
67 A. H. Morton, ‘The Chub-i Tariq and Qizilbash Ritual in Safavid Persia’, in
Calmard, ed., 234–5. On the tawhidkhana, see also Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 55.
See also Floor, ‘Khalifeh’, 71–3. Reports of cannibalism in the previous century
(n89 of Chapter 2) circulating in this period no doubt also bolstered Abbas’ Sufi
credentials in the same manner as the references to the ‘Sufis of Lahijan’ which
also began to circulate in this period (n14, Chapter 1). See also the text ad n7 and
n123.
68 The ‘Peck’ Shahnama, dated to 1589–90, contains interesting visible variations
to the Timurid-style of manuscript illustration generally followed in Shiraz until
mid-century. See Marlow, 229–43. U. al-Khamis, in a personal communication,
notes that Abbas’ Shahnama was never completed. Perhaps the answer lies in the
painters’ interests, if not the necessity, in this period in producing single-page
illustrations such that, as noted by Gray, 6: 898, these painters ‘rivalled one
another in virtuosity of penmanship and richness of design’, tendencies which, as
will be seen, only grew over the century. On this Shahnama see Canby, 105. On
the non-royal market for single-page illustrations from the Shahnama itself, see
E. Sims, ‘Two 17th Century Firdausi Manuscripts: The Windsor and the Rashida
Shahnamas’, paper presented at ‘Shahnama: The Visual Language of the Persian
Book of Kings’, Edinburgh, March 2001. On Riza’s painting of Russians, see the
following note. Two Shahnamas were, however, produced in Shiraz in 1600 and
1601. See Babaie, et al., Slaves of the Shah, 116, 183n24.
On Sadiqi Bek, see also A. Welch, ‘Art’, 621–2, 625. On a second Shahnama
commissioned in 1614, see ibid., 625. On Riza Abbasi, in particular, see also
Canby, The Rebellious Reformer. Munshi notes that Sadiqi Bek exhibited simi-
lar independence of convention. See Canby, 20, citing Munshi, 1: 273. See also
A. Adamova, ‘On the Attribution of Persian Paintings and Drawings of the Time
 Notes to pages 60–61 191
of Shah
Abbas I’, in Hillenbrand, ed., Persian Painting from the Mongols to the
Qajars (London, 2000), esp. 23f; Gray, 6: 699. In that both his father and his
son also served the court Riza’s family was similar to that of the period’s multi-
generational administrators, historians and clerics already discussed. The nisba
Abbasi itself, though Riza was reluctant to use it until c. 1610, was likely
bestowed upon him by the shah c. 1600. Canby, ibid., 22. See also, more
generally, Canby, The Golden Age, 105–6; idem, Reformer, 23, 39f, 68; Gray, 6:
897–903. On the other artists, see also Canby, The Golden Age, 72, 74, 76,
83–5, 87, 88–9, 105–7; Qadi Ahmad, Calligraphers, 101, 191, 187, 188; Munshi,
1: 271–2; A. Welch, ‘Painting and Patronage under Shah Abbas I’, Iranian
Studies 7(3–4) (1974), 458–507; Babaie, et al., Slaves of the Shah, 114–38.
69 See the sources in the previous note and, on the possible influence of Dutch
painters from this period, see n77. Riza Abbasi also produced portraits of two
Russian ambassadors to the court in the late sixteenth century. See A. Adamova,
‘Persian Portraits of the Russian Ambassadors’, in S. Canby, ed., Safavid Art and
Architecture (London, 2002), 49–53; n114.
70 Blake, 119. The royal sarai itself, of two storeys, with 140 rooms, mosques and
schools, housed merchants from Ardabil and Tabriz; the former sold blankets,
carpets and shawls and the latter sold silk goods. Muslins from Qazvin were
available along with Kirmani and Mashhadi porcelain fine enough to compete
with the Chinese product. The upper rooms were occupied by goldsmiths
and jewellers, and in the middle of the structure were rich Indian merchants,
probably cloth dealers.
71 Hunarfar, 395–401; Blake, 107–15; Hillenbrand, 6: 779.
72 Naraqi, 310–18, 322, 414; Hunarfar, 863; Floor, The Economy, 32, 36–40. For
an overview of Iran’s sarais and Safavid sarais, see M. Y. Kiani, M-Y. and
W. Kleiss, ‘Caravansary’, EIr, 4: 798–802; W. Kleiss, ‘Safavid Caravanserais’, in
S. Canby, ed., Safavid Art and Architecture (London, 2002), 27–31.
73 On the Ottomans’ earlier oppression of the Armenians in Julfa, the flight of
richer Armenians to Iran, their welcome by Abbas and the hopes of those
remaining in Julfa for rescue by Abbas, see H. Papazian, ‘Armenia and Iran. vi.
Armeno-Iranian Relations in the Islamic Period’, EIr, 2: 472. On the deportations
generally, see Papazian, ibid.; E. Herzig, ‘The Deportation of the Armenians in
1604–05 and Europe’s Myth of Shah Abbas I’, in Melville, ed., Pembroke
Papers, 59–71; I. McCabe, The Shah’s Silk for Europe’s Silver (Atlanta, 1999),
35f; V. Ghougassian, The Emergence of the Armenian Diocese of New Julfa in
the Seventeenth Century (Atlanta, 1998), 17f; Munshi, 2: 857, 859, 933. For
later deportations, see ibid., 2: 1179f. McCabe’s analysis is also on offer in
Babaie, et al., Slaves of the Shah, 49–79. Matthee (The Politics, 84–9) suggests
Abbas must have planned the Armenian settlement in Isfahan sometime before,
perhaps suggesting an earlier date for Abbas’ decision to designate Isfahan as the
new capital. On Iran’s Nestorian Christian population, see n18 of the
Introduction.
74 Ghougassian, 29; McCabe, 49–53.
75 The most important routes crossed through Eastern Anatolia, where they linked
up with routes from Syria and the Upper Euphrates and Tigris’ region to the
South, and the Black Sea ports to the North, to converge on Tabriz before run-
ning South across the central Iranian plateau to Hormuz and thence India and
China, and eastwards, South of the Alburz mountains, to Herat, Qandahar,
Kabul and India or North to Bukhara, Central Asia and China. On the Levant
192 Notes to page 61
route, see n84 below. For an overview of Iran’s trade and commercial position in
the larger region, see Lockhart, ‘European Contacts’, 6: 373f; Ferrier, ‘Trade
from the Mid-14th Century to the End of the Safavid Period’, 6: 410f, 420–7;
Allouche, 6–29; Matthee, The Politics, 15–7; Allouche, 21–2; B. Fragner, ‘Social
and Internal Economic Affairs’, in Peter Jackson, ed., 6: 524–7; Floor, The
Economy, 197–203; Woods, 30. Given its prominent role as a key city in this
trade, Tabriz, consistently described as a thriving commercial centre in the pre-
Safavid period, was, unsurprisingly, the capital of Jahanshah Qaraquyunlu and of
the Aqquyunlu under Uzun Hasan and the focal point of Ismail I’s early efforts.
76 Matthee, The Politics, 23–4; Herzig, ‘The Rise of the Julfa Merchants in the Late
Sixteenth Century’, in Melville, ed., Safavid Persia, 305–23.
77 The English companies included the Russia Company, chartered in the 1550s,
the Spanish Company formed in 1577, the Eastland Company in 1578, formed
to handle Scandinavian and Prussian trade, the Levant Company, chartered in
1592 as a fusion of the earlier Turkey and Venice companies, the former founded
in 1581, and the East India Company (EIC), founded in 1600. On the EIC see
also R. Mukherjee, The Rise and Fall of the East India Company (New York,
1974), especially 35, 61. On the Levant Company, see A. Wood, A History of the
Levant Company (London, 1935, 1964). See also, more generally, R. Ferrier,
‘Anglo-Iranian Relations, i. From the Safavids to the Zands’, EIr, 2: 41–4;
Ferrier, ‘East India Company (The British)’, EIr, 8; Ferrier, ‘The Terms and
Conditions under which English Trade was Transacted with Safavid Persia’,
BSOAS 49(1) (1986), 48–72; R. Davis, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies
(Ithaca, 1973). The Russia Company, seeking to bypass the East–West trade in
spices, silks and dyes dominated by the Venetians and Ottomans and a market
for English cloth, first made contact with Tahmasp who, in 1566, signed a treaty
guaranteeing the company the toll-free trade rights. Matthee, The Politics, 30–2;
Lockhart, 6: 383f; Ferrier, 6: 416, 428f; n84; idem, ‘The Terms’, 50–3. The
Dutch United East India Company (VOC) was chartered in 1602. For an over-
view of Iranian-Dutch relations from 1623 to 1759, see also Floor, ‘Dutch-Persian
Relations’, EIr, 7. Still understudied, as Floor notes, is the influence of the many
Dutch artists and artisans in Iran on commissions from the court or prominent
elites.
78 Matthee, The Politics, 87–8, 91–2, 15; Floor, The Economy, 61, 77, 219.
79 In 1590, at the start of his Uzbek campaign, Abbas was said to have melted
down his silver and gold plate service to raise the funds to pay the army. In 1593
Abbas initiated currency reform. See Floor, The Economy, 29–30, 78–80, 183,
222–3; Matthee, The Politics, 115; n82.
80 Abbas also sent Julfan merchants to Venice and special parcels of silk to Spain
and Russia in an attempt to interest these powers in direct commercial, and
political, relations.
For an overview of foreign arrivals in Iran over this period, see Lockhart, 6:
394–7; Stevens, ‘European Visitors’. On dealings with Russia in this period,
see Matthee, ‘Anti-Ottoman’, 110f. On the English especially, see Ferrier,
‘Anglo-Iranian’, 41f; idem, ‘The Terms’, 53–6. On the Carmelite missionaries,
sent from Rome and allowed to settle in Isfahan in 1608, but whose efforts
among Iranian Armenians were opposed by the court, see F. Richard, ‘Carmelites
in Persia’, EIr, 4: 832–4. On the French Capuchin monks who first arrived in
1628 and whose charge in the region involved the conversion of Armenians and
Muslims, see Richard, ‘Capuchins in Persia’, EIr, 4: 786–8. On the Portuguese
 Notes to page 62 193
Augustinians, who had been in Iran operating from Hormuz since 1572 but who
lost their position with the fall of Hormuz, see C. Alonso Vanes, ‘The Hormuz
Convent and the Augustinians (1572–1621)’, paper presented at ‘Iran and the
World in the Safavid Age’, University of London, September 2002. On the
Jesuits, see n67 of Chapter 6.
In 1616 and 1618 Abbas also ordered Persian translations of Psalms and the
Gospels. See K. J. Thomas, ‘Chronology of Translations of the Bible’, EIr, 4:
203; K. Thomas and F. Vahman, ‘Persian Translations of the Bible’, EIr, 4
(1990), 211; Richard, ‘Carmelites’, 832–3.
The court painter Riza Abbasi produced portraits of Russian ambassadors to
the court in 1588–9 and 1594. See n69.
81 Matthee, The Politics, esp. 93f, 115f, 145–6; idem, ‘Merchants in Safavid Iran:
Participants and Perceptions’, Journal of Early Modern History, 4(3–4) (2000),
238–9.
82 In 1623, during the Baghdad campaign, Abbas had to pay his troops in leather
coins and cloth, the latter obtained by trade with the EIC. In 1626 the Dutch
observed the poverty of Isfahan owing to the campaigns to recover Baghdad
and Qandahar, the latter in 1624. Matthee, The Politics, 111, 115; Floor, The
Economy, 29; n79. In his The First Dutch-Iranian Commercial Conflict (Costa
Mesa, 2004), not available to the present author, Floor reviews the terms of the
1627 VOC treaty with the shah which specified Dutch imports would be paid for
in Iranian silk and a 1632 agreement which, though never fulfilled, reflected
increasing Iranian demands for cash payments for silk.
83 With the retaking of Tabriz, Shirvan and Irivan in 1606–8 the Safavids regained
control over key silk-producing areas and transit zones. Matthee, The Politics,
76. On the role of the Armenians in the trade see also, idem, ‘Merchants’, pas-
sim, esp. 238–9, 240–2; McCabe, 87; Ghougassian, 67; Papazian, ibid. On the
silk monopoly, see below.
84 The Levant trade route passed from the Eastern Mediterranean ports via Baghdad
to Kirmanshah to Hamadan to Isfahan and thence either North to the Caspian
or South via Shiraz to the Persian Gulf, or East to India. See Matthee, The Politics,
xix, xxi; Herzig, ‘The Volume of Iranian Raw Silk Exports in the Safavid
Period’, IS, 25(1–2) (1992), 62; Floor, The Economy, 200–46, esp. 216f. On the
companies’ consistent failure over the period to redirect the silk trade from the
overland routes to the Levant to the Gulf route, see Matthee, The Politics, 93–4;
Floor, The Economy, 172–5, 203f, 216f, 254–7; Floor, ‘The Dutch and the
Persian Silk Trade’, in Melville, ed., Safavid Persia, esp. 325f, 349f. The Russia
Company wound up business in the 1580s, and trade through Russia remained
insignificant over the period. See Herzig, ‘The Volume’, 71; Floor, The Economy,
221, 232f.
85 Further families were removed from Armenia to Isfahan in 1606–7 and 1618.
Blake, 188–9; Hunarfar, 505–20; Godard, 165–9; Munshi, 2: 858–61, 933;
Ghougassian, 83f, 204–7, 208–10, 291–2. On the churches built during Abbas’
reign, the last being the Bethlehem Church, dating to 1627–8, see also
J. Carswell, New Julfa, The Armenian Churches and Other Buildings (Oxford,
1968), 37, 41, 43, 46, 48, 50. See also Canby, 96. On the 1604 decree, see also
Matthee, The Politics, 84f; Floor, A Fiscal, 130. On Abbas’ attendance at
Armenian feast days, in 1619, for example, see McCabe, 89; Ghougassian, 57–8;
Babaie, et al., Slaves of the Shah, 69, 89–90. On the Tabriz refugees, see above
ad n44.
194 Notes to page 63
Other centre elements were involved with the Armenian venture: an Ustajlu
amir protected the Armenians at Julfa during the Ottoman advance in 1603
(Munshi, 2: 829f; n28) and Abbas’ 1614 decree mentions the involvement of
the ghulam Muhibb Ali Bek (Hunarfar, 507), on whom see n86. Floor (The
Economy, 57) notes also the transportation of a number of Tabriz-based Muslim
merchants to Isfahan in 1607. On Jews and the silk trade, see Matthee, The
Politics, 44; n46.
On Shaykh Bahai’s rulings on interaction with Christians, see n140 below. See
also nn136, 137.
86 Floor, The Economy, 44f; Matthee, The Politics, 72–4. These royal merchants
included Muhibb Ali Bek, the ghulam head of the imperial household and the
imperial treasury, from 1616 to 1623 and, from 1623 to 1632, the ghulam
Mulayim Bek who negotiated silk trade agreements with the VOC. Floor (103–5)
notes that good relations between the centre and indigenous merchant elements
were all the more important as the court occasionally borrowed money from
them, directly or through certain purchases. On Muhibb Ali, see Matthee, The
Politics, 44, 84, 89, 102. See also Blake, 122–3, 142–3, 144–5, 185; Munshi, 2:
1170–1; Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 127–8, and below. On Mulayim Bek, see Matthee,
The Politics, 44, 84, 109–11, 116; McCabe, 148. See also Babaie, et al., Slaves of
the Shah, 63.
87 Matthee, The Politics, 67–8, 115; Floor, The Economy, 29–30, 79–80, 181–4,
222–3, 331; Allan, Persian Steel, 116f; n81. Citing Tavernier, the Antwerp mer-
chant who made a number of trips to Iran between 1632 and 1668, Matthee has
suggested the centre’s encouragement of Iranian pilgrimage centres, including
Mashhad, as well as Isfahan’s imamzadas was part of a policy to discourage
Iranian pilgrims from going on pilgrimage to the Iraqi shrines and/or the Hijaz
and thereby limit specie outflow. See Matthee, The Politics, 68; idem, ‘Between
Venice and Surat: The Trade in Gold in Late Safavid Iran’, Modern Asian Studies
34(1) (2000), 243. See also W. Floor and P. Clawson, ‘Safavid Iran’s Search for
Silver and Gold’, IJMES 32 (2000), 345–68. See n36 of Chapter 7 on other
reasons for such encouragement later in the period. On coinage in this period,
see Floor, The Economy, 65f, 75f; Matthee, ‘The Safavid Mint of Huwayza: The
Numismatic Evidence’, in Newman, ed., Society and Culture, 265–91. Dadvar
(329–48) discusses Iranian merchants in India over the century.
Note also Abbas’ efforts to assist Central Asian Sunnis traversing Iran in their
performance of the pilgrimmage c. 1595 and in the 1620s (McChesney, ‘The
Central Asian’, 145, 146f).
88 Hunarfar, 444–5, 434–6. A 1627 firman in Isfahan’s Dhul-Fiqar mosque, pri-
vately built in 1543, had reduced taxes for some of the same guilds named in
the 1628 firman. See Hunarfar, 385–6. Keyvani (135) notes a 1629 firman in
the Shah Mosque addressed to Isfahan’s barbers as part of a more general tax
reduction to various tradesmen, which Hunarfar (434–6) ascribes to Abbas’
reign.
89 Naraqi, 224–5, 230–3; Zarrabi, 532–4. A firman of Jahanshah Qaraquyunlu
was inscribed in this mosque as was Tahmasp’s 1534 firman banning various
non-Islamic practices. See ad n40 in Chapter 2; Naraqi, 203–38, esp. 211f.
90 The firman announcing the tax was inscribed in Yazd’s Congregational Mosque
(Keyvani, 159). Floor (The Safavid Economy, 325) estimates some 30% of the
urban population was involved in textile and leather crafts.
91 See, for example, Munshi, 2: 633; 1063f, 1187; Szuppe, 1994, 238–9; Floor,
 Notes to pages 63–65 195
Safavid Government, 37. On Abbas’ responsiveness to an earlier earthquake in
Shirvan, see Munshi, 1: 928–9.
92 Gilan and Mazandaran, important silk-producing lands, became crown land in
1598 and 1599 respectively, with ghulams as governors. Qum had been made
khassa in 1597 and from 1606 Astarabad was so designated. Abbas’ mother
Khayr al-Nisa held Simnan, Damavand and some other areas as khassa in
1578–79. Röhrborn, 90–1, 173, 177–8, 181; Matthee, The Politics, 75; Mun-
shi, 2: 621, 625, 633–4. The firman described ad n90 suggests both that locally
based troops may not have been paid by the centre and that local taxes were
used for local military purposes.
93 The mosque inscription described it as being built ‘during the caliphate of the
most just, most dignified, most courageous, greatest Sultan, King . . . of the
Arabs [this at a time when Eastern Iraq and the shrine cities were still held by
the Ottomans] and Persians . . . Shadow of Allah on the two Earths, ghulam of
. . . the Prince of the Believers Ali b. Abi Talib . . . the Musavid . . . the Husay-
nid’. See Blake, 152; Hunarfar, 475–6. On the post itself, see Munshi, 2:
1120n7. The occupant of the post c. 1616–17 also had military responsi-
bilities, and remained in office for some years. See ibid., 2: 1123, 1200, 1259–
60, 1265–7, 1270.
94 Blake, 152; Hunarfar, 477–9. Tadhkirat al-Muluk does not list this tribe but
Munshi (2: 648) describes them as having been ordered to arrest Darvish Khus-
raw. Malik Ali’s position attests to the continued influence of tribal elements at
court over this period. See also Munshi, 2: 941, 1100–1. On Malik Ali, see also
nn107, 122.
95 McChesney, ‘Waqf ’, 179. See also Babaie, et al., Slaves of the Shah, 90f.
96 See n61 above.
97 Blake, 168; Hunarfar, 148.
98 Hunarfar, 479; Godard, 122; Munshi, 1: 261.
99 Blake, 152; Hunarfar, 467–70; Godard, 99–101. Keyvani (143) calls Maqsud
Bek a coppersmith. Cf. Munshi, 2: 1111.
100 Blake, 152; Hunarfar, 620–1. On the Buyid mosque see also Tabrizi, 341.
101 Blake, 153; Hunarfar, 501–4. Nur al-Din’s brother, Aqa Mumin, built a bath-
house nearby. The 1629–30 Persian-language inscription refers to the just-
deceased Abbas as ‘the Husaynid’ and to Safi as ‘the just ruler (Padishah-i Adil)’.
102 The layout of the maydan where these were located resembles the Naqsh-i
Jahan square in miniature. The vaqf document dates from 1605. The same Ali
Riza Abbasi whose work appeared in Isfahan’s mosques from this period con-
tributed to the inscriptions. See Munshi, 2: 1261–2; Hillenbrand, 6: 793–5;
Canby, 116–7. See also S. Babaie, ‘The Mosque of Ganj Ali Khan in Kirman:
Shahsevani Loyalty and the Index of Belonging’, paper presented at the Fourth
International Round Table on Safavid Studies, Bamberg, July 2003; Babaie, et
al., Slaves of the Shah, 94–7.
103 Mudarrissi, Bargi, 29.
104 The traditional four ayvan plan is followed but absent any symmetry. The
communal areas are to the East not the qibla side or within the entrance com-
plex. Hillenbrand (6: 790–1, 795–6) noted that both this school and Ganj Ali
Khan’s Kirman complex attests that the emphasis on size, and the wealth to
produce it, were not confined to Isfahan in this period. See also Blake, 88;
Canby, 117; Babaie, et al., Slaves of the Shah, 92–4.
105 Babaie, et al., Slaves of the Shah, 95; Blake, 88–91. According to Chardin, the
196 Notes to pages 65–67
Khan’s mansion in Shiraz, the seat of his power inherited from his father, out-
shone the Isfahan house.
106 Blake, 89, 91. On Rustam Khan, see n34, n108; Munshi, 2: 944. At Rustam
Khan’s death, his brother inherited the mansion. At the latter’s death without
heir the shah inherited the mansion and gave it to the sadr, his own relative.
107 Blake, 32–3, 95, 74; Hillenbrand, 6: 779; Hunarfar, 487–93; Canby, 100;
Munshi, 2: 578; Babaie, Slaves of the Shah, 92–3. On the bridge’s date of
completion, see Melville, ‘New Light’, 63–9.
108 Blake, 123–4. In 1614 the sarai was dedicated to the Shah Mosque. From this
same time period dates a sarai in the city in the name of Ali Quli Khan, possibly
a reference to Ali Quli Khan Shamlu, Abbas’ tutor who died when the Uzbeks
seized Herat in 1588–9, or the brother of Rustam Khan Qaramanlu, the latter
killed in battle in 1606 (Munshi, 2: 944). The latter seems probable as he is
identified with a mansion in Isfahan, on which see below. See Blake, 43, 119,
89; n122.
109 Blake, 122–3.
110 Blake, 117f; Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning
(New York, 1994), 331–76. On coffee and coffee houses, see further below.
111 Melville, ‘Shah Abbas’, 212–13; Matthee, The Politics, 67. On Zaynab Bekum,
see Szuppe, 1995, 118, 113.
112 Naraqi, 310–18, 322, 414. On the ribat/sarai, see Kiani and Kleiss, esp. 798.
113 Ferrier, ‘Women in Safavid Iran: The Evidence of European Travellers’, in
Hambly, ed., 401–2, citing Chardin, who described the sarai as ‘one of the
finest and roomiest’ in the country.
114 Canby, The Golden Age, 106–7; Gray, 6: 896–7; Canby, Rebellious, 65f. See also
the work of Muhammad Qasim, who produced one of the few life-time portraits
of Abbas himself, as discussed in Adamova, ‘Muhammad Qasim and the Isfahan
School of Painting’, in Newman, ed., esp. 208; n68. Shiraz was also a centre of
armour production and arms feature in a drawing produced by Riza Abbasi
(Allan, Persian Steel, 143, 155). On a family of steel-makers of this period, see J.
Allan, ‘Abbas, Hajji’, EIr, 1: 76–7. On Riza’s portraits of Russian ambassadors,
which may have been influential in the development of his style, see n69.
115 Canby, 109, 111, 115.
116 Canby, 112–17; idem, Reformer, 177; Gray, 6: 911–12; Matthee, The Politics,
67; Welch, ‘Art’, 625; L. Golombek, ‘Riza Abbasi’s Wine Pot and Other Prob-
lems of Safavid Ceramics’, in Canby, Safavid Art and Architecture (London,
2002), 95–100. Later in the century Chardin (Canby, The Golden Age, 115)
named Shiraz, Mashhad, Yazd, Kirman, Zarand and Isfahan as the main
centres of ceramic production. See also Floor, The Economy, 322–3. On water
pipes and the popularity of smoking, see also Matthee, ‘Tobacco in Iran’, in
Smoke, A Global History of Smoking’, S. L. Gilman and Z. Xun, eds (London,
2004), 58–67.
117 Canby, 103–5. On the centres of textile production see esp. Floor, The Econ-
omy, 325. Inside Iran, over the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century
domestic centres such as Yazd and Kashan were important centres of textile and
other manufactured items, such as ceramics, whose goods were sold at home
and abroad (Floor, The Economy, 322–4). See also D. Walker, ‘Carpets. ix.
Safavid Period’, EIr, 4: 866–75, which includes pictures of Polonaise carpets.
Walker notes the paucity of carpets from the sixteenth century but characterises
carpet production from Abbas’ reign on as increasingly commercialised.
 Notes to page 68 197
118 Quinn, Historical, 19–23, 28–9, 43–5, 57–60. See also her ‘The Timurid His-
toriographical Legacy: A Comparative Study of Persianate Historical Writing’,
in Newman, ed., Society and Culture, 19–31; idem, ‘The Dreams of Shaykh Safi
al-Din and Safavid Historical Writing’, IS, 29(1–2) (1996), 139. On Qadi
Ahmad, see n23 of Chapter 2. Yazdi’s son and grandson were also court astro-
logers and historians, and, as such formed the second ‘multi-generational fam-
ily of Safavid historians, the first being Mir Khvand, his grandson Khvandamir
and the latter’s son Amir Mahmud. See Quinn, ‘Rewriting Nimatallahi His-
tory’, 205. Yazdi’s chronicle has been published as Mulla Jalal al-Din Munajjim
Yazdi, Tarikh-i Abbasi ya Ruznama-yi Mulla Jalal, S. Vahid Niya, ed. (Tehran,
1366/1987). For a medical ‘dynasty’ whose members served the court through
the reigns of Tahmasp and Abbas I, see our ‘Safavids – Religion, Philosophy
and Science’, 783.
Sadly, if understandably, Savory’s translation of Munshi’s chronicle does not
include the Turkish-language poetry Munshi had included therein, a further
testament to his loyalty to the dynasty and its origins and a reminder of the
potential gulf between ‘ruler’ and ‘ruled’.
119 Quinn, Historical, 87–8. The interest in Timurids among Safavid historians is
paralleled by that among such painters of the period as Riza Abbasi who, from
1612 to 1620, made direct use of paintings and drawings of Bihzad. See Canby,
Rebellious, 129–30, 110. The Timurids’ religious eclecticism and tolerance of
minorities, and their patronage of both Islamic and distinctly Persian cultural
projects, can only have informed the interest in, if not also reinterpretation of,
things Timurid in this period.
120 Quinn, Historical, 75, 80–1, 87; idem, ‘Notes on Timurid Legitimacy in Three
Safavid Chronicles’, Iranian Studies 32 (1998): 149–58; idem, ‘The Dreams of
Shaykh Safi al-Din’, 139–40. Quinn (‘Rewriting’, 209) notes that Qadi Ahmad
also did not downplay the Nimatallahi associations of Ismail’s vakil Abd al-Baqi
Yazdi, as had later Tahmasp-period chronicles. Of course, by now the family was
well linked to the family via numerous marriages, as recounted above.
121 A copy of Afzal’s third, final volume had been completed some four years
earlier in India in 1635. See Melville, ‘New Light’, 69. The Khuzani family had
served Ismail and Tahmasp. During the second interregnum, one member of the
family supported the pro-Abbas faction in Mashhad, and his son was briefly
Abbas I’s vizier before he fell with his ally the Ustajlu Murshid Quli Khan. Fazli
himself was vizier to a Qajar governor. On the family see n14 of Chapter 1;
Haneda, ‘La Famille Khuzani’, 83, 87, 89.
122 Morton, ‘The Early Years of Shah Ismail’, esp. 32f; nn66, 122.
123 Quinn, Historical, 100–23. See also Qummi and Munshi’s accounts of Ismail’s
victory at Firuzkuh, as well as mention in Junabadi’s 1625–6 Rawzat (241) of
Ismail’s order to his troops to eat the body of Shaybani Khan Uzbek, on which
see also n89 of Chapter 2. Falsafi (2: 125–6n2) cites another report of cannibal-
ism in Qummi dating to Khudabanda’s reign and also (2: 126–7) cites Junabadi
(724) and Yazdi (224, ad. 1010/1601) implicating Malik Ali Sultan in such
activities. Munshi (2: 1100–1), however, notes Malik Ali’s reputation as a wit
and a jester. See also Floor, ‘Khalifeh’, 62–4 and Dadvar, 268, the latter citing
Falsafi. As noted above (n67) references to the ‘Sufis of Lahijan’ also first appear
in these chronicles; see n14 of Chapter 1, citing Qummi’s Khulasat and Fazli’s
Afzal. Such references may have offset the impact of the challenge to Abbas by
other Lahijani Sufis in 1592–3 and again c. 1614–16. See the text ad n7, n128.
198 Notes to page 69
124 Canby, Rebellious, 77f; text above ad n113. The Russian traveller Kotov (n65
above) describes darvishes in the capital (Allan, Persian Steel, 313, citing P. M.
Kemp, transl. and ed., Russian Travellers to India and Persia, 1624–1798:
Kotov, Yefremov, Danibegov (Delhi, [1959], 25).
125 Having travelled to India, where he studied Hinduism and the occult sciences,
he wrote works on Yoga and Hinduism and on the vocations in society. Abbas I
is famously said to have queried Mir Findiriski’s frequent attendance at cock-
fights. See S. H. Nasr, ‘The School of Ispahan’, in M. M. Sharif, ed., A History
of Muslim Philosophy (Wiesbaden, 1966), 2: 922–6; H. Dabashi, ‘Mir Damad
and the Founding of the “School of Isfahan” ’, in History of Islamic Phil-
osophy, S. H. Nasr and H. Dabashi, eds (New York/London, 1996), 626–7;
Newman, ‘Mir Damad’ EIr, 6: 623–6.
126 Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 253, citing Sadr al-Din Muhammad Shirazi, Kasr
Asnam al-Jahiliyyih, M. T. Danishpazhuh, ed. (Tehran, 1340/1962), 3; Cooper,
‘Some Observations’, 151–2. See also Babayan, Mystics, 165f, 176f, 213f, on
the historical links between guilds and Sufi Alid movements, focusing especially
on Futuvvatnama-yi Sultani, the undated work of Kashifi (d. 1504–5), which
has been translated by J. R. Crook as The Royal Book of Spiritual Chivalry
(Chicago, 2000). See also n35 of Chapter 1. On this date for Kasr, see Muhsin
al-Amin, Ayan al-Shi
a (Damascus, 1935-) 17: 293. On Sadra see also nn133,
136 below. Abisaab (Converting Persia, 82–5) notes Lutfallah Maysi’s anger at
the ignorance of Shi
i doctrine and practice among local craftsmen and mer-
chants and Maysi’s self-promotion of his superior Arab/clerical background.
See also n131 below.
127 Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 195f.
128 Munshi, 2: 1096–9; Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 68; Savory, ‘The Office of “Khali-
fat” ’, 501; Floor, ‘Khalifeh’, 68. Dadvar (268) attributes the emigration of ‘the
Iranian sufis’ to India to this ‘massacre’, but lists only nineteen such Sufis as
having emigrated to India over the period and these for a variety of reasons
(269–79). On the Lahijani Sufis, see also the text ad n7 and nn 67, 123, and n14
of Chapter 1. Another son of Abbas, Imam Quli, was blinded in 1626–7 (Mun-
shi, 2: 1288). The Ottomans also now tended to eliminate such rivals (n6 of
Chapter 3, citing Munshi, 2: 1288). Also perhaps following Ottoman policy
Abbas gradually ceased sending his sons to important provincial centres (Röhr-
born, 61–8).
129 Munshi, 2: 1174, 1176; Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 62–3. See also Fazli Khuzani’s
account as discussed by Abrahams, 104.
Such accounts point to the presence of a complex view of illness and wellness
extant among all segments of Safavid society. See our ‘Baqir al-Majlisi and
Islamicate Medicine: Safavid Medical Theory and Practice Re-examined’, in
Newman, ed., Society and Culture, 371–96.
130 Matthee, ‘Coffee in Safavid Iran: Commerce and Consumption’, JESHO, 37
(1994), esp. 24–30; A. Al-i Davud, ‘Coffeehouse’, EIr, 6(1): 1–4; Floor, The
Economy, 140–3. On poets of this period, see also P. Losensky’s forthcoming
research on the poet Alinaqi Kamrai (d. 1620–2). See also A. Tamimdari, Irfan
va Adab dar Asr-i Safavi, 2 vols (Tehran, 1372–3), a discussion of Persian
poetry from this period as yet unexplored by Western-language writers.
131 Of such essays by Shaykh Bahai see, for example, I. Kanturi, Kashf al-Hujub
(Calcutta, 1914), 5, 256, 262, 287; Tehrani, 13: 61, 3: 340, 5: 63; Khatuna-
badi, 500; Newman, ‘Towards’, 191f, on Bahai’s Persian-language Jami
 Notes to pages 69–70 199
Abbasi. For such essays by Mir Damad, see Kanturi, 360, 375; Tehrani, 1: 407,
5: 156. For Majlisi, see Kanturi, 256, 265–6, 270; Tehrani, 2: 260, 6: 389, 13:
305, 15: 68, 313, 18: 369–70, 22: 258. For a Persian-language essay on the hajj
by the vizier Khalifa Sultan, see Tehrani, 1: 16.
The opposition to Lutfallah Maysi, for whom Abbas built a mosque in the
new maydan, expressed by Isfahan’s craft and merchant elements (Abisaab,
Converting Persia, 85; n126 above) suggests they, at least, objected to these
evangelistic efforts, if not also to the transferral of activities from the old,
traditional city centre to the new which the siting of Maysi’s mosque in the new
maydan betokened.
132 See our ‘Mir Damad’; H. Dabashi, ‘Mir Damad’; I. Netton, ‘Suhrawardi’s
Heir? The Ishraqi Philosophy of Mir Damad’, in Lewisohn and Morgan, eds,
225–46. Both Bahai and Mir Damad were also interested in medicine. See our
‘Safavids – Religion, Philosophy and Science’, 783.
133 See, most recently, S. Rizvi, ‘Reconsidering the Life of Mulla Sadra Shirazi:
Notes towards an Intellectual Biography’, Iran 40 (2002), 181–201, and his
forthcoming Mulla Sadra: Philosopher of the Mystics. See also Cooper, ‘Some
Observations’, 150–2; idem, ‘From al-Tusi to the School of Isfahan’, in History
of Islamic Philosophy, S. H. Nasr and H. Dabashi, eds (New York/London,
1996), 585–96; H. Ziai, ‘Mulla Sadra: His Life and Works’, in Nasr and
Dabashi, eds, 635–42; S. N. Nasr, ‘Mulla Sadra: His Teaching’, in Nasr and
Dabashi, eds, 643–62. For earlier sources on Sadra and the others mentioned
herein, see our ‘Safavids – Religion, Philosophy and Science’, EI2, 8: 781–2,
787. On Sadra’s arguably most famous philosophical contribution, see F. Rah-
man, ‘al-Asfar al-Arbaa’, EIr, 2: 744–7.
134 Newman, ‘Towards’, 179–85, 190–6; idem, ‘The Nature of the Akhbari/Usuli
Dispute in Late-Safawid Iran. Part Two: The Conflict Reassessed’, BSOAS,
55(2) (1992), 258–9; Newman, ‘Fayz’, esp. 37–8, 40–1, the latter citing a 1619
discussion on the prayer by Fayz Kashani (d. 1680), a student of Bahai and
Mulla Sadra, and Sadra’s son-in-law.
135 Where his father’s teacher Zayn al-Din had held lay believers were not in all
situations obliged to the lead of senior clerics and Ahmad Ardabili argued for
the obligatory nature of such a relationship (taqlid), both having avoided all
Safavid associations during their lifetimes, Bahai was a proponent of taqlid in
all religious matters. See our ‘Usuliyya’, forthcoming in EI2. Munshi (2: 1070)
records ‘violent arguments . . . on theological matters and problems of ijtihad’ –
the exercise of judicial interpretation absent sole recourse to the faith’s key
revealed texts – between Abdallah Shushtari and Lutfallah Maysi, both recipi-
ents of the shah’s favour. See also Abisaab, Converting Persia, 85–6. See also
nn137, 138.
136 On Bahai see our ‘Towards’, 185–90; Abisaab, Converting Persia, 87; n140
below. On Sadra’s residence in Kahak, see our ‘Fayz’, 38. See also D. MacEoin,
‘Mulla Sadra’, EI2, 7: 547–8. From this period probably dates Sadra’s Sih Asl, a
denunciation of some clerics for seeking worldly power coupled with a con-
demnation of ‘sincere spiritual [i.e. Sufi] practices as innovation’, a tradition of
balanced refutation evident also in the works of Hafiz and Rumi. See Cooper,
‘Some Observations’, 151.
Bahai’s strict rulings on the impurity of goods made, and consumption of
animals slaughtered, by ‘infidels’ (Abisaab, Converting Persia, 64–6) may have
been an effort to reaffirm his credentials among his ‘orthodox’ critics as well as
200 Notes to pages 70–73
delimit the Ottomans, who permitted both, as imperfect Muslims. Indeed,
Abisaab (ibid., 67) notes his other, more tolerant, rulings on relations between
Muslims and Christians per se. See also n137.
137 On Majlisi, see our ‘Fayz’, 40–1; S. M. Mahdavi, Zindigi-nama-yi Allama-yi
Majlisi (Tehran, 1378) 2: 351f. A 1619 ban on wine issued by the shah,
although it exempted many, including non-Muslims and foreigners, may have
been part of effort to cool various ‘popular’ passions and allay the concerns of
some ‘orthodox’ elements. See Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 1: 381–2.
On Astarabadi, often accounted the ‘founder’ of the Akhbari movement
within Twelver Shi
ism, his critique and Akhbarism itself in this period see,
most recently, Stewart, ‘The Genesis’. See also our ‘The Nature of the Akhbari/
Usuli Dispute’; n138.
138 Abdallah Shushtari and his own son Jafar disagreed on the legality of the per-
formance of Friday prayer by the cleric as the deputy of the Hidden Imam just
as Zayn al-Din and Shaykh Husayn had disagreed with Ali Karaki on the same
issue. In his Jami Abbasi, a legal manual written in Persian, Bahai himself
acknowledged the contemporary controversy over the prayer’s legality. See our
‘Towards’, 195; idem, ‘Fayz’, 35–8; n130; n31 of Chapter 6. Stewart (‘The
Genesis’, 181–2) notes additional criticisms of Shaykh Zayn al-Din by his own
son and others in addition to Astarabadi.
139 Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 105–6, 313; Floor, Safavid Government, 37. See also
our discussion above. Zaynal Khan Shamlu’s position, as either chief officer of
the Supreme Divan (ishikaqasibashi) or sipahsalar, or both during ‘Abbas’ last
years, is unclear in the sources. See Munshi, 2: 1283; Muhammad Masum
Isfahani, Khulasat al-Siyar (Tehran, 1368/1989), 33, 55; Babayan, ‘The Wan-
ing’, 109, 111; Roemer, 6: 280. On the first office, see Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 47.
Its previous holders from at least 1591–2, had also been Shamlu (Munshi, 2:
1309, 922, 810, 614). On Isfahani’s Khulasat see n1 of the following chapter.
Babayan’s charts of the members of the various ‘cabinets’ over the period are
also available in Babaie, et al., Slaves of the Shah, 139f.
140 On the Jews in this period, see the references herein (nn46, 59, 85), nn26, 30 of
Chapter 6, and nn56,77 of Chapter 7. Gurney (114) refers to Lar as a centre of
Jewish learning in this period. See also Kemp, 21–3. Netzer, (‘Conversion, iv. Of
Persian Jews to Other Religions’, EIr, 6: 235), cites efforts c. 1613 and 1620 to
convert Jews, over the objections of such court clerics as Shaykh Bahai.
141 Farhad Khan Qaramanlu’s execution was not only down to his failure of battle
but also to suspicions over his loyalty to the shah. As was frequently the case
over the period, individual disloyalty as not taken as a sign of family disloyalty,
and Farhad’s brother was not killed. See Munshi, 2: 755–60. Yaqub Khan
Dhul-Qadr’s disloyalty did not forestall the advancement of other members of
the tribe, as noted above in n20. Even in 1596–7 some Takkalu elements still
enjoyed the shah’s favour. See Szuppe, ‘Kinship Ties’, 92–5.

5 Shifts at the Centre and a Peace Dividend: Shah Safi (1629–1642)

1 These included Abbas’ son-in-law the Tajik sayyid Khalifa Sultan, vizier since
1624, and Isa Khan Safavi, another son-in-law and qurchibashi since 1612. Also
present were Abul-Qasim Evughlu, ishikaqasi (defined as ‘usher’ by Minorsky,
Tadhkirat, 77, 138) of the haram since 1617, and, the ishikaqasibashi
 Notes to page 73 201
Zaynal Khan of the Bekdilu, apparently a Shamlu subclan. On Abul-Qasim, see
Munshi, 2: 717, 947, 975, 1147; Floor, Safavid Government, 169. On Zaynal
Khan, see Munshi, 2: 1194, 1172, 1233, 1283, 1309–10 and n138 of the previ-
ous chapter. For these events, see Muhammad Masum Isfahani, Khulasat, 33,
11–18, 311f.
Isfahani’s chronicle covers the years 1627 to 1641–2, through the accession of
Abbas II. The author, apparently related to the vizier of Lahijan and governor of
Qarabagh, held a court position which entailed travel with Safi. This text has yet
to be subjected to the sort of analysis undertaken by Quinn for the pre-Safi court
chronicles. The sections of Valih Isfahani’s 1667 Khuld-i Barin which cover the
reigns of Safi and Abbas II, edited by M. R. Nasiri and published as Iran dar
Zaman-i Shah Safi va Shah Abbas-i Duvvum (1038–1071), a single volume, in
Tehran in 1380/2001, were not available to the author at the time of writing.
Munshi, author of Tarikh-i Alam Ara-yi Abbasi, added material to this work
until his own death in 1633, several years after Safi’s accession. To produce a text
which covered the entirety of Safi’s reign, S. Khvansari published this additional
material of Munshi together with that on Safi until the latter’s death in 1642
from Khuld-i Barin as Zayl-i Tarikh- i Alam Ara-yi Abbasi (Tehran, 1317/1938)
which volume was also not available to the present author. Thanks to W. Floor
and M. Sefatgol for their assistance with this bibliographical information.
2 Sam’s father was Muhammad Baqir, murdered in 1614 after being implicated in
a plot against his father. The fate of Abbas’ three uterine brothers, Hamza Mirza
(d. 1586), Abu Talib and Tahmasp (d. 1619–20) has been discussed. Hasan
Mirza, Abbas’ brother by a Gilani notable, had been killed in 1577 by Ismail II.
In 1620–1 and 1626–7 Abbas blinded his own sons Muhammad Mirza and
Imam Quli respectively. Another son died a natural death. See Munshi, 1:
208–13, 2: 612, 614, 692, 825, 1099, 1177, 1187, 1288, 1303; 1288n. See also
Savory, Iran Under, 94–5; Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 90n207. On Khudabanda’s
brothers and their fates, see Munshi, 1: 213f.
3 Munshi (2: 1302–3) noted the speed of the accession process ‘to preserve the
stability of the realm and to guard against possible mischief, because the capital
was full of [all?] sorts and conditions of men . . . if the future Shah Safi had not
been at the capital when the news of the death of Shah Abbas was published,
serious riots and insurrections might have resulted . . . Large numbers of troops
were stationed in Isfahan, some of whom reliable and some not.’
4 Abbas I had appointed no vakil, the post of qullaraqasi was vacant at his death,
and the post of sipahsalar was also less important than it had been. Khalifa
Sultan and Isa Khan retained their posts and Zaynal Khan Shamlu was now
appointed vakil and sipahsalar. Abbas’ sadr, the Tajik sayyid Rafi al-Din
Muhammad Shahristani, like the first two above a son-in-law of the shah, also
remained in his post. Khusraw Mirza, the Georgian governor of Isfahan whose
brother’s daughter was a wife of Abbas, was appointed qullaraqasi and given the
name Rustam Khan. Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 105–6, 313; Floor, Safavid Gov-
ernment, 13, 16, 18, 21, 37, 142, 172; Floor, ‘sadr’, 482, 483n134. On Rustam
Khan’s earlier career, including his campaigns in Georgia and Baghdad, see Mun-
shi 2: 1168, 1250, 1280; Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 108. See also Munshi 2: 1069,
1146–7, 1261. Thanks to K. Babayan for her assistance with the various sadrs.
5 Mir Damad, a descendent of Ali Karaki, read the prayer at the ceremony. Other
clerics who attended included: Mirza Habiballah, son-in-law of Lutfallah Maysi
and the son of Sayyid Husayn Karaki, and hence another relative of Ali Karaki,
202 Notes to pages 73–74
and Hasan Ali Shushtari, the son of Abdallah, for whom Abbas had built a
school. See Munshi, 2: 1300ff; Isfahani, 35–9. See also Sayyid Abd Husayn
Husayni Khatunabadi, Vaqai al-Sinin val-Avvam (Tehran, nd), 508–9.
Khatunabadi (d. 1693) was a student of Taqi Majlisi and Muhammad Baqir
Sabzavari (d. 1679). On the latter, an associate of Khalifa Sultan, see the follow-
ing chapter. Not a court chronicle per se, Khatunabadi’s Persian-language text
records events to the year 1686, with additional entries being added by his
descendants.
6 Isfahani (41–2) notes payments to various courtiers, ghulams, qurchis, musket-
eers, those in the royal workshops and other military and political officials at
court and in the provinces. Imam Quli Khan, son of the of the ghulam Allahvirdi
Khan, and governor of Fars, Lar and Bahrayn, was said to have received as a gift
a sum equivalent to the total of Fars’ tax burden for one year. Isfahani noted
the resulting outpouring of support among the large numbers who attended
the accession ceremonies at the Shah Mosque, itself completed several years
thereafter. See also Matthee, The Politics, 119.
7 Baghdad was administered by a Georgian, appointed by Abbas in 1622–3, and
later commander in all of Persian Iraq and warden of the Iraqi Shi
i shrines, and
one of the ghulams raised to amir-status. See Munshi, 2: 1223, 1226–7, 1316;
Roemer, 6: 283–4.
8 Matthee, The Politics, 121, and our discussion below. On Qishm see also Floor’s
The First Dutch-Iranian Commercial Conflict (Costa Mesa, 2004), unavailable to
the present author. Although Isfahani does not offer great detail on Safavid mili-
tary forces over Safi’s reign, their composition over the period appears to have
been as complex as during Abbas’ reign. See, for example, Isfahani, 190, 262.
9 Munshi, 1302–3; Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 93–6.
10 Isa Khan Safavi, three of his sons and the grandson of the son who had allowed
himself to be identified with claims to the succession at Abbas’ death, were all
killed. The sons of all Abbas’ daughters were blinded. Zubayda Bekum, Abbas
I’s daughter and Safi’s aunt, and Isa Khan’s wife who had put forth the claim of
her own son and may have tried to poison Safi, seem also to have been killed.
Khalifa Sultan, Abbas’ Tajik sayyid vizier and son-in-law, was put under house
arrest. His four sons were blinded, as were those of the sadr, another son-in-law.
The sons of the guardian of the Mashhad shrine, himself yet another of Abbas’
sons-in-law, were also blinded. See Isfahani, 124–5, 132; Babayan, ‘The Waning’,
99, 113–14. Yusuf Aqa, master of the ghulams of the royal haram and supervisor
of Isfahan’s Armenian community, was also executed. A relative who was gov-
ernor of Shirvan, and a key figure in the royal silk monopoly, also lost his post.
See Matthee, The Politics, 120–1 and our discussion below.
11 Several months later a son of Imam Quli Khan – himself son of Allahvirdi Khan
and formerly head of all the ghulams – who claimed to be a son of Abbas rose in
Georgia. At this Imam Quli Khan and his family all were killed. The province of
Fars, which had been governed by Imam Quli Khan, was seized as crown land.
See Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 109, 114n271, 109, 109n259; Roemer, 6: 283–5
notes a rising among the Mushasha following the murder of Imam Quli Khan in
1632. On Rustam Khan see further below. In the same time frame Mulayim Bek,
the royal factor, or court merchant, responsible for silk deliveries, purportedly
became involved in an embezzlement scheme such that by 1632 he lost any role
in the silk trade whatsoever. Matthee, The Politics, 124. See also Savory, ‘Cerag
Khan Zahedi’, EIr, 5: 263.
 Notes to pages 74–75 203
12 The Tajik Mirza Abu Talib Urdubadi, the son of Abbas’ vizier Hatim Bek, was
vizier; the ghulam Rustam Bek was sipahsalar, head of the musketeers, and
divanbeki; the Georgian Khusraw Mirza, now renamed Rustam Khan, was head
of the ghulam, but was replaced by the ghulam Siyavush Bek. The Evughlu
apparently held the post of the ishikaqasi of the haram, in the form of the
brother of Abul-Qasim, the post’s previous holder. The new sadr was Habiballah
Karaki, son of Sayyid Husayn Karaki who had displaced Bahai’s father as
Qazvin’s Shaykh al-Islam under Tahmasp. Tajik sayyids held other key adminis-
trative posts. See Munshi, 2: 1147; Isfahani, 61, 94, 172, 247, 380; Babayan,
314, 114n268; Floor, Safavid Government, 20, 237, 185; idem, ‘Judicial’, 22.
On Rustam Bek, see also Babayan, ibid., 102; Floor, ‘Judicial’, 22; idem, Safavid
Government, 18, 21, 185.
13 Urdubadi was executed. Rustam Bek remained sipahsalar and head of the mus-
keteers and divanbeki. The ghulam Siyavush Bek remained qullaraqasi, Karaki
remained sadr and the Evughlu retained sway over the haram. A Dhul-Qadr was
appointed qurchibashi and a Shamlu was designated ishikaqasibashi. See
Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 314–15; Floor, Safavid Government, 142, 172; idem,
‘Judicial’, 22. On Saru Taqi, see Floor, ‘The Rise and Fall of Mirza Taqi, The
Eunuch Grand Vizier (1043–55/1633–45), Makhdum al-Omara va Khadem al-
Foqara’, SIr, 26(2) (1997), 249; Babayan, ibid., 114f; Isfahani, 164; Munshi,
2: 1322–3; Matthee, The Politics, 129f.
14 For differing interpretations of these coups, see Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 95–6,
114–22; Floor, ‘The Rise’, 246–50, 263f; Babayan, Mystics, 401n91. The analy-
sis of the former is also on offer in Babaie, et al., Slaves of the Shah, 20–48. Floor
(ibid., 264) also notes Röhrborn’s analysis (50f) that at the end of Safi’s reign
ghulams governed but three of eleven key provinces. See also Matthee, ‘Adminis-
trative Change and Stability in Late 17th c. Iran: The Case of Shaykh Ali Khan
Zanganah (1669–89)’, IJMES, 26 (1994), 78.
The careers of the Saru Taqi and the ghulam Rustam Bek illustrate yet again
how loyalty to the person of the shah and ability promised advancement. On
Saru Taqi, who had, in fact, been castrated as a punishment by Abbas I, see
Floor, ‘The Rise’, 249; Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 114f; idem, Mystics, 383; Isfa-
hani, 164; Munshi, 2: 1322–3; Matthee, The Politics, 129f. On Rustam Bek, see
the sources cited in n12 above, and also Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 102; Floor,
‘Judicial’, 22; idem, Safavid Government, 18, 21, 185.
15 Isfahani, 49–54; Floor, ‘The Rise’, 249, 246. Isfahani (50) notes that the rebels
targeted Rasht’s merchants, broke into royal warehouses and seized and sold off
the silk therein, forcing a drop in prices – suggesting an economic aspect to the
rising. See also Matthee, The Politics, 122; Floor, ‘The Dutch’, 351–3. On Gilan,
see Röhrborn, 90–1, 178. See also Roemer, 6: 283–6.
16 Isfahani, 117–21; Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 103–4, 148f. Isfahani notes (121) the
‘strange sciences (ulum ghariba)’ by which were produced luxurious goods seen
in the Darvish’s house. Babayan’s figure of seventy-five killed in the final clash
with Safavid forces is based on Yusuf Valhi’s Khuld-i Barin, itself completed in
1667.
17 Matthee, ‘Coffee’, 25–6, citing contemporary travellers’ accounts. See also n35.
The association between Sufi discourse and the bazaar continued strong: in
1634–5 a prominent local fruit merchant funded repairs to the tomb of Baba
Qasim in Isfahan (Blake, 170; Hunarfar, 302–11). About the same time a local
dyer built and donated a number of shops as vaqf to a small mosque in the city
204 Notes to page 76
(Hunarfar, 541–3). At his death in 1640 Mir Findiriski, on whom see above, was
buried near the tomb of Baba Rukn al-Din, a popular local site of pilgrimage
built by Abbas (Blake, 170; Hunarfar, 543–6). On such Sufi tendencies in such
provincial cities as Kashan, see Naraqi, 196–7, 335–6, 347–8; Zarrabi, 505.
18 Soon after his accession, Safi visited Qum and the Iraqi shrine cities, where he
distributed funds among local religious officials, and Hilla. In 1631 major
improvements were ordered to the Najaf shrine. See Isfahani, 64, 111f, 129–130,
149, 158, 164; Saru Taqi’s association with the latter project contributed to his
subsequent rise to prominence. In Isfahan, substantial sums were earmarked for
religious teaching (Tabrizi, Faraid, 297) and work continued on the Shah
Mosque, which was completed in 1630–1 (Hunarfar, 450–2; Godard, 107f.).
The Aqa Nur mosque, in which a 1629 inscription referred to Safi in Persian as
‘the just shah (shah-i adil)’, was completed in these years (Hunarfar, 501–4;
Canby, 121). The Imamzada of Ismail, the grandson of the second Imam, begun
by Abbas, was also completed now; a 1631 inscription therein described Safi as
the ‘propagator of the faith of the Infallibles . . . the Husaynid . . . the Musavid’.
See Blake, 47, 171; Hunarfar, 521–40; Godard, 131–42. The Abdallah Shushtari
school is usually dated to the reign of Abbas I. Cf. Canby, 121, citing Hillenbrand,
6: 796. Safi’s court retainer Isfahani refers to Safi as the ‘shadow of Allah’ (37,
110, 208, 269, 297–9).
Outside the capital, however, Safi was not consistently ascribed such titles. A
1637–8 firman in Yazd referred to Safi only as ‘the Husaynid’. See I. Afshar,
‘Similar Farmans from the reign of Shah Safi’, in Melville, ed., Safavid Persia,
293. For a 1637–8 firman in Kashan, where Abbas I was buried, see Naraqi,
222–3, and for a 1634–5 firman in Isfahan itself, see Hunarfar, 541–3. Compare
Khatunabadi, 508.
Upon his accession Safi also dropped the ban on tobacco instituted by his
grandfather but is known to have reinstituted it several times. See Isfahani, 39;
Jafariyan, Ilal bar Uftadan-i Safaviyyan (Tehran, 1373), 355, dating a firman
against tobacco to 1628–9. On similar Ottoman and Mughal bans, see Matthee,
‘Tutun’ EI2, 10: 755; idem, ‘Tobacco in Iran’, 66. See also Floor, The Economy,
259.
19 Mir Damad participated in Safi’s accession, led the Friday prayer in Isfahan
thereafter and accompanied Safi on his trip to Iraq, during which he died.
Isfahani (96, 111) calls Mir Damad ‘the seal of the mujtahids’, a title previously
ascribed to Mir Damad’s ancestor Ali Karaki and the latter’s daughter’s son
Sayyid Husayn Karaki. See also Tehrani, 1: 407. Safi also invited Fayz Kashani,
student of Shaykh Bahai and Mulla Sadra and the latter’s son-in-law, to the
capital, though Fayz declined (see ad n30 and n43, both in the following chap-
ter). Sometime before 1634–5 Safi asked Mulla Sadra himself to translate por-
tions of the Ihya of Ghazali (d. 1111) into Persian and also made overtures to
Mir Findiriski, the close associate of Bahai and Mir Damad well known for his
interest in Indian faiths and for his lower-class Sufi connections. Before Safi’s
accession Shaykh Bahai’s student Taqi Majlisi himself apparently approached
Safi with details of a dream portending Abbas’ death and Safi’s accession. See
Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 279–80. On Safi and Fayz, see our ‘Fayz’, 41.
20 Matthee, The Politics, 120–1; McCabe, 146. See also Keyvani, 159. Though
such contemporary Europeans as Olearius, on whom see below, Tavernier, and
Chardin held that Safi introduced the khassa system of direct central ownership
of land (see Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 26; Röhrborn, 173) the first major accrual of
 Notes to pages 76–77 205
land to the crown during Safi’s reign, that of Fars, occurred after the 1632
murder of governor Imam Quli Khan and his family. The only other area made
khassa land during Safi’s reign was Lar, in 1636. See Röhrborn, 177–8; Savory,
Iran Under, 228–9.
21 Herzig, ‘The Volume’, 64, 69; Floor, The Economy, 173. The 60% profit on
Iranian silk sold in Holland in 1629 spurred the Dutch to renegotiate their trade
agreements to expand silk purchases. The court, no doubt itself also aware of the
profit differentials between the overland and Gulf routes, sent minor officials to
conduct these discussions. These latter were happy to receive bribes which, as
will be noted in Chapter 8, were in effect a salary, while ignoring Dutch
entreaties. When, needing cash, the court levied a surcharge on all privately
purchased silk, the VOC turned to the Armenians only to find them also well
attuned to the shifting profit margins between selling to the VOC and shipping
via the Levant route: the Armenians insisted on payment in advance. Matthee,
The Politics, 124f, 243. On the Armenians’ prosperity in these years, see
McCabe, 148–51; Ghougassian, 59. The large sum of money was found with
Yusuf Aqa, then supervisor of Isfahan’s Armenian community, at his execution
in 1632 (n10), further underlines this prosperity, even at the outset of Safi’s
reign. See Matthee, The Politics, 120–1.
22 This overture was, however, not only rebuffed but, in 1638 Ottoman clerics
issued a legal ruling (fatva) against the Shi
a. See Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi
Din, 1:83.
23 Floor, A Fiscal, 227; idem, ‘The Rise’, 248–51; Matthee, The Politics, 130;
Ghougassian, 59, citing Olearius. Qandahar was lost in when the local governor,
disaffected with Saru Taqi’s withdrawal of certain subsidies, placed himself
under the jurisdiction of the Mughal Shah Jahan (reg. 1628–58). Isfahani, 251,
254–5.
24 On four firmans issued in 1636 and inscribed at provincial sites granting conces-
sions, respectively, to Hindus, Kabulis, certain local tribes and numerous guilds
and classes of the poor, see Afshar, ‘Similar Farmans’, 285–304.
25 In 1635, during negotiations with the VOC on a new treaty, the vizier requested
8,000 tumans loan from the Dutch to pay Safavid troops. In 1637, with a
German silk mission also present in the country, Saru Taqi drove the Dutch a
hard bargain on silk. In 1638 the court limited all private silk purchases to amass
cheaper-grade silk itself for sale to the Europeans, though Iran continued to send
Armenian merchants to Europe to sell silk directly. The VOC was forced to agree
to buy most of the court’s silk. See Matthee, The Politics, 131–3.
26 Floor, ‘The Dutch’, 351–3. On the companies’ preference to sell their goods for
cash, see also Floor, The Economy, 117–18.
27 The English depended more than the VOC on selling products in the Iranian
market to finance their silk purchases. English cloth being both unsuitable for
the Iranian market, and often of poor quality, the EIC had to pay cash for its silk.
Economics therefore dictated an end to EIC silk export, and the company
exported its last bales of silk in 1641, just as Indian and Chinese silk was becom-
ing available. Unsurprisingly the court treated the EIC with increasingly greater
disregard than the Dutch. On the EIC’s position in Iran over the period, see
Matthee, The Politics, 133f, 145, 243; Floor, The Economy, 148–9, 173–4;
Ferrier, ‘The Terms’, 65f.
On the companies’ silk exports, and consequently the court’s attention
thereto, as incidental to the overall volume of Iran’s silk trade over this entire
206 Notes to page 77
period, see Floor, ‘The Dutch’, 352; Herzig, ‘The Volume’, esp. 63–71, 74; idem,
‘The Rise’, 317–18. Floor suggests (The Economy, 173–5) that the Gulf-based
trading companies obtained at best 25% of the market in 1628, 1630, 1640.
Thereafter VOC averaged only 400 bales per year and after 1654 200 bales, out
of approximately 4,000 bales produced per year. If these are not absolutely
accurate figures, as Herzig (‘The Volume’, 79) acknowledges, they do give a
reasonable, relative, picture of the period’s trading activity and the relative sig-
nificance of the Gulf silk trade. See also Matthee, The Politics, 133f, 145, 123,
128, 243. On Zuhab itself, see Matthee, ‘Iran’s Ottoman Diplomacy During the
Reign of Shah Sulayman I (1077–1105/1666–94)’, in K. Eslami, ed., Iran and
Iranian Studies, Essays in Honor of Iraj Afshar (Princeton, 1998), 148–9. Coffee
imports briefly promised potential profits to the foreign companies but were
throttled by competition from private European and local merchant elements.
See Matthee, ‘Coffee’, 7–13.
28 McCabe, 150–1. Armenian wealth in the period was such that by 1634 there
were more than twenty active churches in Isfahan. See Ghougassian, 59, 94, 101,
182.
29 Bespeaking the centre’s partiality for Armenian over foreign interests in particu-
lar, the court consistently sided with the complaints of Armenian church officials
against the activities of foreign missionaries. See Ghougassian, 137. In this, the
anti-missionary polemics of Mir Damad’s son-in-law Sayyid Ahmad Alavi
(d. between 1644 and 1650) during the reign of both Abbas and Safi, suited
court interests. On Alavi see also further below. See also Matthee, ‘Between’,
237; A. H. Hairi, ‘Reflections on the Shi
i Responses to Missionary Thought and
Activities in the Safavid Period’, in Calmard, ed., Études, 151–64, esp. 155–7;
F. Richard, ‘L’apport de Missionaires Européens à la Connaissance de l’Iran en
Europe et de l’Europe en Iran’, in Calmard, ed., Études, 251–66; Richard,
‘Capuchin’, 787. On Sayyid Ahmad, see H. Corbin, ‘Ahmad b. Zayn al-Abedin
Alavi Ameli Esfahani, Sayyed’, EIr, 1: 644–6; Abisaab, Converting Persia,
79–81.
30 See Floor, The Economy, 199f, 245. Floor (ibid., 173) notes the Banyans were
sending out silk via the overland route to India. The Indian trade included rice,
sugar, spices, steel for weapons, indigo, cotton goods and wool. Cotton was
imported despite the centre’s best efforts. See Floor, ibid., 125, 126f, 133f, 136f,
147f, 149f, 156f. Keyvani (130) notes trade and manufacture specialisation in
various cities in this period. See also Floor, The Economy, 247–301.
31 Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 314–5; Floor, ‘sadr’, 482.
32 Sayyid Ahmad penned his own anti-Sufi diatribe in 1633. In 1634 Kamrai com-
posed an essay criticising Safi’s request to Mulla Sadra translate Ghazali into
Persian. An opponent of Friday prayer during the occultation, Kamrai also
declared the present age devoid of any mujtahid; that this was not an Akhbari-
style criticism, see Stewart, The Genesis, 187. See our ‘Clerical Perceptions of
Sufi Practices in Late Seventeenth-Century Persia: Arguments Over the Permissi-
bility of Singing (Ghina)’, in L. Lewisohn and D. Morgan, eds, The Heritage of
Sufism, Vol. III: Late Classical Persianate Sufism: the Safavid and Mughal Period
(1501–1750), (Oxford, 1999), 135–64; Babayan, ‘The Waning’ 135–6, 141n,
195f, 326–8, 342; idem, Mystics, 250f. R. Jafariyan has published a number of
these anti-Abu Muslim essays in Miras-i Islami-yi Iran, 2 (Qum, 1374), 247–302.
Taqi Majlisi’s apparent disclaimer of interest in the Dhahabi Sufi order in this
period (C. Turner, Islam Without Allah? The Rise of Religious Externalism in
 Notes to pages 78–79 207
Safavid Iran, Richmond, 2000, 153) was likely an effort to defend himself from
association with resurgent popular interest in Abu Muslim in the face of such
polemics.
Coincident with these events Shaykh Ali Amili, a direct descendant of Shaykh
Zayn al-Din Amili and a relative of Ali Karaki on his mother’s side, relocated to
Iran from the West. Shaykh Ali was a fierce opponent of both Muhammad Amin
Astarabadi and the Akhbari school and of philosophical inquiry, Sufism, and
Friday prayer. See the following chapter.
33 Melville, ‘Shah Abbas’, 218; Afshar, ‘Similar Farmans’, 285; Isfahani, 144,
168–9, 195, 234–5, 238.
34 Absolution involved a ritual beating with a stick called chub-i tariq. Morton,
‘The Chub-i Tariq’, 227–9, 231, 233, 233n29, 234–5. Morton (ibid., 243) sug-
gests that the continuation of the ceremony throughout the later Safavid period
points to the continued prominence of the Qizilbash in the period, their existence
being required to balance ‘the new forces he (Abbas I) had created at their
expense’. Compare Savory, ‘The Office of “Khalifat al-Khulafa” ’, 501–2. On
the ritual beatings performed by the Khalifa during Tahmasp’s reign, see
Membré (42–3). See also Floor, ‘Khalifeh’, 73.
35 Olearius, perhaps unwittingly observing dissident spiritual traditions at work,
noted the presence of the traditional story-tellers who would recite the stories of
the martyrdom of Husayn and other Shi
i historical figures during these festivals.
Calmard notes these story-tellers based their recitations at least partly on the
works of Muhtasham, the poet ordered by Tahmasp to produce more ‘religious’
poetry. Calmard includes a 1641 letter on the Ashura festival composed by the
lay companion of the Carmelite bishop of Baghdad. Calmard, ‘Shi
i Rituals and
Power II’, 146–7, 148, 152, 154, 155–6, 162, 164; Morton, ‘The Ardabil
Shrine’, (1975), 54–5. See also Babayan (Mystics, 219f) on travellers’ accounts
of these ceremonies. On Olearius’ claim to have seen the tomb of Abbas I in
Ardabil, see n64 of Chapter 4.
Although Matthee (The Politics, 139, 142–5) blames the failure of the
Russian trade route on Safi’s ‘diminished interest in the outside world’, the
resistance of local Russian merchants, the continuing Cossack raids into Gilan in
the early 1630s and the greater profits to be made from and the reliability of the
Levant route, especially after Zuhab, were certainly factors as well. See also
Canby, 124.
36 In 1640 Safi issued a firman confirming the holdings of the Marashi family as
custodians of the Qazvin shrine. Mudarrissi, Bargi, 31, 169–72. See also
Jafariyan, ‘Munasibat’, 17–18, on several prominent Arab sayyids who visited
Isfahan in the late 1630s.
37 Blake, 151, 153; Godard, 146–7; Hunarfar, 547–52. See also S. Babaie, ‘Building
for the Shah: the Role of Mirza Muhammad Taqi (Saru Taqi) in Safavid Royal
Patronage of Architecture’, in S. Canby, ed., Safavid Art and Architecture, 20–6;
Babaie, et al., Slaves of the Shah, 101f.
38 The darugha’s Tajik assistant in the city built a mansion next to that of the vizier.
Blake, 89; Hunarfar, 549–52.
39 Blake, 89. Rustam Khan later spearheaded the capture of Tiflis and died in office.
See Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 114.
40 Blake, 94, 90.
41 Canby, 103, 122–4, 134f; Munshi, 2: 1260. The flower paintings, dated to 1640,
in the Abdallah Shushtari school suggest his interest in European sources and
208 Notes to pages 79–80
may have been produced to be supplied to weavers as the basis for textile
designs. The ‘Portuguese’ carpets, so-called for their serrated, central medallion
containing blossoms, partridges and hoopoes and corners, with ships manned by
figures dressed in European, apparently Portuguese, clothes, also attest to
European influence and an interface between Riza Abbasi’s paintings and textile
patterns, as do a series of textiles sent with the 1639 Iranian mission to Duke
Frederich III. Kirman continued to be a carpet centre where carpets using vase-
style techniques were still being produced. See Canby, The Golden Age, 124–6;
Walker, ‘Carpets’, 873–4. On Riza Abbasi and his European influences, see
Canby, Reformer, 172, 175, 167, 193, 195; Matthee, ‘Between Aloofness and
Fascination: Safavid Views of the West’, IS, 31(2) (Spring 1998), 231–2. On
Dutch painters and jewellers in Iran in this period, see Floor, ‘Dutch-Persian
Relations’; n77 of the previous chapter.
42 Canby, The Golden Age, 61, 78, 111–12, 116–17, 124–7; Floor, The Economy,
323–4, 321.
43 Canby, The Golden Age, 122. On father and son, see Munshi, 2: 1260, 1316.
The career of Qarachaqay Khan and his son in respect of Khurasan thus parallels
that of Allahvirdi Khan and his son Imam Quli Khan as successive governors of
Fars. Adamova’s reference to a Farhad and Shirin copied in 1635 whose mini-
atures were done by Muhammad Qasim, another student of Sadiqi Bek, for
Qarachaqay Khan perhaps refers to his son, as Qarachaqay Khan had died some
ten years before. See Adamova, ‘Muhammad Qasim’, in Newman, 209. If
Muhammad Qasim was producing for Safi prior to his accession (ibid., 207) he
was not averse to seeking out other patrons.
44 Savory discusses the reigns of the last four shahs in his last chapter, which he
entitled ‘Decline and Fall of the Safavids’. The chapter opens with the quote from
Chardin (226), itself cited by Lockhart (The Fall, 16), Stevens (441), and in our
Introduction. As noted earlier, Chardin arrived in Iran only in 1666, the last year
of the reign of Safi’s successor, i.e. two decades after Safi’s death. See Stevens,
425; J. Emerson, ‘Chardin’, EIr, V(4): 369–77; Lockhart, ‘European Contacts’,
6: 399–401; H. Winter, ‘Persian Science in Safavid Times’, in Peter Jackson, ed.,
6: 585; Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 7, 7n46. Prior to the papers cited in n12 of our
Introduction only Stevens (441) had queried the usefulness of a comment made
by one so young, twenty-two, when he arrived in Iran more than thirty years
after Abbas’ death. Savory himself (Iran Under, 229) notes that Safi’s ‘black-
ened’ reputation owes much to the opinions of such European writers as the
Jesuit Krusinski and Jonas Hanway who reached Iran only sixty and a hundred
years after Safi’s death respectively. Chardin’s erroneous dating of the develop-
ment of the khassa system to Safi’s reign has been noted. But see also Canby,
118; Blake, 10; Matthee, The Politics, 124–5, 176, dating to Safi’s reign the
financial constraints and military weakness which he suggests plagued the polity
later in the century; idem, ‘Administrative Change’, 79, on the growth of khassa
land as a sign of Safavid weakness.
45 Although ghulams held but three of eleven governorships, versus eight of four-
teen at Abbas’ death, among the key officials at the centre the balance of power
remained roughly the same over the period. The post of qurchibashi remained in
tribal hands: in 1638 the Dhul-Qadr qurchibashi was replaced by Jani Khan
Shamlu who remained in office until 1645. The Georgian Rustam Khan
remained divanbeki until 1635 when he was replaced by his brother who
remained in office until 1642. Rustam Khan himself remained sipahsalar until
 Notes to page 81 209
March 1643. A Shamlu replaced the Shamlu ishikaqasi of the Supreme Divan in
1637 and another Evughlu replaced the Evughlu ishikaqasi of the haram in
1637–8. Saru Taqi himself remained vizier. Karaki remained sadr, and Tajiks
held other of the centre’s important administrative posts. See Isfahani, 139, 141,
147, 197, 222, 242, 310; Babayan, ‘The Waning’ 315, 316; Floor, Safavid
Government, 140, 21, 21n125; 37; idem, ‘Judicial’, 22; idem, ‘The Rise’, 264.
On the continued mixed composition of Safavid military forces in this period,
see n8.

6 The Peace Dividend Consolidated: Shah Abbas II (1642–1666)

1 Isfahani, 303f; Valiquli b. Daud Quli Shamlu, Qisas al-Khaqani, H. S. Nasiri,
ed., 2 vols (Tehran, 1371), 266f. Shamlu (d. after 1674), a historian and poet
who had served as comptroller in Sistan, completed his chronicle between 1664
and 1674. He occasionally cites Abbasnama (e.g. 405, 415), on which see the
following note. See also Nasiri’s introduction to the text. Thanks to K. Babayan
for her comments on the dating of Qisas.
2 Tax concessions were distributed among the provinces, key officials were con-
firmed in their posts, and official robes of honours were sent to all incumbents.
According to Mirza Muhammad Tahir Vahid Qazvini’s Abbasnama, a tax
amnesty was granted to all those whose salaries were in arrears, at a cost esti-
mated at 500,000 tumans. Favaid Safaviyya, completed in 1796, alleges some
300,000 tumans in gifts was spent at Abbas II’s accession. The hardly dispas-
sionate Dutch claimed the reception of an Uzbek envoy in late 1642 cost some
100,000 tumans. See Muhammad Tahir Vahid Qazvini, Abbasnama, I. Dihqan
ed. (Arak, 1329), 19–20; Matthee, The Politics, 150; idem, ‘The Career of
Mohammed Bek, Grand Vizier of Shah Abbas II (reg. 1642–66), IS, 24(1–4)
(1991), 22–3, 25; Floor, A Fiscal, 227; n54 below.
Abbasnama of the Tajik Qazvini (d. 1698) covers Abbas II’s reign from 1642
to 1666. Qazvini was an associate of Saru Taqi and an associate of the court
during the reigns of Abbas II and his successor Sulayman. See Dihqan’s introduc-
tion to the text. Abbas II died as his ‘corrections’ were being added to the latter
portions of the work. On Khuld-i Barin, the universal history written by
Qazvini’s brother Muhammad Yusuf Valih, and completed in 1667 – though the
dates 1660 and 1689 also have been suggested – see the following chapter.
3 Saru Taqi stayed remained the vizier, the ghulam Rustam Bek the sipahsalar
and his brother Ali Quli the divanbeki. The ghulam Siyavush Bek remained
qullaraqasi. Jani Khan Shamlu remained qurchibashi, and another Shamlu
remained ishikaqasi of the divan. The Evughlu retained the post of ishikaqasi of
the haram and Habiballah Karaki remained sadr. The capital’s shaykh al-Islam
and other lesser court figures also remained in post. See Babayan, ‘The Waning’,
315–16, 122–4; Floor, Safavid Government, 37, 142, 172; idem, ‘Judicial’, 22;
idem, ‘sadr’, 482.
4 Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 120n291, citing Chardin, who identified Saru Taqi’s
female ally as Abbas II’s mother Anna. Floor (‘The Rise’, 255–6, 255n108,
260n131) identifies her as Safi’s mother, citing Tavernier who, having arrived in
Iran in 1632, is the more contemporary. Compare Isfahani, 307–10; Shamlu,
271f. See also Floor, ‘Judicial’, 22. In true Safavid fashion, the ‘sins’ of one family
member did not necessarily tar his relatives: Rustam Bek’s brother would be
210 Notes to pages 82–83
sipahsalar, be jailed and, in 1666, be freed at Sulayman’s accession, become
governor of Azerbaijan and, again, sipahsalar. See Babayan, ‘The Waning’,
317–19.
5 Shamlu, 275f, esp. 282–6; Qazvini, 64–9; Khatunabadi, 515–16. See also
Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 126n308, citing the 1741–2 Zubdat al-Tavarikh; Floor,
Safavid Government, 208; idem, ‘The Rise’, 257–6, 262, 265, citing contempor-
ary and later sources, the latter including Chardin and Persian sources. Jani
Khan’s extensive property was confiscated but, with typical Safavid pragmatism,
was returned to his heirs under Sulayman and Jani Khan’s son became divanbeki
in 1670–1 (Floor, ‘The Rise’, 262). For an accessible, if much abridged,
version of Chardin’s (later) account of Saru Taqi’s fall, the detail of which
strains credibility, see R. Ferrier, A Journey to Persia, Jean Chardin’s Portrait of
a Seventeenth-century Empire (London, 1996), 49. See also McCabe, 173–4.
6 Abbas II eventually had his own brothers blinded and nephews killed; his two
sons were spared. See Roemer, 6: 302.
7 Where the key officials during Saru Taqi’s vizieate under Abbas II had included
three ghulams, three Tajiks – including the sayyid Mirza Habiballah as sadr –
and five Qizilbash – mainly Shamlu, Khalifa Sultan’s second ‘cabinet’ comprised
two ghulams, four Tajiks and six Qizilbash; the six included Qajars, Shamlus
and Chagatais, the latter having been incorporated into the Qizilbash during
Abbas I’s reign. Abbas II’s new Shamlu qurchibashi was of the same Bekdilu
subclan as Zaynal Khan Shamlu, the vakil and sipahsalar under Khalifa Sultan at
Safi’s accession. See Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 124, 133–4, 315–17; Floor, Safavid
Government, 142, 172, 185; idem, ‘Judicial’, ibid.; idem, ‘The Rise’, 264; idem,
‘sadr’, 482, where he notes that Mirza Habiballah was sadr of the khassa, but
that the post of sadr al-mamalik had been vacant from the dismissal of Mirza
Rafi al-Din Muhammad in 1632.
8 Floor, The Economy, 80, 173; See also Floor, the Dutch, 352. On Ottoman-
Safavid relations in this period, see Matthee, ‘Iran’s Ottoman Diplomacy’,
149–51. On domestic silk weaving, see further below.
9 By the end of Abbas II’s reign, the Frenchman de Thévenot, who arrived in Iran in
1664, suggested there were some 15,000 Indian merchants in the capital. Blake
(125f, citing Dale’s Indian Merchants Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade,
1600–1750 (Cambridge, 1974), suggests the Indians occasionally dealt in money
lending but were mainly merchants but Keyvani argues for their overt and
greater participation in specie export. See also Blake, 135, 125; Floor, The
Economy, 21–5 on Indian traders in Iran and 181f, esp. 183–96, 327f, 245, on
the importance of the trade with India; Matthee’, Merchants’, 246–9, 255.
Matthee (ibid., esp. 254f) reviews the literature on merchants’ status in this
period. See also n26 of Chapter 7.
10 On Qishm, see Floor’s The First Dutch-Iranian Commercial Conflict. See also
idem, The Economy, 173; idem, ‘The Dutch’, 353; Matthee, The Politics, 157.
On Saru Taqi’s negotiations with the VOC, see Matthee, The Politics, 148f;
idem, ‘Between Venice and Surat’, esp. 238, on the 1644 ban. On the VOC’s silk
and specie export, see Matthee, The Politics, 156–7, 244; Floor and Clawson,
348–50; Floor, The Economy, 173, 181–96, 327f. The extent to which the hajj
exacerbated the specie outflow, as suggested by Matthee (The Politics, 205), is
unclear but see, in Chapter 4, the text ad n87 and n87 itself.
11 At Abbas II’s accession, despite a gift to the new monarch, the EIC secured no
new concessions, nor was the company able to exploit the disfavour into which
 Notes to page 83 211
the VOC fell after 1645. See Floor, The Economy, 173, 186; Floor in Melville,
353; Matthee, The Politics, 158–60. On EIC silk exports, see Floor, The
Economy, 173, 186; idem, ‘The Dutch’, 353; Matthee, The Politics, 158–60. On
the Russian route, see Herzig, ‘The Volume’, 71–3; Matthee, The Politics,
168–71; n35 of Chapter 5 and n84 of Chapter 4. On the EIC’s suspension of silk
purchases after 1641, see n27 of Chapter 5. For an ultimately unsuccessful effort
by the EIC to coopt indigenous Armenian merchants and thereby revive the silk
trade in the later 1680s and 1690s, see V. Baladouni and M. Makepeace, eds,
Armenian Merchants of the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries: English
East India Company Sources (Philadelphia, 1998).
12 Matthee, ‘The Career’, 27; idem, ‘Coffee’, 29–30; Floor, The Economy, 17.
Keyvani (129) cites Tavernier, who made a number of trips to Iran between 1632
and 1668, that Isfahan’s Armenian furriers were only allowed to trade at the
Armenian bazaar near the Ali Qapu and, citing Qazvini (72), notes Abbas II’s
1645 firman forbidding their engagement in this trade altogether. On Khalifa
Sultan and the Dutch, see Matthee, The Politics, 157–8. See also Jafariyan,
Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 1: 389. On the devaluations, see Floor, The Economy,
80–1; Matthee, ‘The Career’, 23; idem, ‘Merchants’, 244; n16 below. See also
McCabe, 154–70. On Jewish merchants, see also Floor, ‘Commerce’, 70; n26.
On Jewish conversions, see Netzer, ‘Conversion’, 234–6, citing Jewish sources.
13 Foreign sources claimed that although more than 5,000 tumans’ worth of grain
was collected for the campaign Safavid troops were unpaid, poorly equipped and
hungry. The following year Qandahar itself was said to have been ravaged and
verging on famine. Matthee, The Politics, 160–3, 165–6; idem, ‘The Career’,
23; Floor, Safavid Government, 208–9; idem, A Fiscal, 228. On Qandahar’s
commercial importance over the period, see Floor, ‘Commerce’, 68.
The mixed composition of the Safavid expedition is attested in the con-
temporary sources. Röhrborn (78–9), citing such sources as Qazvini (94),
states that at the start of the Qandahar campaign Abbas called up Beklarbeks,
tribal amirs, qurchis, ghulams and elements of the shah’s special guards as well
as musketeers, many of whom were ghulams, and others of tribal origin based in
Azerbaijan and Shirvan, i.e. border provinces. See also Qazvini, 114; Shamlu,
429–30; Floor, Safavid Government, 194–5, 209, on the use of Turkish and
European mercenaries, not for the first time, in the attack on Qandahar, one of
the strongest forts in the Middle East. On the musketeers, see also Minorsky,
Tadhkirat, 32–3. Chardin, who arrived in Iran late in Abbas II’s reign, estimated
the army as totalling 112,000 troops. The ghulam numbered only 10,000 and
with the musketeers, who numbered 12,000, were paid from khassa land. The
qurchi, made up of tribal elements, numbered some 30,000, a figure still larger
than the ghulam and musketeers combined. With local governors maintaining
some 60,000 troops, the overwhelming balance of forces thus lay at the provin-
cial level, hence the call in the Qandahar campaign. Floor, Safavid Government,
207–14, lists troops and their dispersal over the period and Röhrborn (73, 80),
citing contemporary sources, notes that assembling such a large number of troops
took months. See Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 32–6. Cf. Floor, Safavid Government,
152, 162, 209–10; n90 of Chapter 8.
14 Floor, The Economy, 173–4, 187–8, 81; Floor, ‘The Dutch’, 353; Matthee, The
Politics, 161, 163, 165. Although the figures for Dutch silk exports for 1652 and
1653, let alone other years, given by Floor (The Economy, 173–4) and Matthee
(165, 243–5) differ, both suggest decline. Although the EIC had purchased no
212 Notes to pages 83–85
Iranian silk since the 1640s, EIC specie export continued. See Matthee, The
Politics, 158–60, 243. On the limited impact of the French East India Company,
granted trading rights in 1665, see A. Kroell, ‘East India Company (The French)’
EIr, 8.
15 On these economic hardships, see Matthee, The Politics, 164; idem, ‘The Career’,
20, 27–9.
16 The campaign also banned prostitution and closed brothels. See Qazvini, 70–2;
Matthee, ‘Prostitutes’, 146; idem, ‘Coffee’, 27, 29–30; idem, The Politics, 323–5.
Although the alcohol ban lapsed after the taking of Qandahar, owing to wide-
spread celebrations, it was reinstituted c. 1653, when shah felt close to death.
The potential drop in ‘entertainment’ tax revenues to the centre, along with the
similar potential fall in revenues resulting from conversions, no doubt contrib-
uted to the short-lived nature of these campaigns and probably similar earlier
campaigns noted above. On these several bans during Abbas II’s reign, including
that of 1653, and mention thereof by the poet Saib Tabrizi, see also Jafariyan,
Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 1: 383f. See also Floor, A Fiscal, 158; Keyvani, 129
and n12 above. On the revenue from tobacco taxes, see n75 of Chapter 8.
17 These groups are also accused of participating in gatherings where there was
handclapping, wearing unsuitable clothing, including wool, felt hats and
patched frocks (khirqa). On these texts, see our ‘Clerical Perceptions’. On Sufi
dancing see R. Friend, ‘Dance, III. Modern Persian Dancing’, EIr, 6: 644. On
Ardabili, see n40 of Chapter 3; n95 of Chapter 2. ‘Ardabili’ also attacked Mirza
Jan Shirazi who had, in fact, studied with the real Ardabili, and on whom see
n93 of Chapter 2.
18 The descriptions of the groups in Muhammad Tahir’s ‘Radd’ are more often
than not nearly perfect, if often shortened, versions of those in Hadiqa. See our
‘Sufism and Anti-Sufism in Safavid Iran: The Authorship of the Hadiqat al-Shi
a
Revisited’, Iran, XXXVII (1999), 95–108.
19 Mir Lawhi’s Persian-language treatise ‘Salvat al-Shi
a’ dates to 1650. On these
individuals, see above as well as our ‘Clerical Perspectives’, pp. 173–4. On
Kamrai, see also Jafariyan, Din va Siyasat dar Dawrah-yi Safavi (Qum, 1370/
1991), 173–4, idem, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 3: 1165–90; Babayan, ‘The
Waning’, 317.
20 During his exile in Qum, Khalifa Sultan had composed a number of essays in this
genre, thus distancing himself from allegations of Sufi sympathies made against
his own teachers Mir Damad and Shaykh Bahai. See Tehrani, 4: 490; 6: 41–2,
65, 91–2, 111, 130–1, 206.
21 Khatunabadi, 522–3, 531; Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 85f, 141, citing Shamlu;
Floor, ‘sadr’, 482.
22 A Tabrizi, Muhammad Bek had participated in trade negotiations with the
Dutch and the 1648 currency devaluation. He himself was head of Isfahan’s
Armenian community at Abbas II’s accession and was then harbour master at
Bandar Abbas. In 1651 he was promoted to the powerful post of supervisor of
the royal workshops. See Matthee, ‘The Career’, 20–1. On the post of harbour
master over the Safavid period, see Matthee, ‘Shahbandar’, EI2, Suppl, 716–17.
23 Qizilbash elements – including two Qajars, two Chagatais and a Shamlu – held
five of fourteen of the realm’s key posts, ghulam held 5, and Tajiks held three; a
number of these, including the Qajar qurchibashi and divanbeki and the Karaki
sadr, for example, were holdovers from Khalifa Sultan’s vizierate. See Babayan,
‘The Waning’, 129–30, 318–20; Floor, Safavid Government, 21, 37, 142, 172;
 Notes to page 85 213
Floor, ‘sadr’, 482; Floor, ‘Judicial’, 22. Mirza Muhammad Karaki was sole sadr
from 1651 to 1661, though Qazvini (338) lists three such sadrs. See also ibid.,
335f. The ghulam qullaraqasi Siyavush Bek died c. 1651 and was replaced by
an Armenian ghulam. See Qazvini, 85, 137, 165, 180, 322; Matthee, Career, 29;
Floor, Safavid Government, 172.
24 Floor, The Economy, 173–5; idem, ‘The Dutch’, 353–4; Herzig, ‘The Volume’,
65, 69; Matthee, The Politics, 166–7. On the Russian route in this period, see
Herzig, ibid., 71–3; Matthee, The Politics, 168–71; n11.
25 Qazvini, 219–22. See also Floor, ‘Judicial’, 22; Keyvani, 156–7, citing Chardin.
26 The enforcement of the ban on specie export until 1661, the year of Muhammad
Bek’s dismissal, was all the easier as one of the vizier’s sons was assayer of the
mint and another was Bandar Abbas’ harbour master. Soon after the institution
of the ban, in March 1657, Jewish merchants, at least, offered a large present to
the shah. See Matthee, ‘The Career’, passim, esp. 23, 27–9; idem, The Politics,
164–5. On the Jews in this period, see also Qazvini, 218–19; Keyvani, 129;
Floor, The Economy, 19–20, citing foreign sources; Matthee, ‘Merchants’,
242–6; V. Moreen, ‘The Problems of Conversion Among Iranian Jews in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, IS, 19(3–4) (1986), 215–28; idem, ‘The
Kitab-i Anusi of Babai ibn Lutf (Seventeenth Century) and the Kitab-i Sar
Guzasht of Babai ibn Farhad (Eighteenth Century): a Comparison of Two
Judaeo-Persian Chronicles’, in Mazzaoui and Moreen, eds, Intellectual Studies
on Islam, Essays Written in Honor of Martin B. Dickson (Salt Lake City, 1990),
41–8. On reports that Fayz Kashani objected to the campaign to convert Iranian
Jews, see n30. On the measures against the Armenians, see also n65.
27 Floor and Clawson, 350. Saru Taqi is credited with greater centralisation of land
but although he did interfere with vaqf properties (Floor, A Fiscal, 119–25), in
fact only gradually did more land become khassa land over Abbas II’s reign. In
the main, moreover, these lands comprised territory safe from attack, that is not
border provinces. Too, not all these lands remained khassa: during Muhammad
Bek’s vizierate, the lands designated khassa included Hamadan and nearby
areas, from 1653–4 until the middle years of Abbas II’s successor; Ardabil, in
1656–7, Simnan from 1656–7 until 1662–3; and Kirman, from 1658 until c.
1694. Chardin’s claim that only under Abbas II did Gilan and Mazandaran
become khassa is not substantiated in the Persian sources. See also Minorsky,
Tadhkirat, 24f, esp. 26; Lockhart, The Fall, 23–4; Matthee, The Politics, 164–5,
176–7; idem, ‘The Career’, 24–7. There is little correspondence between the lists
of Olearius and Chardin of the areas made khassa land under Safi and Abbas II
(Minorsky, ibid., 26) and that of Röhrborn (172–83, esp. 177–8). After 1650
Qizilbash troops were stationed in khassa provinces but, while revenues from
khassa land paid such troops, local revenue also went to paying local troops and
local governors had some authority over such forces. See Röhrborn, 166; Floor,
Safavid Government, 109n11, citing Qazvini (320) and Olearius. See also nn13,
28.
28 Chardin’s oft-cited story that c. 1660 the shah discovered that the same troops
had repeatedly passed by him in review (Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 35; Floor, Safavid
Government, 209), no doubt owes its origins to the costs of calling up troops
from their provincial bases; see n13; n90 of Chapter 8. Despite such cost-cutting
measures, two special corps were established during Abbas II’s reign: the 600-
strong Jazairi corps, established in 1654 and permanently on guard at the palace
gates, and the shah’s life-guards, made up of some 200 ‘Sufis’. Kaempfer, a
214 Notes to page 86
German doctor who lived in Isfahan in 1683–4, claimed the former numbered
some 2,000. See Minorsky, 33–4. As against Chardin’s suggestion (Minorsky,
33) that at the death of the head of the artillery corp in 1655, no successor was
appointed, Roemer (6: 291n1) cites Luft that a new artillery detachment was
formed the very same year.
On less successful attempts by the vizier to raise money, see Matthee, ‘The
Career’, 25–31; idem, The Politics, 163f.
29 Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 143, citing Qazvini, 255. Fayz Kashani is mentioned as
having been involved in this process as well.
30 The firman inviting Fayz was dated 1654. The same year Abbas commissioned
from Taqi Majlisi a Persian translation of and commentary on Man la
Yahdaruhu al-Faqih, the hadith compilation of the Buwayhid-period Twelver
scholar Ibn Babawayh (d. 991–2), on which Majlisi had already written an
Arabic language commentary for Abbas in 1653. Abbas also patronised Khalil
Qazvini (d. 1678–9), an opponent of ‘popular’ Sufism but a proponent of philo-
sophical inquiry and an associate of the former vizier Khalifa Sultan. In a com-
mentary on al-Kafi, the hadith compilation of Muhammad b. Yaqub Kulayni
(d. 941), commissioned by Abbas II and completed between 1653 and 1657,
Qazvini interpreted two hadiths from the Prophet as references to Abbas II.
Qazvini’s known opposition to Friday prayer during the Imam’s absence sug-
gests a, successful, effort by the centre to identify with potentially sympathetic
elements among such opposition, as Khalifa Sultan had attempted earlier. See
Khatunabadi, 520, 530; Newman, ‘Fayz’, 45, n20. Other ‘philosopher-clerics’
present at court in this period included Rajab Ali Tabrizi (d. 1669), like Sabza-
vari a student of Mir Findiriski (d. 1640). See Tehrani, 1: 104–5. Abbas II, as his
namesake, also encouraged intermarriage of his family with the Shi
i clergy: one
of his sisters married a sadr. See Roemer, 6: 302; Ferrier in Hambly, 402; Blake,
89, 191; Ferrier, A Journey, 153–4. On reports that Fayz objected to official
efforts to convert Iranian Jews, see Netzer, ‘Conversion’, 235, and on his declin-
ing of Safi’s invitation, see n43. For an alternative view of Khalil Qazvini based on
a later source, see M. Momen, ‘Usuli, Akhbari, Shaykhi, Babi: The Tribulations
of a Qazvin Family’, IS, 36(3) (2003), 318.
31 Some of the opposition to Fayz was clearly rooted in the Akhbari rejection of
clerical authority over the formulation of doctrine and practice and the exercise
of ijtihad by the clergy during the Imam’s absence. Other opponents supported
this doctrine of niyaba, and the exercise of ijtihad by the senior clerics, but still
regarded the performance of Friday prayer during the occultation as illegitimate.
See our ‘Fayz’, 42–3.
32 In his autobiography the obviously unhappy Fayz noted that the severity of the
discord caused the shah to attend Friday prayers only rarely and to give himself
up to pleasure (Newman, ‘Fayz’, 42–4). According to the Dutch (Matthee, ‘The
Career’, 33, 26), also unhappy with the court in this period but for their own
reasons, Abbas now remained in the haram or went on hunting parties, exhibit-
ing little interest in the wider affairs of the state. By contrast, Roemer (6: 301),
citing Kaempfer and Chardin, stresses the ‘indefatigable concern [Abbas] per-
sonally showed for the affairs of state’ even after 1662 as symptoms of what
European writers deduced was syphilis began to present and he withdrew to
Mazandaran. Khatunabadi (524), certainly much better connected to the court
at the time than the two foreigners, dated the onset of Abbas’ illness only to
1665, the year before his death.
 Notes to pages 86–87 215
As for Friday prayer, in a 1666 essay Fayz himself declared it was permissible
to abandon the Friday prayer if performing it encouraged division, suggesting its
possible discontinuation. See our ‘Fayz’, n28. A reference in Tehrani (15: 81) to a
1653 essay on Friday prayer written by a cleric who seems to have been the first
to perform the prayer in Yazd in this period, suggests the performance of the
prayer may not have been widespread.
33 As evidence of the continued strength of the ‘popular’ spiritual feeling and Taqi
Majlisi’s identification therewith, his critic Mir Lawhi charged that at his death
in 1659 Majlisi’s coffin was torn to pieces by the crowd and pieces were worn as
amulets (Arjomand, The Shadow, 186).
34 Muhammad Bek, as Khalifa Sultan following his 1632 dismissal, was sent to
Qum, Floor, Safavid Government, 37; idem, ‘sadr’, 482. Accounts of his dis-
missal usually overlook the contemporary spiritual crisis. See Matthee, The
Politics, 167; idem, ‘The Career’, 31–5. See also Khatunabadi, 519.
35 Babayan, ‘The Waning’, 318. On the post of sipahsalar, however, compare
Babayan (318–19) and Floor (Safavid Government, 18–19, 21). In c. 1657 the
Qajar divanbeki was replaced by Safi Quli Khan who remained in post until
1663 and who, if he was also ‘Safi Quli Bek’ (Floor, ‘Judicial’, 22), had Ustajlu
connections (Qazvini, 68, 329). The Armenian qullaraqasi died in 1663 and was
replaced by Jamshid Khan, whose origins are not clear. See Floor, Safavid
Government, 172; Qazvini, 328.
36 The Shamlu, Ustajlu and Chagatai held key posts over the period and a brother
of Khalifa Sultan served as sadr from 1661 until 1664 when the post(s) fell
vacant. The divanbeki Safi Quli Khan was replaced by a ghulam and then an
Ustajlu, the latter serving until 1666. See Qazvini, 65, 108, 300; Babayan, ‘The
Waning’, 319; Floor, Safavid Government, 172; idem, ‘sadr’, 482; ‘Judicial’, 23.
Qazvini (335–8) briefly addresses the overall organisational structure of the
court and the military, absent the names of the office-holders over the period.
37 Matthee, The Politics, 165–74; Floor, The Economy, 173–5. On the under-
standable lack of interest at court in negotiating with the VOC in this period, see
Matthee, ibid., 167–8.
38 Some European travellers also alleged over-taxation and poor agricultural man-
agement; none of these travellers had any apparent expertise. See Matthee, The
Politics, 175f. On bankruptcies among Indian merchants in 1666, see Blake,
Half, 131, citing Chardin who, with the Carmelites and others, lost money and
whose opinion of the Indian merchants was, unsurprisingly, hostile. By contrast,
see n48 of Chapter 8, that in later years court eunuchs entrusted their funds to
Indians.
39 His Tuhfat al-Akhyar continued the attack on the Sufis, philosophy and Taqi
Majlisi, who had died nearly five years earlier, and described ‘the youth’ as
especially prone to Sufi influence. See also Newman, ‘Sufism’, n46.
40 Attacks on ‘singing’ in particular featured prominently in the anti-Sufi essays
dating from mid-century. Muhammad b. Hasan, Hurr-i Amili (d. 1693), who
also came from the West and passed through Isfahan in the early 1660s, later
composed an attack on Sufism and Sufis reminiscent of contemporary mid-
century denunciations of Sufi doctrine and practices; indeed he referred to and
quoted from Hadiqat al-Shi
a and identified its author as Ardabili, as did Shaykh
Ali Amili. See our ‘Clerical Perceptions’, n42; idem, ‘Sufism’, 102, n55, n56.
41 Chardin noted a certain Mulla Qasim preached against the immoral behaviour,
including the wine-drinking and sexual promiscuity allegedly rampant at the
216 Notes to page 87
court, and argued that ‘another pure branch of the imams’, specifically the son of
Shaykh al-Islam, whose mother was a daughter of Abbas I, should rule instead.
Both Calmard and Blake cite Chardin on the c. 1664 execution of Mulla
Qasim, who is otherwise unknown in the primary sources. Compare A. K. S.
Lambton, ‘Quis Custodiet Custodes, Some Reflections on the Persian Theory of
Government’, Studia Islamica 5 (1956) 132; Arjomand, The Shadow, 200–1;
Blake, 182–3; Calmard, ‘Shi
i Rituals and Power II’, 168. On Mulla Qasim see
also Babayan, Mystics, 404–6, Abisaab, Converting Persia, 97, both citing
Chardin. Compare Ferrier (A Journey, 55, 77) on the apparent clerical approba-
tion of Mulla Qasim’s criticisms. Arjomand and Ferrier accept Chardin’s
emphasis on the involvement of the Shaykh al-Islam – the reference to whom is
unclear, as Sabzavari had been appointed to that post after 1650 and remained in
post through Abbas II’s 1668 succession – and his son; the latter two were said to
have begged for mercy and been forgiven. On holders of the post of Shaykh
al-Islam, see M. B. Kitabi, Rijal-i Isfahan (Isfahan, 1375), 57f.
42 In a 1658 essay Muhammad Tahir declared for the ayni position on Friday
prayer – the same pro-court position advocated by both Majlisi and Fayz,
otherwise his opponents – in opposition to the court protégé Khalil Qazvini, to
whose position Muhammad Tahir in fact called attention. In his 1664 Tuhfat al-
Akhyar he wrote ‘God willing, the reign of Shah
Abbas II will be linked to the
rule of the Lord of the Age’, i.e. the Hidden Imam, a comment little different to
that of Khalil Qazvini legitimising Safavid rule. See our ‘Fayz’ on the political
implications of this position. See also Tehrani, 15: 72–3; 3: 452; Babayan, ‘The
Waning’, 287; n30. Muhammad Tahir’s Arabic-language Hikmat al-Arifin –
completed between 1657 and 1664, three years after Muhammad Bek’s dis-
missal and two years before Abbas II’s death – was more restrained in its attacks
on Sufism and philosophy than his earlier essays. See our ‘Sufism’, n46.
43 Fayz claimed the presence of such individuals at Safi’s court had deterred him
from accepting the latter’s invitation thereto. See our ‘Fayz’, 44; Jafariyan, Din
va, 292–5. Lewisohn (‘Sufism and the School of Isfahan: Tasawwuf and
Irfan in
Late Safavid Iran’, in Lewisohn and Morgan, eds, 112f, 123f) locates Fayz
between ‘popular’ Sufi inquiry and practice and traditional Islamic mysticism.
44 The always unhappy Dutch claimed both Saru Taqi and his murderer Jani Khan
Shamlu had accumulated considerable fortunes at their murders in 1645. Floor,
‘The Rise’, 263. On Armenian wealth after Zuhab, see above, below and also the
previous chapter, esp. ad nn20f.
45 Mudarrissi, Bargi, 80; Hunarfar, 453–5; Canby, 133; Hillenbrand, ‘The Tomb of
Shah Isma
il I’, 6. Abbas also corresponded with the authorities in Mecca to
facilitate the movement of Iranian pilgrims in this period. The centre’s endow-
ment of vaqf to the Husaynids in the Hijaz also continued apace. See Jafariyan,
‘Munasibat’, 4–8, 16, 17.
A floor plan of the shrine of Fatima, featuring the tombs of the four Safavid
rulers (Safi, Abbas II, Sulayman and Sultan Husayn) buried there, can be found
in M. M. J. Fischer, Iran, From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge,
MA London, 1980), 110–11. The tombs of Safi and Abbas II are closest to, and
look upon, the tomb of Fatima itself.
46 See Blake, Half, 46, 167, 90, 121. An inscription in the larger of Dilaram
Khanum’s schools, completed by Muhammad Riza Imami, described the shah as
a Musavid and a Husaynid and ‘propagator of the faith of the twelve imams’,
while an inscription in the smaller calls him ‘possessor of the lands of the Arabs
 Notes to pages 87–88 217
and the ajam [the Persians]’, a good example of Safavid ‘spin’ in light of the
territorial losses in Iraq ratified by the Zuhab treaty; see also nn48, 49, and n71
of Chapter 7. See Hunarfar, 553–6. On the vaqf documents for these two
schools, see N. Ahmadi, ‘Chahar Vaqfnama az Chahar Madrasa-yi Isfahan dar
Dawrah-yi Safavi’, in R. Jafariyan, ed., Miras-i Islami-yi Iran (Qum, 1375/
1996), 3: 95–9. On women builders in this period, see also Blake, ‘Contributors’,
412f.
47 The Kashan mosque’s 1646 vaqf was in the name of the Tajik sayyid who headed
Abbas II’s library. See Naraqi, 238–41; Blake, Half, 49.
48 The Arabic inscription on the large mosque completed in 1643–4, mentioned in
the previous chapter, speaks of Abbas II as the Musavid, the Husaynid and ‘the
propagator of the faith of the infallible imams’. See Blake, Half, 45–6, 123, 151;
Hunarfar, 547–52; Roemer, 6: 292; Ferrier, 48–9. Hunarfar (608–10) describes a
school built by Saru Taqi dated to 1660, in which Sayyid Nimatallah Jazairi
(d. 1701), a student of Baqir Majlisi (d. 1699), on whom see below, would later
study. The Arabic inscription describes the shah as the ‘holder of the lands of the
Arabs and the ajam . . . the propagator of the faith of the infallible Imams’, the
former, like the inscriptions of Abbas I’s reign (n93 of Chapter 4), a good
example of ‘spin’ in the years following the acknowledgement of the territorial
losses in the Zuhab treaty. See also n49.
49 The mosque features numerous Qur
anic inscriptions, the names of the Imams
and an Arabic inscription, by the same Muhammad Riza Imami, which refers to
the shah as ‘possessor of the lands of the Arabs and the ajam and propagator of
the faith of the infallible Imams’. Hakim Daud’s father and mother were phys-
icians under Abbas I and Safi. Daud succeeded his father at the latter’s death but,
receiving no further promotion, left for India – an economic migrant – where he
treated the daughter of Shah Jahan for a burn and subsequently received a pro-
motion. Hakim Daud sent money from India for the erection of this mosque but
died in India in 1662–3. See Hunarfar, 612–30; Godard, 152–4; Blake, Half,
152; Canby, 133–4; Haneda, ‘Emigration’, 136–7.
50 The head of imperial household treasury built a school in 1658–9. Sulayman Bek
also built a mosque in this period. See Blake, 168; Hunarfar, 605–7, 611–12 and
619–20 on the work done to the Hajji Yunis mosque in 1664. The inscriptions
on these mosques endorsed the Safavid claims to the descent from the Imams and
referred to Abbas II as ‘the propagator of the faith’.
51 A member of the Khuzani family, one of whom authored Afzal al-Tavarikh and
others of whom had served earlier shahs, built a school in 1656–7, and dedicated
to it the revenues of a sarai and five nearby villages. The inscription, also com-
pleted by Muhammad Riza Imami, describes Abbas II as ‘the propagator of the
faith of his forefathers the pure Imams . . . the Musavid, the Husaynid’. See
Blake, 168; Hunarfar, 589–92. An Egyptian merchant also built a mosque c.
1650–1, on which see Blake, 153; Hunarfar, 585–8; Godard 152. The inscrip-
tion was done by the same Muhammad Riza. In Natanz, in 1653, repairs were
also undertaken to the eight-century tomb of a local notable (Naraqi, 400;
Hunarfar, 878). On a 1660 vaqf of an otherwise unknown woman, Gawhar
Bekum, for the shrine cities, see Ahmadi, ‘Du Vaqfnama az Du Zan’, in
R. Jafariyan, ed., Miras-i Islami-yi Iran 6 (Qum, 1376), 342, 355–8.
52 Calmard, ‘Shi
i Rituals and Power II’, 147, 164, 152, 157f, 161f, 167–8, citing
both Chardin and Raphael du Mans, superior of the Capuchin mission in
Isfahan who lived in Iran from 1647 until his death in 1696, and composed his
218 Notes to pages 88–89
Estat de la Perse en 1660 at the request of Louis XIV’s minister Colbert. De
Thévenot saw commemorations of Ali’s martyrdom in Shiraz in 1664 and also
Ashura activities. Richard (‘Capuchins’, 787) notes that du Mans served as a
translator for European commercial interests at court and that the accounts of
such later European travellers, including Tavernier, de Thévenot, Chardin, Fryer
and Kaempfer, owe much to information supplied by him. That he acted as a
translator ought not necessarily to give his reportage any added credibility. See
also n77 of Chapter 7; Calmard, ibid., 157–63. See also Richard, ed., Raphael du
Mans: missionaire en Perse au XVII, 2 vols (Paris, 1995).
53 Blake, 45, 121–2. At the Khurasani sarai, located to the Northwest of Abbas I’s
maydan, were sold animal pelts and plums from Bukhara, felt from Jam and
Mashhad and carpets from Khurasan. Chardin described this sarai as one of the
city’s most beautiful.
54 Blake, 45, 47, 124, 12, 121, 182. Note Abbas II’s courteous treatment of
Sunni Uzbek officials moving through Iran to perform the pilgrimage as per
McChesney, ‘The Central Asian’, 149–50.
55 Hunarfar, 549; Blake, 46, 123; Floor, ‘The Rise’, 254–5. On Saru Taqi’s various
building projects, see also S. Babaie, ‘Building for the Shah: the Role of Mirza
Muhammad Taqi (Saru Taqi) in Safavid Royal Patronage of Architecture’, in
S. Canby, ed., Safavid Art and Architecture (London, 2002), 20–6.
56 Blake, 119.
57 On the first, also called Khvaja or Shahi bridge, dated to 1651–2, see Hunarfar,
582–5, Blake, 43. On the second, completed in 1657–8, during the vizierate of
Muhammad Bek, see Hunarfar, 247n1, 575–6; Blake, 33, 43; Canby, 133.
58 Hunarfar, 422–5; Blake, 64; Babaie, ‘Building for the Shah’, 22–4.
59 The shah celebrated the Iranian New Year there in 1648, 1658 and 1661. See
Hunarfar, 557–74; Blake, 66–7. See also Qazvini, 90–1. On Chihil Sutun, see
also Babaie, ‘Building for the Shah’; idem, ‘Shah Abbas II, the Conquest of
Qandahar, Chihil Sutun, and its Wall Paintings’, Muqarnas 11 (1994), esp.
128–9. See also I. Luschey-Schmeisser, ‘Chihil Sotun’, EIr, 5: 111–15. Thanks to
S. Babaie for directing my attention to the latter article which, along with
Hunarfar (570f), and Blake (68–9), addresses the fire which struck this palace
during the reign of Shah Sultan Husayn, the extent of the damage from which is
disputed. See also Lockhart, The Fall, 42. On the erotic poses of the women in
Chihil Sutun’s paintings, see Matthee, ‘Prostitutes’, 123, citing E. Grube, ‘Wall
Paintings in the Seventeenth Century Monuments of Isfahan’, IS, 7 (1974), 516.
60 Inscriptions therein dated to 1651 and 1656 suggest the structure was com-
menced, if not completed, during the vizierate of Khalifa Sultan, another mem-
ber of the house who suffered a similar, though less final, fate that same year. See
Hunarfar, 593–604; Godard, 129–31.
61 A great mirrored hall, similar to of the already completed Chihil Sutun itself, also
featured in this garden. In the nearby two-storey salt-cellar, the lower level fea-
tured six life-size murals, including depictions of men and women drinking wine.
Hunarfar, 576–80; Blake, 74, 77–9, citing Qazvini, 270.
62 Hunarfar, 547f; Blake, 45, 49, 89, 85; Babaie, ‘Building for the Shah’.
63 Blake, 89–90; Haneda, ‘Emigration’, 135.
64 Blake, 185–90. Cf. Canby, 143. Hunarfar (575f) notes the great expansion of
the capital city during Abbas II’s reign although, citing Chardin, he also
calls attention to the many structures from this period of which only names
remain.
 Notes to pages 89–91 219
65 On the social differentiation within the community see, for example, Ghougas-
sian, 69f, and our discussion in Chapter 4, ad nn72, 73. The repressive measures
instituted by Muhammad Bek against the Armenians in 1657 seem to have been
inspired by senior Armenian clerics reacting to the anti-clerical message of a
darvish-style messianic movement based among Armenian artisnal elements
(McCabe, 183–4), much as contemporary urban ‘popular’ Sufi movements
attracted the disapproval of orthodox Shi
i clerics.
66 Ghougassian, 100f. The Church of Mary has an inscription dated to between
1660 and 1667. See Hunarfar, 511, 514f; Blake, 188–90. See also Carswell, New
Julfa, 30–4, and 55–6 on St Minas church, commenced in 1658–9 and com-
pleted in 1662–3. Floor (The Economy, 15–18) notes Armenian involvement in
both local and long-distance trade. See also Matthee, ‘Merchants’, 237–42, 255;
Ferrier, A Journey, 64–5. ‘Vank’ means cathedral in Armenian. Thanks to
E. Herzig for this translation.
67 McCabe, 180–4; Ghougassian, 137f, 214, 278. Babaie (‘Shah Abbas II’, 128,
139) notes the favourable representations of Iranian Armenians in Chihil Sutun’s
wall paintings. On the Catholic missionaries, see n80 of chapter four. On frus-
trated Carmelite efforts among the Armenians in this period, see Richard,
‘Carmelites’, 833. After the failure of their 1646 attempt, the Jesuits bought a
house in Isfahan in 1656 and then moved to New Julfa in 1661. On Fr. Aime
Chezaud (d. 1664), who participated in debates at court on the faith and wrote a
refutation of Ahmad Alavi’s attack on Christianity, see F. Richard, ‘Fr. Aime
Chezaud – Controversialist’, paper presented at ‘Iran and the World in the
Safavid Age’ University of London, September 2002.
68 Canby, 134–9. Adamova, ‘Muhammad Qasim’, 209. See also Adamova, ‘On the
Attribution’, 19–38; n43 of Chapter 5.
69 Abbas II so admired Shaykh Abbasi’s style that he was chosen to render an
Indian embassy to Iran in 1663. See Canby, 136–7. Cf. Matthee, ‘Between
Aloofness’, 237–8.
70 Babaie, ‘Shah Abbas II’, esp. 132.
71 Y. Crowe, Persia and China, Safavid Blue and White Ceramics in the Victoria
and Albert Museum, 1501–1738 (London, 2002), 137–8, 150–2, 162–3. See also
Crowe, ‘Ceramics. xv. The Islamic Period, 10th–13th/16th–19th Centuries’, EIr,
5: 327.
72 In her ‘Safavid Blue and White Bowls and the Chinese Connection’, Iran 40
(2002), 257–63, esp. 261–3, Crowe notes the VOC had been importing Chinese
ceramics into Iran from early in the century, c. 1638 especially, sufficient to
encourage the appearance of an indigenous industry by mid-century. On the
impact of the fall of the Ming dynasty on the production of ceramics in Iran, see
her Persia and China, esp. 21, 103–4. In both Crowe cites T. Volker, Porcelain
and the Dutch East India Company . . . 1602–1682 (Leiden, 1954, 1971), who
dubbed the period 1652 to 1683, during which the VOC ordered quantities of
Persian blue and white pottery as a substitute for the no-longer available Chinese
ware – on occasion deceiving Western traders – as ‘the Persian interlude’ and
noted that in the process Iranian potters faced special challenges as they lacked
the right materials to produce ‘real’ porcelain. See also Canby, 142–3. In
addition to Kirman, Shiraz, Mashhad and Yazd were centres of ceramics
production in this period. See Crowe, ‘Ceramics’, 327, 329–30. See also J.
Rogers, ‘Chinese-Iranian Relations, iv. The Safavid Period’, EIr, 5: 436–8.
73 Canby, The Golden, 139. In 1659 the EIC in Surat urged their local agent factor
220 Notes to pages 91–94
to purchase annually some 100 ‘loads’ of Kirmani wool. Although once home
the wool was seen as of poor quality, such demand did spur a local rise in prices.
See Matthee, ‘The East India Company Trade in Kirman Wool, 1658–1730’, in
Calmard, ed., Études Safavides., 343–83, esp. 346–7, 367.
74 Canby, 139–41.
75 Yarshater (6: 990) has noted modern critics’ disparagement of this style of poetry
which has, no doubt, contributed to the relatively poor study, and understand-
ing, of the movement and its practitioners. The tone of Yarshater’s discussion of
Safavid poetry contrasts markedly with that of Safa’s immediately preceding
discussion (6: 948f).
76 See Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 1: 483–91. See also, especially, the
discussion of Saib in the Epilogue. On Saib’s praise for Chihil Sutun, see also
Hunarfar, 569–70. On Saib, see also Browne, 4: 164–5; Safa, 6: 956, 959;
Yarshater, 6: 982, 986, 988, 990. Note Browne’s unsubstantiated comment
(4: 265), cited by Safa (6: 956n1), that Saib was ‘without honour’ in his own
country.
77 On this chronicle see n2.
78 The remaining sections cover, at greater length, the reign of Abbas II, religious
scholars of the period, 101 poets of the period and, lastly, nineteen darvishes of
note.
79 Babaie, ‘Shah Abbas II’, passim, esp. 127–9. See also Luschey-Schmeisser,
113–14.

7 Meeting the Challenges: Shah Sulayman (1666/68–1694)

1 The vizier Muhammad Karaki, Husayn Quli – probably a reference to the future
qurchibashi – and the qullaraqasi Jamshid Khan certified the shah’s death.
Khatunabadi, 524–9, esp. 525, 530. Floor, Safavid Government, 142, 151, 172,
185. Others party to the news included the court historian, the head of the
musketeers, two astrologers and an unnamed cleric who was probably Sabzavari,
Khatunabadi’s own teacher. The yuzbashi was himself probably member of a
tribe. On the position, referring a commander of 100 men, usually tribal elements,
see Floor, Safavid Government, 151, 174, 184, 187, 196.
2 Khatunabadi, 529–30. Of all those others in attendance at these ceremonies,
Khatunabadi notes only the cleric Mirza Rafia Naini (d. 1688), a Husayni sayyid
and student of both Shaykh Bahai and Taqi Majlisi, on whom see also n31.
Khatunabadi also attended the ceremonies. The Cossack raids were instigated by
the Tsar in his anger at Abbas II’s poor treatment of a Russian trade delegation
(Lockhart, The Fall, 57–8).
3 Karaki continued as vizier until 1669, Jamshid Khan remained qullaraqasi until
his death afterwards near Qandahar, at which the post seems to have been left
unfilled until the 1690s. Both the qurchibashi Husayn Quli Khan, a member of a
tribe, and the musketeers’ chief remained in office until 1668. The sipahsalar,
appointed by Abbas II in 1666, was from the Kurdish Zangana family and
remained in post until 1691; his brother became vizier in 1669. A Qajar associ-
ate was briefly divanbeki until, in 1670–1, the post fell to the son of Abbas II’s
discredited qurchibashi Jani Khan Shamlu, to whom was returned the property
confiscated from his father. Tajik sayyids continued to hold the sadr-ship. See
Floor, Safavid Government, 21, 37, 142, 172, 185; Floor, ‘Judicial’, 23; idem,
 Notes to pages 94–95 221
‘sadr’, 482; idem, ‘The Rise’, 262; Matthee, ‘Administrative’, 80–1; Isfahani,
324.
4 On Ottoman-Safavid relations, see Matthee, ‘Iran’s Ottoman Diplomacy’, esp.
161f; Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 348–50. The realm’s key officials often conferred on
key foreign and domestic matters (Khatunabadi, 542). For such meetings during
the reign of Abbas I, see n36 of chapter four.
5 On Sulayman’s reign as relatively peaceful, see Roemer, 6: 308–9; Matthee, ibid.;
idem, ‘Administrative’, 77, 82; Jafariyan, ibid.
6 Khatunabadi, 537–8, 543–4; Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 2: 761f, 777;
idem, Ilal, 331–2; Matthee, The Politics, 177–8; Floor, A Fiscal, 229.
Floor (The Safavid Economy, 2f) evaluates various foreign estimates of Iran’s
population, and that of its chief cities, in this period, and suggests a total popula-
tion of no more than nine million – well short of Chardin’s estimate of 40 million
(!) – with the urban share of the population varying between 10% and 15%. See
also n15 of the Introduction; n88, below, and n71 of the following chapter.
7 On the shah’s efforts to control grain prices, see Blake (113) citing Chardin. See
also n18. On similar efforts by Ismail I, see our ‘Safavids – Religion, Philosophy
and Science’, 784.
The links between the Zangana and the Qizilbash date to Ismail I’s time and
during Abbas II’s reign they were based around Kirmanshah and Hamadan.
Shaykh Ali became head of the tribe at his brother’s death and in 1666 was sent
in command of a Zangana contingent against the Uzbeks. Returned to Isfahan
in 1668 by Sulayman, he was made head of the musketeers. See Minorsky,
Tadhkirat, 16; cf. Munshi, 1: 227, 2: 1312–13; Matthee, ‘Administrative’, 85–6.
Shaykh Ali’s appointment is all the more interesting if, as Kasravi and Togan
have suggested, the Safavids were actually Kurdish in origin.
8 Matthee, ‘Administrative’, 91–2.
9 The government also moved to forestall Iranian pilgrims from taking specie out
of the country. Matthee, ‘Administrative’, 83–7; idem, The Politics, 180; see also
Floor, A Fiscal, 21; idem, The Economy, 189–91; Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 356–7. In
his ‘Between Venice and Surat’, 238, Matthee dates the imposition of the 5% fee
to 1672. See also ibid., 242–3. See also Matthee, ‘Mint Consolidation and the
Worsening of the Late Safavid Coinage: The Mint of Huwayza’, JESHO 44(4)
(2001), 522, 526, 532.
10 Armenian sources record government confiscation of church funds. See
Ghougassian, 158–9. Matthee (‘Administrative’, 87–8) connects pressures on
the polity’s minorities with the period’s broader economic and other tensions, as
he did regarding similar policies undertaken by Khalifa Sultan and Muhammad
Bek (idem, ‘The Career’, 27). See also McCabe, 187–8; n60.
11 Ignoring these crises, contemporary European accounts (Matthee, ‘Administra-
tive’, 84) weave elaborate explanations for Shaykh Ali’s dismissal. See also
similar accounts from the, hardly disinterested, Dutch on the 1679–80 beating
of the vizier and the blinding of the divanbeki (ibid., 90) which, if true, not
coincidentally occurred during the severe famine of 1678–9.
12 See Floor, The Economy, 189 citing Dutch accounts; Matthee, ‘Administrative’,
91. On the war rumours, Matthee (‘Iran’s Ottoman’, 155–7) notes Sulayman’s
solicitation of Russian and Polish support, his own movements and those of
Safavid troops, in the context of his overwhelming desire to maintain the peace.
13 Matthee, The Politics, 175–92; McCabe, 193.
14 In 1668, when the VOC exported 212 bales via the Gulf, some 2,500 bales of
222 Notes to pages 95–96
silk, mainly Iranian, reached Livorno/Leghorn, in Italy, where there was an
Armenian-Iranian consul. The VOC exported no Iranian silk via the Gulf from
1684 to 1690. See Matthee, The Politics, 173, 192f, 200–3; idem, ‘Iran’s
Ottoman Diplomacy’, 154f; Floor, The Economy, 174; idem, ‘The Dutch’, 354;
Herzig, ‘The Volume’, 65, 69–73. On trade with India, see Floor and Clawson,
347–8; Floor, The Economy, 199–216.
15 The Dutch and Sanson, the latter a French priest in Iran from 1683 to 1691,
claimed an increase in revenues. See Matthee, ‘Administrative’, 91; Floor, A
Fiscal, 165, 159–60, 164. There is no record of further territory being declared
khassa by the centre and, indeed, Röhrborn (178) suggests that some lands lost
their khassa status, including Simnan, during Abbas II’s reign, and Hamadan,
Kirman c. 1694, Lar c. 1708–9 and Fars in 1718–19. These reversions may
have been calculated to increase revenues, since the real tax burden – in cash or
in kind – apparently fell less hard on those peasants serving on crown land. See
Floor, A Fiscal, 30–1, 114.
16 Dutch sources (Matthee, The Politics, 175) suggest a decline in Persian Gulf
and Levantine trade in this period, but see Herzig (‘The Volume’, 65, 70, 73) and
Floor (The Economy, 174).
17 Floor, The Economy, 81–3; Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 27, 27n3; Matthee, ‘Mint
Consolidation and the Worsening of the Late Safavid Coinage: The Mint of
Huwayza’, JESHO, 44(4), 2001, esp. 521f; idem, ‘The Safavid Mint of
Huvayzeh: The Numismatic Evidence’, in Newman, ed., Society and Culture,
287–9; Matthee, ‘Between Venice and Surat’, 238–9.
18 Floor (A Fiscal, 229–30) notes the successful opposition to the centre’s efforts to
change perpetual tuyuls into temporary ones aligned with salaries attached to
the function of their holders in the realm. Some posts were also left vacant as a
means of saving money. See also Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 28–9.
19 The centre appears to have experienced little change in composition. Thus, for
example, Shaykh Ali’s son Shah Quli Khan remained qurchibashi through
Sulayman’s death until 1699. The sadr remained in post. There were several
qullaraqasis, including one known ghulam, later in the period. A Georgian
ghulam was both sipahsalar and divanbeki. See Floor, Safavid Government, 22,
38, 142, 173; Floor, ‘sadr’, 482; idem, ‘Judicial’, 23; Muhammad Nasiri,
Dastur-i Shahryaran, (Tehran, 1373), 30. On Nasiri, see n1 of the following
chapter.
20 Matthee, The Politics, 175–92, 244; Floor, Safavid Government, 38n255; Floor,
The Economy, 174, 189–91, 194; Floor, ‘The Dutch’, 354. On the brief upsurge
in demand for Kirmani wool during Sulayman’s reign, and the brief, VOC/EIC
struggle over this trade, see Matthee, ‘The East India Company Trade’, esp.
351–2, 357, 367–78; n73 of the previous chapter. On the Dutchman Johan van
Leene’s 1690–2 Dutch trade mission to Sulayman, see Matthee, ‘Negotiating
Across Cultures’, esp. 50–63.
21 Blake, 113–14, citing Chardin; Ferrier, A Journey, 51f, 57f. Matthee (‘Mer-
chants’, 249–54) discusses the role of ‘Muslim’ merchants in the Safavid econ-
omy, especially their domination of domestic trade and transport. See also Floor,
The Safavid Economy, 14–26.
22 The latter included, for example, wholesale fruiterers and sellers of foodstuffs,
and the lesser guilds, including, according to Chardin, the lemon and pomegran-
ate juice-makers, charcoal and firewood-sellers and vinegar-distillers. Chardin
noted that petty tradesmen did conduct business in front of the Shah Mosque but
 Notes to page 96 223
on a rotating basis. See Keyvani, 125–6, 142–3, 145; Blake, 113–14; Ferrier,
117–18. See also Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 2: 780.
23 In the early 1690s the bazaars of Tabriz and Ardabil were well stocked with
domestic and foreign luxury items. See Keyvani, 126–7.
24 Blake, 113–14; Keyvani, 125–6.
25 Blake, 113, 181f. See also Haneda, ‘The Character’.
26 Blake, ibid. As the old maydan declined in importance the presence of Indians, as
financiers and merchants, grew, sufficiently so to have been noted by contempor-
ary foreigners. See Blake, 125–31, citing Tavernier, who made six trips in and
through Iran between 1632 and 1668, Chardin and the anonymously written ‘A
List of the Caravansarais of Isfahan’ completed in the late 1660s. The latter
notes that Indians, especially cloth merchants, dominated several of Isfahan’s
sarais and sections of the bazaar area, and Chardin (Blake, 121) noted the Indians
had replaced the Ottoman merchants at another sarai. Blake (125–7) also dis-
cusses the secondary source literature on the role of the Indians, particularly
Keyvani and Dale’s Indian Merchants. See also Matthee, The Politics, 3n12,
5n18, 7n25; Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 19; Ferrier, A Journey, 51–2, 95, 136. In
1674, the Venetian Bembo estimated the number of Indians in the capital as
12,000, ‘partly Moslems and partly Gentiles (sic)’ (Welch, ‘Safavi Iran’, 105–6).
27 Chardin (Godard, 63f; Matthee, ‘Coffee’, 22) also noted the continued popular-
ity of the tomb of Harun-i Vilayat itself as a place of pilgrimage in this period.
See also Matthee, ‘Coffee’, 24–7; idem, ‘Tobacco in Iran’.
28 See our earlier references to Mulla Sadra’s 1617–18 Kasr Asnam and Hadiqat al-
Shi
a, completed in the late 1640s. Tadhkira-yi Nasrabadi, written between
1673–4 and 1679, demonstrates this link for the reign of Shah Sulayman and
refers to a merchant building a takiyya (hospice) for a darvish in the capital. See
Nasrabadi, 141, 382, 51, 31, 44, as cited by Babayan in her ‘The Waning’,
262n647, 648. Keyvani (143–4, 205–11) discusses the role of the guilds in secu-
lar and non-secular buildings – mosques and schools were built by the city’s
porters, grape juice-makers and potters – and the link between the guilds and
darvish orders. On Tadhkira-yi Nasrabadi’s social dimensions, see also
Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 2: 761f. In 1693–4, the Tajik sayyid phys-
ician Muhammad Ardistani built ‘The School of the Potters’ off the Harun-i
Vilayat square; the inscription speaks of the shah as ‘the Husaynid’ and ‘the
Musavid’ but also of local ‘darvishes’, suggesting an effort to balance open
associations with ‘popular’ practices with declarations of loyalty to the throne.
In a further declaration of such loyalty, the 1692 vaqf document (see n36 in
Chapter 8) for the School of the Potters included the name of Baqir Majlisi. See
Hunarfar, 652–3; Blake, 167–8; Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 363; n50 of Chapter 8.
The mosque erected in 1688–9 by ‘Muhammad Qasim’, ad n71 below, was
also clearly built with such interests in mind though its inscriptions carefully
acknowledge the authority of Sulayman.
29 Baqir Majlisi’s student Sayyid Nimatallah Jazairi (d. 1701), in his 1678 al-Anvar
al-Numaniyya, condemned the ‘popular’ Sufi presence in the city and the story-
telling in the city’s coffee-houses. See Jafariyan, Ilal, 323–45; Tehrani, 11: 175,
5: 301; Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 1: 390, 3: 1141–54, 2: 782;
Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 353; Matthee, ‘Coffee’, 24–6, citing travellers’ accounts.
On the connection between poetry and Sufism, see also McChesney’s discussion
of a 1688–9 source in his ‘The Anthology of Poets: “Muzakkir al-Ashab” as a
Source for the History of Seventeenth-Century Central Asia’, in Mazzaoui and
224 Notes to page 97
Moreen, eds, Intellectual Studies on Islam, Essays Written in Honor of Martin B.
Dickson (Salt Lake City, 1990), esp. 65, 71–2. On the merchant-poet connec-
tion, see Matthee, ‘Merchants’, 251, citing Nasrabadi, 137; Keyvani, 233. See
also Keyvani (197f) on the period’s poetry and, especially, the to-date poorly
studied urban shahrashub literature.
30 On Husayn, see Mirza Abdallah Isbahani Afandi, Riyaz al-Ulama (Qum, 1401),
2: 57–60; Yusuf ibn Ahmad Bahrani, Luluat al-Bahrayn (Najaf, 1969), 90–2;
Muhammad Baqir Khvansari, Rawzat al-Jannat (Tehran, 1390/1970), 2: 367f.
On Jamal, see Bahrani, ibid.; Afandi, 2: 211f; Khvansari, 1: 114. See also
Hunarfar, 657–9; Arjomand, The Shadow, 151. Afandi (d. 1717) was a student
of Baqir Majlisi. See also n63 below.
31 These included Sabzavari’s student Rajab Ali Tabrizi and the above-mentioned
Mirza Rafi al-Din Naini, a Husayni sayyid and student of Shaykh Bahai and Taqi
Majlisi, who attended Sulayman’s accession and, like Husayn Khvansari,
received an elaborate mausoleum at his death. In this period the Lutfallah Maysi
school was a particular centre for the philosopher clerics of the day, including
Husayn Khvansari, Shamsa Gilani (d. 1686) – another student of Mir Damad –
Tabrizi and Sayyid Ismail Khatunabadi and his son Muhammad Baqir, on whom
see the next chapter. See Tabrizi, Faraid, 295–6. On these, Mulla Rafia Gilani
(d. 1671–2), a student of Mir Findiriski and Baqir Majlisi, and Qadi Said
Qummi (d. 1691), a student of Tabrizi and Fayz, see also our ‘Safavids –
Religion, Philosophy and Science’, EI2, 8: 777–87, esp. 781–2. For an anthology
of work by such figures as Mir Damad, Mulla Sadra, Rajab Ali, Lahiji, Husayn
Khvansari, Shamsa Gilani, Ahmad Alavi and Fayz Kashani, and an introduction
thereto, see J. Ashtiyani, ed., Anthologie des Philosophes Iraniens depuis le
XVIIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours. Textes persans et arabes choisis et présentés par
Sayyed Jalâloddîn Ashtiyânî. Introduction analytique par Henry Corbin, 3 vols,
(Paris/Tehran, 1972–5).
32 See, for example, Tehrani, 6: 45, 114, 130, 45, 224; 4: 506. The issue of the
permissibility of Friday prayer during the absence of the Imam continued to be
source of disagreement, even among the clerical associates of the court. See
Tehrani, 15: 79–81, 66–7. Jamal Khvansari penned an essay to Shah Sulayman
in 1680, the year after Sabzavari’s death, opposing Friday prayer. Newman,
‘Clerical Perceptions’, n42.
33 On Sulayman, Khvansari and the debate on the permissibility of wine, see
Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 1: 390f. The legality of tobacco and
coffee was also debated. See Tehrani, 11: 175, 5: 301; Jafariyan, ibid., 3:
1141–53; 2: 782; Floor, ‘The Art of Smoking in Iran and Other Uses of Tobacco’,
IS, 35(1–3) (2002), esp. 524; Abisaab, Converting Persia, 133–4; Matthee,
‘Tobacco in Iran’, 66. On revenue from tobacco taxes, see n75 of Chapter 8.
On a 1682–3 firman against gambling, see Hunarfar, 608–9n1. A 1685 decree
banned wine at court and female musicians and dancers were absent from court
receptions that year as well (Matthee, ‘Prostitutes’, 146–7, citing Kaempfer),
although there is no evidence that this ban, like many earlier, similar bans, lasted
long.
34 See our ‘Clerical Perceptions’, esp. 154f. On Sabzavari and clerical authority
during the occultation, see also N. Calder, ‘Legitimacy and Accommodation in
Safavid Iran: The Juristic Theory of Muhammad Baqir al-Sabzewari (d. 1090/
1679)’, Iran 25 (1987), 91–105.
35 In 1675 Sulayman’s physician, the Tajik sayyid Muhammad Tanukabuni,
 Notes to pages 97–98 225
penned an essay refuting arguments of Muhammad Tahir and Mir Lawhi. See
Tehrani, 3: 325, 402–3.
36 Jafariyan, ‘Munasibat’, 19, 21f. The interest of the Hijazi Shi
a in Safavid sup-
port can only have been heightened by the murder of Shi
i cleric, a descendant of
Muhammad Amin Astarabadi, in Mecca in 1677, a massacre of Shi
a in the city
the same year and other attacks and indignities suffered by Iranian pilgrims and
the Shi
a in general. These certainly contributed to an emphasis on the import-
ance of Iran-based centres of pilgrimage in such works as that of Taqi Majlisi’s
son Baqir’s 1677 Tuhfat al-Zair. See Khatunabadi, 532; Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar
Arsa-yi Din, 2: 825–49; Matthee, ‘Between Venice’, 242–3. Compare n87 in
Chapter 4; n49 of Chapter 8.
37 See the 1675 directive of the sadr Mirza Abu Salih b. Mirza Muhammad Muhsin
Rizavi Mashhadi (d. 1686) – who had assumed his post at Sulayman’s accession
and built a school at the Mashhad shrine in 1675 – granting certain concessions
to the Marashi guardians of the Qazvin shrine, the 1682 firman confirming a
firman of Abbas II in which certain suyurghals were allotted to the same Marashi
elements and a similar 1691 firman granting these to another family member in
Mudarrissi, Bargi, 71, 173–9, 179–81; Floor, ‘sadr’, 482.
38 This is the famous Ross Anonymous discussed in n14 of Chapter 1. See
also Woods, 171; Morton, ‘The Date’, in Melville, Pembroke Papers, passim,
esp. 197, 199, 181; McChesney, ‘Alam Ara’. The illustration features on the
dustjacket of the present volume.
39 In his Persian-language al-Favaid al-Diniyya, completed during Sulayman’s
reign, Muhammad Tahir argued philosophical inquiry was incompatible with
the faith. Replete with citations from the Imams – hence later descriptions of him
as an Akhbari – the work also attacked Fayz’ interests in such inquiry. See
Tehrani, 16: 335–6; 15: 72–3, 71; 287; Newman, ‘Sufism’, n46.
40 Tehrani, 1: 428, 18: 101–2; M. T. Danishpazhuh, ed., Catalogue Méthodique,
Descriptif, et Raisonné des Manuscrits Concernant la Tradition . . . de la
Bibliothèque de l’Université de Teheran (don de M. le Professeur Meshkat), (in
Persian) 5 (Tehran, 1956), 1211; Arjomand, The Shadow, 82, 186; Turner,
212–13. Cf. Babayan, ‘The Waning’, nn717, 741, 750 and 751.
41 See our ‘Clerical Perceptions’, nn21, 43. Fayz’ own 1672 essay al-Insaf, in which
he regretted his early interest in ‘popular’ Sufism, attests to the continuing
strength of both the anti-Sufi polemic and that ‘popular’ expression. Fayz’ own
son also denounced Sufism in an essay composed in this period. See our ‘Fayz’,
44; Lewisohn, ‘Sufism’, esp. 123f.
42 Tehrani, 15: 79–81, 66–7; n32.
43 On the various dates for his death, see, for example, Browne, 4: 120 and most
recently, Turner, 165. See also Mahdavi, 1: 84–92; Khatunabadi, 551.
44 On the dating of this appointment, see Turner (163–4), citing Khatunabadi, 540;
Babayan (‘Sufis, Dervishes’, 132n4) giving 1689, but citing no sources. See also
Mahdavi, 1: 130f.
45 Baqir Majlisi, born in Isfahan in 1627–8, was the great-grandson of a Lebanese
student of both Ali Karaki and Shaykh Zayn al-Din Ali who was said to have
been an important Twelver scholar in Isfahan in the previous century. Baqir
Majlisi’s mother was herself descended from a Lebanese clerical family. It is not
clear when, why or from where members of either branch of the family came to
Iran. See the sources in the following note.
46 On the family, see H. Nuri Tabrisi, Fayz-i Qudsi, J. Nabavi, transl. (Qum, 1374),
226 Notes to page 98
173f; A. Bihbihani, Mirat al-Ahval Jahan-nama, A. Davani, ed. (Tehran, 1370),
99f; Danishpazhuh, 5: 1613, 1144–5; Turner, 179–81; J. Cole, ‘Shi
i Clerics in
Iraq and Iran, 1722–1780: The Akhbari-Usuli Conflict Reconsidered’, IS, 18(1)
(Winter, 1985), esp. 6–13; idem, Sacred Space and Holy War, The Politics,
Culture and History of Shi
ite Islam (London/New York, 2002), esp. 60–6;
Mahdavi, 1: 67f, 297f. A sister’s marriage with the Tajik sayyid Muhammad
Shirvani (d. 1687–8), whom Shah Sulayman had invited to Isfahan from Najaf,
brought the family a sayyid connection. See Khatunabadi, 506; Nasrabadi, 155;
Arjomand, The Shadow, 152. A relative and poet, Ashraf (d. 1704), a student of
Saib Tabrizi, later moved to India (Dale, ‘A Safavid Poet’). A daughter of Baqir
Majlisi married into the Khatunabadi sayyid family, whose origins were in the
Hijaz and which achieved prominence at court during the reign of Shah Sultan
Husayn and on whom see the following chapter, esp. ad n42.
47 Another of Baqir Majlisi’s teachers was related by marriage to the Akhbari
Muhammad Amin Astarabadi. Majlisi also studied with Sayyid Ali Khan
Madani Shirazi (d. 1707), a descendant of the Tajik sayyid Mansur Dashtaki
who served Tahmasp as sadr. On his teachers, see the sources cited in the previ-
ous note and also Danishpazhuh, 5: 1613; Amin, 10: 119–24; Turner, 158–9. On
Sayyid Ali Khan, who lived much of his life in India, see M. Salati, Il Passaggio in
India di Ali Khan al-Shirazi al-Madani (1642–1707) (Padova, 1999).
48 The best-known of these Persian-language ‘primers’ were completed between
1662 and 1678, before his appointment as Shaykh al-Islam. See Tabrisi (87f) and
Bahrani (56f) for lists of Majlisi’s Arabic and Persian-language works, the latter
including many shorter essays on specific points of doctrine and practice. See
also Tehrani, 7: 83; Khatunabadi, 533. Turner (166–8) and Arjomand (The
Shadow, 157–8, 168–9) both miss out the Persian-language contributions of
Taqi Majlisi and his teachers Bahai and Damad, on which see n131 of Chapter 4.
49 Majlisi favoured the pro-court position on Friday prayer and, in the tradition of
Ali Karaki, in a 1662 Persian-language work he had upheld the authority and
legitimacy of temporal rulers and co-operation with them, even if they were
unjust tyrants, in order to preserve and protect the community of believers. As
early as 1661, he had interpreted certain hadith texts as referring to the
appearance of the Safavids. See Tehrani, 15: 66, 79 and the following note.
50 Majlisi did not himself live to see the completion of Bihar, an early version of
which was finished in 1659, the year of his father’s death when he himself was
32, and several volumes of which were completed by 1670. On these dates see
Khatunabadi, 535–6; E. Kohlberg, ‘Behar al-Anwar’, EIr, 4: 90–3. Bihar itself
included two hadiths which he had earlier interpreted as referring to the coming
of the Safavids. See Danishpazhuh, 5: 1204–5, 1207n1, 1210; Babayan, ‘The
Waning’, 182f. Compare Turner, 210–11.
Where Turner (171, 194), for example, questioned the authenticity of Bihar’s
hadith texts, Chittick (‘Two Seventeenth-Century Persian Tracts on Kingship
and Rulers’, in Arjomand, ed., Authority, 284–304) carefully traced the texts
cited in extracts he examined to earlier collections of Twelver hadith. See also the
very careful verdict of Kohlberg (ibid.) on the authenticity of Bihar’s texts and
our discussion of Bihar in the following note. See also a similar discussion in our
article on Majlisi cited in n56 below.
51 See the sources cited in n47. Majlisi’s Persian-language Sual va Javab (question
and answer), much cited in the Western sources, in which he denounced Sufism
as ‘this foul and hellish growth’, was itself of a genre of essay in which clerics
 Notes to pages 98–99 227
offered written responses to submitted questions, suggesting Majlisi had not
raised the issue himself. This brief essay was the sole basis of Lockhart’s charac-
terisations of Majlisi discussed in our Preface, ad n1. See also Arjomand, The
Shadow, 157n180; Turner, 173–4n112. In his essay ‘al-Itiqadat’ (Beliefs) Majlisi
listed problematic practices popular among the darvish orders, including sing-
ing, denounced various earlier Sufi figures and explained his father’s association
with Sufis as having stemmed from a desire to convert them to the true faith. Few
of these points were not, however, already on offer in the essays of Muhammad
Tahir and Shaykh Ali, both of whom had devoted considerably more time and
energy to the subject. Indeed, Majlisi wrote this essay in one night as a response
to a unnamed questioner. See Turner, 174–5, 176. On Baqir Majlisi and his
father, see Arjomand, The Shadow, 153n162; Babayan, ‘The Waning’, n715,
citing Sayr va Suluk (a minor work written in 1675–6 as reply to questions put to
him by Khalil Qazvini), as quoted in post-Safavid sources.
By comparison with the field’s fixation with these minor essays, Majlisi’s work
with the hadith, which culminated in both his massive Bihar al-Anvar (the
1982–3 Beirut edition of which comprises some 110 volumes) and the 16-volume
Muladh al-Akhyar, recently published in Qum, both in Arabic, have yet to be the
subject of any detailed, comparative examination. See, however, K. H. Pampus,
‘Die theologische Enzyklopädie Bihar al-Anwar Muhammed Baqir al-Majlisi’
(unpublished PhD thesis, Bonn, 1970), and our article on Majlisi cited in n56.
52 Sources speak of the Safavid-period hadith compilations of ‘the three Muham-
mads’, in reference to Fayz’ Vafi, completed by 1658, Hurr-i Amili’s Vasail
al-Shi
a, completed between 1655 and 1677, and Bihar, all in Arabic. See
Danishpazhuh, 5: 1627–40, 1232–4.
53 Some of Bihar’s texts, for example, presented the Imams as possessing super-
human, and pre-existential knowledge and miraculous abilities and portrayed
the Prophet’s immediate companions as grave sinners (Kohlberg, 92–3), tenden-
cies which had been downplayed since the time of al-Kulayni in the tenth
century. On the latter see our The Formative Period, esp. 134f.
54 On an essay dedicated to Sulayman in which Majlisi predicted the return of the
Hidden Imam in sixty-five years, a point also addressed in Bihar, see Tehrani, 1:
90; Danishpazhuh, 5: 1203f, 1213; Bahrani, 99. See also Arjomand, The
Shadow, 182; Babayan, ‘The Waning’, n739, n749; Turner, 210, 218–30.
55 As during the reign of Abbas I, in this period also the centre sent out its own
clerics to preach in the ‘popular’ quarters. For a 1694 example of pro-Safavid
clerical orations in the city’s coffee-houses, see Matthee, ‘Coffee’, 25. Majlisi’s
involvement with the 1693–4 School of the Potters (nn28, 36, and 50 of
Chapter 8) also suggests efforts to associate with and thereby influence ‘popular’
discourse. See also the previous note.
56 See our ‘Baqir al-Majlisi and Islamicate Medicine: Safavid Medical Theory and
Practice Re-examined’, in Newman, ed., Society and Culture, 371–96; n50 of
Chapter 8.
In line with the hadith Majlisi sanctioned recourse to Christian and Jewish
doctors (ibid., 392), suggesting, pace Moreen, that his continued reputation as a
persecutor of the Jews (Lockhart, The Fall, 32–3) is overdue for rejection. See
V. Moreen, ‘Risala-yi Sawa
iq al-Yahud [The Treatise “Lightning Bolts Against
the Jews”] by Muhammad Baqir b. Muhammad Taqi al-Majlisi (d. 1699)’, Die
Welt des Islams 32 (1992), 177–95, and compare the reference to Lockhart cited
in n77. See also n140, Chapter 4, and n30 of Chapter 6 on the earlier efforts of
228 Notes to pages 99–100
Shaykh Bahai and Fayz Kashani to forestall earlier moves to convert Jews and
Bahai’s tolerance of social interaction with Christians. On the viability, and
court patronage, of both these and various other traditions of illness and well-
ness over the entire Safavid period, see our ‘Safavids – Religion, Philosophy and
Science’, 783–5.
57 Calmard, ‘Shi
i Rituals and Power II’, 158–9, 162–3, 165–6; Ferrier, ‘Women’,
399; Keyvani, 188f, partly based on post-Safavid sources.
58 Blake, Half, 170–1; Hunarfar, 531; Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 362.
59 Mazzaoui, The Origins, 51, citing Shaykh Husayn b. Abdal Zahidi Nasab
Nama-yi Safaviyya, or Silsilat al-Nasab-i Safaviyya (Sarwar, 115). The work was
published in Berlin in 1924. Khuld-i Barin, completed in 1667 by Muhammad
Yusuf Qazvini, the brother of Mirza Muhammad Tahir, the author of Abbasnama
and vizier from 1689, took a similar view of Safavid history. Special, very posi-
tive, attention was paid to the Nimatallahi Sufi order, which achieved both a
‘working relationship’ and enjoyed family ties with the Safavids in the previous
century, in such court chronicles as Alam ara-yi Safavi, dated to 1675–6, and
Alam ara-yi Shah Tahmasp, completed after 1675–6 (Quinn, ‘Rewriting’, 211f,
215f). The latter work (I. Afshar, ed., Tehran, 1991, 22) from the first
emphasises Tahmasp’s status as head of the Safavid Sufi order. See also Floor,
‘Khalifeh’, 77.
60 Khatunabadi, 541; Blake, 130; nn26, 56. Majlisi’s smashing of idols is often
cited as proof of his intolerance (Turner, 164; Matthee, The Politics, 206; S.
Mahdavi, ‘Muhammad Baqir Majlisi, Family Values, and the Safavids’, in M.
Mazzaoui, ed., Safavid Iran, 90), absent reference either to his tolerance of
‘People of the Book’ or to the broader socio-economic context of this particular
event to which attention is drawn in discussions of the anti-minority measures
undertaken by Khalifa Sultan and Muhammad Bek (compare Matthee, ‘The
Career’, 12; idem, ‘Administrative’, 87–8). In her ‘A Seventeenth-Century Iranian
Rabbi’s Polemical Remarks on Jews, Christians, and Muslims’, in M. Mazzaoui,
ed., Safavid Iran and Her Neighbors (Salt Lake City, 2003), 157–68, V. Moreen
discusses an essay completed in 1686, the year before Majlisi’s appointment as
Shaykh al-Islam.
On Sulayman’s request that an Arabic-language anti-Christian work be
translated into Persian, see Matthee, ‘Between Aloofness’, 980–1; Jafariyan,
Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 3: 965–1000, esp. 980–1; Mahdavi, 1: 129f; A. Hairi,
‘Reflections’, 159. This essay was likely a continuation of the anti-missionary
discourse adopted earlier in the century on which see n29 of Chapter 5, and
nn77, 78.
The vizier also played to the realm’s anti-philosophy polemic as well (n61).
See also n77.
61 See our ‘Sufism’, nn55, 56; Tehrani, 15: 79; Danishpazhuh 5: 1488–90. On
subsequent criticism of them of both as well as Shaykh Bahai, Mir Damad,
Khalil Qazvini and Fayz Kashani, however, see n35 of Chapter 8.
In a further instance of the centre’s identification with such elements, the
vaqfnama of a school in Hamadan built by the vizier himself – dated to 1689,
two years after Majlisi’s appointment as Isfahan’s Shaykh al-Islam, and signed
by many prominent Isfahani clerics – prohibited the study of philosophy. See
Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 357–8.
62 Mir Lawhi probably died after 1672, when he would have been more than 83.
Muhammad Tahir had died in 1687, the year of Majlisi’s appointment. Shaykh
 Notes to pages 100–101 229
Ali died in 1691–2, and Hurr-i Amili died in 1693 – six years after Majlisi’s
appointment. Sayyid Ahmad Alavi had died before 1650. We have the names of
no students of these figures who carried on their teachers’ polemic. See n63.
63 By contrast with the opponents of Sufism (n62), Baqir Majlisi, for example,
‘produced’ a number of prominent students who carried on his legacy, including
Muhammad b. Ali Ardabili, Nimatallah Jazairi and Mirza Abdallah Afandi (d.
1717). The latter, for example, held a position on Friday prayer similar to that of
both Majlisis (Tehrani, 15: 74), and, like Jazairi, assisted his teacher in compiling
Bihar (Kohlberg, 91). On Jazairi, see also D. Stewart, ‘The Humour of the
Scholars: the Autobiography of Nimat Allah al-Jaza
iri (d. 1112/1701)’, IS,
22(4) (1989), 47–81. On another prominent student of Majlisi, see n40 of
Chapter 8.
64 Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 13, 13n3, citing Chardin and Sanson.
65 Canby, 148; Hillenbrand, 6: 805; Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 363. On the earthquake
see also Jafariyan, ‘Munasibat’, 24. On work on Isfahan’s Darb-i Imam dated to
1671, see P. Varjavand’s article in EIr, 7(1).
66 Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 357–8, 360f, 363; Hunarfar, 638–42; n61. A 1686 inscrip-
tion in the sarai (Hunarfar, 646–8) notes Sulayman’s connection to Imam Musa.
On these and other private vaqfs, see Sefatgol, ‘Safavid Administration of Avqaf:
Structure, Changes and Functions, 1077–1135/1666–1722’, in Newman, ed.,
Society and Culture, 403. On the vaqf of Sulayman’s daughter, see also Ahmadi,
‘Du Vaqfnama’, 341–54. Floor (A Fiscal, 119–25) discusses vaqf generally and
(ibid., 122–3) notes disagreements between the estimates of vaqf incomes given
by Chardin, Fryer and Kaempfer. See also n69 of the following chapter.
67 Hunarfar, 531–2.
68 The Ilchi’s mosque inscription, dated to 1685, speaks of the reigning shah as ‘the
propagator of the faith of the infallible Imams’ and ‘the Musavid’ and ‘the
Husaynid’. Blake, 153–4; Hunarfar, 643–5; Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 363; Godard,
154–5.
69 A ghulam at Sulayman’s court built a two-storey school in the Hasanabad quar-
ter, East of Abbas I’s new maydan; the 1693–4 vaqf, dedicating to the mosque
the revenues of a sarai and shops to its upkeep, suggests his involvement in trade.
Blake, 167. A eunuch whose support was crucial to Sulayman’s accession also
built a school in this period. See Khatunabadi, 525; Roemer, 6: 305; Jafariyan,
Safaviyya, 363.
70 In 1687–8 the daughter of a Qummi merchant and wife of ‘Mirza Muhammad
Mahdi’, built the Mirza Husayn School in a suburb located West of the New
Gate of the older walled city, and in 1692–3 she dedicated properties to its
upkeep. See Blake, 168, 191; Hunarfar, 649–50; Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 362–3. If
the reference is to the vizier Muhammad Mahdi Karaki, the marriage suggests
more than a working relationship between clergy and bazaar (see text ad nn87,
88, of Chapter 2). See also n51 of Chapter 8. On Muslim merchants, see
Matthee, ‘Merchants’, 249f. On private vaqfs, including those of two women
dated to 1679 and 1692, see Sefatgol, ‘Safavid Administration’, 403–4; John
Fryer, an English physician in Iran in 1677–8, as cited in Canby, 144; Ferrier, in
Hambly, 400. Perhaps such continued overt involvement of women gave rise to
the polemics discussed by Babayan in ‘The “Aqaid al-Nisa” ’ and Mahdavi in
her ‘Muhammad Baqir Majlisi’, though analyses offered on the basis of a single
text can be problematic. On attitudes toward women generally, see also Blake,
‘Contributors’, 414–15, citing Chardin. See also n88.
230 Notes to pages 101–102
71 The mosque’s 1688 inscription called the shah ‘the shadow of Allah on the
Earth’ and ‘the Musavid’ and referred also to the shah as ruling over the ‘Arabs
and the ajam’, on which title see nn46, 48, 49 of Chapter 6. See Hunarfar, 472–4,
389–91, 651–2; Blake, Half, 152. On the clerical/ merchant alliance, see also the
previous note.
72 Blake, Half, 153–4; Hunarfar, 626–30; Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 362.
73 Canby, 147–8, Blake, Half, 71f; Hillenbrand, 6: 804–5; Hunarfar, 622–5. The
building was highly praised by the poet Saib Tabrizi, on whom see below. See
Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 360; Godard, 147–8.
74 Canby, 148; Godard, 162–3; Hunarfar, 580–1; Blake, Half, 44, who dates the
building to after 1722.
75 Blake, Half, 76. The mausolea erected for Naini and Khvansari have been men-
tioned. The poet Saib Tabrizi, a court associate over the reigns of three shahs,
was buried in his own gardens. Hunarfar, 634–8, 657–9; Jafariyan, Safaviyya,
362, Tabrizi, Faraid, 295.
76 According to Chardin, the sadr received the mansion of Ali Quli Khan when the
latter died without heir and the property passed to the shah. Blake, Half, 89–90,
191; Ferrier, A Journey, 153–4.
77 On the consistency with which the court upheld the Armenian side in foreign
trade arrangements throughout Shaykh Ali Khan’s vizierate and into that of
Muhammad Tahir Qazvini, see Matthee, The Politics, 192–7, 197–201, 202. On
the continued wealth enjoyed by the richest merchants, see also McCabe, 191.
McCabe (188–94) links the 1678 persecution of the Armenian, and Jewish,
community to that year’s ‘drought, crop failure and high price of corn’ and
suggests conversions to Islam in this period were either personal or ‘political’.
See also Ghougassian, 158. The later conversion to Islam of the very wealthy
mayor (kalantar) of New Julfa was linked to French Capuchin efforts to convert
the Armenians. See also McCabe, 195–8. On Catholic missionary efforts in New
Julfa, and court’s support for Iranian Armenians, see Ghougassian, 125f, esp.
135f, 145–6, 176. Jafariyan (Safaviyya, 353–5) notes Sulayman’s visit to an
Armenian church and an Armenian priest’s dedication to the shah of a book on
the faith. Lockhart (The Fall, 32) cites Carmelite reports, dated to 1678, of the
killing of some Jewish rabbis at the instigation of some hostile clerics, which he
attributes, sans supporting references, to ‘the power and influence’ of Baqir
Majlisi. See nn56, 60. On Carmelite attitudes toward the centre, see also n16 of
the following chapter.
78 St Nerses church was built between 1666–7 and 1670–1 and that of St Nicholas
the Patriarch also dates from this period (Carswell, 57, 59). On All Saviour’s, see
the inscriptions dated to 1667, 1669 and 1670, in Hunarfar, 516. McCabe notes
(188–94) that despite the taxes imposed on the community ‘the richest were still
immensely wealthy’ and Chardin (Ferrier, A Journey, 65) noted that Julfa con-
tained over 3,500 houses, the most lavish of which were located along the river.
Carswell discusses two of the community’s finer houses (65f) and offers foreign
accounts of New Julfa (73f). In arguing for New Julfa’s subsequent apparent
‘decline’, McCabe (353–5) notes both pressures for conversion and, mainly,
‘community infighting’ as its causes. In tandem with conventional discussions of
Safavid ‘decline’, she dates the onset of this process to the 1650s even though she
also notes that the community’s key role in international trade continued until
c. 1750.
79 In his ‘The Tarikh-i Jahanara in the Chester Beatty Library: An Illustrated
 Notes to pages 102–104 231
Manuscript of the “Anonymous Histories of Shah Ismail” ’, IS, 37(1) (2004),
89–107, esp. 93f, B. Wood notes a 1683 copy of this text which featured ‘old
norms’ rendered in a European style. Canby (151) refers to other illustrated
manuscripts of the same text which do not feature European stylisation. See also
Morton, ‘The Date’.
80 Muhammad Zaman’s recourse to European styles may be seen especially in his
additions to earlier works such as the 1539–43 Khamsa or the Shahnama made
for Abbas I. Canby, 148f.
81 Shafi Abbasi, Muhammad Zaman and Ali Quli Jabbadar produced such items;
Muhammad Zaman may well have first attracted Shah Sulayman’s attention as a
lacquer painter. Canby, 15f1.
82 Canby, 151, 154–6, 159. See especially 152, fig. 143 where the rose and butterfly
design itself may derive from a European pattern book, reflecting both a cosmo-
politan taste and an ability to pay for such a fine fabric and design patterns.
83 Canby, 156.
84 Canby, 159.
85 Crowe, Persia and China, 169–70, 174, 176, 187, 197, 205, 226, 240. Crowe
calls attention to Dutch shipments in 1670, 1675 and 1678, which attest to
ongoing foreign demand for such items.
86 Canby, 157–9.
87 Jafariyan, Safaviyya, 347.
88 Browne, 4: 112–13, citing Krusinski and Chardin; Lockhart, The Fall, 29–30,
citing Fryer, in Iran from 1677–8, Sanson, in Iran from 1683 to 1691 and
Muhammad Muhsin’s Zubdat al-Tavarikh, composed for Nadir Shah in 1741–2,
50 years after Sulayman’s death; Roemer, 6: 304–7, 310, citing, among others,
Kaempfer, in Iran from 1683–4, on whom see n70 of the following chapter;
Savory, Iran Under, 238–9, citing Chardin. On the rising influence of the haram
from the reign of Abbas II, see also Matthee, ‘Administrative’, 81; idem, ‘Iran’s
Ottoman Diplomacy’, 151–2, citing Chardin, Sanson, Krusinski, and Kaempfer,
among other foreign sources. Ferrier (A Journey, 69–75) summarises Chardin’s
remarks on the palace and the haram, direct news of which, as both were not
public venues, might usefully be treated with considerable care. See also Carmelite
accounts of Sulayman’s drinking (Floor, A Fiscal, 230). On womens’ involvement
in society, see also n70.
89 Ferrier, A Journey, 44–5. Blake (Half, 139–40) suggests that Chardin’s figure of
162 mosques within the city and another twenty-eight outwith ignored many
smaller neighbourhood mosques and those built by various notables in conjunc-
tion with the establishment of such other buildings as sarais, mansions and
bathhouses. On the city’s various quarters and suburbs generally, see Blake,
181–91; Haneda, ‘The Character’. Hunarfar (725–8) citing later sources, notes
that over the Safavid period the city grew to some forty quarters from six. See
also n64 of the previous chapter. On Chardin’s estimate of Isfahan’s population
as 500,000, see n71 of the following chapter but on his estimate of Iran’s total
population as 40 million, see n6.

8 Denouement or Defeat: The Reign of Shah Sultan Husayn (1694–1722)

1 Khatunabadi, 549–50, 558, where he notes that in 1708–9 robes were also
distributed to religious figures. See also the preface to Nasiri, Dastur, 28, and the
text itself, 24.
232 Notes to pages 104–105
Nasiri (d. c. 1714), a descendant both of Nasir al-Din Tusi and more recent,
Safavid-period, figures at court, including Abbas I’s vizier Hatim Bek Urdubadi,
was a court historian (preface, 45f; n7). Of his chronicle, only entries for the
years 1692–1700, the first six years of Shah Sultan Husayn’s twenty-eight-year
reign, are extant. See also Lockhart, The Fall, 35, citing European sources. As
noted in Dastur’s preface (27–8), Maryam Bekum is usually identified as the
shah’s aunt. See also Lockhart, ibid., 36, 39, 48n1; Tabrisi, 245; Jafariyan, Ilal,
302; Mirza Rafia Ansari, Dastur al-Muluk, M. Danishpazhuh, ed., in Majallah-yi
Danishkadah-i Adabiyat va
Ulum-i Insani-yi Danishgah-i Tehran, 15: 501,
where she is identified as Safi’s daughter and the builder of builder of the school.
In a 1703–4 inscription on that school (Hunarfar, 662) she refers to herself as
Safi’s daughter.
C. Marcinkowski has recently completed a translation of Ansari’s text, as
Mirza Rafia’s Dastur al-Muluk. A Manual of Later Safavid Administration.
English Translation, Comments on the Offices and Services, and Facsimile of the
Unique Persian Manuscript (Kuala Lumpur, 2002). I. Afshar is scheduled to
produce a new version of this text based on the recent discovery of the remainder
of the manuscript and Marcinkowski has indicated he will produce a new trans-
lation thereof. There is little known of the author, except that he was likely a
member of the capital’s well-known Jabari family (see also n8) which had served
the court from Ismail’s reign. The text is dedicated to Sultan Husayn and the last
date cited in the text is 1712. See Danishpazhuh’s prefatory remarks in ibid., 15:
484.
2 Nasiri, preface, 28; Lockhart, The Fall, 50–68, based on non-Persian sources.
On the treaty with Russia, see Lockhart, 103–8.
3 Nasiri, 70f; 277–8; Lockhart, The Fall, 46–7, 50.
4 These manuals include Dastur al-Muluk, on which see n1; Tadhkirat al-Muluk,
written sometime after the assassination of Isfahan’s conqueror Shah Mahmud
in 1725, for Shah Mahmud’s nephew and successor Ashraf (1725–9), although
Lockhart (The Fall, 513–14) dates it to 1726; and Alqab va Mavajib-i Dawrah-i
Salatin Safaviyya, of Mirza Ali Naqi Nasiri (Y. Rahimlu, ed., Mashhad, 1372),
completed during the reign of Tahmasp II – the son of Shah Sultan Husayn, who
proclaimed himself shah in Qazvin following the fall of Isfahan.
Scholars have yet to consider the ‘agendas’ of these texts, as Quinn has done
for earlier court chronicles. The ascription of such a high degree of formality to
Safavid administrative structures described in the two post-1722 texts is particu-
larly problematic. Tadhkirat is noticeably structured along the lines of Dastur.
For an overview of the court, based mainly on Tadhkirat and foreign, including
later, sources, see Savory, ‘Courts and Courtiers vi. In the Safavid Period’, EIr, 6:
371–5. On the role of the eunuchs, especially as attested by these later sources,
see K. Babayan, ‘Eunuchs in the Safavid Period’, EIr, 9. Chardin, however, had
estimated that 1,000 ghulam served the shah and 3,000 eunuchs resided at the
court. See S. Babaie, Slaves of the Shah, 15. On Chardin’s reliability, see n44 of
Chapter 5, and n12 of our Introduction. See also n48.
5 Floor, Safavid Government, 38, 22, 173; Matthee, ‘Between Aloofness’, 226n35;
Lockhart, The Fall, 106, 114, 126, 138; Matthee, ‘Administrative Change’,
92–3, where he dates Muhammad Tahir’s appointment as vizier to March, 1691;
Khatunabadi, 550. Fath Ali Khan had been qullaraqasi and the Bekdilu Shamlu
Muhammad Quli Khan, made vizier in 1721, had been qurchibashi and fought
against the Afghans at Gulnabad in 1722; he was dismissed following the
 Notes to page 105 233
Afghans’ subsequent capture of Isfahan. There was no vakil in this period (Floor,
Safavid Government, 13). See also Floor, Safavid Government, 142–3, 172–3;
idem, ‘sadr’, 482; Lockhart, The Fall, 98–9, 138. The origins of the divanbekis of
the period are hard to identify, but at least one, Livan Mirza, was Georgian
(Floor, ‘Judicial’, 23–4; Lockhart, 46) and another, Safi Quli Khan, who served
1712–15, was of tribal origin (Lockhart, 98–9). On Fath Ali Khan, see also
R. Matthee’s recent ‘Blinded by Power: The Rise and Fall of Fath Ali Khan
Daghestani, Grand Vizier Under Shah Sultan Husayn (1127/1715–1133/1720)’,
SIr, 33 (2004), 179–220.
6 The Dhul-Qadr retained the position of sealkeeper (Floor, Safavid Government,
72) and the Shamlu held the post of ishikaqasibashi of the Supreme Divan
(Nasiri, 19, 33, 196, 258, 272). See also the sources cited in the previous note.
7 On sayyids dominating the posts of court scribe, including Nasiri, author of
Dastur and descendant of the Urdubadi viziers of the reigns of Abbas I and Safi,
and other Nasiris, and other key posts, see Floor, Safavid Government, 57, 43,
53; n1. The chief doctor was a sayyid (Khatunabadi, 553). Floor (Safavid
Government, 40) notes the centre’s domination over the period by Qizilbash,
ghulam, and Tajik elements.
8 Floor (‘Judicial’, 48) offers a partial list of Isfahan’s kalantars, in effect an elected
mayor; during Husayn’s reign all were drawn from the prominent Jabari family
of sayyids, which also provided the comptroller during Abbas II’s reign. See also
Floor, Safavid Government, 43. On those holding posts at court and in the
provinces, see Khatunabadi, 551–1, 559, 560, 564. The provincial religious bur-
eaucracy was also dominated by Tajik sayyids. Thus, while the first-generation
Lebanese immigrant Hurr-i Amili was Mashhad’s Shaykh al-Islam, local sayyid
families dominated the city’s other religious posts, including those connected
with Imam Riza’s shrine (Khatunabadi, 515, 522–3, 529, 532, 536, 539) one
of whom was the centre’s sadr khassa from 1666 to 1687 (Khatunabadi,
546, 550; Floor, ‘sadr’, 482) and another married Sulayman’s daughter. See also
Khatunabadi, 541; Floor, ‘sadr’, 484f. In Isfahan, the thoroughly Persianised
Karaki family retained its influence over this period, with the son of the former
vizier Muhammad Mahdi Karaki serving as the city’s qadi (Khatunabadi, 555).
The post of Shaykh al-Islam of Isfahan and the capital’s Friday prayer leader
remained in the Majlisi family, now also sayyids, through the fall of Isfahan. See
Kitabi, 57–8. Absent, at both the provincial and central administrative levels, are
any large number of Arab immigrants. Jurdi (‘Migration’, 422) lists only eight
Amili scholars as holding any ‘position’ at all during the period 1680–1736; four
were sayyids, suggesting their assimilation, like the Karakis and Majlisis, by this
period. Compare her ‘Converting Persia’, 155, where she lists ten.
9 An Ustajlu chief was sent to expel the Abdalis and Ghalzai Afghans from Herat
of which the governor was a Shamlu (Lockhart, 96, 97). Sultan Husayn’s son
Tahmasp appointed a Qajar governor of Simnan, who later turned against him,
and sent a Shamlu envoy to Istanbul (Lockhart, 280–1, 344). In Nasiri’s Dastur,
see also mention of the Kurd Rustam Khan Zangana as governor of Jam (213,
269), and other prominent Zanganas (214, 225–6; 58; Matthee, ‘Administrative
Change’, 92), the Sadlu governor of Simnan (114; on the Sadlu, see Woods, The
Aqquyunlu 108, 196, 199), the Afshar governor of Urmiyya (96), prominent
Qajars (166, 219, 222, 233–4; 56–7; 29; 96), including a governor of Simnan
(273), prominent Shamlu (19, 33, 106, 196, 258, 272) and the Inallu (61, 70,
193–4).
234 Notes to pages 105–106
10 See Floor, Safavid Government, 80–123, for a discussion of provincial govern-
ment over the period, esp. 102. Nasiri, in his Alqab, devotes special attention to
provincial affairs.
11 Röhrborn (86) cites Sanson’s disagreement with Chardin on the degree of local
autonomy.
12 Röhrborn, 69, 86, 103, 107, 165–6, 171. See also Khatunabadi, 551–2, 555,
559, 560, 564.
13 See Nasiri, Dastur, 30, 71, 85, 104–5, 121, 122, 131, 157–8, 160, 181, 195,
200–1, 206, 225, 234, 237, 246, 258. See also Floor, A Fiscal, 200, citing a
listing of tribes who supplied both mounted and foot soldiers; idem, Safavid
Government, 214–15. Although the list probably dates to the Zand or Qajar
period, the many references to the Qizilbash in Nasiri’s contemporary text
(cited above), in both ‘political’ and military contexts, suggest the continued
importance of tribal elements in, and to, the polity. See also n90.
14 Lockhart, The Fall, 138–9, citing, as he acknowledges, conflicting sources. On
the Kuhgilu see Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 163, 173, 193. As noted below, Qajar
forces based in Astarabad, and their commander, a former governor of Mashhad,
were sent against and defeated by Sistani rebels in 1719–20. See Lockhart,
122–3, 280–1, citing the later Tarikh-i Nadiri, on which see n26.
15 See, for example, the text ad n60 of Chapter 7, and our discussions of the anti-
minority policies of Khalifa Sultan and Muhammad Bek. See also Ghougassian,
159–61, citing Armenian sources.
16 On the Sunni vizier Fath Ali Khan’s 1716 refusal of Peter the Great’s request to
order the Armenians to redirect the silk trade via Russia and, on the eve of the
Afghan invasion, the Shamlu vizier’s refusal of an Ottoman request to order
merchants to redirect all land and maritime silk export via their territory, see
Matthee, The Politics, 225, 220–1. See also Floor, The Economy, 209–10; idem,
A Fiscal, 181. See also Ghougassian, 145–56, 220–3, 225–6, 280, 284 and 286,
the latter including Sultan Husayn’s 1712 firman forbidding Catholic missionary
efforts among the Armenians. In 1694, the Carmelites were expelled from
Isfahan, although they were allowed to return in 1697. See Richard, ‘Carmelites’,
833. The court’s, at least passing, interest in anti-Christian polemics, as exhib-
ited by the attacks on Christianity of a European convert to Islam, Ali Quli Jadid
al-Islam, and the shah’s encouragement of his translation of one such work into
Persian, was no doubt rooted in the suspicion of ‘foreign’ Christians, as Sayyid
Ahmad Alavi’s hostility to the foreign missionaries had been earlier in the cen-
tury. On Jadid al-Islam, see Hairi, ‘Reflections’, 160–3; Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar
Arsa-yi Din, 3: 965–1000, 1001–42; n18.
17 A1716 firman freed Armenians from the transporting of the bodies of executed
criminals and from the cereal tax. See Ghougassian, 160; McCabe, 360–1.
18 Ghougassian, 160. Baqir Khatunabadi’s 1696–7 translation of the gospels at the
shah’s command, on which see n42, suggests a more profound interest in
Christianity, especially the indigenous variety, than that exhibited in the polem-
ics of Jadid al-Islam. See also Thomas, ‘Chronology’, 204; Thomas and Vahman,
‘Persian Translations’, 211.
19 Ghougassian, 197; Hunarfar, 508–10, 517. See also E. Herzig’s forthcoming
research.
20 See Floor, The Economy, 191–3, 84; Floor and Clawson, 350–1, 361–2; Matthee,
‘Between Venice’, 239–40, 251–3, citing mainly company sources. The vizier
Shah Quli Khan Zangana, the son of Shaykh Ali who, as Sulayman’s vizier, had
 Notes to page 106 235
tried to stem the specie outflow, played a role in the issuance of the 1713 firman
(Matthee, The Politics, 213–14). The specie drain in this period was perhaps
aggravated by the demands of Iranian pilgrims to Mecca. See Matthee, ‘Between
Venice’, 251, citing Khatunabadi, 553 and Dutch reports; Matthee, The Politics,
213; Floor, The Economy, 192, and on the popularity of the hajj in this period,
see also ad n49.
21 European demand for Iran’s silk rose in 1693 owing to the 1689–97 European
wars but fell in 1696 owing to the trade in Chinese silk. See Herzig, ‘The Volume’,
65; Floor, The Economy, 173–5, 191, 225–6; Matthee, The Politics, 206f,
210–18, 223–5, 244–5.
22 Lockhart (49–50) citing a contemporary Georgian source, who also claimed
rioters demanded the shah’s younger brother replace him on the throne.
Khatunabadi (556) refers to the shah’s visit to Mashhad in 1707–8 but does not
mention any disorders in the capital.
23 Lockhart, The Fall, 50, and Matthee, The Politics, 212, both citing foreign
sources.
24 Lockhart, ibid. Apparently no harm befell the shah’s younger brother afterwards.
The Georgian commander was made governor of the city.
25 Khatunabadi, 558–60. See also 565–6 on the replacement of officials in the
provinces in 1712, some owing to military failures.
26 Lockhart, The Fall, 83–92, citing foreign accounts, including an Armenian
interpreter attached to the French embassy in Istanbul in Iran from 1718 to
c. 1723, Krusinski and such post-1722 sources as Zubdat al-Tavarikh, Majma
al-Tavarikh and Tarikh-i Nadiri. The latter, composed by Mirza Muhammad
Mahdi Kawkabi Astarabadi, dates to c. eleven years after Nadir Shah’s 1747
assassination. Lockhart (512–13, 92n2, 504f) acknowledged problems with
both Astarabadi and the Armenian source. The reliability of Krusinski (d. 1756),
the Polish Procurator of Jesuit mission in Iran, in Iran for some twenty years
until 1729, and well received by the Afghans after the capture of Isfahan, must
be reconsidered, not the least given the centre’s consistent support for local
Armenian interests against the activities of Catholic missionaries in Iran in
this period, on which see also n16. See also Lockhart, 516–25, esp. 517. On
Krusinski, see also nn33, 81, 92.
27 Khatunabadi, 567–9; Floor, A Fiscal, 230. Matthee cites additional detail on
this unrest from Dutch sources. See his ‘Blinded by Power’, 187–9.
28 Matthee, The Politics, 212n46, 216; Floor, The Afghan Invasion of Safavid
Persia, 1721–29 (Paris, 1998), 29–31; Lockhart, The Fall, 107, 107n2, 108, all
citing foreign sources. Lockhart did not subject the Dutch records to the sort of
systematic, critical examination merited given the VOC’s position in the coun-
try; concerning the Afghans’ 1722 siege of Isfahan (144–70, 408–11), for
example, the VOC’s Dagregister, or Isfahan Diary, which ends in August of
1722, is, at best, underutilised. For his The Afghan Invasion Floor not only
translated the bulk of the Isfahan Diary, but also included previously unknown
Dutch eyewitness accounts of events in Kirman in 1719–21, Lar in 1721 and
Shiraz in 1724.
29 Floor, Safavid Government, 173. Matthee, 214, citing Dutch sources, says Fath
Ali Khan was also qurchibashi, but cf. Floor, ibid., 143.
30 Courtiers’ salaries were cut, for example, but as these comprised a mixture of
payments, in cash and kind, as discussed below, the impact was likely, and
possibly purposely, limited. Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 152f. The Dutch (Matthee,
236 Notes to pages 107–108
‘Blinded by Power’, 187–9) implicated Fath Ali Khan and Muhammad Baqir
Khatunabadi in the earlier food unrest. See n33.
31 Matthee, The Politics, 214–15. On Fath Ali Khan’s measures see also Matthee,
‘Blinded by Power’, 189–93. Foreign sources, variously unhappy with the court
for a variety of reasons, were, perhaps unsurprisingly, uniformly critical of the
centre’s responses. The French, upset with court measures taken against Catholic
missionaries, charged the vizier with pocketing the revenues raised from these
measures (Matthee, The Politics, 215n63). On the French, see also Matthee,
‘Blinded by Power’, 197; nn26, 72. On the similarly critical Dutch view, see
Floor, The Afghan, 26f; Matthee, The Politics, 212; idem, ‘Blinded by Power’,
198–9; nn30, 33. On the Russian view, see Lockhart, The Fall, 106–7; n33.
32 Matthee, ‘Between Venice’, 252, citing contemporary foreign sources and the
later Zubdat; Floor, The Afghan, 29–30; idem, A Fiscal, ibid. The Abbasi was
revalued and in 1717 the minting of gold coins on a large scale was resumed for
the first time since 1587. In 1717 also a new trade agreement VOC was reached
which prohibited the free export of bullion; local traders’ complaints, c . 1719,
that they could not engage in specie export unless they reported their activities to
the authorities suggests some compliance. See Floor, The Economy, 191–3, 84,
116–17; Floor and Clawson, 350–1, 361–2; Matthee, ‘Between Venice’, 239–40,
251–3, citing mainly company sources.
33 Herzig, ‘The Volume’, 65; Floor, The Economy, 173–4, 191, 225–6, 116–17;
Floor, ‘The Dutch’, 355; Matthee, The Politics, 206f, 210–18, 223–5; idem,
‘Blinded by Power’, 191f. On the Levant route and consistent Ottoman efforts to
assure the safe passage of Iranian silk through their territory, see Matthee, The
Politics, 224–5, 216, 222; Herzig, ibid, 65, 71, 75, for c. 1720, 79; Floor, The
Economy, 226. On Russia’s limited successes in attracting Armenian interest in
the ‘Northern’ route, see Herzig, ibid, 71–2; Matthee, The Politics, 219–20, 227;
Ghougassian, 161–2; McCabe, 278f; n16. The continued success of the overland
trade, in silk and specie, and the constant movement of Iranian pilgrims to the
Hijaz over the period belie frequent suggestions as to the inherent insecurity of
travel within the realm, at least to 1715. See Savory, Iran Under, 241; Matthee,
The Politics, 204; idem, ‘Between Venice’, 243, 245, 247, Floor, The Economy,
209–10. For contemporary Dutch ‘analysis’ of their failure to achieve their
desired trade goals, on the 1702 treaty for example, see Matthee, The Politics,
214. On Dutch dissatisfaction with the amount of the gift they were expected to
give the new vizier, see idem, ‘Blinded by Power’, 191.
Such foreign discontent with the centre cannot but have produced skewed
reporting and analysis of domestic developments, as per nn30, 31. Foreign
reports of events at court, to which they enjoyed at best extremely limited access,
are therefore usefully treated with some caution. See, for example, the reports of
the Dutch, (cited by Matthee, ‘Blinded by Power’, 201n78) or the reports of
Krusinski (ibid., 213). On the latter’s ‘agenda’, see nn26, 81, 92.
34 See references to an essay by Fayz’s son and other essays dating to this time
period in Tehrani, 8: 56; 10: 206; n42 of Chapter 7. For an essay by a minor
scholar associated with Maryam Bekum, Safi’s daughter and Sultan’s Husayn’s
aunt, see Tehrani, 6: 446, 12: 157.
Seeking spiritual explanations for Afghan successes, post-1722 accounts by
proponents of philosophical inquiry and Sufi doctrine and practice perhaps nat-
urally focus on clerical hostility to Sufism and irfan. See the references by the
Shirazi Qutb al-Din Nayrizi (d. 1759), the well-known Dhahabi Shaykh, in his
 Notes to pages 108–109 237
post-1722 Fasl al-Khittab, portions of which appear in Jafariyan, ed., Ilal, 259f,
and idem, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 3: 1355–81; n59. See also Nayrizi’s post-
1729 Tibb al-Mamalik, which appears in Jafariyan, ed., Ilal, 215–34, and idem,
Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 3: 1324–37, and Mukafatnama (on which see nn37,
58, 89), written by an imprisoned court retainer between two and five years after
the fall of Isfahan. See also Jafariyan’s accompanying discussion of these texts in
Ilal and Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din.
35 Among the non-living targets of this latter polemic were Shaykh Bahai, Mir
Damad, Khalil Qazvini and Fayz Kashani. Even Muhammad Tahir and Hurr-i
Amili, also both deceased, were attacked on these grounds; both had accepted
court appointments, and both, including Muhammad Tahir who was a critic of
philosophy and Sufi inquiry, had permitted the faqih to lead Friday prayer dur-
ing the Imam’s absence. See Newman, ‘The Nature’, 1992, esp. 256f. On Hurr-i
Amili and the prayer, see Tehrani, 15: 79.
36 The firman, engraved on mosques and other prominent locations, also closed
brothels, banned cock-fighting, ram-fights, and bull-fights and enjoined women
to behave more modestly. Nasiri, Dastur, preface, 29–30; text, page 19, 44f, 29.
See also ibid., 35–52; Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 1: 394f, 406f, citing
Nasiri, on a second, harsher, version of the firman subsequently signed by eight
prominent clerics. See also Lockhart, The Fall, 38–40, 72, cited in turn by
Arjomand (The Shadow, 190) and Turner (164). Floor (A Fiscal, 158) and
Matthee (‘Prostitutes’, 147–8) note copies of the firman in Amul and Tabriz.
Naraqi (230–3) notes a 1694 text of this firman in a Kashan mosque.
Interestingly, Nasiri (e.g. 19, 35) and a 1692 vaqf document for the School of
the Potters (n50) describe Majlisi as ‘the mujtahid of the age (mujtahid al-
zaman)’, but not ‘seal of the mujtahids’, a title given Mir Damad, Mir Damad’s
ancestor Ali Karaki and the latter’s daughter’s son Sayyid Husayn (n19 of
Chapter 5). Khatunabadi (e.g. 551) reserves this term for Muhammad Baqir
Khatunabadi, on whom see below. On Majlisi’s khutba, see also n55.
37 See, for example, Matthee (‘Prostitutes’, 147–8), citing Cornelius de Bruyn, the
Dutch painter who was in Iran, and Isfahan, in 1703, 1704/5 and 1706/7
(Lockhart, The Fall, 48, 476; Floor, ‘De Bruin (or de Bruyn), Cornelis’, EIr,
7/(2); Stevens, 426–7, 432), that dancing women were no longer common at
official ceremonies, and John Bell, briefly in Isfahan in 1717 as surgeon to a
Russian mission (Lockhart, The Fall, 105), that women were no longer offered
to guests but rather shirbat. Canby notes a painting with a more sombre depic-
tion of the shah in 1721, in contrast with that of an audience of Shah Sulayman,
complete with music, food, drink and tobacco. See Canby, The Golden Age,
167, 153. Cf. Babayan, ‘The “Aqaid al-Nisa” ’, 358, 373; n36. For different,
and conflicting accounts as to the failure of the restrictions, see, for example,
Lockhart, The Fall, 47, citing de Bruyn; Matthee, The Politics, 204–5, citing the
post-1722 Mukafatnama and the much later Majma. The pre-1722 account of
Abu Talib Mir Findiriski, Tuhfat al-Alam, lauds Sultan Husayn’s efforts at mili-
tary reform and his moral piety. On the author, see Nasiri, Dastur, Introduction,
28; Matthee, ‘Prostitutes’, 147n117.
38 Hunarfar, 662–7; Blake, 90, 167; Sefatgol, ‘Safavid Administration’, 406.
39 Canby, 163-f; Blake, Half, 159–65; idem, ‘Contributions’, 685–723; Hillen-
brand, 6: 808–11. The Chahar Bagh school contained 150 student rooms
(Khatunabadi, 557), several times more than the total provided for in the two
schools in the Royal or Shah Mosque, now called the Imam Mosque.
238 Notes to page 109
40 Sultan Husayn also convened a gathering marking Imam Ali’s birthday, attended
by the realm’s key clerics. Students began arriving the same year. Khatunabadi,
559–62. On the dates of the building of the school, known also as Sultani school
and the Chahar Bagh School, see Khatunabadi, 556; Tabrizi, Faraid, 290–1;
Blake, Half, 159–3. Tabrizi, author of Faraid, was a student of Baqir Majlisi,
Jamal Khvansari and Muhammad Salih Khatunabadi. See also Sefatgol, ‘Safavid
Administration’, 404–5.
41 Sefatgol, ‘Safavid Administration’, 404–5. See also Blake, Half, 167. See also a
similar ban at the Hamadan school established in 1689 by the vizier Shaykh Ali
Khan ad n61 of Chapter 7.
42 Khatunabadi, 551–71, esp. 552, 554–7, 559, 569–71, 585–98; Kitabi, 52f;
Jafariyan’s introduction to Baqir Khatunabadi’s 1696–7 translation of the
gospels, Tarjuma-yi Anajil-i Arba
a, R. Jafariyan, ed. (Tehran, 1373), 44f.
Muhammad Salih Khatunabadi (d. 1704), who had also studied with the Tajik
sayyid Muhammad Shirvani, Majlisi’s brother-in-law (n46 of Chapter 7), was
Shaykh al-Islam in Isfahan after his father-in-law’s death and his sons were the
capital’s Friday prayer leader and Shaykh al-Islam. See Tabrisi, 148, 243f;
Kitabi, 61–2; Jafariyan, Ilal, 298–302. Kitabi (57f) lists the holders of the post of
Shaykh al-Islam in the city. One Muhammad Jafar appears briefly to have been
Shaykh al-Islam after Majlisi (Khatunabadi, 551; n58).
43 Khatunabadi, 563–4, 566; Jafariyan, Ilal, 298–9.
Minorsky (Tadhkirat, 110–11, 41–2) had identified Baqir Majlisi as the first
mullabashi, an ‘analysis’ echoed by Lockhart (72). Although Arjomand, in his
‘The Office of Mulla-bashi in Shi
ite Iran’, Studia Islamica, 57 (1983), 135–46,
showed Tadhkirat’s ‘Muhammad Baqir’ referred to Baqir Khatunabadi, both he
(The Shadow, 155) and, more recently, Turner (165) argue that Baqir Majlisi
had accumulated so much authority in the realm that he was ‘in effect’ mul-
labashi before the post was created, some fourteen years after his death. See also
Mahdavi, ‘Muhammad Baqir Majlisi’, 90; Floor, ‘sadr’, 477. The primary
sources, textual and otherwise, do not confirm that Majlisi enjoyed such author-
ity or personal closeness to the shah; in fact, the sources do not even agree on the
honorifics accorded Majlisi (see n36). By contrast, based on the close association
between Baqir Khatunabadi and Sultan Husayn, Blake (Half, 161–3) suggests
the Shah in fact built the Chahar Bagh school for the sayyid. Further attesting to
his prominence, the author Khatunabadi (567, 569) reports that rioters attrib-
uted to Muhammad Baqir the statement that people who could afford tobacco
could afford bread, and subsequently torched his house. The Dutch blamed
Khatunabadi for causing the grain crisis (Matthee, ‘Blinded by Power’, 187–9;
n30). See also Blake, 162. At his death in 1715, a son was named teacher at
the Chahar Bagh school in his father’s place, and another was named chief
teacher at the Royal Mosque. The post of mullabashi went to a non-sayyid who
served through the fall of Isfahan and whom Lockhart (72) erroneously styled
Baqir Majlisi’s grandson and, citing no sources, attributed to him the same
fanaticism as his ‘grandfather’ (72n4). See also Roemer (6: 322–3); Jafariyan,
Ilal, 298–301.
44 The school’s great size required extensive vaqf. By 1716, according to Sefatgol,
the income of 11 villages, 33 gardens, 48 farms, 35 qanats, 2 baths, 1 caravan-
sarai, 1 market, 11 tracts of land, 1 coffee shop, 3 mills, 8 walnut trees, 862
other kinds of trees and 1 castle were given to the custodian, teachers, students
and other members of the school. See Sefatgol, ‘Safavid Administration’, 404–5;
 Notes to pages 109–110 239
Tabrizi, ibid.; Khatunabadi, 563; Blake, Half, 163–6. Blake (159–61) suggests
that the school’s vaqf being almost completely in cash reflected the greater mon-
etarisation of the realm since the establishment of the Shah Mosque. Jafariyan
(Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 2: 744f) discusses the library associated with the
school and cites the text of the 1708–9 vaqf.
45 On continued royal patronage of the Qazvin shrine, and its administrators the
Marashi sayyids in this period, as evidenced by firmans dated from 1694 to
1717, see Mudarrissi, Bargi, 181–92, 195–7. On repair work sponsored in the
Iraqi shrine cities, under Ottoman control since 1638, see Khatunabadi, 553.
46 Khatunabadi, 558, 565, 563; Nasiri, 218; Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din,
3: 1254n4, on descendants of this marriage. See also Floor, Safavid Government,
45; n51. See also ad n6 of the following chapter.
47 Blake, Half, 167.
48 Hunarfar, 694–5, 711, 803–4; Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 2: 913–47,
esp. 915–16; Khatunabadi, 557; n51; Jafariyan, ed., ‘Vaqfnama-i Madrasa-yi
Sultan Husayniyya Maruf bi Madrasa-yi Aqa Kamal’, Miras-i Islami Iran,
Jafariyan, ed. 1 (Qum, 1994), 259–90; Babaie, et. al., Slaves of the Shah, 17.
In 1709–10 another eunuch who served the court during the reigns of both
Sulayman and Sultan Husayn built a bathhouse, bazaar and sarai to support a
mosque. See Blake, 154; Hunarfar, 682–3. On eunuchs, see also n69 of the
previous chapter.
Other vaqf documents attest to further co-operation between clerics and
eunuchs and show that the eunuchs, who owed something of their wealth to land
and farms, entrusted their funds to the city’s Indian merchants for safekeeping,
thus linking all these groups together. See Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din,
2: 879f; n38 of Chapter 6.
49 The hajj process was certainly facilitated by continuing peace with the Ottomans
but made more difficult by the not-infrequent attacks on, and various indignities
suffered by, Shi
i residents of and pilgrims to the Hijaz. See, for example,
Khatunabadi, 552–3, 557, 566; Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 2: 844–5;
Matthee, The Politics, 213; idem, ‘Between Venice’, 242–3. See also Jafariyan, 2:
825–49. See also nn20, 33; n36 of Chapter 7.
50 In 1705–6 the Tajik sayyid Ardistani, who built the School of the Potters in
1693–4, and his wife built a school known as the Nim Avard School, located in
the Nim Avard quarter of the city, between the old and new maydans, the base of
a number of the period’s prominent clerics. Both dedicated revenues from their
own lands around Ardistan to support these schools. See Blake, 168; Hunarfar,
652–66, 679–82; Ahmadi, ‘Chahar Vaqfnama’, 3: 99–100, 114f; n28 of Chapter
7. In the Ahmadabad area another medical practitioner, Muhammad Hakim,
built a school with the inscription dated to 1702–3. See Hunarfar, 660–2; n55.
The reference in the vaqf document for the School of the Potters to Baqir
Majlisi and in that of the Nim Avard to Jamal Khvansari (Ahmadi, 118, 128)
suggest continued efforts by both, Majlisi especially, to associate with, and
thereby influence, ‘popular’ discourse in this period.
51 The daughter of a prominent Qummi merchant and sayyid who had married one
Mirza Muhammad Mahdi, perhaps a reference to the Karaki vizier of that name,
dedicated further properties to the Mirza Husayn School she had built in 1687–8,
during Sulayman’s reign. See Blake, Half, 168; Hunarfar, 649–50; n70 of the
previous chapter. In 1713–14, another merchant built a small school in the
Shamsabad quarter of the city. See Hunarfar, 684. One Hajj Mirza Asadallah
240 Notes to page 110
dedicated revenues from two shops to the Dhul-Fiqar mosque in 1697–8 in
Blake, 153; Hunarfar, 385.
52 In 1705–6 a high-ranking (ustad) tailor made an endowment to the Sufrachi
mosque, itself dating to Abbas I’s reign. See Blake, Half, 152; Hunarfar, 476–7.
53 See the water basin built at the Sufrachi mosque in Blake, Half, 152; Hunarfar,
476–7. On the 1712 repair work done at the pre-Safavid Khan Mosque, see
Hunarfar, 608n1.
54 See Jafariyan (Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 2: 903) and Sefatgol, ‘Safavid Adminis-
tration’, 408. Sefatgol notes the importance of vaqf which ‘at a time when no
governmental budget existed for the maintenance of schools, mosques and other
popular institutions, . . . was fundamental to the cultural, economic and social
life of Iran.’ On the centre’s attention to the provision of health ‘services’ over
the period, see our ‘Safavids – Religion, Philosophy and Science’, 784–5.
55 The first is found in both an 1696–7 inscription at the Aqa Kamal school and
at the school built by the medical practitioner Muhammad Hakim, in an inscrip-
tion dated to 1702–3 (nn 48, 50). The second is found in a 1710–11 inscription
in the Chahar Bagh complex. See also those of the Darb-i Imam and Imamzada
Ismail, cited above. See Hunarfar, 684, 524–5, 539–40, 651–2, 660, 718;
Godard, 131–41. For inscriptions dated to 1699–1700, see Hunarfar, 526–31,
682–3. By contrast, Majlisi’s khutba for the new shah (Nasiri, Dastur, 21f)
noticeably lacks the distinctly messianic references to the new ruler evident, for
example, in these inscriptions and Majlisi’s own, earlier writings, on which see
ad nn49, 50 of the previous chapter.
56 Astarabadi, Tarikh-i Sultani, esp. 13. The intended division of the work – itself
based on recourse to, and citing, many well-known earlier chronicles – into three
parts, traced the prophets from Adam to Muhammad, the fourteen immaculates,
their descendants, and the first three caliphs; the rulers of the world prior to the
Prophet’s hijra; and the Safavid house to the reign of Shah Safi. This almost
perfectly mirrors the tripartite arrangement in Qazvini’s Nusakh and, if slightly
less neatly, Lubb’s four sections (Quinn, Historical, 17). In the published version
of the text, which comprises only the third of the three above divisions, the
author commences with a genealogy tracing Sultan Husayn himself back to
Imam Musa and refers to Timur meeting the early Safavids (22–4), as had Abbas
I-period chronicles.
57 Newman, ‘Baqir al-Majlisi and Islamicate Medicine’; Tehrani, 2: 186; 5: 83; 13:
64, 376. Jamal Khvansari also authored ‘Aqaid al- Niswan’ (Tehrani, 18: 112),
on which see Babayan, ‘The “Aqaid al-Nisa” ’, and references ad n37 above and
ad n70 in the previous chapter.
58 Arjomand (The Shadow, 158) cites Shaykh Ali Hazin’s autobiography on the
extensive interest in philosophy and irfan among the literati of the period. The
expulsion of Ardistani is cited from a much later source. The unknown court
retainer who, from jail just a few years after the capital’s fall, penned Mukafat-
nama was likewise interested in philosophy. See the text in Jafariyan, Ilal, 63–
169; Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 3: 1191–297. In 1709 Tabrizi, the
author of Faraid and a student of Jamal Khvansari, Baqir Majlisi and Majlisi’s
son-in-law Muhammad Salih Khatunabadi, penned a critique of Shaykh Ali Ami-
li’s harsh opinions on philosophy and Sufism and translated into Persian Fayz’
1623 Khulasat al-Azkar, a collection of Sufi prayers. See Kanturi, 206; Tabrizi,
Faraid, esp. 14–19, 297–9; Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 3: 1113. On
Muhammad Jafar, see n42, Khatunabadi, 551; Arjomand, The Shadow, 151.
 Notes to pages 111–112 241
59 S. H. Nasr, ‘Shiism and Sufism: Their Relationship in Essence and in History’,
Religious Studies, 6 (1970), 241. Prior to its capture by the Afghans, Qutb al-Din
Nayrizi studied both philosophy and theology and studied Sufism with Dhahabi
scholars in Isfahan. In his post-1722 Fasl al-Khitab (n34) he blames Afghan
successes on conflict between clerics and Sufis. See also Floor, ‘Khalifeh’, 80–1.
60 On the 1702–3 repairs ordered by the shah to the Imamzada Ismail, begun by
Abbas I and completed by Safi in 1631–2, see Blake, Half, 171; Hunarfar, 524–5,
Godard, 131–42. On the 1703 exemption granting the Imamzada’s inhabitants
from certain Ashura expenses, see Hunarfar, 535–7. On work done at the Imam-
zada Ahmad, see Blake, 171; Hunarfar, 670–2. On the 1715 repairs ordered to
the Imamzada Darb-i Imam, a Qaraquyunlu-period structure now crowded with
the tombs of many prominent figures, including that of Tahmasp, and the
construction of a new door in 1717 by the shah’s order, see Blake, Half, 171;
Hunarfar, 341–53, esp. 344–5; Godard, 47–54; Varjavand.
61 Blake, 170–1, citing Khatunabadi, 555–6.
62 See Hunarfar, 528–9, 540; Blake, 171. This may have been the figure mentioned
by Nasiri (Dastur, 84), on whom see also further below.
63 Morton (‘Chub’, 243n59) notes the shah’s visits to the tawhidkhana (on which
see 234, citing Nasiri, Dastur, 56; Hunarfar, 422), the issuance of no less than
half a dozen shajaras, deeds of appointment of the Safavid Sufi khalifa, during
Husayn’s reign and the continued practice of the Safavid Sufi ritual beating
ceremony over this period (241–2, 243n59, 231–3). The many spiritual-political
references to the Qizilbash by Nasiri (Dastur, 30, 71, 85, 104–5) suggest their
continued role at that level, commensurate with their continued military import,
discussed above. See also Mahdavi, 1: 190–1. On the taj in this period, see
Morton, 241. In his contemporary Tarikh-i Sultani (n56) the Tajik sayyid
Astarabadi stresses the ‘ghazi Sufi’ bases of the early house (25, 29), associates
the famous twelve-pleated taj and the term ‘qizilbash’ with Sultan Haydar (26),
and numbers as seven those accompanying the young Ismail from Lahijan,
though these individuals are not identified (33). Floor (‘Khalifeh’, 80–1) cites
contemporary primary sources on the shah’s wearing of the taj and the continued
popularity of the shrine at Ardabil in this period.
64 Calmard, ‘Shi
i Rituals and Power II’, 160, 166, 169–70, 180–1, citing accounts
from 1695, 1704, 1705 and 1714. Claims that Sultan Husayn’s early firman
banning wine, issued at Majlisi’s behest, coincided with a stringent crackdown
on the capital’s Sufis are based on post-Safavid sources, chiefly Tanukabuni’s
nineteenth-century Persian-language clerical biography Qisas al-Ulama. See
Browne, 4: 404; Lockhart, The Fall, 38; Savory, Iran Under, 238, citing only
Browne; Arjomand, The Shadow, 191, 191n33; Turner, 164–5. Compare
Morton, ‘Chub’, 243, and, esp. 243n59. Sufis were also said to have been mass-
acred and the convent of Fayz Kashani destroyed by order of Sultan Husayn.
See Lockhart, The Fall, 38, citing only Sanson, who was, in fact, in Iran from
1683 to 1691; Arjomand, The Shadow, 154, and Röhrborn, 57, citing a mid-
nineteenth- and a late eighteenth-century source respectively. On the latter,
written in India, see also Morton, ‘Chub’, 243n59. Mahdavi (1: 104f, 185–6 and,
esp. 128–9) notes that the Nimatallahi shaykh Zayn al-Abidin Shirvani
(d. 1853), who argued for Majlisi’s antipathy to Sufism, did not mention his
involvement in killings or expulsions. Mahdavi also queried why none of Majlisi’s
legal writings contain rulings ordering, or approving of, the killing of Sufis. Floor
(‘Khalifeh’, 79–80) argues there is no proof for such allegations against Majlisi.
242 Notes to pages 112–113
65 Hunarfar, 722–5; Blake, Half, 79–81; Khatunabadi, 562–3; Matthee, The
Politics, 212, citing Dutch sources. Blake (79) notes later Western sources date
the garden to 1700. Muhammad Baqir Khatunabadi erected a house nearby.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his interest in such matters (see n66), Muhammad
Hashim Asaf, in his Rustam al-Tavarikh (Tehran, 1929–30), completed in 1831,
notes that the site’s haram complex contained rooms for 1,000 women (Blake,
81, citing Asaf, 71–2).
66 On the Chihil Sutun repairs, c. 1706–7, see Blake, Half, 68–9. Reports of the
shah’s excessive behaviour at the garden complex (Blake, 73) are also from
Asaf’s Rustam.
67 Hunarfar, 662–7; Sefatgol, ‘Safavid Administration’, 404; Blake, Half, 90, 167.
On the chief merchant, see Blake, 111, citing the later Asaf.
68 See, for example, Matthee, The Politics, 212; Canby, The Golden, 163, 160. On
Chahar Bagh, see also Hillenbrand, 6: 809.
69 Floor (A Fiscal, 35) maintains the impossibility of estimating Iran’s budget,
though contemporary foreigners did offer estimates. See also idem, ‘Commerce’,
68. But see Matthee, ‘Prostitutes’, 134; idem, ‘The Career’, 22n20, 23, 25; idem,
‘Between Venice’, 229n20. See also Floor, A Fiscal, 114; Afshar, ‘Maktub and
Majmua: Essential Sources for Safavid Research’, in Newman, ed., Society and
Culture, 61. Indeed, the sources do not even permit agreement on Dutch exports
of silk and specie over the century: see n14 of Chapter 6 and, on gold exports
during Sultan Husayn’s reign, compare Floor and Clawson, 351, with Matthee,
‘Between Venice’, 241. See also Floor, ‘Commerce’, 68, citing conflicting VOC
accounts of gold exports in this period.
70 Floor (A Fiscal, 30–1, 129–213) has attempted to gather as much information on
the period’s system of taxation. All these taxes discussed herein were distinct
from the religious taxes (Floor, ibid., 127–8).
Chardin suggested that Iranian peasants were better off than their European
counterparts (Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 21–3, esp. 23; cf. Floor, A Fiscal, 233, also
citing Chardin). On Chardin’s political sympathies, however, see also McCabe’s
‘Beyond the Lettres Persanes’. S. Brakensiek notes that Kaempfer derived most
of his information from Olearius, du Mans and, especially, Chardin and that his
political assessments derived from prevailing European political philosophical
trends. See his ‘Political Judgement between Empirical Experience and Scholarly
Tradition – Engelbert Kaempfer’s Report on Persia (1684/5)’, paper presented at
the ‘Fourth International Round Table on Safavid Studies’, Bamberg, July 2003.
Floor reviews the more important domestic trade and production, often over-
looked in the concern with foreign trade, in his ‘Commerce’, 69. See also his The
Economy, 247–301, wherein he suggests (301) that ‘agriculture, and its ancillary
activities, was the most important sector of the economy in Safavid Persia
employing about 80% of the population.’ See also ibid., 125f, 160f, 197f.
71 Chardin estimated the population of Isfahan, Iran’s largest city, as 500,000, a
figure also given by the Englishman John Ogilby, who visited the city in the same
time period; the Dutch cited the figure of 550,000 for 1710, or about 6% of the
total population of nine million. The other major cities of Tabriz, Kashan and
Yazd were important centres of production and commerce; Tabriz, a key city on
the many local and long-distance trade routes, was likely the only other city with
more than 100,000 inhabitants in this period. Mashhad and Qum were primar-
ily important religious centres. Together the urban share of the population varied
between 10% and 15% of the total. See Blake, 134, 37–41, 74–7; Keyvani,
 Notes to pages 113–114 243
157–8; Floor, The Economy, 2–5; Lockhart, The Fall, 473–85, esp. 477; Ferrier,
A Journey, esp. 44–65. On Chardin’s estimate of the population of all of Iran in
this period as 40 million (!), where Floor (ibid., 2f) suggests no more than nine
million, see n6 of Chapter 7.
72 Keyvani, 47, 49–52, Ferrier, A Journey, 154, 167f. In 1674 the Venetian Bembo
met French goldsmiths and watchmakers working for the shah. See Welch,
‘Safavi Iran’, 105.
73 Keyvani, 52–6; Matthee, ‘Coffee’, 30. On the guild of prostitutes, see Matthee,
‘Prostitutes’, 125–7.
74 Keyvani, 71–4, who notes that the position, which also existed in smaller, pro-
vincial towns, does not appear in the Tadhkirat al-Muluk. Chardin included
Isfahan’s malik al-tujjar among the many ‘rich and highly ranked people’ who
lived in the city’s Abbasabad suburb. See Blake, 111; Ferrier, A Journey, 60–1,
62–3. On Armenian guilds, for example, see Keyvani and also L. Hunarfar,
‘Mashaghil-i Aramanah-yi Julfa’, Majallah-yi Vahid (1964), 68–73, as cited in
Babayan, Mystics, 193n41. For examples of merchants being organised in the
manner discussed above, see ad n53 of Chapter 6.
75 A tobacco tax also generated substantial revenue, according to Chardin and
Tavernier. See Floor, A Fiscal, 149f, 163, 170–4; Matthee, ‘Tobacco in Iran’, 66.
On the corvee, see also Matthee, ‘Unwalled Cities’, 400.
Lest some of these taxes seem ‘odd’ in the twenty-first century, note that in
July 1695 in England a tax was introduced on glass windows.
76 Keyvani, 63f, 83f, 115, 117–21, 137–8. See ibid., 113, 117–18, 137–8 on the
centre’s responses to economic problems during the reigns of Safi and Abbas II
and Sulayman’s efforts to control inflation during 1666–7. Provincial cities also
had price control regimes. Floor, The Economy, 189–90, 230.
77 Under Abbas I and II, there is evidence that censuses were periodically carried
out. See Floor, A Fiscal, 177–89. See also ad n12 of the previous chapter, attest-
ing that Zoroastrians paid the Islamic poll tax even though they were not
formally ‘People of the Book’.
78 Floor, A Fiscal, 37, 189f, 126f, 137–8.
79 Floor, A Fiscal, 37f. These included such devices as the tuyul, hamahsala, and the
suyurghal. See also Floor, ‘Concessions i. In the Safavid Period’, EIr, 6: 119–20.
80 Farmers had to feed, house, and provide transport to various tiers of officials as
well as travellers and ambassadors and provide men for the military and/or
defray of the costs of the upkeep thereof on a regular, and irregular, basis. See
Floor, A Fiscal, 189f. A centrally appointed local water official, like others,
acquired his own salary through ‘gifts’. See Floor, A Fiscal, 126f, 137–8, 177f,
190f.
81 Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 29, citing Krusinski, in Iran between 1704 and 1729, on
whom see n26. The court also maintained factories outside the capital which
produced items for the court and for sale by the court. Keyvani, 171–3, 48–9.
Locals were often required to deliver key raw materials to royal workshops as
part of their regular gift-giving to the centre (Floor, A Fiscal, 210). The court is
known to have supplied materials to rural weavers for carpet production;
instead of pay, these weavers received tenure of crown lands. On carpet
production, see also Walker, ‘Carpets’, 870f. On gifts generally, see Matthee,
‘Negotiating Across Cultures’, 37–41; A. K. S. Lambton, ‘Pishkash: present or
tribute?’, BSOAS 57(1) (1994), 148–58. See also n106 of Chapter 4.
82 Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 181–2, citing de Bruyn. Matthee (The Politics, 212) cites
244 Notes to pages 114–116
Dutch sources that funds for construction of Farahabad were ‘extorted’ from
‘courtiers and domestic merchants’.
83 Canby, ‘The Pen or the Brush: An Inquiry into the Technique of Late Safawid
Drawings’, in R. Hillenbrand, ed. Persian Painting from the Mongols to the
Qajars (London, 2000), 75–82.
84 Canby, The Golden, 164f.
85 Canby, ibid., 171, citing J. Allan, ‘Silver Door Facings of the Safavid Period’,
Iran, 33 (1995), 123–38, pl. xxib.
86 Canby, 173.
87 Canby, The Golden, 168, 165, citing a 1694–5 Muhammad Zaman painting of
the Sunni Kurdish vizier Shah Quli Khan Zangana.
88 Canby, 173. Crowe, Persia and China, 225–6, 234, 170, 226, noting continuing
foreign demand for Iranian ceramics through 1730, in spite of competition from
genuine Chinese porcelain and Japanese substitutes, and (246, 252, 259, 263,
268, 272) the continued sensitivity of Iranian producers to local and foreign
tastes and styles. A 1712 astrolabe (Canby, 171) suggests the continued presence
of a production infrastructure sufficient for such complex undertakings. See also
Allan, Persian Steel, 274f on standards, many bearing very distinctly Twelver
Shi
i inscriptions, dating from mid-century into Sultan Husayn’s reign. For other
steel products also dating to this period, see ibid., 291, 298, 300–1, 311, 419,
426, 446–7, 468–70.
89 See, for example, Lockhart (The Fall, 35, 47), citing de Bruyn; Matthee, The
Politics, 204–5, citing the post-1722 anonymously written Mukafatnama and
Marashi’s much later Majma al-Tavarikh.
90 Sanson estimated the number of troops available to the centre in this period
as 150,000 (Röhrborn, 171) where Kaempfer estimated 90,000 (Minorsky,
Tadhkirat, 35). On the latter’s reliability, see Floor, Safavid Government,
236n1021. Floor (ibid., 211–16; esp. 211–12; n13) cites the post-Safavid esti-
mate of 180,000. Floor (213), also citing the usually conflicting foreign assess-
ments of Safavid military capabilities, quotes Nasiri’s Dastur (104) that up to six
months were needed to mobilise these troops from their bases in the provinces,
but adds that the centre was nevertheless able to mount effective responses to
‘local incursions’. For a partial listing of the locations of Safavid troops, see
Floor, Safavid Government, 214, citing Minorsky, Tadhkirat, 161. See also n13
of Chapter 6.
91 Floor, The Afghan, 43–62; Matthee, ‘Unwalled Cities’, 407.
92 Foreign sources (Lockhart, The Fall, 121n1) attribute Fath Ali Khan’s fall to
conspiracies at court. See also Floor, The Afghan, 134. Savory (Iran Under,
246–8) and Roemer (6: 317–24) base their accounts thereof on Lockhart. On
Russian and Turkish reports, see Lockhart, The Fall, 106, 125–6. For ‘analyses’
of these events by the Dutch, Krusinski, the much later Mar
ashi and a con-
temporary Italian source in the service of the Russians, see Matthee, ‘Blinded by
Power’, 201–13. A Bekdilu Shamlu (see n5) replaced Fath Ali Khan only to be
dismissed following the Afghan capture of Isfahan.
93 Lockhart, The Fall, 130–43. Lockhart, 136n1, notes that three Persian and eight
foreign sources, not all contemporary, estimate Iranian forces as numbering
between 30,000 and 80,000 and Afghan forces as between 8,000 and 40,000.
On the complex composition of the Persian forces, see ad nn14, 94.
94 According to the Dutch the tribal elements which entered the city or at least
fought the Afghans during the siege included the Qajar (Floor, The Afghan, 130,
 Notes to pages 116–124 245
147), Kuhgilu (113, 123, 127, 131; Lockhart, The Fall, 205) and the Bakhtiyari
(125, 144–5, 149, 153, 160, 162, 170; Lockhart, The Fall, 207). ‘Arab’ troops
are also mentioned (88, 96, 122, 127, 153) as are other unnamed forces (84,
113, 120, 127, 156, 162), Georgian officials and levies (123, 132, 142, 156) and
‘Astarabadi’ forces (127, 129, 139). The Dutch hired Georgian and Armenian
troops to protect themselves (56). On the shah’s own efforts to rally the city, see,
for example, Floor, The Afghan, 135. Roemer (6: 323) criticises the shah’s
decision to remain in the capital. See also Lockhart, The Fall, 145.
95 On discontent in Isfahan see Floor, The Afghan, 110–1, 115, 119, 143, 152, and
in Tabriz and Kirman and among some elements of the military itself, see Floor,
35, 225, 229, 133, 147. On Dutch reports of Afghan brutality, see Floor, 50–1,
61, 123, 141, 179, 192, 237, 246, 313. On ‘popular’ resistance in Isfahan, see
Floor, 171; Lockhart, The Fall, 165, 165n2. On the Armenians in New Julfa, see
McCabe, 362–3. On the Zoroastrians in this period, see Lockhart, The Fall,
72–3.
96 On the Afghans’ preparations and final attack and the battle of Gulnabad, see
especially Lockhart, The Fall, 109–29, 130–43, esp. 142n1, in which, however,
he relies heavily on foreign sources and such post-Safavid sources as Muhsin’s
Zubdat al-Tavarikh, Tarikh-i Nadiri, composed c. 1760, and Marashi’s Majma
al-Tavarikh. On the siege and Mahmud’s accession, see Lockhart, The Fall,
144–75, using similar sources. For an account of Gulnabad and Isfahan’s siege
to 31 August 1722 based on the VOC’s Isfahan Diary, of which Lockhart had
used only portions, see Floor, The Afghan, 83–172, esp. 115, 119, and, on
Mahmud’s accession, 173–6.

Epilogue: Poetry and Politics – The Multiplicity of Safavid Discourse

1 R. Jafariyan, Safaviyya dar Arsa-yi Din, 1: 483–91, citing Saib’s poetry on Safi,
Abbas II and Sulayman.
2 Jews were excluded from England from 1290, during the reign of Edward I, until
the mid-seventeenth century, under Oliver Cromwell (d. 1658) in whose animos-
ity to Catholicism lie the origins of the present-day ‘Irish question’. Jews were
expelled from France in 1306 and forced conversions commenced in Spain in
1391. When Spain’s remaining Jews were expelled in 1492, they sought refuge
among the Muslim Ottomans.
3 See Herzig’s reflective ‘Safavid Foreign Trade Policy? The Evidence from Persian
Sources’, paper presented at ‘Iran and the World in the Safavid Age’, University
of London, September 2002.
4 Cf. Matthee, The Politics, 233.
5 Lockhart, The Fall, 156, 193–5, 151, 153; Floor, The Afghan, 184–5, 187, 241,
245. Tribal support for Tahmasp’s accession is clear: in addition to the above-
mentioned tribal elements, a Qajar served as his vakil, as did, in 1730, an Afshar,
the future Nadir Shah. See Floor, Safavid Government, 16–17.
Perry notes others who appeared after the capital’s fall claiming to be the
Shah’s second son. On the latter and Tahmasp II, see Perry, ‘The Last Safavids
(1722–73)’ Iran 9 (1971), 60. Perry’s chief sources include Shaykh Ali Hazin,
Lockhart, Tarikh-i Nadiri and such, much later, Persian sources as Marashi’s
Majma al-Tavarikh and Qazvini’s Favaid al-Safaviyya. In his ‘The Man Who
Would Not Be King: Abul-Fath Sultan Muhammad Mirza Safavid in India’, IS,
246 Notes to pages 125–127
32(4) (1999), 513–35 G. Rota utilises the latter, itself completed in India
c. 1796.
6 Lockhart, 196–211, 300–2; Perry, 60–1; Roemer, 6: 327; Floor, The Afghan,
197–203, 263–90 and, on other pretenders, 297, 299, 301. See also n46 of the
previous chapter.
7 Roemer, 6: 324f; Lockhart, 233, 259f, 261, 270–2, 286; Floor, The Economy,
227.
8 Ashraf was served, briefly, by a Qajar who had turned against Tahmasp II and
aligned himself with Mahmud only to return to Tahmasp, be appointed his vizier
and suffer execution by Nadir Shah. Lockhart, 123, 281, 304–10, 289. A
Turkish envoy received at Chihil Sutun by the Afghan court in 1728 (Lockhart,
293–4) described Ashraf as wearing the shah’s crown and sitting on his throne
even as he was about to leave the city to attack Tahmasp II. On the distinctly
Safavid administrative titles adopted by the Afghans during the decade they held
some sway in Iran, see Floor, The Afghan, 174–6, 236, 247, 269. Tadhkirat al-
Muluk, composed for the Afghans in this period, reflected as much the Afghans’
interest in the working details of the polity’s administration under the Safavids
as a desire to legitimise their presence in the country by trading on the Safavid
legacy as explained to them thereby.
Like his three immediate predecessors, Sultan Husayn would be buried in the
shrine of Fatima in Qum. See n45 of Chapter 6.
9 On Nadir as qurchibashi and vakil, see Lockhart, 311; Shaykh Ali Hazin, 175;
Floor, Safavid Government, 13.
10 Lockhart, 292–93, 296, 332–40, 341–45, 348, 423; Floor, The Afghan, 258, 260.
Lockhart (194–5) cites Persian sources, including Ali Hazin and Muhammad
Muhsin’s Zubdat al-Tavarikh – written at Nadir’s command – as deploring the
character of Tahmasp and his advisors.
11 Floor, The Afghan, 342–3, 336, 355, 358. Lockhart (299–300) quotes Hazin,
whose account spans the fall of Isfahan to the murder of Tahmasp II, and who
was, in fact, in the company of the Ottomans for some period (The Life, 160f),
lamenting the state of the realm and, in particular, the lack of leadership.
12 Ali Hazin, 220–2; Lockhart, 311–40; Floor, 260–2. In his memoirs, written in
1742, Shaykh Ali Hazin referred to the Safavid forces as Qizilbash (e.g., 194,
198–9, 203). Thanks to M. Axworthy for his assistance on the marriages of
Nadir and his son.
13 Ali Hazin, 272; C. Tucker, ‘Nadir Shah and the Jafari Madhhab’, IS, 27 (1994),
163–79.
14 Perry, 62–3, 64–5. On Nadir see also L. Lockhart, Nadir Shah: A Critical Study
Based mainly upon Contemporary Sources (London, 1938), and M. Axworthy’s
forthcoming study. Relatives of Nadir included a grandson of Shah Sultan
Husayn who extended the Afshar name in Khurasan to 1796 until the coming of
the Qajars. The latter, Shah Rukh, was deposed in favour of a grandson of
Sulayman who was proclaimed Sulayman II in 1750. At his murder the same
year Shah Rukh was returned. See Perry, 65–6; Roemer, 6: 329.
15 Perry, 67–9; Roemer, 6: 330.
16 A general socio-economic, political and ‘cultural’ overview of the post-Safavid
period may be found in P. Avery, et al., eds, The Cambridge History of Iran, 7,
From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic (Cambridge, 1991), but see also, in
particular, the works listed below.
17 Floor, A Fiscal, 233f; Canby, The Golden Age, 176; Crowe, Persia and China,
 Notes to pages 127–128 247
225–6. On the economic legacy, see also T. Ricks, ‘Politics and Trade in Southern
Iraq and the Gulf’, unpublished PhD thesis, Indiana University, 1975.
18 On Usuli discourse in particular, see Cole’s ‘Shi
i Clerics in Iraq and Iran,
1722–1780’, and the revised version of this essay in Cole’s Sacred Space and
Holy War, The Politics, Culture and History of Shi
ite Islam (London/New York,
2002), 58–77. See also idem, ‘Imami Jurisprudence and the Role of the Ulama:
Mortaza Ansari on Emulating the Supreme Exemplar’, in N. Keddie, ed.,
Religion and Politics in Iran (New Haven, 1983), 33–46; J. Calmard, ‘Mardja-i
Taklid’, EI2, 6: 548–56. See also R. Gleave, ‘Akhbari Shi
i Usul al-Fiqh and the
Juristic Theory of Yusuf b. Ahmad al-Bahrani’, in Gleave, ed., Islamic Law,
Theory and Practice (London: 1997), 24–47; idem, Inevitable Doubt, Two
Theories of Shi
i Jurisprudence (Leiden, 2000); the essays in L. Walbridge, ed.
The Most Learned of the Shi
a (New York, 2001); the essays in Religion and
Society in Qajar Iran, R. Gleave, ed. (London, 2004), including our own
‘Anti-Akhbari Sentiments among the Qajar Ulama: The Case of Muhammad
Baqir al-Khwansari (d. 1313/1895)’, 155–73, and Momen, ‘Usuli, Akhbari,
Shaykhi, Babi’. See also Cole’s ‘Ideology’, in the following note.
19 Volume 7 of the Cambridge History of Iran does not cover developments in
this realm of activity well. A basic, if dated, introduction to some of the key
figures of post-Safavid philosophical discourse is found in History of Islamic
Philosophy (London, 1993) of Henry Corbin (d. 1978), 348f, translated from
the French Histoire de la philosophie islamique (Paris, 1964). See also the latter
volumes of Ashtiyani’s Anthologie and, on Hadi Sabzavari (d. 1872), T. Izutsu,
The Fundamental Structure of Sabzawari’s Metaphysics (in English) (Tehran,
1968). More recent works include, for example, Cole, ‘Ideology, Ethics and
Philosophical Discourse in Eighteenth Century Iran’, IS, 22(1) (1989), 7–34. The
dissertation of the late John Cooper, had it been completed, would have shed
considerable additional light on post-Safavid trends in Shi
i philosophical
thought.
20 Garthwaite, The Persians, 2, 86, 97, 114, 117.
21 M. G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, III. The Gunpowder Empires and
Modern Times (Chicago/London, 1974), esp. 46f, 49. Hodgson’s under-
standing of the Safavid period, in respect of which he used the term, proved to be
conventional.
22 See, for example, J. K. Choksy, Conflict and Cooperation, Zoroastrian Subalterns
and Muslim Elites in Medieval Iranian Society (New York, 1997).
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2536.
 Index

Abbas I 1, 3, 6, 28, 31, 43, 45, 48, 51–2, Afshar 15, 16, 21, 26, 29, 36, 39, 41–43,
54, 73–7, 80, 83, 86, 88, 90, 92, 96, 47, 50, 54, 59, 66, 75, 107, 124, 126,
97, 98, 104–05, 108, 109, 110, 111, 153–54, 164, 172, 177–78, 180–85,
112, 114, 118–9, 122, 130–31, 155, 186, 190, 208, 232–33, 245–46
164, 165, 167, 168, 176–8, 181, Afshar, I. 4
186–87, 198, 200–02, 204, 206, 207, Afzal al-Husayni 90–1
216–17, 221, 227, 229, 231, 232, agriculture 112, 121, 148, 215, 242
233, 240–1 Ahl al-Haqq 14, 149
Abbas II 54, 55, 86, 90, 91, 93, 97, 98, Ahli Shirazi 158
100, 104, 131–32, 155, 201, 216, Ahmad Alavi, Sayyid 77, 84, 206, 219,
220–22, 225, 231, 233, 243, 245 224, 229, 234
Abbas III 126, 134 Ahmad Ardabili 84, 174, 180, 199, 212
Abbasabad 56, 89, 100–01, 112, Ahmad Khan Gilani 45, 54, 168, 179,
243 186
Abbasabad garden 65 Ahmad b. Muhammad Ghaffari 30
Abbasids 9, 14 Ahmad Pakaraji 24, 135, 150
Abd al-Baqi Yazdi, Sayyid 20, 33, 157, Ahmad Qummi, Qadi 48, 67–68, 166
159, 170, 197 Ahmadabad 239
Abd al-Vahhabi sayyids 156, 177 Ahsa 159
Abdallah Khan Ustajlu 164, 168 Ahura Mazda 1
Abdallah Shirazi 48 Ahvaz 170
Abdallah Shushtari 57–8, 77, 84, 101, Aisha 179
130, 199, 200, 202, 204, 207 ajam 217, 230
Abdallah Yazdi 174 Akbar 182
Abdi Bek Shirazi 35, 170–2 akhbar, Akhbari 71, 127, 175, 200,
Abdi Bek Shamlu 17, 153 206–07, 214, 225–26
Abraham 190 akhi 14
Abu Hanifa 156 alcohol 103, 212
Abu Muslim 14, 20, 31, 32, 37, 46, 69, Alexander 1, 13, 14
70, 75, 77, 83, 84, 86, 96, 131, 152, Ali b Abi Talib, Imam 13, 14, 18–19, 30,
206 32, 36, 57, 59, 91, 99, 152, 173, 180,
Abu Talib Mirza 43, 182, 201 195, 238
Abu Talib Mir Findiriski 147, 237 Ali Amili, Shaykh 87, 95, 97–8, 100,
Abul Hasan Qazvini 146 132, 207, 227
Abul-Qasim Evughlu 74, 200–1, 203 Ali Asghar 34, 47–8, 59
Achaemenians 1, 128, 148 Ali Jadid al-Islam 234
Afghans, Afghanistan xi, 2, 3, 6, 61, Ali Karaki 24, 37, 38, 44, 58, 70, 86, 93,
104, 105–07, 115–6, 119, 124–26, 109, 129, 156, 166, 174, 180, 200,
133, 226, 232–5, 241, 244, 245–6 201, 204, 207, 225, 226, 237
266 Index
Ali Khan Madani Shirazi, Sayyid 226 150, 159, 165, 168, 172, 177,
Ali Khan Zangana, Shaykh 94, 97–100, 189–91, 207, 213, 223, 241
105, 119, 120, 132, 230, 238 Ardabil carpets 169
Ali Mardan 126 Ardistan 239
Ali Minshar Karaki 36, 173–74, 178 Armenia, Armenians xi, 52, 53, 60–3,
Ali Qapu 56, 59, 73, 78, 89, 101, 188, 65, 71–2, 76–7, 79, 85, 89, 90, 94–6,
211 99, 101–02, 106, 107, 119, 120,
Ali Quli Jabbadar 102, 209, 231 130–33, 167, 183, 184, 191, 193–4,
Ali Quli Khan Shamlu 45, 48, 88–9, 202, 205, 206, 211–3, 215–16, 219,
177, 186, 196, 209, 230 221, 222, 230, 234, 235, 236, 243,
Ali Riza Abbasi 57, 64, 188, 195 245
Alinaqi Kamrai 77, 84, 131, 198, 206, artisans 8, 35, 52, 64, 68, 69, 75, 96,
212 112–13, 123, 171, 182, 192, 219
All Saviour’s Cathedral 89, 102, 106, Ashraf 125, 133
132, 183, 184, 185, 186, 202, 208, Ashura 36, 78, 88, 151, 190, 207, 218,
230 241
Allahvirdi Khan 53, 65 Astara 50
Alqas Mirza 28, 29, 39, 42, 130, 169, Astarabad 39, 52, 53, 56, 94, 153, 164,
175, 176 165, 185, 188, 195, 200, 234, 245
Amasya 9, 28, 32, 38, 40, 46, 52, 115, astrolabe 244
130, 183 astrology 67, 123, 182, 197, 220
Amili scholars 36, 38, 58, 70, 77, 87, 95, Augustinians 193
97–8, 100, 129, 131–32, 173–75, aunt 66, 104, 108, 175, 232, 236
178, 180, 189, 199, 200–01, 203, ayd-i qurban 59, 190
207, 225, 227, 233, 237 Azerbaijan 23, 43–44, 52, 53, 86, 94,
amir 17, 20–21, 32, 39, 42, 44, 46, 124, 125, 130, 132, 164, 166, 210,
50–1, 53, 71, 79, 82, 89, 93, 101, 211
154, 164, 175–77, 180–1, 184–5, Aziz Nasafi 152, 162
194, 202, 211
amir al-umara 17, 22, 53, 164 Baba Rukn al-Din 59, 111, 204
Amir Mahmud 68, 136, 166, 167, 197 Baba Qasim 203
Amira Dabbaj Rashti 31, 33, 168–9 Babai-Biktashis 149
Amul 161, 237 Babur 18, 20
Anatolia 21, 28, 61, 85, 149, 150, 154, Babylonians 1
160, 191 bad harvests 93
Andijan 20, 33, 46, 179 Bagh-i Khaji 188
Anna Khanum 186 Baghdad 11, 20, 21, 28, 38, 52, 58, 73,
Antwerp 194 74, 76, 94, 105, 129–31, 153, 156,
Aqa Jamal Khvansari 97, 188, 224, 238, 162, 163, 184, 193, 201, 202, 207
239, 240 Baha al-Din (Shaykh Bahai) 58–9, 69,
Aqa Kamal 110, 240 70, 77, 84, 130, 174, 178, 189, 194,
Aqa Mumin 195 198–200, 203–04, 224, 226, 228, 237
Aqa Nur mosque 188, 204 Bahram 29, 31, 45, 51, 164, 166, 167,
Aqquyunlu 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, 17–9, 21, 172, 182
24, 25, 39, 44, 45, 64, 101, 122, 161, Bahram Sufrakish 79, 90
167, 178, 183, 192 Bahrayn 24, 160, 174, 202
Arab, Arabs, Arabic xii, 2, 4–5, 6, 9, 14, Bakhtiyari 124, 125, 126, 245
24, 36, 37, 38, 52, 58, 70, 74, 79, 93, Baku 30, 94, 104
100, 106–7, 116, 119, 125, 150, 160, Balkh 21, 52, 57
162, 195, 198, 207, 216–7, 226, 228, Baluchi 104, 105, 107
230, 233, 245 bankruptcies 86, 132, 215
Arab Iraq 28, 153 Banyans 63, 82–3, 107, 119, 206
Arak 20 Baqir Khatunabadi 109–11, 119, 133,
Ardabil 2, 10–11, 19, 23, 29, 32, 38, 47, 224, 236–38, 242
50, 58–9, 78, 87, 91, 94, 126, 132, Baqir Majlisi xi, 3–4, 96, 98, 108, 109,
 Index 267
111, 120, 123, 132–33, 188, 217, cannibalism 173, 190, 197
223, 224, 225–26, 229–30, 233, capital 3, 11, 20–21, 28, 32, 34, 36, 38,
237–41 42–43, 46, 55–58, 64–67, 69, 70, 75,
Baqir Sabzavari 84, 93, 97–9, 131–32, 78–79, 84, 86, 88, 91, 93–95, 97–99,
201–02 100–03, 107–09, 111, 114–16,
Baratashvili clan 186 123–24, 126, 145, 153, 163, 165,
barbers 113, 194 170, 174, 179, 185, 187–88, 190–92,
Bashkent 25, 39, 175 201, 204, 209–10, 218, 223, 232–33,
Basra 28, 94, 95, 104, 159 238, 240–41, 243, 245
Bastani-Parizi, M. I. 4 Capuchin monks 139, 192, 217, 230
Bayat 41, 183, 184, 185 Carmelites 133, 192, 207, 215, 219,
Bayazid 21, 39, 130, 163 230, 231, 234
Bayazid II 161 carpets 5, 35, 48, 67, 91, 102, 127, 171,
bazaar 30, 60, 64, 78, 79, 88, 96, 101, 181, 196, 208, 218, 243
103, 108, 110, 113, 121, 155, 188, Caspian 11, 76, 93, 95, 107, 112, 160,
203, 211, 223, 229, 239 193
Bekdilu 105, 201, 210, 232 Catholics 90, 106, 147, 133, 219, 230,
Bengali 76, 83 234, 235, 236, 245
Beklarbeks 211 Caucasus, Caucasian 15, 31, 52, 55, 186
Bell, John 142, 237 cavalry 17, 89, 106
Bembo 141, 223, 243 census 243
Bethlehem Church 131, 193 ceramics 5, 48, 67, 90–1, 103, 127, 171,
Bihar al-Anwar xi, 98–9, 111, 226–7, 181, 196, 219, 244
229 Chagatai 19, 53, 82, 156, 210, 212, 215
Bihzad 23, 34, 66, 161, 197 Chahar Bagh 55–56, 79, 101, 108–12,
Biktashis 14, 149, 152 115, 133, 237–38, 240, 242
Bisitun 1 Chahar Bagh-i Saadatabad 89, 132
Black Sea 61, 191 Chaldiran 2, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25,
Blue Mosque 158 26, 34, 36, 39, 61, 118, 129, 153,
book binding 35, 48, 102, 181 157, 160, 161, 162, 166
Bourbons 8 Chardin 1, 80, 92, 96, 101, 103, 112,
bribery 103 132, 147, 165, 183, 185, 188–89,
bridge/s 23, 56, 65, 88–89, 131, 196, 195–96, 204, 208–10, 212–18,
218 221–23, 229–32, 234, 242–43
brocade 91 Chezaud, Fr. Aime 219
brothel 113, 212, 237 chief accountants 166
brother 14, 21, 30–1, 35, 39, 42, 43, 45, chief head of the imperial heralds 65
46, 50–2, 75–6, 81, 116, 118, 124, chief merchant 113, 243
157, 160, 163–66, 167, 169, 172, chief officer of the haram 74
176, 182, 201, 208–09, 215, 235 chief scribe 44
brother-in-law 17, 187 Chihil Sutun 89–90, 92–3, 112, 131,
Browne, E. G. xi, 2 218–20, 242, 246
budget 112, 242 Chihil Sutun (Qazvin) 34, 130, 171
Buddhist 148 China, Chinese 19, 61, 67, 76, 79, 82,
Bukhara 39, 184, 191, 218 91, 103, 131–32, 148, 159, 181, 191,
bullion 85, 95, 236 205, 219, 235, 244
Buyid 64, 195 Christian 8, 11, 14, 54, 62, 99, 114,
117, 120, 123, 131, 148, 152, 167,
cabinet 71, 187, 200, 210 186–7, 191, 194, 200, 227, 228, 234
Cairo 21, 129 chronicles, chroniclers 5–6, 15, 29,
caliph 9, 10, 30, 151, 162, 167, 195, 32–33, 45, 52, 63, 67, 92, 99, 110,
240 119, 127, 147, 153, 156–7, 183, 197
calligrapher 18, 34–5, 47, 48, 167, Church of Mary 62, 130, 219
170–72, 178 Church of the Holy Mother of God 101
candlesticks 35, 66 churches 62, 89, 95, 106, 120, 131–32,
268 Index
167, 186, 193, 206, 221, 230 Dardasht 64
Circassian 31, 35, 41, 44, 45, 46, 49, 52, Darius the Great 1
55, 93, 100, 167, 178, 186 darugha 85, 107, 133, 157
civil war/s 32, 36–38, 41, 44, 46, 52, 55, darvish 10, 47, 69, 96, 101, 179, 182,
60, 81, 118, 129–30, 163, 178, 197 195, 203, 219, 223, 227
cleric 2–3, 5, 24, 37, 38, 45, 47, 51, 58, Darvish Khusraw 51, 68, 75, 130, 182,
59, 62, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 75, 77, 84, 195
86, 87, 88, 97, 98, 99, 101, 107–10, Darvish Riza 75, 78, 131
119–21, 123, 127, 129–30, 156, 162, daughter/s 22, 29, 31, 33, 35, 38, 41, 45,
180–1, 188, 199, 200, 205, 225, 48, 50, 54, 58, 74, 75, 81, 84, 86–87,
227–30, 236, 238–39, 241 89, 97–8, 100, 105, 108, 109, 124,
coffee, coffee-houses 66, 69, 75, 84, 96, 150, 157, 161, 165, 168–69, 175,
113, 196, 198, 206, 223–24, 227 177–79, 181, 186, 216–17, 226,
coins, coinage 5, 63, 83, 85, 95–6, 151, 232–33, 236
159, 161, 169, 180, 193–94, 236 de Thévenot 112, 210, 218
Colbert 218 Deccan 84, 103, 187
colic 176 Della Valle, Pietro 138–39, 183
comet 69 deputy, deputyship 10, 24, 37, 69–71,
commercial 123 78, 107, 127, 129, 162, 174, 179,
composition of military forces 183, 202, 200, 214
209, 211, 222, 244 devaluations 83, 95–6, 131, 221–12
comptroller 44, 209, 233 Dhahabi Sufi order 206, 236, 241
comptroller-general 44 Dhul-Fiqar mosque 30, 194, 240
comptrollers of the realm’s finances 55 Dhul-Qadr 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 26, 27,
concubines 41, 45, 164–65 42, 43, 44, 50, 52–53, 68, 71, 130,
Congregational Mosque in Isfahan 32, 153, 154, 164, 165, 176, 177,
47, 155 180–84, 185, 186, 200, 203, 208,
convert, conversion 83, 85, 95, 156, 233
160, 187, 189, 211–14, 227, 228, Dilaram Khanum 87–88, 216
230, 234, 245 disorder 9, 27, 41, 42, 43, 47, 51, 79,
Cooper, John 247 80, 81, 87, 109, 118, 120, 124,
corruption 103 235
corvee labour 112, 114 dissimulation (taqiyya) 174, 179
Cossack 93, 94, 207, 220 divan 13, 15, 19, 136, 151, 169
cotton 91, 102, 206 divanbeki 53, 81–2, 85, 164–65, 186,
cousin 165, 178 203, 208–10, 212, 215, 220–22, 233
court-clergy alliance 86, 97–98 Diyar Bakr 11, 15, 21, 52, 151, 153
craftsmen, crafts 48, 68–9, 91, 96, Dizful 28, 33, 52
110–13, 182, 194–95, 198–99, 202 doctors 110, 214, 227, 233
Cromwell, Oliver 245 dreams 32, 130, 166, 168–69, 204
crown land 63, 76, 112, 195, 202 drought 86, 94, 132–33, 230
currency reform 63, 83, 192 du Mans, Raphael 112, 139, 217–18,
cursing the caliphs 46, 52, 155–56, 162, 242
179 Duke Frederich III 208
customs revenues 61, 83, 95, 113, 160 Durmish Khan Shamlu 19, 21, 22, 153,
Cyrus the Great 1 177
Dust Muhammad 35, 172
Daghistan 41, 45, 126 Dutch 76, 82, 83, 91, 95, 96, 126, 147,
Damavand 161, 195 132, 191, 205, 208, 209, 211, 214,
Damghan 22 216, 221, 222, 231, 235, 236, 237,
Damiri 35 238, 242, 244, 245
dancer, dancing 34, 84, 113, 212, 224, Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) 61,
237 67, 82–83, 95, 106–07, 116, 131–33,
Danish-pazhuh, M. T. 4 192–94, 205, 206, 210, 211, 215,
Darb-i Imam 59, 64, 229, 240–41 219, 221, 222, 235, 242, 245
 Index 269
de Bruyn, Cornelius 96, 142, 237, Fayz Kashani 84, 86, 87, 97–8, 100,
243–44 131–32, 199, 204, 213–16, 224–28,
236–37, 240–41
earthquake 93–4, 100, 195, 229 Fazli Khuzani 68, 139, 150
Eastern Mediterranean ports 61 financiers 99, 223
Eastland Company 192 Fighani Shirazi 158
Edward I 245 firman 32, 36–37, 62–63, 108, 129–30,
Egyptian 217 133, 151, 161, 168–70, 174, 179,
Elamite 1 194–95, 204–05, 207, 211, 214, 224,
enamel work 66, 115 225, 234, 235, 237, 239, 241
England, English 8, 91, 126, 192, 205, First Anglo-Dutch War 83
229, 243, 245 Firuzkuh 155, 173, 197
English East India Company (EIC) 61, floods 56
82–3, 91, 95, 116, 131, 192–93, 205, food crises 95, 107, 132–33
210, 211, 212, 219, 222 foreign trading companies 72, 76, 121
Eshraqi, Ehsan 4 France, French 106, 126, 147, 152, 192,
eunuch/s 3, 89, 109–10, 120, 183, 215, 222, 230, 235, 236, 243, 245
229, 232, 239 Frederick II Duke of Holstein 78
Euphrates 10, 191 French East India Company 212
Europe, European 3, 22, 43, 60–1, 79, Friday prayer 37, 38, 70–1, 84, 86–7,
90, 94–5, 102, 113–14, 120, 122, 97, 99, 100, 131, 173, 175, 179, 200,
127, 147, 160, 165, 185, 204, 206, 204, 206, 207, 214–16, 224, 226,
207, 211, 215, 218, 231, 232, 229, 233, 237–8
234–35, 242 Fryer, John 141, 218, 228, 231
Evughlu 203, 209 furriers 211
ewer 66 Fuzuli Baghdadi 158

Fakhr al-Din Razi 156 Galenic (Greek) medical tradition 99,

Falsafi, Nasrallah 4 111
famine 21, 85, 94, 101, 107, 132–33, gambling 32
211, 221 Ganj Ali Khan 53, 65, 66, 184, 195
faqih, fiqh 70, 109, 111 Garshaspnama 48, 172
Farahabad 56, 133, 188, 244 Garthwaite, Gene xii
Farahabad Chahar Bag 112 Gawhar Bekum 217
Farahabad palace 114, 116 Gawhar Shad 19, 48, 148
Farahani sayyids 64 Gawhar Sultan Khanum 35, 165, 181
Farhad and Shirin 208 genealogy 30, 67, 152, 240
Farhad Bek 44, 178, 182 Georgia, Georgian 21–2, 27, 31, 41,
Farhad Khan Qaramanlu 53, 183–6, 43–4, 49, 52, 66, 79, 85, 105–07,
200 124, 131, 167, 176, 183–88,
Faridun 13, 14 184, 201–03, 208, 222, 233, 235,
Fars 16, 18, 28, 44, 46, 47, 50, 51, 53, 245
65, 68, 76, 94, 100, 124, 133, 153, German 205, 214
159, 165, 185, 202, 205, 208, 222 Ghadir Qumm 99
Fath Ali Khan Daghistani 105, 107, 116, Gharib Shah 75, 76, 131
133, 232–36, 244 Gharjistan 16, 166
father 11, 13–4, 22, 29, 31–4, 37, 40–2, Ghazali 204, 206
45, 48, 50, 58, 65, 74, 79, 84, 86, 91, ghazals 19, 34, 35, 158
93, 98, 104, 109, 111, 112, 114, 153, ghazi 10, 14, 19, 241
159, 174–76, 178, 191, 196, 201, ghulam/s 8, 44, 52–3, 55, 60, 62, 64, 65,
208, 226 69, 71, 72, 74–75, 80, 81–2, 85, 93,
father-in-law 238 100, 105, 118–20, 123, 131, 167,
Fatima 13, 23, 87, 100, 104, 190, 216, 183–86, 188, 194, 195, 202–03, 205,
246 208–13, 215, 222, 229, 232–33
fatva 205 Gilan 17, 28, 31, 33, 39, 47, 51, 53–4,
270 Index
61, 69, 75, 76, 94, 107, 131–33, 164, 100, 116, 125, 131–33, 164, 165,
167, 173, 176, 179, 183, 195, 201, 175, 177, 178, 184, 185, 193, 213,
207, 213 221, 222, 228, 238
glassware 102 hamahsal 243
Goa 61 Hamza 42, 43, 44, 48, 50, 54, 165, 178,
gold 63, 66, 67, 85, 88, 91, 172, 192, 182, 201
236, 242–43 Hanafi Sunnis 148, 150
Gombroon (Bandar Abbas) 39, 66, 83, Hanway, Jonas 208
88, 91, 131, 212, 213 Hapsburg 43
Gospels 193, 234, 238 haram 3, 6, 7, 103, 147, 185, 200, 202,
governor/s 11, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 203, 209, 214, 231, 242
26–34, 39, 43, 45, 48, 52–4, 65, 71, harbour master 212, 213
75–6, 79, 88, 100, 105, 153, 159, harsh winter 85, 94–5, 131–32
162, 165–66, 168, 177, 184–85, 202, Harun-i Vilayat 19, 36, 44, 55, 57, 64,
205, 208, 210, 233, 234 88, 96, 111, 120, 223
grain 36, 221, 238 Hasan, Imam 36, 59
grandchildren 179 Hasan Ali Shushtari 77, 84, 202
granddaughter 46, 50, 176 Hasan Amili 180
grandfather 11, 13, 14, 22, 29, 38, 57, Hasan Khan Ustajlu 54
58, 67, 74, 76, 77, 152, 156, 158, Hasan b. Jafar Karaki 174, 189
166, 178, 204 Hasan b. Yusuf, Allama Hilli 151
grandmother 82, 87, 88 Hasan Mirza, Abbas’ brother 201
grandson 3, 31, 44, 45, 51, 54, 59, 73, Hasanabad bridge 88–9, 131
89, 105, 126, 131, 168, 169, 177, Hasanabad gate 88, 89, 112
182, 186, 197, 202, 204, 238, 246 Hasanabad quarter 78, 89, 229
great-grandfather 29, 82, 86, 88, 92 Hasht Bihisht 101, 108, 112, 132
great-grandson 81, 182, 225 Hatifi 19, 20, 23, 33, 156, 158, 170
guardians to various royal princes 28, Hatim Bek Urdubadi 55, 187, 203, 232
30, 164–66, 172, 175 Haydar 11, 13, 14, 29, 41–42, 45–6, 54,
guilds 32, 39, 63, 85, 96, 113, 194, 198, 129, 150–51, 153, 154, 159, 168,
205, 222, 223, 243 175, 177, 241
Gulistan 48, 157 Haydari faction 59, 78, 88
Gulnabad 106, 116, 133, 232, 245 Hayratù 35
Gurgan 11, 153 health services 240
Hellenic legacy 111
Habib b. Musa 59 Herat 12, 17, 18, 20, 21–3, 26, 29, 30,
Habiballah Karaki 77, 84, 86, 131, 201, 34, 48, 50–3, 56, 58–99, 67, 125,
203, 209–10 129–30, 133, 153, 156–59, 162, 164,
Hadi Sabzavari 247 166, 172, 177, 181–82, 185, 191,
Hadiqat al-Shi‘a 84, 215, 223 196, 233
hadith 19, 71, 98–9, 109, 111, 174, 214, Hidden Imam 14, 37–38, 69, 75, 151,
226, 227 162, 171, 179, 200, 227
Hafiz 19, 34, 48, 199 Hijaz 58, 64, 97, 162, 174, 180, 194,
hajj 109, 110, 175, 210, 235, 239 216, 225–26, 236, 239
Hajji Biktash 152 Hilla 204
Hajji Hedayat 101 Hindu 88, 198, 205
Hajj Mirza Asadallah 239 Hizar Jarib 65
Hajji Mirza Muhammad 101 Hodgson, Marshall 128, 247
Hajji Yunis mosque 217 Hormuz 21, 61, 62, 129, 160, 187, 191,
Hakim Daud 87, 217 193
Hakim mosque 101 hospices 60, 109
half-brother 20, 27, 31, 38, 41–2, 160, Huguenot 147
175 Hurr-i Amili 98, 100, 132, 215, 227,
half-sister 181 229, 233, 237
Hamadan 11, 28, 44, 47, 54, 73, 75, 94, Hurufi 14, 51, 149
 Index 271
Husayn, Imam 16, 36, 151, 189, 207 210, 215, 217, 219, 223, 226, 228,
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad Amili 38, 58, 239, 241
174–75, 178, 189, 200, 203 Indian Ocean 128
Husayn Bayqara, Sultan (Timurid) 12, Indian style (poetry) 158
18, 19, 20, 30, 33, 153, 156, 158, indigo 63, 206
166, 170, 186, 246 Indus 1
Husayn Bek Shamlu 17, 20 inflation 83, 85, 94, 132, 243
Husayn Khan Shamlu 153, 164 Inju 181, 187
Husayn Khvansari 97, 98, 100, 111, 224 inscription/s 5, 10, 19, 23, 30, 32, 47,
Husayn Karaki, Sayyid 38, 58, 77, 178, 57, 64, 65, 90, 110, 111, 151,
180, 201, 203, 237 157–59, 167, 180–81, 195, 216–19,
Husayni/d 23, 30, 32, 46, 48, 57, 64, 223, 229–30, 232, 240
66–67, 151, 166, 177–78, 195, 204, inspector general 177
216–17, 220, 223–24, 229 iqta 28
Iram gardens 34
Iberian 61 Iranshahr 128
Ibn al-Arabi 70 Iranzamin 128
Ibn Babawayh 214 Iraq 20, 24, 57, 80, 87, 177, 195, 202,
Ibn Bazzaz 136 204
Ibn Sina 108 irfan (gnosis) 69–70, 111, 236, 240
Ibrahim b. Bahram 29, 42, 47–8, Irish question 245
165–66, 168, 170, 172 Irivan 52, 78, 125, 245
Ibrahim b. Malik 180 irrigation 112, 113
Ibrahim Amini, Sultan 156, 166 Irzinjan 11, 21, 159
Ibrahim Aqa 112 Irzirum 28, 165
idols 120 Isa Khan Safavi 54, 74–5, 89, 184,
ijtihad 199, 214 186–87, 200–02
Ilchi Mosque 100, 229 Isfahan xi, 2, 3, 6, 16, 19, 20, 22, 23, 27,
Ilkhanids 11, 148, 170 28, 30, 32, 36, 44, 47, 51, 52, 54–5,
illuminated manuscripts 18, 34, 48, 66, 58, 60, 62, 68, 70–2 75–6, 87, 91,
102 94–5, 98, 103, 105, 107, 110, 116,
illustration 171, 173 119, 120–21, 124–25, 127, 130–33,
Imadi mosque 63, 168 139, 147, 153, 155, 157, 158, 159,
Imam/s 2, 13–4, 19, 23, 30, 35, 37, 57, 165, 168, 172, 177, 178, 182–83,
59, 68, 71, 98, 99, 110, 111, 129, 187, 191, 193, 194, 196, 201, 204,
160, 204, 151–52, 155, 158, 161, 211, 219, 221, 232, 233–34, 237,
169, 179, 216–17, 225, 227, 229, 238 238, 242, 244–46
Imam Juma 84 Isfahan Diary 235
Imam Quli (son of Abbas I) 74, 101 Isfahan’s congregational mosque 161,
Imam Quli Khan 65, 76, 185, 202, 205, 181
208 ishikaqasi 200, 203
Imamzada Ahmad 241 ishikaqasi of the divan 209
Imamzada Ismail 100, 111, 112, 204, ishikaqasi of the haram 209
240–4 ishikaqasi of the Supreme Divan 209
Imamzada Shah Zayd 47 ishikaqasibashi 81, 185–86, 200,
imamzadas 99, 161, 194 203
Imperial Canal 79 ishikaqasibashi of the Supreme Divan
Imanlu 184 233
Inallu 233 Ismail I xi, 2–3, 9, 11, 13, 15–6, 22, 26,
India, Indian 1, 20, 61, 63, 66–7, 76, 77, 30–34, 36–37, 40, 43, 46, 51, 58, 61,
79, 82–3, 88–9, 90–1, 95, 102, 104, 62, 64, 72. 75, 81, 92, 97, 104,
113, 120, 126, 131, 134, 137, 139, 117–18, 120, 122–24, 129, 136, 150,
146, 149, 155–56, 160, 166, 167, 153, 157, 163–64, 166–69, 170–4,
171, 173, 180, 182, 183, 185, 186, 177–78, 180, 182, 192, 197, 221, 241
191, 193, 194, 197, 198, 204–05, Ismail II 29, 33, 39, 41, 43, 46, 47, 50,
272 Index
58, 60, 118, 126, 130, 169, 171, 201 173–75, 178, 180, 189, 200–01,
Ismail III 126 203–04, 207, 209–10, 220, 225, 226,
Ismail Khatunabadi, Sayyid 109, 111, 229, 233, 237
189, 224 Karbala 24, 28, 36, 129, 151, 189
Ismaili 20, 33, 46, 51 Karim Khan Zand 126
Istanbul 233, 235 Karun river 76
Italy, Italian 61, 137, 183, 222, 244 Kashan 28, 35, 44, 46, 51, 56–9, 60, 63,
ivory 172 67, 87, 88, 91, 100, 102, 151, 156,
161–62, 165, 168, 171, 172, 175–77,
Jabiri family 16, 44, 123, 177, 232–33 179, 189, 196, 204, 217, 237, 242
Jafar al-Sadiq, Imam 59 Kasr Asnam 69, 223
Jafar Savji 27 Kasravi, A. 152
Jafariyan, R. 4 Kazeruni mystical order 157, 159
Jahan Shah Qaraquyunlu 10–11, 18, 39, Khanish Khanum 36
129, 149, 158, 189, 192, 194 Khaju quarter 89, 100
Jahan Qazvini, Qadi 27, 31, 36, 46, Khaki Shirazi family 155
160–61, 163, 166, 168, 176 khalifa 204, 241
Jalal al-Din Davani 10, 30, 37, 69, 160, khalifa al-khulafa 78, 164
174 Khalifa sayyids 54
Jalal al-Din Muhammad Tabrizi 22, 27 Khalifa Sultan 54, 55, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80,
Jalal al-Din Yazdi 67 82–5, 87, 96, 99, 105, 119, 131,
Jamal Khvansari 111 186–87, 199–202, 210, 211–12, 215,
Jamal al-Din Astarabadi, Sayyid 37, 160 218, 221, 228, 234
Jami 10, 19, 20, 23, 33–34, 218, 233 Khalil Pasha (Ottoman) 184
Jamshid 13–14 Khalil Qazvini 98, 214, 216, 227–28,
Jamshid Khan 31, 210, 215, 200 237
Jani Khan Shamlu 81–2, 208–10, 216, Khalil Shirvanshah, Sultan 22, 168
220 Khalilallah b. Mir Miran Yazdi 45,
Jannat Sarai 32 178
Japan, Japanese 127, 148, 244 Khamsa 18, 34–5, 159, 171, 231
Jarchi mosque 188 khan 153, 175, 185
Jazairi corps 213 Khan mosque 240
Jesuits 193, 208, 219, 235 Khan school 65
Jesus 14, 152 khanga 101
Jews xi, 1, 63, 65, 72, 83, 85, 99, 119, khassa lands 3, 6, 85, 105, 146, 165,
120, 188–89, 194, 200, 211, 213, 195, 204–05, 208, 210–11, 213,
214, 227–28, 230, 245 222,
Jirun 168 Khatai (the Sinner) 13
Julfa 61, 130, 191, 194 Khatunabadi sayyids 109–111, 119,
Junayd 10, 13, 129, 150, 152 188–89, 224, 226, 236–38, 240, 242
just Imam 10, 14, 24, 149, 151 Khayr al-Nisa Marashi 31, 42, 43, 44,
just ruler 157, 195 54, 58, 130, 176, 177, 181, 195
just shah 204 Khidr 14, 151
just sultan 10, 14, 23–4, 30, 32, 47, 110, Khomayni, Ayatollah 2
149, 151, 161, 169 Khudabanda 28–29, 31, 41, 43, 46, 50,
51, 58, 118, 130, 164, 172, 178, 181,
Kabul 191, 205 197, 201
Kaempfer, E. 112, 141, 147, 213–14, khums 70
218, 224, 228, 231, 242, 244 Khunji 24, 135, 151, 161
Kahak 70, 199 Khurasan 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20–1, 27,
kalantar 177, 233 29, 32–3, 39, 42–5, 47, 51–2, 54, 66,
Kamuna, Sayyid 162 74, 107, 129–30, 134, 149, 153, 157,
Karaki family 24, 36–38, 44, 58, 70, 77, 158, 165, 171, 177, 179, 184, 208,
84, 86, 88–89, 93–94, 97, 109, 121, 218, 246
123, 129, 131–32, 156, 162, 166, Khusraw 13
 Index 273
Khusraw and Shirin 79, 173 Lord of the Age (Sahib al-Zaman) 32,
Khusraw Mirza (Rustam Khan) 186, 75, 151, 216
201, 203, Louis XIV 152, 218
khutba 46, 93, 108, 163, 237, 240 Lur, Luristan 16, 43, 47, 52–3, 106–07,
Khuy 177 124–25, 155, 167
Khuzani family 20, 22, 27, 68, 123, 139, lustreware 102, 115
150, 154, 157, 166, 172, 197, 198, Lutfallah Maysi 57, 58, 64–5, 77, 84,
217 86, 97, 111, 130, 188, 198–99, 201,
Khuzistan 16, 33, 47, 52 224
Khvaf 177
Khvaja Afzal al-Din Muhammad Turk Madina 58, 109
155 Magellan 160
Khvaja (Shahi) bridge 131, 218 magistrate of Isfahan 89
Khvaja Ali 68 Mahan 186
Khvandamir, Ghiyas al-Din 30, 67, 136, mahdi 75, 169
156, 166, 197 Mahin Banu (Shahzada Sultanum) 35,
Kirman 10, 35, 36, 50, 51, 53, 65–7, 79, 172
90, 91, 95, 102, 104, 105, 107, 116, Mahmud 116, 124, 125
124, 164, 185, 191, 195, 208, 213, Mahmud Afushta Natanzi 68
219–20, 222, 235, 245 Mahmud (Afghan) 124, 133, 232,
Kirmani ware 91 245–46
Kirmanshah 125, 193, 221 majlis nevis 187
Kotov 139, 190, 198 Malcolm, Sir John 146
Krusinski, Pere Judasz Tadeusz 143, Malik Ali 64–65, 195, 197
147, 208, 231, 235–36, 243–44 Malik Husayn Isfahani 90
Kubravis 14 mamalik 3, 6, 146, 165
Kuhgilu 106, 234, 245 Mamluks 10, 21
Kujuji family 16, 22, 27, 44, 123, 166, mansion 65, 78, 89, 101, 112, 178, 196,
182, 187 207, 230–31
Kuh Giluya 164 Mansur Dashtaki, Sayyid Ghiyas al-Din
Kurd, Kurdish, Kurdistan 15–6, 21, 28, 37–8, 161, 166, 226
41, 43, 47, 52–3, 65–6, 94, 105, 107, Manuchir Khan 79, 184
116, 130, 132, 149, 152, 167, 176, manuscript/s 23, 35, 59, 115, 181
220, 233, 244 Maqsud 66
Maqsud Bek 64, 188, 195
lacquer 102, 127 Marashi sayyids 17, 31, 36, 42, 44,
Lahijan 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 51, 69, 75, 54–5, 75, 123, 124, 133, 146, 168,
124, 153–54, 159, 165, 190, 197–98, 187, 207, 225, 239, 244–45
201, 241 Marnan Bridge 65
Lahore 35 marriage/s 10, 15–17, 22, 24–6, 29, 31,
Land grants 40 33, 35, 40, 43–6, 48, 50, 54–5, 58, 64,
land tax 38 72–3, 81, 97, 109, 126, 148, 150,
Lar 66, 200, 202, 205, 222, 235 153, 161, 164–68, 174–76, 178–79,
Layla and Majnun 66 181–82, 184–88, 194, 196–97,
Lazgi 107, 116 218–19, 225, 233–35, 239, 242,
Lebanon 24, 38, 98, 175, 225, 233 246
Lepanto 43 Marv 11, 52, 185
Levant 61, 76, 77, 82, 102, 106, 191, masnavi 18, 158
193, 205, 207, 222, 236 Maryam Bek 108, 112
Levant Company 192 Maryam Bekum 45, 54, 87, 89, 104,
Libya 1 105, 186, 232, 236
Livan Mirza 233 Mashhad 17, 19, 24, 27, 29, 34, 36,
Livorno/Leghorn 222 43–4, 48, 51–22, 56, 58–9, 65, 66, 79,
Lockhart, L. 2 81, 87, 100, 102, 107, 109–11,
London 103 124–27, 130, 133, 148, 161–62,
274 Index
164–66, 168, 172, 174, 177, 180–82, Mirza Abu Talib Urdubadi 203
184–86, 188, 191, 194, 196–97, 202 Mir Khvand 67, 156, 197
Masjid-i Ali 23, 36 Mir Lawhi 84, 97, 100, 77, 212, 215,
massacre of Shi‘a 225 225, 228
Masum Bek Safavi 29, 39, 41–2, 54, Mir Miran Yazdi 54, 169, 178, 182
165, 175, 184, 186, Mir Sayyid Ahmad 48
Mawsillu 15, 16, 21, 23, 27–9, 31, Mir Uvais 107, 116, 133
35–6, 41–42, 45, 65, 118, 153–54, Mirjafari, Huysan 4
159, 163–64, 167, 172, 175, 177, Mirza Ahmad 124
179–80 Mirza Ali Karkiya 11
Mazandaran 11, 22, 31, 39, 42, 54, 56, Mirza Husayn School 239
58, 73–76, 94, 165, 167, 188, 195, Mirza Ibrahim Hamadani 178
213, 214 Mirza Jan Shirazi 174, 180, 212
Mecca 216, 235 Mirza Makhdum Sharifi 46–7, 156,
Medes 1 179–80
medical practitioners 123, 239–40 Mirza Muhammad Khalil Marashi 146
medical theory and practice 99, 111, Mirza Muhammad Kirmani, of the
197–99 Tabrizi Kujuji 182
Membré 136, 163, 168, 172, 206 Mirza Muhammad Tahir 105, 132, 140,
mercenaries 211 228
merchant/s 20, 36, 59, 60, 61–33, 65, Mirza Salman 44
66, 75–7, 79, 82–83, 86, 88, 91, 94, Mirza Shah Husayni Isfahani 19, 22, 23,
96, 99, 101–02, 104, 106–07, 157
110–12, 120, 161, 171, 191–92, 194, Mirza Shukrallah Isfahani 44
198, 202–03, 205–07, 210–11, 213, missionaries 61, 72, 90, 106, 206, 228,
215, 217, 222–24, 229–30, 234, 239, 230, 234–36
243–44 Mokri 184
Mesopotamia 94, 128 money-changers/lenders 79, 88, 210
messianism 2, 13, 14, 19, 20, 22, 23, Mongol 9, 10, 17, 18, 67
31–2, 75, 83, 99, 100, 120, 149, 170, Mosul 94, 184
219, 240 mother 13, 15, 19, 21, 29, 31, 35–6, 41,
metalworking 5, 18, 48, 66, 103, 115, 54, 58, 84, 87, 100, 108, 175, 209,
158, 160, 171 225
military chaplain 173, 177 Mughals 39, 52, 73, 79, 81, 83, 90,
military expenditures 85 103–04, 107, 126, 130–31, 171, 183,
millenarianism 75, 150 204–05, 217
Ming dynasty 91, 148, 219 Muhammad (the Prophet) 10, 14, 16,
miniatures 18, 90, 97 19, 36, 57, 68, 99, 152, 173, 179,
minorities 5, 83, 99, 102, 106, 113, 214, 227, 240
119–20, 122, 131–32, 197, 221, 228, Muhammad Ali 79, 114
234 Muhammad Amili, Sayyid 180
Minorsky, V. 2 Muhammad Amin Astarabadi 70, 207,
mint 213, 236 225–26
Mir Ala al-Mulk 173 Muhammad Ardistani 223
Mir Abul-Fath 30 Muhammad Asafi 157
Mir Ali Shir Navai 18, 158, 166 Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Tusi 151
Mir Damad 44, 58, 69, 70, 76–7, 84, 97, Muhammad b. Ali Ardabili 229
131, 189, 199, 201, 204, 206, 212, Muhammad b. Yaqub Kulayni 214, 227
224, 226, 228, 237 Muhammad Bek 85, 86, 89, 94, 97, 99,
Mir Findiriski 69, 111, 189, 198, 204, 119, 13–32, 212–13, 215, 216, 218,
214, 224 219, 221, 228, 234
Mirimandze clan 186 Muhammad Bek Ustajlu 21–2, 160
Mirza Abdallah Afandi 229 Muhammad Hakim 239, 240
Mirza Abu Salih b. Mirza Muhammad Muhammad Hashim Asaf 146
Muhsin Rizavi Mashhadi 225 Muhammad Husayn Tabrizi 110
 Index 275
Muhammad Jafar 111, 238, 240 mustawfi al-mamalik 17, 157, 161, 166
Muhammad Khan Takkalu 172 mutavalli 168
Muhammad Mahdi Karaki 84, 86, 88–9, Muzaffar Ali 34, 48, 170, 172
94, 97, 121, 131–32, 220, 229, 233
Muhammad Mirza 201 Nadir Afshar (Nadir Shah) 125–26,
Muhammad Mumin 170 134, 46, 231, 245, 246
Muhammad Qasim 90, 101, 196, 208, naib 10, 24, 37, 71, 162, 214
223 Nain 51
Muhammad Quli Khan 232 Najaf 24, 28, 58, 84, 109, 129, 187,
Muhammad Riza 2, 216–17 188, 189, 204, 226
Muhammad Salih Khatunabadi 109, Najaf Quli Bek 89
188, 238, 240 Najm al-Din Gilani 17, 157
Muhammad Shirvani 226, 238 Najm-i Thani (Khuzani) 20, 22, 27,
Muhammad Tahir 84, 87, 97, 98, 99, 157
100, 132, 212, 216, 225, 227–28, 237 Nakhchivan 11, 52
Muhammad Tahir (Qazvini notable) 95 naqib 33, 177
Muhammad Tanukabuni 224 Naqsh-i Jahan 44, 56, 65, 130, 195
Muhammad Yusuf 90, 91 Naqshbandi 10, 18, 20, 23, 156, 170
Muhammad Yusuf Qazvini 209, 228 Nasir al-Din al-Tusi 55, 232
Muhammad Zakariya Kujuji 16, 22 Natanz 58, 66, 88, 161, 189, 217
Muhammad Zaman 102, 114, 231, 244 Navai, Abd al-Husayn 4
Muhammad-Shahi branch of the Nizari nephew 11, 19, 32, 34–5, 41–42, 47–8,
Ismailis 20 54, 81, 125, 156, 163–64, 210, 232
Muhammadi 48, 66 Nestorian Christians 148, 191
Muharram 59, 78, 88, 109, 112, 151 New Julfa 61–33, 65, 219, 230
Muhibb Ali Bek 64, 66, 188, 194 New Year 59–60, 113, 218
Muhtasham 35, 171, 172, 207 Nimatallah Hilli, Sayyid 37
Muin Musavvir 79, 90, 101 Nimatallah Jazairi, Sayyid 217, 223,
muhtasib al-mamalik 177 229
mujahid 19 Nimatallahi Sufis 14, 20, 32–3, 35, 45,
mujtahid 37–38, 70–1, 204, 237 54, 169–70, 178, 182, 186, 197, 228,
mujtahid of the age (mujtahid al-zaman) 241
237 Nimati faction 59, 78, 88
Mulayim Bek 194, 202 Nim Avard 239
Mulla Aqa Hawaijdar 64 Nishapur 177, 185
Mulla Qasim 99, 215–16 Nizam al-Din Muhammad 100
mullabashi 109–10, 133, 238 Nizami 18, 24, 79, 173
Munzavi, Ahmad 4 Nizari Ismailis 20, 179
Murad III, Sultan 43, 181 non-court demand 90, 102
Murad IV, Sultan 73 Northern notables 72
Multani gold-lace makers 88 Nuqtavis 46, 51, 54, 68, 75, 130, 179,
Murshid Quli Khan Ustajlu 43, 48, 50, 182–83
176, 178, 182, 184, 197 Nurallah Shushtari 156
murshid-i kamil 11 Nur al-Din Abd al-Rahman Jami 18
Musa, Imam 23, 30, 67, 92, 167, 178, Nur al-Din Abd al-Vahhab 16
189, 229, 240 Nur al-Din Baqi 33
Musavid 57, 64, 195, 204, 216–17, 223, Nur al-Din Muhammad Isfahani 64
229 Nur al-Din Muhammad Jabiri Ansari 64
Musayyib Khan Takkalu 35, 45, Nur al-Din Baqi Yazdi 33, 45, 169
175–76, 180 Nur Kamal Isfahani 27, 163, 166
Mushasha 14, 16, 20, 33, 51, 125 Nurbakhshis 20, 33, 149, 169
music, musician 32, 35, 69, 84, 149,
155, 159, 186, 202, 224, 237, occult sciences 198
musketeers 53, 183, 202, 203, 211, 220, occultation 84, 97, 99, 100, 107, 206,
221 214, 224
276 Index
office holders 17 physician 79, 87, 100, 166, 177, 217,
Ogilby, John 242 223–24, 229
old city centre (Isfahan) 55, 60 pilgrims, pilgrimmage 194, 216, 218,
old Congregational Mosque (Isfahan) 221, 225, 236, 239
57, 64, 96 pir 11, 13, 14, 51, 69, 120
Old Persian 1 plague 94, 132
Olearius 78, 112, 131, 139, 189, plots 26, 28, 31, 69, 74, 81, 82, 201
204–05, 207, 213, 242 poems, poetry, poets 13–14, 18–19, 35,
Omani 116 47–8, 69, 84, 91, 96, 117, 124, 153,
opium 96, 176 155, 157–58, 169–72, 178, 182, 186,
Ottoman/s 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 18, 20–22, 197, 198, 207, 209, 220, 223–24, 230
24–25, 27–28, 31–32, 38–39, 43, poison 26, 28, 31
46–47, 51–52, 54–58, 60–63, 73, Polish 221, 235
75–76, 78, 80, 82, 85, 87, 88, 94–95, poll tax (jizya) 66, 95, 107, 113
99–100, 104, 115, 117–118, 122, Polonaise carpets 67, 91, 102, 196
125–26, 129–32, 134, 148, 152, 154, poor harvests 94, 132
157, 160–61, 163, 165, 167, 173–75, Pope 106
177, 180–84, 186–87, 189, 191–92, popular practices, discourse 58, 83–4,
194, 198, 200, 204, 205, 210, 221, 86, 88, 98–99, 111, 119, 214–16,
223, 234, 236, 239, 245–46 219, 223, 225, 227, 239, 245
Ottoman-Safavid trade agreement 85, population 128, 148, 194, 221, 231,
87, 132 242, 243
Ottoman studies 147, 167 porcelain 91, 103, 131–32, 191, 219
Ottoman Turkish 244 porters 223
overland trade routes 61–63, 77, 85–86, Portugal, Portuguese 21, 61, 129, 160,
106–107, 121, 160, 193, 205–06, 187, 192, 208
236, 242 potters, pottery 5, 102, 119, 223
Oxus 21, 128 pretenders 47, 126, 175, 246
prices 95, 107, 113, 133, 220–21, 230
Pahlavi 2 prostitution 32, 212, 243
painter/s, painting 23, 34–5, 47–8, 60, province, provincial 3, 8, 16, 26, 28–30,
79, 90, 96, 102, 114–15, 127, 34, 35, 42–45, 48, 50, 53, 55, 63, 65,
171–72, 187–88, 197, 207–08, 237 66, 68, 71, 73, 75, 76, 79, 95, 105,
Pari Khan Khanum 35, 41–2, 44, 46, 107, 109, 115, 123–24, 153, 165,
176, 178 166, 168, 176–77, 185, 198, 204–05,
peasants 107, 112, 154, 188, 222, 242 209, 213, 233–34, 243–44
People of the Book 228, 243 Psalms 193
Persepolis 1 pseudo-Ismail II 47
Persian xiii, 1, 4–6, 10, 14, 18–9, 23–4,
33–35, 39, 47, 59, 69, 79, 84, 86, qadi 77, 178, 233
89–91, 93, 98, 100, 102–03, 113, Qain 165
116–17, 121, 123–24, 128, 153, 158, Qajar 16, 41, 43, 51, 82, 85, 116, 124,
167, 171, 193, 195, 197, 198, 199, 126–27, 132, 154, 177, 164, 183,
200, 202, 206, 210, 214, 219, 226, 184, 185, 186, 197, 210, 212, 215,
232, 240, 241, 246 220, 233–34, 244, 245–46
Persian Gulf 1, 10, 21, 62–3, 77, 82–3, qalandars 47
85, 95, 96, 107, 116, 121, 125, Qandahar 27, 39, 45, 52, 73, 77, 79, 81,
128–29, 180, 193, 205–06, 222 83, 90, 92, 105, 107, 116, 125,
pestilence 69, 107, 133 130–31, 133–34, 153, 165, 191, 193,
Peter the Great 104, 126, 152, 234 205, 211, 212
Philippines 61 Qarabagh 52, 165, 177, 201
philosophy, philosophical inquiry 9, Qara Khan Ustajlu 164
69–71, 86, 97, 99, 100, 107–08, 111, Qarachaqay Khan 79, 183, 184, 208
120–21, 127, 128, 199, 207, 214–16, Qaramanlu 15, 53, 154, 183, 185, 186
225, 228, 236–37, 240–41, 247 Qaraquyunlu 9, 10, 11, 17, 18, 39, 129,
 Index 277
149, 158, 167, 178, 183, 189, 192, risings 20–1, 29, 39, 43, 46–7, 51, 69,
194, 241 74, 75, 104–05, 107, 116, 170, 181
qasida 19, 35, 158, 172 ritual beating (chub-i tariq) 207, 241
Qasim-Shahi Ismailis 33 Rivulet Bridge 89, 132
Qasimi Gunabadi 33–4 Riza, Imam 17, 19, 23–24, 27, 36, 58,
Qayin 21, 159 65, 87, 100, 110, 126, 148, 172, 181,
Qaysariyya (Imperial) bazaar and gate 186, 189, 233
56–8, 60, 64, 88, 101, 187–88 Riza Abbasi 4, 59, 60, 66–7, 69, 79, 90,
Qazvin 3, 17, 23, 24, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 101, 131, 187, 190–91, 193, 196,
38, 43, 44, 46–8, 50, 51, 55, 56, 58, 197, 208
60–1, 65, 75, 78, 87, 101, 109, 124, Romanovs 148
130–31, 133, 163, 165, 167–70, 172, Rome 192
174, 176, 178–79, 180, 181, 185, Royal (Shah) Mosque 56–58, 63–64, 66,
191, 203, 207, 225, 232, 239 78, 93, 101, 108–09, 112, 130, 187,
qibla 195 194, 196, 202, 204, 222, 237–39
Qing 127, 148, 152 royal workshops 62, 64, 113, 166, 202,
Qishm 74, 83, 95, 131–32, 202, 210 212, 243
Qizilbash 2–3, 6, 9, 14–15, 17–18, Rum 18, 154
20–22, 26–28, 30, 32–33, 37, 39, 40, Rumlu 15, 21–22, 26, 27, 29, 41, 154,
42–44, 46–47, 49–53, 63, 68, 71, 78, 160, 164, 177, 183, 184
82, 93, 105–06, 118, 124, 126–27, Russia, Russians 61, 63, 78, 94–5, 104,
152, 163, 167–68, 176, 181–82, 116, 125–26, 133–34, 152, 160,
184–85, 207, 210, 212–13, 221, 190–93, 196, 198, 207, 211, 213,
233–34, 241, 246 220–21, 232, 234, 236–37, 244
qullar corp 52–3, 106 Russia Company 192–93
qullaraqasi 53, 82, 105–07, 183, 201, Rustam 13, 14
203, 209, 213, 215, 220, 222, 232 Rustam Bek 81, 203, 209
Qum 23, 28, 48, 50, 70, 87–88, 100, Rustam Khan (Georgian) 79, 186, 196,
102, 104, 107–08, 125, 127, 133, 201–03 207, 208
161, 175, 177, 190, 195, 204, 212, Rustam Khan Qaramanlu 65, 196
215, 227, 239, 242, 246 Rustam Khan Zangana 233
qurchis 41, 53, 164, 176, 183–86, 202, Rustam Mirza (great-grandson of Ismail
211 I) 182
qurchibashi 17, 22, 42, 43, 53–4, 71–2,
81–2, 105, 164, 176, 184, 187, 200, Sabzavar 36, 165, 216, 224
203, 208–10, 212, 220, 222, 232, Sadi 19, 157
235, 246 Sadiqi Bek Afshar 47, 59–60, 66, 172,
qutb 11 190, 208
Qutb al-Din 30 Sadlu 233
Qutb al-Din Nayrizi 143, 147, 236, 241 Sadr al-Din Muhammad Shirazi (Mulla
Qutbshahi (India) 149 Sadra) 4, 65, 69–70, 86, 198–99, 131,
204, 206, 223, 224
Rafi al-Din Muhammad Shahristani 54, Sadr al-Din Musa 68
189, 201, 210 sadr 17, 20, 22, 33, 36–7, 44–6, 54–5,
Rafia Naini 220, 224 71–2, 77, 84, 86, 101, 104–05, 108,
Rajab Ali Tabrizi 111, 214, 224 131–32, 157, 161, 166, 169–70, 173,
Rasht 22, 75, 153, 203 177, 181–82, 186–87, 196, 201–03,
Rayy 27, 43, 50, 155, 172, 175, 185 209–10, 213, 215, 220, 222, 225–26,
Razi Shahristani 54, 89 230, 233
rebellion 163 sadr al-mamalik 210
religious taxes 99 sadr al-khassa 177, 210
repentance (tawba) 31–32, 129, Safavid Sufi order 2, 20, 23, 32, 59, 78,
168–69, 170, 172 99, 129, 164, 228
revolt 182–83 Safi 54, 65, 79, 81, 87, 89–91, 100,
riots 107, 116, 119, 133, 201, 235, 238 104–05, 131–32, 165, 186, 195, 213,
278 Index
216, 232–33, 236, 240–41, 243, 245 Shah Inayatallah Isfahani 46, 177
Safi II 93 Shah Jahan 205, 217
Safi al-Din, Shaykh 2, 10, 67, 99, 129, Shah Nimatallah III 54
153, 158–59, 166 Shah Nimatallah Vali 20
Safi Quli Khan 215, 233 Shah Qasim Nurbakhsh 33
Sagittarius 187 Shah Quli Khan Zangana 105, 107, 133,
sahib qiran 167 222, 234, 244
Said Qummi, Qadi 224 Shah Rukh (Timurid) 19
Saib Tabrizi 91, 117, 124, 212, 220, Shah Rukh 148, 246
226, 230, 245 Shah Tahir 20, 33
St Nicholas the Patriarch 230 Shahnama 18, 23, 34–5, 36, 39, 48,
St. Minas church 219 59–60, 90, 96, 102, 130, 161, 170,
St. Nerses church 230 172, 181, 190, 231
salaries 235, 243 Shahnamah-yi Ismail 33
Saljuk period 57, 158 shahrashub (poetry) 224
Salman Khan Ustajlu 45, 168, 181, 187 Shahristani sayyids 54, 64, 89, 123, 161,
Sam Mirza 21, 27, 31, 39, 42, 153, 163, 166, 186, 189, 201, 210
167, 170, 176 Shahsevan 124
Sanson 112, 142, 222, 229, 231, 234, Shakki 30, 166
241, 244 Shamakhi 11
Sanudo 135, 152 Shamkhal Sultan 41, 44–45, 176, 178
sarai 60, 65–66, 78, 88–89, 96, 100, Shamlu 15, 17, 21–2, 26–27, 31, 34,
103, 169, 188, 191, 196, 217–18, 37–38, 42–43, 50, 53, 71, 74, 81–82,
223, 229, 231, 238–39 105–06, 116, 133, 153–54, 159, 164,
Sarakhs 28 166, 176–77, 180, 182–86, 188,
Saru Taqi 74–8, 80–1, 83, 84, 85, 87, 200–01, 203, 209–10, 212, 215,
89, 121, 131, 155, 203–05, 213, 232–34
216–18 Shamlu-Ustajlu alliance 26–27, 29, 33,
Sassanians 128 37, 42, 164, 166, 173
Sava 51, 164 Shamsa Gilani 224
Savory, Roger 2 Shamsabad quarter 239
Savji family 16, 27, 166 Sharif al-Din Ali 46, 157
sayyid/s 11, 14, 16–7, 20, 23–4, 27, Sharif Jurjani 46, 157
29–33, 35, 37–8, 42, 44, 46, 48, 54–5, Shaybani Khan Uzbek 150, 173, 197
58, 64, 66–9, 75, 77, 82, 86–87, 89, Shaykh Abbasi 90, 219
93, 98, 105, 109, 110, 111, 117, Shaykh al-Islam 17, 36, 38, 58, 70, 84,
123–24, 156–57, 160–62, 166–68, 93, 98–100, 108–11, 131–33, 168,
175, 177–78, 180, 182, 186–87, 189, 174, 177–78, 203, 209, 216, 226,
200–03, 206–07, 210, 217, 220, 228, 233, 238
223–24, 226, 229, 233–34, 238–39, Shaykh Muhammad (artist) 34, 48,
241 59–60, 172, 181
Sa‘adatabad Garden 34 Shaykh Muhammad Safi 30
School of the Potters 111, 223, 227, Shaykhavand 54, 71, 74, 82, 185
237, 239 Sherley, Anthony 61
seal of the mujtahids 204, 237 Shihab al-Din Bayani 158
sealkeeper 153, 164, 176–77, 186, 233 Shiraz 18, 34, 37, 47, 51–53, 65, 77, 79,
second Anglo-Dutch War 86 84, 89, 94, 100, 125, 127, 132, 157,
Sefatgol, Mansur 4 159, 164, 171–72, 176, 180, 182,
Selim I, Sultan 17, 21 184, 187, 190, 196, 218–19, 235–36
Selim II, Sultan 39, 130 shirbat 237
Shadow of Allah on earth 10, 30, 47, Shirvan 11, 28, 29, 30–1, 43, 52, 64, 65,
110, 117, 195, 204, 230 93, 104, 107, 116, 126, 130, 164–66,
Shafi Abbasi (Muhammad Shafi) 79, 90, 172, 177, 193, 195, 202, 211
101, 102, 231 Shirvanshah 11, 22, 161, 168
Shafii Sunnis 148, 180 Shi‘ism 2, 5–6, 10–1, 14, 16–9, 24,
 Index 279
28–9, 33, 36, 38, 40, 46, 68, 70, 73, 120–1, 147, 151, 156, 162, 170, 180,
75, 88, 100, 117, 120, 126, 149, 151, 190, 197–99, 203–04, 206–07,
156, 160–62, 166–67, 169, 172–73, 212–16, 219, 223, 225–27, 229,
179–80, 198, 207, 225, 239 236–37, 240–41
Shi‘i shrine cities in Iraq 36, 38, 57, 64, Sufis of Lahijan 51, 153–54, 190,
76, 87, 100, 109, 129–31, 174, 195, 197–98
202, 204, 239 Sufrachi 64, 188, 240
Shurur 11 sugar 63, 95
Shushtar 20, 28, 33, 125, 159 Suhravardi 69, 152
silk 7, 35, 61–63, 67, 75–78, 82–83, 85, Sulaman Aqa 93
91, 94–96, 102, 106–07, 121, 125, Sulayman 6, 55, 86, 91, 108–09, 112,
131, 133, 160, 188, 191–95, 202–03, 121, 124, 132–33, 146, 209, 233–34,
205–06, 210–12, 222, 234–36, 242 237, 239, 243, 245–46
silver 63, 66, 88, 91, 95, 109, 192 Sulayman II 134, 246
Simnan 161, 165, 195, 213, 222, 233 Sulayman Bek 217
simurgh 171 Sulayman (Ottoman) 39, 148, 163, 167
singing, singers 84, 87, 97, 113, 215, Sulayman Qatifi 37, 162
227 Sulayman (half-brother of Ismail I) 20
single-page illustrations 79, 90, 91, 190 Sultan Husayn 3, 6, 8, 110, 121–26,
the Sinner (Khatai) 13, 31 133, 218, 226, 233
sipahsalar 81, 105, 183, 185–86, Sultan Muhammad 4, 23, 170
200–01, 203, 208–10, 215, 220 Sultani school 238
Sistan 16, 28, 116, 165, 182, 209, 234 Sultanum Bekum Mawsillu 29, 42, 172
sister 10, 15–6, 19, 21–23, 33, 35–6, 45, Sunni 2, 9, 10, 19, 22, 30, 37, 40, 45–6,
48, 66, 87, 101, 110, 153, 164, 88, 94, 105, 107, 118, 120, 133, 148,
168–69, 170, 226 150, 155–57, 167, 174, 179–81, 183,
Siyavush (artist) 47, 48, 59, 66, 172 190, 194, 218, 234, 244
Siyavush Bek 82, 203, 209, 213 Surab Tanukabuni 4
smoking 79, 196 Surat 219
Somkhiti region 186 surgeon 237
son/s 1, 2, 11, 13, 14, 15–7, 18–23, 26, suyurghal 55, 225, 243
28, 29–31, 33–36, 38–9, 41–45, 48, syphilis 214
50, 54–55, 58–59, 65, 68–70, 73–77, Syria 11, 150, 154, 191
79, 81, 84, 86, 89–91, 93, 97, 98,
104–5, 109, 111, 114, 116, 118, Tabas 48, 156, 164
124–26, 131, 133, 153, 160, 163–65, Tabriz xi, 2, 3, 6, 8, 12–4, 16–8, 19–24,
167, 169, 170, 174–76, 178–80, 182, 28, 32, 34, 38–9, 44–5, 49, 51, 52,
186, 190–91, 198, 201–02, 208, 210, 56–57, 72, 76, 78, 88, 89, 91, 99,
216, 225, 233, 238, 245–46 101, 107, 116–17, 125, 126, 129–31,
sons-in-law 77, 82, 86, 105, 107, 109, 133, 150, 151, 153, 155–57, 159,
131, 174, 178, 186–87, 199–200, 204 160, 164–65, 168–69, 172, 177–82,
Spain, Spanish 61, 160, 192, 245 184, 187–88, 191–94, 203, 207, 212,
Spanish Company 192 223, 226, 237, 241–42
specie 7, 61, 62, 63, 67, 76, 82, 83, 85, Tabrizi school of painting 23
86, 91, 95, 96, 106, 107, 111–12, tafsir 109, 111
121, 122, 131–33, 194, 210, 212–13, Taft 169
221, 235–36, 242 Tahmasp 2, 9, 15, 20, 21, 23, 26, 27, 30,
spices 192, 206 31, 33, 34–6, 41–2, 45, 47–8, 50–2,
standards 173, 244 57, 58, 63, 64, 74–5, 81, 92, 101,
steel 63, 115, 196, 206, 244 104, 109, 118, 120, 124, 129–30,
Stewarts 8 137, 164, 168
storytellers 69, 75, 173, 207 Tahmasp (brother of Abbas I) 51, 201
Sufi, Sufism 10, 11, 13–4, 18, 20, 33–4, Tahmasp II 124–26, 127, 133–34,
47, 51, 54, 59, 68, 69, 70, 73, 75–8, 232–33, 245–46
84–7, 96–9, 100, 107, 111, 117, tailor 240
280 Index
taj 2, 14, 18, 23, 31, 36, 59, 151, 157, 46, 52, 73, 76–78, 80, 82–83, 85,
166, 168, 185, 241 87–89, 94–95, 104, 106, 115, 119,
Taji-buyuk 64, 185 122, 125–26, 132–34, 183, 206–07,
Tajik 6, 8–11, 13–19, 21–27, 29–37, 40, 216–17, 232
43, 44–7, 49–52, 54–5, 58–9, 63–64, tribe/s 2–3, 5–6, 8, 9–11, 15, 16, 17, 18,
67–68, 71, 74–5, 77, 79, 81–2, 87, 20–2, 26–28, 30, 34–37, 39, 40,
92–3, 97, 105, 109–11, 117–19, 123, 42–44, 47, 49, 51–55, 59, 68, 71, 78,
152, 157, 166–67, 176–77, 182, 187, 94, 105–07, 113, 116–18, 120, 123,
200–03, 207, 209–10, 212, 217, 220, 125–27, 153–54, 164, 170, 176, 177,
223, 224, 226, 233, 238, 239, 241 181, 184–85, 195, 200, 205, 211,
Tajlu Khanum 23, 167 234, 244, 245
takiyya 64, 223 Tudors 7
Takka 154 Tun 48, 164
Takkalu 17, 20, 21, 26, 27, 29, 35, 37, Turan 23
41, 42, 45, 53, 130, 154, 164–66, Turk 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 25, 26,
168, 172, 174, 175, 177, 180–82, 29, 31, 34, 36–7, 39–44, 45, 49, 51,
184, 200 52, 54, 63, 74–75, 81, 105, 117–19,
Takkalu-Mawsillu-Turkman tribal 123, 155, 161, 167, 187
alliance 42 Turk-Tajik alliance 9, 19, 21, 22, 25, 34,
Talar-i Ashraf 101, 132 36, 39, 118
Talish 15, 20, 41, 50, 153–54, 159, 184 Turkman 42–45, 48, 50, 94, 175–76,
tamgha 32, 130, 169 180, 182, 184–85
Taqi Majlisi 69, 70, 77, 84, 86, 97–8, Turkman-Takkalu alliance 44
131–32, 199, 202, 204, 206, 214–16, Turkey Company 192
220, 224–26 Turkish 197
taqlid 199 tuyuls 28, 222, 243
Tartar 107 twelfth Imam xi, xiii, 10, 14, 23, 24, 32,
Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste 140, 194, 204, 37–38, 69, 75, 86, 121, 149, 151,
209, 211, 218, 223, 243 162, 171, 179, 200, 214, 227, 237
taverns 84 Twelver clergy 36, 72
tawhidkhana 59, 241 Twelver Shi‘ism xi, 2, 10, 14, 16–17, 19,
tax/es 32, 39, 62–3, 76–7, 85, 95, 20, 22, 24–25, 37–38, 45, 47, 49, 52,
106–07, 112–13, 122, 155, 179, 188, 56, 58, 68–70, 97, 107, 109–10,
194–95, 202, 209, 212, 215, 222, 117–18, 121, 123, 127, 148–49, 151,
230, 234, 242–43 159, 162, 166, 174, 181, 200, 225,
Tehran 27, 161 226, 244
textiles 35, 63, 79, 115, 194, 196, 208
Tiflis 39, 94, 167, 207 Ubayd Khan 172
Tigris 191 Uljaitu 148
Timur 16, 19, 33, 46, 68, 148–49, 157, Umayyads 14, 151
240 uncle 10, 41, 42, 44, 45, 54, 165
Timurid 9–12, 16–19, 23, 30, 33–5, 68, unrest 34, 54, 85, 96, 107, 115, 133
101, 108, 140, 153, 156, 158, 171, uprising 20, 124
190, 197 Urdubadi family 55, 187, 203, 232
tobacco 67, 79, 96, 204, 212, 224, 237, Urfi Shirazi 35
238, 243 Urmiyya 184, 233
Tokugawa shogunate 148 Ustajlu 15, 17, 21–22, 26–30, 32, 34,
Trabzond 11 37–46, 48, 50–51, 54, 71, 82,
trading, tradesmen 72, 96, 125, 191, 153–54, 159–60, 163–64, 166, 168,
236, 242 173, 176–78, 180–85, 187, 194, 197,
trading monopolies 62 215, 233
translation 79, 193, 206, 214, 218, 234, Usuli 127, 247
238, 240 Uzbek/s 2–3, 9, 11, 16–17, 20–21,
transmigration of souls 75 26–27, 31, 34, 36, 39, 43, 50–52,
treaty/ies 3, 9, 21, 27–28, 32, 38, 40, 43, 55–58, 74, 107, 109, 115–17,
 Index 281
129–30, 150, 157–58, 163, 164, wine 66, 90, 91, 108, 113, 133, 200,
166–67, 172–73, 182–83, 185, 187, 215, 218, 224, 241
192, 196–97, 209, 218, 221 women 3, 34, 91, 101, 103, 169, 190,
Uzun Hasan 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 217, 229, 237
23, 25, 30, 39, 129, 150–51, 158, wool 206, 212, 220, 222
160, 192
Xerxes 1
Vahshi Bafqi 35, 170, 172
Vaiz-i Kashifi 158, 198 Yahya Qazvini 30
vakil 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 33, 35, 43, 45, Yakhan Bekum 54, 168
71, 125, 127, 157, 163, 164–66, 170, Yaqub (son of Uzun Hasan) 16, 18, 39,
182, 184, 197, 201, 210, 233, 245–46 150, 160
vakil of the people 127 Yaqub Khan Dhul-Qadr 52, 68, 130,
vali 79 182, 200
Valois 8 Yazd 11, 33, 51, 63, 66, 68, 104–05,
Van 28 116, 157, 165, 169, 172, 178, 194,
Vank Cathedral 89 196, 204, 215, 219, 242
vaqf 5, 36, 58–59, 60, 64, 66, 109–12, Yazid 14, 99, 151
181, 188, 189, 190, 195, 203, 213, yoga 198
216–17, 223, 228, 229, 237–39, 240 Yuli Bek 182
Varamin 23 Yusuf Aqa 202, 205
Varsaq 41 Yusuf Khan 184
vase 208 yuzbashi 93, 111–12, 220
Venice, Venetian 32, 79, 102, 147, 152,
168, 192, 223, 243 Zahid, Shaykh 68, 99
Vienna 94 zakat 70
vilayat-i faqih 127 Zal 13
vizier 16, 19, 22–23, 27, 31, 36, 44, Zand 126, 234
54–55, 64, 71–72, 74–78, 81–84, Zangana Kurds 94, 97–100, 105, 107,
86–88, 91, 93–97, 100, 105, 107, 119, 120, 132–33, 220–22, 230, 234,
116, 131–33, 165–66, 177, 181–82, 238, 244
187, 197, 199, 200–01, 203, 205, Zarand 196
207, 209, 213, 214, 220, 221, 228, Zayanda River 36, 56, 59, 62, 65, 89,
229, 232–34, 236, 238, 239, 244, 246 101
Vizier mosque 87 Zaydi Shi‘a 11, 14, 17, 33
Zayn al-Abidin 47, 59, 172
Wallerstein, I. 147 Zayn al-Abidin Shirvani 241
water pipes 67, 79, 90, 196 Zayn al-Din Ali Amili, Shaykh 38, 70,
watchmaker 243 87, 130, 174, 180, 199, 200, 207, 225
weavers 63, 243 Zaynab Bekum 45, 66, 177, 196
West 122 Zaynal Khan Shamlu 74, 200–01, 210
Western 80, 103, 114, 119, 122, 169, Zohak 13
226 Zoroastrians 1, 66, 95, 106, 148, 243,
Western secondary sources 124 245
wife/wives 19, 23, 27, 29, 31, 41, 42, 45, Zubayda Bekum 202
66, 74, 104, 108, 202, 176, 179, 201 Zuhab 76–78, 80, 82–83, 85, 87–89, 94,
Windsor 90 115, 119, 122, 126, 206–07, 216–17