Around the
time that Osman was creating his state in Anatolia, a native of Azerbaijan
named Safi al-Din (1252–1334) founded a Sufi brotherhood in Ardabil, whose
followers came to be known as Safavids. By the late 15th century, this
brotherhood had morphed into a militant Shiite–Sufi movement that held its
leader to be either the
hidden Imam or God Himself. At the turn of the 16th century, the leader of the
Safavid order, a teenager named Isma‘il, came out of hiding and set about
conquering Iran; by 1501, he was the region’s shah with a capital at Tabriz. In
1514, however, the Safavid forces were defeated by the Ottomans at Chaldiran,
with three signifi cant consequences: first, the modern Turkish–Iranian border
was set; second, having lost the battle (and their claim to divinity) to
Ottoman gunpowder, the Safavid shahs acquired gunpowder too; and third, with
Ottoman forces encroaching on their western provinces, subsequent shahs moved the
capital eastwards, eventually settling on Isfahan under ‘Abbas I (r.
1587–1629).
In moving
eastwards, the Safavids were distancing themselves from their original Turkmen
power-base, and digging their heels into Iran’s heartland. The religious
character of the state was purged of its radical ideas, which were replaced
with orthodox, Twelver Shiism (while Turkish elites were replaced with Persian ones). This
form of Shiism was forcibly imposed on a largely Sunni population, and Shiite
scholars from Bahrain, Greater Syria, and Iraq were imported to Isfahan, where
both religious and secular culture flourished. To his capital in Isfahan, ‘Abbas
also shifted populations from provincial towns to create a cultural and
economic hub. It was thus under the Safavids that Iran’s modern borders and religious
and cultural identities were brought into clear focus – in sharp contrast to
the tolerant heterogeneity of the Ottoman empire. Persian literature reached new
heights and, to the extent that both the Ottomans and Mughals (or
‘Moghuls’, Persian for ‘Mongols’) had adopted Persian as the language of high
culture (in pre-Ottoman Anatolia and pre-Mughal India), the Safavids were at
the very centre of Islamic civilization. After the death of ‘Abbas II (r. 1642–66),
however, decline set in: natural disasters (famines, earthquakes, and the spread
of diseases) combined with ineffectual rulers to leave a political vacuum that
was filled by Shiite ‘ulama’, or ‘mullahs’, who tightened Shiism’s hold on
society. Imposing one’s religion by force is no way to win friends and influence people, and embittered Sunni tribesmen from Afghanistan overran the
Safavids in
1722, putting an end to their rule. Political unity – and Shiism – returned to
Iran with the Qajars (1794–1925), who ushered Iran into modernity.
