The Safavid Kings themselves claimed to besayyids,[17] family descendants of the Islamic prophetMuhammad, although many scholars have cast doubt on this claim.[18] There seems now to be a consensus among scholars that the Safavid family hailed fromIranian Kurdistan,[5] and later moved toIranian Azerbaijan, finally settling in the 11th century CE atArdabil. Traditional pre-1501 Safavid manuscripts trace the lineage of the Safavids to theKurdish dignitary,Firuz-Shah Zarrin-Kolah.[19][20]
From the evidence available at the present time, it is certain that the Safavid family was of indigenous Iranian stock, and not of Turkish ancestry as it is sometimes claimed. It is probable that the family originated in Persian Kurdistan, and later moved to Azerbaijan, where they adopted the Azari form of Turkish spoken there, and eventually settled in the small town of Ardabil sometimes during the eleventh century.
By the time of the establishment of the Safavid empire, the members of the family were Turkicized and Turkish-speaking,[25] and some of the Shahs composed poems in their then-native Turkish language. Concurrently, the Shahs themselves also supported Persian literature, poetry and art projects including the grandShahnameh of Shah Tahmasp,[26][27] while members of the family and some Shahs composed Persian poetry as well.[28][29]
The authority of the Safavids was religiously based, and their claim to legitimacy was founded on being direct male descendants of Ali,[30] the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, and regarded by the Shiʻa as the first Imam.
Furthermore, the dynasty was from the very start thoroughly intermarried with bothPontic Greek as well asGeorgian lines.[31] In addition, from the official establishment of the dynasty in 1501, the dynasty would continue to have many intermarriages with bothCircassian as well as again Georgian dignitaries, especially with the accession ofTahmasp I.[10][11]
Self-identification and worldview
The identity created by the Safavid monarchs and the Persian-speaking urban elites who backed them was based on religion. The Safavids portrayed themselves as the rightful successors of theTwelve Imams inShia Islam and reinforced this claim by inventing a genealogical link to the third Shia Imam,Husayn ibn Ali, through his supposed marriage toShahrbanu, the daughter of lastSasanian rulerYazdegerd III.[32] By constructing this lineage, the Safavids emphasized their Persian genealogical heritage.[33]
The Safavids also drew inspiration from earlier times, both historical and mythological. The historical component was theTurco-Mongol tradition, which the Safavids considered themselves the inheritor of. The 14th century warlordTimur influenced their self-image. In his autobiography,Shah Tahmasp I mentioned that he often read theTarikh-e Teymur. This romanticized past was given renewed attention once the Safavids abandoned their role as warriors.[32]
The mythological component was references to pre-Islamic kings and heroes.Zahhak,Fereydun andJamshid were amongst the figures thatShah Ismail I compared himself to in his poetry. His two sonsSam and Rostam, had traditional Persian names. WhenShah Soltan Hoseyn was crowned shah in 1694, Jamshid andKay Kawad were amongst the pre-Islamic figures mentioned in thekhotba speech by thesheykh al-islam ofIsfahan,Mohammad Baqer Majlesi. TheTohfat al-alam, apaean to Shah Soltan Hoseyn composed about ten years after his coronation, contains similar themes. Although many dynasties in Iran remembered only fractions of the past, they still aimed to claim a connection to it, a tradition the Safavids continued. The DutchIranologistRudi Matthee adds "Yet that does not mean that the Safavids were engaged in a systematic and comprehensive mining of the past with the intention of "retrieving" an authentic identity".[32]
The identity of the Safavids was broad in certain aspects, consistent with premodern custom. The Safavid dynasty was likely ofKurdish origin, while Shah Ismail I hadPontic Greek descent and spoke a variant ofAzerbaijani Turkic.[32] Both Rudi Matthee and English–American IranologistDick Davis agree that "pure identity was not part of Iran's early, multi-ethnic and imperial consciousness and emerged only in Sasanian times". The Safavids still set themselves apart from others, mainly judging by perceived levels of civilization. Those considered barbarians were not only outsiders but also certain neighboring Muslims, includingArabs, Turks, andKurds. Texts in Persian portrayed them all as primitive, unpredictable and unreliable. The Safavids considered the truly uncivilized groups to include theTurkmens,Lezgins,Kipchaks, andUzbeks. This grouping also included the Russians, whom the Iranians reportedly called the "Uzbeks of Europe". The Safavid outlook on civilization also includedWestern Europeans, albeit they were rarely mentioned in Persian texts. These texts make little mention of Europe (Farangestan) as a competitor, threat, or point of comparison, even long after the Safavid dynasty. Secondary sources, typically from Europe, provide the majority of the information regarding Safavid views on Europeans.[34]
Legitimacy in the Safavid chronicles revolved around support for the shah and his associates, not adherence to the Muslim divine order or ties to the land. In this system, loyalty became the key and nearly exclusive condition for inclusion.[34] The clerical elite in Iran justified this perspective in religious terms, seeing the dynasty and its shah as essential to upholding and safeguarding the divine order.[35]
After the fall of theSasanian Empire in the 7th century, the idea of Iran as a political state ceased to exist, but it continued to shape Iranian national sentiment. Under the MongolIlkhanate (1256–1335), this notion was revived.[36] After settling firmly in Iran, the Mongols actively supported its cultural heritage, centering their patronage on theShahnameh. This development was aided by the emergence of the New Persian language as the predominant cultural language in this large region. During the Safavid period, these factors came together, and the Safavids collected and directed centuries of cultural achievements. This preserved heritage proved resilient, enduring both the turmoil after the Safavid government collapsed and the aggressive imposition of Russian culture following the early 19th centuryRusso-Iranian Wars.[37]
Especially in urban areas, Safavid literature and Persian poetry connected the past, including the pre-Islamic past, to the present and functioned as a body of shared cultural traditions for both the common people and the elite. The legendary pre-Islamic Iranian past, with kings battling eternal forces of evil in Iran'snational epic, theShahnameh, was connected to the Islamic Safavid present, which had its own strong symbols of righteousness and redemption.[38]
The Safavids revitalized theGuarded Domains of Iran.[39] The idea of the "Guarded Domains" was formed by a feeling of territorial and political uniformity in a society with shared cultural elements such as the Persian language, monarchy, andShia Islam.[40] In addition to supporting an advanced Persian material culture, the Safavids contributed to the development of an Islamic philosophical and theological heritage. The Safavids established trade and diplomatic ties with Europe, introducing Iran to Western developments for the first time.[39]
The Safavid dynasty regarded Iran, both as a territory and as a concept, as under their rule and divinely protected. The name "Iran" occurs rarely in early chronicles, suggesting that its location was considered too evident to require frequent mention.[41] The attention to "Iran" as a unified entity, shielded by the Iranian army, increased somewhat under the reign ofShah Abbas I, who defended the country from external opponents while reducing the autonomy of outlying areas and islands. Iran, seemingly, was recognized without formal proclamation.[41]
Iran's modern period is often linked to the Safavid dynasty, which also laid the groundwork for the Iranian nation-state. Under them, Iran became a unified political entity, while its largely tribal and nomadic population became settled, relying on agriculture and trade for revenue.Patrimonial kingship, which combined territorial authority with religious legitimacy, was introduced by the Safavids and, with some modifications, endured until the 20th century.[42]
Under the Safavids, a political structure with interwoven religious and political domains was established, along with a primary language, Persian, which functioned as the literary language and even started to supplant Arabic as the medium for theological discourse. The political system that emerged under them had overlapping political and religious boundaries and a core language, Persian, which served as the literary tongue, and even began to replace Arabic for theological conversation. Well into theQajar era, some administrative institutions established during the Safavid era or modified from earlier periods continued to exist. Iran and Europe first began regular, long-term diplomatic and commercial exchanges during the Safavid era.[42]
TheReformation in northern and central Europe and theCounter-Reformation that followed it are comparable to the state-sponsored Shia Islam that resulted from the advent of the Safavids and the Sunni response to it. The split that resulted between the Sunnis and Shias is similar to the Protestant-Catholic split that accelerated the formation of nation-states in Europe.[43] The emergence of the Safavid state and its adoption of Shia Islam as the official faith was a pivotal moment that significantly affected both Iran and the surrounding Sunni-majority regions.[44] The conversion to a state-sponsored religion, in this case Shia Islam, provided the bond required to hold together the fundamental elements of Safavid state, similar to other early states such as Spain and England.[45] Iran was largely shaped into a geographical empire with a unique identity due to the fusion of religious and political elements by the Safavid dynasty.[46]
Matthee, Rudi. (2005).The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500-1900. Princeton University Press. p. 18; "The Safavids, as Iranians of Kurdish ancestry and of nontribal background (...)".
Savory, Roger. (2008). "EBN BAZZĀZ".Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. VIII, Fasc. 1. p. 8. "This official version contains textual changes designed to obscure the Kurdish origins of the Safavid family and to vindicate their claim to descent from the Imams."
Amoretti, Biancamaria Scarcia; Matthee, Rudi. (2009). "Ṣafavid Dynasty". In Esposito, John L. (ed.)The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. Oxford University Press. "Of Kurdish ancestry, the Ṣafavids started as a Sunnī mystical order (...)"
Roemer, H. R. (1986). "The Safavid Period" in Jackson, Peter; Lockhart, Laurence.The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 6: The Timurid and Safavid Periods. Cambridge University Press. pp. 214, 229
Blow, David (2009).Shah Abbas: The Ruthless King Who Became an Iranian Legend. I.B.Tauris. p. 3
Savory, Roger M.; Karamustafa, Ahmet T. (1998) "ESMĀʿĪL I ṢAFAWĪ".Encyclopaedia Iranica Vol. VIII, Fasc. 6, pp. 628–636
^Aptin Khanbaghi (2006)The Fire, the Star and the Cross: Minority Religions in Medieval and Early. London & New York. IB Tauris.ISBN1-84511-056-0, pp. 130–1
^Anthony Bryer. "Greeks and Türkmens: The Pontic Exception",Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 29 (1975), Appendix II "Genealogy of the Muslim Marriages of the Princesses of Trebizond"
^Dale 2020, pp. 73–74 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFDale2020 (help) "Ismāʿīl – who evidently knew both Persian and what has been described as a Southern Turkic dialect"
^"Why is there such confusion about the origins of this important dynasty, which reasserted Iranian identity and established an independent Iranian state after eight and a half centuries of rule by foreign dynasties?" RM Savory,Iran Under the Safavids (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980), p. 3.
^Alireza Shapur Shahbazi (2005), "The History of the Idea of Iran", in Vesta Curtis ed., Birth of the Persian Empire, IB Tauris, London, p. 108: "Similarly the collapse of Sassanian Eranshahr in AD 650 did not end Iranians' national idea. The name "Iran" disappeared from official records of the Saffarids, Samanids, Buyids, Saljuqs and their successor. But one unofficially used the name Iran, Eranshahr, and similar national designations, particularly Mamalek-e Iran or "Iranian lands", which exactly translated the old Avestan term Ariyanam Daihunam. On the other hand, when the Safavids (not Reza Shah, as is popularly assumed) revived a national state officially known as Iran, bureaucratic usage in the Ottoman empire and even Iran itself could still refer to it by other descriptive and traditional appellations".
^In the pre-Safavid written work Safvat as-Safa (oldest manuscripts from 1485 and 1491), the origin of the Safavids is tracted to Piruz Shah Zarin Kolah who is called a Kurd from Sanjan, while in the post-Safavid manuscripts, this portion has been excised and Piruz Shah Zarin Kollah is made a descendant of the Imams. R Savory, "Ebn Bazzaz" inEncyclopædia Iranica). In the Silsilat an-nasab-i Safawiya (composed during the reign of Shah Suleiman, 1667–94), by Hussayn ibn Abdal Zahedi, the ancestry of the Safavid was purported to be tracing back to Hijaz and the first Shiʻi Imam as follows: Shaykh Safi al-din Abul Fatah Eshaq ibn (son of) Shaykh Amin al-Din Jabrail ibn Qutb al-din ibn Salih ibn Muhammad al-Hafez ibn Awad ibn Firuz Shah Zarin Kulah ibn Majd ibn Sharafshah ibn Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Seyyed Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Seyyed Ja'afar ibn Seyyed Muhammad ibn Seyyed Isma'il ibn Seyyed Muhammad ibn Seyyed Ahmad 'Arabi ibn Seyyed Qasim ibn Seyyed Abul Qasim Hamzah ibn Musa al-Kazim ibn Ja'far As-Sadiq ibn Muhammad al-Baqir ibn Imam Zayn ul-'Abedin ibnHussein ibnAli ibn Abi Taleb Alayha as-Salam. There are differences between this and the oldest manuscript of Safwat as-Safa. Seyyeds have been added from Piruz Shah Zarin Kulah up to the first Shiʻi Imam and the nisba "Al-Kurdi" has been excised. The title/name "Abu Bakr" (also the name of the first Caliph and highly regarded by Sunnis) is deleted from Qutb ad-Din's name. ُSource: Husayn ibn Abdāl Zāhedī, 17th cent. Silsilat al-nasab-i Safavīyah, nasabnāmah-'i pādishāhān bā ʻuzmat-i Safavī, ta'līf-i Shaykh Husayn pisar-i Shaykh Abdāl Pīrzādah Zāhedī dar 'ahd-i Shāh-i Sulaymnān-i Safavī. Berlīn, Chāpkhānah-'i Īrānshahr, 1343 (1924), 116 pp. Original Persian: شیخ صفی الدین ابو الفتح اسحق ابن شیخ امین الدین جبرائیل بن قطب الدین ابن صالح ابن محمد الحافظ ابن عوض ابن فیروزشاه زرین کلاه ابن محمد ابن شرفشاه ابن محمد ابن حسن ابن سید محمد ابن ابراهیم ابن سید جعفر بن سید محمد ابن سید اسمعیل بن سید محمد بن سید احمد اعرابی بن سید قاسم بن سید ابو القاسم حمزه بن موسی الکاظم ابن جعفر الصادق ابن محمد الباقر ابن امام زین العابدین بن حسین ابن علی ابن ابی طالب علیه السلام.
^R.M. Savory, "Safavid Persia" in: Ann Katherine Swynford Lambton, Peter Malcolm Holt, Bernard Lewis,The Cambridge History of Islam, Cambridge University Press, 1977. p. 394: "They (Safavids after the establishment of the Safavid state) fabricated evidence to prove that the Safavids were Sayyids."
^F. Daftary, "Intellectual Traditions in Islam", I.B. Tauris, 2001. p. 147: "But the origins of the family of Shaykh Safi al-Din go back not to Hijaz but to Kurdistan, from where, seven generations before him, Firuz Shah Zarin-kulah had migrated to Adharbayjan"
^Tamara Sonn.A Brief History of Islam, Blackwell Publishing, 2004, p. 83,ISBN1-4051-0900-9
^É. Á. Csató, B. Isaksson, C Jahani.Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case Studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic, Routledge, 2004, p. 228,ISBN0-415-30804-6.
^Minorsky, V (2009). "Adgharbaydjan (Azarbaydjan)". In Berman, P; Bianquis, Th; Bosworth, CE; van Donzel, E; Henrichs, WP (eds.).Encyclopedia of Islam (2nd ed.). NL: Brill. Archived fromthe original on 2012-07-28.After 907/1502, Adharbayjan became the chief bulwark and rallying ground of the Safawids, themselves natives of Ardabil and originally speaking the local Iranian dialect
^Roger M. Savory. "Safavids" in Peter Burke, Irfan Habib,Halil İnalcık:History of Humanity-Scientific and Cultural Development: From the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century, Taylor & Francis. 1999, p. 259.
^"Safavid dynasty" atEncyclopædia Iranica, "The origins of the Safavids are clouded in obscurity. They may have been of Kurdish origin (see R. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, 1980, p. 2; R. Matthee, "Safavid Dynasty" at iranica.com), but for all practical purposes they were Turkish-speaking and Turkified."
^John L. Esposito,The Oxford History of Islam, Oxford University Press US, 1999. pp 364: "To support their legitimacy, the Safavid dynasty of Iran (1501–1732) devoted a cultural policy to establish their regime as the reconstruction of the historic Iranian monarchy. To the end, they commissioned elaborate copies of theShahnameh, the Iranian national epic, such as this one made for Tahmasp in the 1520s."
^Ira Marvin Lapidus,A history of Islamic Societies, Cambridge University Press, 2002, 2nd ed., p. 445: To bolster the prestige of the state, the Safavid dynasty sponsored an Iran-Islamic style of culture concentrating on court poetry, painting, and monumental architecture that symbolized not only the Islamic credentials of the state but also the glory of the ancient Persian traditions."
^Colin P. Mitchell, "Ṭahmāsp I" inEncyclopædia Iranica. "Shah Ṭahmāsp's own brother, Sām Mirzā, wrote the Taḏkera-yetoḥfa-ye sāmi, in which he mentioned 700 poets during the reigns of the first two Safavid rulers. Sām Mirzā himself was an ardent poet, writing 8,000 verses and a Šāh-nāma dedicated to his brother, Ṭahmāsp (see Sām Mirzā, ed. Homāyun-Farroḵ, 1969)."
^See: Willem Floor, Hasan Javadi (2009),The Heavenly Rose-Garden: A History of Shirvan & Daghestan by Abbas Qoli Aqa Bakikhanov, Mage Publishers, 2009. (see Sections on Safavids quoting poems of Shah Tahmasp I)
^Kathryn Babayan,Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran, Cambridge, Massachusetts; London : Harvard University Press, 2002. p. 143: "It is true that during their revolutionary phase (1447–1501), Safavi guides had played on their descent from the family of the Prophet. The hagiography of the founder of the Safavi order, Shaykh Safi al-Din Safvat al-Safa written by Ibn Bazzaz in 1350-was tampered with during this very phase. An initial stage of revisions saw the transformation of Safavi identity as Sunni Kurds into Arab blood descendants of Muhammad."
^From Maternal side: Chatrina daughter of Theodora daughter ofJohn IV of Trebizond son of Alexios IV of Trebizond son of Manuel III of Trebizond son of Alexios III of Trebizond son of Irene Palaiologina of Trebizond. From Paternal side:Shaykh Haydar son of Khadijeh Khatoon daughter of Ali Beyg son of Qara Yuluk Osman son of Maria daughter of Irene Palaiologina of Trebizond.
Amanat, Abbas (2019). "Remembering the Persianate". In Amanat, Abbas; Ashraf, Assef (eds.).The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere. Brill. pp. 15–62.ISBN978-90-04-38728-7.
Matthee, Rudi (2009). "Was Safavid Iran an Empire?".Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient.53 (1–2). Brill:233–265.doi:10.1163/002249910X12573963244449.
Matthee, Rudi (2021). "The idea of Iran in the Safavid period: Dynastic pre-eminence and Urban Pride". In Melville, Charles (ed.).Safavid Persia in the Age of Empires: The Idea of Iran. Vol. 10. I.B. Tauris. pp. 81–105.
Melville, Charles (2019). "Concepts of government and state formation in Mongol Iran". InBabaie, Sussan (ed.).Iran After the Mongols. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 33–54.ISBN978-1788315289.
Sicker, Martin (2001).The Islamic World in Decline: From the Treaty of Karlowitz to the Disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Greenwood Publishing Group.ISBN978-0275968915.
Yarshater, Ehsan (2012). "IRAN ii. IRANIAN HISTORY (2) Islamic period (page 4): The Safavids".Encyclopaedia Iranica.The origins of the Safavids are clouded in obscurity. They may have been of Kurdish origin (see R. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, 1980, p. 2; R. Matthee, "Safavid Dynasty" at iranica.com), but for all practical purposes they were Turkish-speaking and Turkified.
Further reading
Christoph Marcinkowski (tr.),Persian Historiography and Geography: Bertold Spuler on Major Works Produced in Iran, the Caucasus, Central Asia, India and Early Ottoman Turkey, Singapore: Pustaka Nasional, 2003,ISBN9971-77-488-7.
Christoph Marcinkowski (tr., ed.),Mirza Rafi‘a'sDastur al-Muluk: A Manual of Later Safavid Administration. Annotated English Translation, Comments on the Offices and Services, and Facsimile of the Unique Persian Manuscript, Kuala Lumpur, ISTAC, 2002,ISBN983-9379-26-7.
Christoph Marcinkowski,From Isfahan to Ayutthaya: Contacts between Iran and Siam in the 17th Century, Singapore, Pustaka Nasional, 2005,ISBN9971-77-491-7.
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