Capture of Tabriz (1585)
The Capture of Tabriz by the Ottoman Empire in 1585 was a momentous event in the Ottoman–Safavid War (1578–1590).
Tabriz was one of the main cities of the Safavid Empire, and their capital until circa 1555, when the Safavid capital was moved by Shah Tahmasp from Tabriz to Qazvin, in order to put a greater distance from the Ottoman Empire. During the Ottoman–Safavid War, the fall of the city followed some important Safavid defeats against the Ottomans, particularly at the Battle of Torches in 1583.
In 1585, an Ottoman force under Osman Pasha and Ferhat Pasha crossed into Iran and managed to capture Tabriz. The Ottoman forces also included Tatar and Circassian troops led by Gazy Giray, who had recently escaped from captivity among the Safavids. Tabriz would remain under Ottoman rule for the next two decades, until the Safavid capture of Tabriz (1603), when it was recovered by Abbas the Great. It would again be plundered in 1618 by the Ottoman Grand Vizier Damat Halil Pasha during the Ottoman–Safavid War (1616–1618), and would again fall briefly to the Ottomans in the Capture of Tabriz (1635).
The next year the Safavid Emperor Mohammad Khodabanda sent his son, prince Hamza Mirza to fight the Ottomans, but the young prince was murdered during this campaign, and the city remained in Ottoman hands.
The city was administered by the new Ottoman Governor Jafar Pasha, who held the post from 1586 until 1591. He destroyed the royal Hasht Behesht Palace in Tabriz, an original creation of the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan, in order to build the Castle of Jafar Pasha in its place a massive defensive structure, which the French traveler Jean Chardin depicted in 1673.