Ismail I
Ismail I was the founder and first shah of Safavid Iran, ruling from 1501 until his death in 1524. His reign is one of the most vital in the history of Iran, and the Safavid era is often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history. Under Ismail, Iran was unified under native rule for the first time since the Islamic conquest of the country eight-and-a-half centuries earlier.
Ismail inherited leadership of the Safavid Sufi order from his brother as a child. His predecessors had transformed the religious order into a military movement supported by the Qizilbash. The Safavids took control of the Azerbaijan region, and in 1501, Ismail was crowned as shah. In the following years, Ismail conquered the rest of Iran and other neighbouring territories. His expansion into Eastern Anatolia brought him into conflict with the Ottoman Empire. In 1514, the Ottomans decisively defeated the Safavids at the Battle of Chaldiran, which brought an end to Ismail's conquests. Ismail fell into depression and heavy drinking after this defeat and died in 1524. He was succeeded by his eldest son Tahmasp I.
One of Ismail's first actions was the proclamation of the Twelver denomination of Shia Islam as the official religion of the Safavid state, marking one of the most important turning points in the history of Islam, which had major consequences for the ensuing history of Iran. He caused sectarian tensions in the Middle East when he destroyed the tombs of the Abbasid caliphs, the Sunni Imam Abu Hanifa, and the Sufi Muslim ascetic Abdul Qadir Gilani in 1508.
The dynasty founded by Ismail I would rule for over two centuries, being one of the greatest Iranian empires and at its height being amongst the most powerful empires of its time, ruling all of present-day Iran, the Republic of Azerbaijan, Armenia, most of Georgia, the North Caucasus, and Iraq, as well as parts of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. It also reasserted Iranian identity in large parts of Greater Iran. The legacy of the Safavid Empire was also the revival of Iran as an economic stronghold between the East and the West, the establishment of a bureaucratic state, its architectural innovations, and patronage for fine arts.
Ismail I was also a prolific poet who under the pen name Khaṭāʾī contributed greatly to the literary development of the Azerbaijani language. He also contributed to Persian literature, though few of his Persian writings survive.
Origins
Ismail I was born to Shaykh Haydar and his wife Halima Begum on 17 July 1487, in Ardabil. His father was the sheikh of the Safavid tariqa and a direct descendant of its Kurdish founder, Safi-ad-Din Ardabili. In 1301, Safi-ad-Din had assumed the leadership of the Zahediyeh, a significant Sufi order in Gilan, from his spiritual master and father-in-law Zahed Gilani. The order was later known as the Safavid. Ismail also proclaimed himself the Mahdi and a reincarnation of Ali. Ismail was the last in this line of hereditary Grand Masters of the order, prior to his founding of a ruling dynasty.His mother Halima Begum was the daughter of Uzun Hasan, the ruler of the Turkoman Aq Qoyunlu dynasty, by his Pontic Greek wife Theodora Megale Komnene, better known as Despina Khatun. Despina Khatun was the daughter of Emperor John IV of Trebizond. She had married Uzun Hassan in a deal to protect the Empire of Trebizond from the Ottoman Turks. Ismail was a great-great-grandson of Emperor Alexios IV of Trebizond and King Alexander I of Georgia.
Roger Savory suggests that Ismail's family was of Iranian origin, likely from Iranian Kurdistan, and later moved to Azerbaijan where they assimilated into the Turkic-speaking population. Ismail spoke both Persian and a Southern Turkic dialect, a precursor of modern Azeri Turkic, in which he wrote his poetry, as it was aimed at his Turkic qizilbash followers. His ancestry was mixed, consisting in Iranian ancestors often intermarrying with Türkmen princesses to form alliances, supplemented by a mixed Byzantine Greek and Georgian component.
The Safavids have been described as "Turkamans of remote Kurdish descent", and the Safavid conquest as "the third Türkmen wave" to hit Iran, after the Seljuks and the Qara Qoyunlu/ Aq Qoyunlu. At the same time, the majority of scholars agree that the resulting empire was an Iranian one, and the state was again officially designated as "Iran" after a lapse of several centuries.
A fabricated genealogy developed by the Safavids claimed that Sheikh Safi was a lineal descendant of the Seventh Twelver Shia Imam and therefore of Imam Ali and the Prophet Mohammad.
Early years
In 1488, Ismail's father was killed in a battle at Tabasaran against the forces of the Shirvanshah Farrukh Yassar and his overlord, the Aq Qoyunlu, a Turkic tribal federation which controlled most of Iran. In 1494, the Aq Qoyunlu captured Ardabil, killing Ali Mirza Safavi, the eldest son of Haydar, and forcing the seven-year-old Ismail to go into hiding in Gilan, where under the Kar-Kiya ruler Soltan-Ali Mirza, he received education under the guidance of scholars.When Ismail reached the age of twelve, he came out of hiding and returned to what is now Iranian Azerbaijan along with his followers. Ismail's rise to power was made possible by the Turkoman tribes of Anatolia and Azerbaijan, who formed the most important part of the Qizilbash movement.
Reign
Conquest of Iran and its surroundings
In the summer of 1500, Ismail rallied about 7,000 Qizilbash troops at Erzincan, including members of the Ustajlu, Rumlu, Takkalu, Dhu'l-Qadar, Afshar, Qajar, and Varsaq tribes. Qizilbash forces passed over the Kura River in December 1500 and marched towards the Shirvanshah's state. They defeated the forces of the Shirvanshah Farrukh Yassar near Cabanı or at Gulistan, and subsequently went on to conquer Baku. Thus, Shirvan and its dependencies were now Ismail's. The Shirvanshah line nevertheless continued to rule Shirvan under Safavid suzerainty until 1538, when, during the reign of Ismail's son, Tahmasp I, it was placed under the rule of a Safavid governor. After the conquest, Ismail had Alexander I of Kakheti send his son Demetre to Shirvan to negotiate a peace agreement.The successful conquest alarmed the ruler of the Aq Qoyunlu, Alvand, who subsequently proceeded north from Tabriz and crossed the Aras River in order to challenge the Safavid forces. Both sides met at the Battle of Sharur, which Ismail's army won despite being outnumbered by four to one. Shortly before his attack on Shirvan, Ismail had made the Georgian kings Constantine II and Alexander I of the kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti, respectively, attack the Ottoman possessions near Tabriz, on the promise that he would cancel the tribute that Constantine was forced to pay to the Aq Qoyunlu once Tabriz was captured. After eventually conquering Tabriz and Nakhchivan, Ismail broke the promise he had made to Constantine II and made the kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti both his vassals.
In July 1501, following his occupation of Tabriz, Ismail took the title Pādshāh-i Irān. He appointed his former guardian and mentor Husayn Beg Shamlu as the vakil of the empire and the commander-in-chief of the Qizilbash army. His army was composed of tribal units, the majority of which were Turkmen from Anatolia and Syria with the remainder Kurds and Chagatai. He also appointed a former Iranian vizier of the Aq Qoyunlu named Amir Zakariya as his vizier. After proclaiming himself Shah, Ismail also proclaimed Twelver Shi'ism to be the official and compulsory religion of Iran. He enforced this new standard by the sword, dissolving Sunni Brotherhoods and executing anyone who refused to comply to the newly implemented Shi'ism.
Qasem Beg Hayati Tabrizi, a poet and bureaucrat of early Safavid era, states that he had heard from several witnesses that Shah Ismail's enthronement took place in Tabriz immediately after the Battle of Sharur on 1 Jumada al-Thani 907 / 22 December 1501, making Hayati's book entitled Tarikh the only known narrative source to give the exact date of Shah Ismail's ascent to the throne.
After defeating an Aq Qoyunlu army in 1502, Ismail took the title of "Shah of Iran". In the same year he gained possession of Erzincan and Erzurum, while a year later, in 1503, he conquered Eraq-e Ajam and Fars in the Battle of Hamadan. One year later he conquered Mazandaran, Gorgan, and Yazd.
In 1507, he conquered Diyarbakır. During the same year, Ismail appointed the Iranian Amir Najm al-Din Mas'ud Gilani as the new vakil. This was because Ismail had begun favoring the Iranians more than the Qizilbash, who, although they had played a crucial role in Ismail's campaigns, possessed too much power and were no longer considered trustworthy. One year later, Ismail forced the rulers of Khuzestan, Lorestan, and Kurdistan to become his vassals. The same year, Ismail and Husayn Beg Shamlu seized Baghdad, putting an end to the Aq Qoyunlu. Ismail then began destroying Sunni sites in Baghdad, including the tombs of Abbasid Caliphs and tombs of Imam Abu Hanifah and Abdul Qadir Gilani.
By 1510, he had conquered the whole of Iran, southern Dagestan, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Khorasan, and Eastern Anatolia, and had made the Georgian kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti his vassals. In the same year, Husayn Beg Shamlu lost his office as commander-in-chief in favor of a man of humble origins, Mohammad Beg Ustajlu. Ismail also appointed Najm-e Sani as the new vakil of the empire due to the death of Mas'ud Gilani.
Ismail I moved against the Uzbeks. In the Battle of Merv, some 17,000 Qizilbash warriors trapped an Uzbek force. The Uzbek ruler, Muhammad Shaybani, was caught and killed trying to escape the battle, and the shah had his skull made into a jewelled drinking goblet. In 1512, Najm-e Sani was killed during a clash with the Uzbeks, which made Ismail appoint Abd al-Baqi Yazdi as the new vakil of the empire.