Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0177/01778.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 32KB | 494 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01778}
$Pretitle{268}
$Title{Iran
Chapter 1B.   The Safavids, 1501-1722}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Shaul Bakhash}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{shah
iran
reza
soviet
government
majlis
new
power
religious
war}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Country:     Iran
Book:        Iran, A Country Study
Author:      Shaul Bakhash
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1987

Chapter 1B.   The Safavids, 1501-1722

     The Safavids, who came to power in 1501, were leaders of a militant Sufi
order. They traced their ancestry to Shaykh Safi ad Din (died circa 1334), the
founder of their order, who claimed descent from Shia Islam's Seventh Imam,
Musa al Kazim. From their home base in Ardabil, they recruited followers among
the Turkoman tribesmen of Anatolia and forged them into an effective fighting
force and an instrument for territorial expansion. Sometime in the
mid-fifteenth century, the Safavids adopted Shia Islam, and their movement
became highly millenarian in character. In 1501, under their leader Ismail,
the Safavids seized power in Tabriz, which became their capital. Ismail was
proclaimed shah of Iran. The rise of the Safavids marks the reemergence in
Iran of a powerful central authority within geographical boundaries attained
by former Iranian empires. The Safavids declared Shia Islam the state religion
and used proselytizing and force to convert the large majority of Muslims in
Iran to the Shia sect. Under the early Safavids, Iran was a theocracy in which
state and religion were closely intertwined. Ismail's followers venerated him
not only as the murshid-kamil, the perfect guide, but also as an emanation of
the Godhead. He combined in his person both temporal and spiritual authority.
In the new state, he was represented in both these functions by the vakil, an
official who acted as a kind of alter ego. The sadr headed the powerful
religious organization; the vizier, the bureaucracy; and the amir alumara, the
fighting forces. These fighting forces, the qizilbash, came primarily from the
seven Turkic-speaking tribes that supported the Safavid bid for power.

     The Safavids faced the problem of integrating their Turkic-speaking
followers with the native Iranians, their fighting traditions with the Iranian
bureaucracy, and their messianic ideology with the exigencies of administering
a territorial state. The institutions of the early Safavid state and
subsequent efforts at state reorganization reflect attempts, not always
successful, to strike a balance among these various elements. The Safavids
also faced external challenges from the Uzbeks and the Ottomans. The Uzbeks
were an unstable element along Iran's northeastern frontier who raided into
Khorasan, particularly when the central government was weak, and blocked the
Safavid advance northward into Transoxiana. The Ottomans, who were Sunnis,
were rivals for the religious allegiance of Muslims in eastern Anatolia and
Iraq and pressed territorial claims in both these areas and in the Caucasus.

     The Safavid Empire received a blow that was to prove fatal in 1524, when
the Ottoman sultan Selim I defeated the Safavid forces at Chaldiran and
occupied the Safavid capital, Tabriz. Although he was forced to withdraw
because of the harsh winter and Iran's scorched earth policy, and although
Safavid rulers continued to assert claims to spiritual leadership, the defeat
shattered belief in the shah as a semidivine figure and weakened the hold of
the shah over the qizilbash chiefs. In 1533 the Ottoman sultan Suleyman
occupied Baghdad and then extended Ottoman rule to southern Iraq. Except for a
brief period (1624-38) when Safavid rule was restored, Iraq remained firmly in
Ottoman hands. The Ottomans also continued to challenge the Safavids for
control of Azarbaijan and the Caucasus until the Treaty of Qasr-e Shirin in
1639 established frontiers both in Iraq and in the Caucasus that remain
virtually unchanged in the late twentieth century.

     The Safavid state reached its apogee during the reign of Shah Abbas
(1587-1629). The shah gained breathing space to confront and defeat the Uzbeks
by signing a largely disadvantageous treaty with the Ottomans. He then fought
successful campaigns against the Ottomans, reestablishing Iranian control over
Iraq, Georgia, and parts of the Caucasus. He counterbalanced the power of the
qizilbash by creating a body of troops composed of Georgian and Armenian
slaves who were loyal to the person of the shah. He extended state and crown
lands and the provinces directly administered by the state, at the expense of
the qizilbash chiefs. He relocated tribes to weaken their power, strengthened
the bureaucracy, and further centralized the administration.

     Shah Abbas made a show of personal piety and supported religious
institutions by building mosques and religious seminaries and by making
generous endowments for religious purposes. His reign, however, witnessed the
gradual separation of religious institutions from the state and an increasing
movement toward a more independent religious hierarchy.

     In addition to his political reorganization and his support of religious
institutions, Shah Abbas also promoted commerce and the arts. The Portuguese
had previously occupied Bahrain and the island of Hormoz off the Persian Gulf
coast in their bid to dominate Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf trade, but in
1602 Shah Abbas expelled them from Bahrain, and in 1623 he used the British
(who sought a share of Iran's lucrative silk trade) to expel the Portuguese
from Hormoz. He significantly enhanced government revenues by establishing a
state monopoly over the silk trade and encouraged internal and external trade
by safeguarding the roads and welcoming British, Dutch, and other traders to
Iran. With the encouragement of the shah, Iranian craftsmen excelled in
producing fine silks, brocades, and other cloths, carpets, porcelain, and
metalware. When Shah Abbas built a new capital at Esfahan, he adorned it with
fine mosques, palaces, schools, bridges, and a bazaar. He patronized the arts,
and the calligraphy, miniatures, painting, and agriculture of his period are
particularly noteworthy.

     Although there was a recovery with the reign of Shah Abbas II (1642- 66),
in general the Safavid Empire declined after the death of Shah Abbas. The
decline resulted from weak rulers, interference by the women of the harem in
politics, the reemergence of qizilbash rivalries, maladministration of state
lands, excessive taxation, the decline of trade, and the weakening of Safavid
military organization. (Both the qizilbash tribal military organization and
the standing army composed of slave soliders were deteriorating.) The last two
rulers, Shah Sulayman (1669-94) and Shah Sultan Hosain (1694-1722), were
voluptuaries. Once again the eastern frontiers began to be breached, and in
1722 a small body of Afghan tribesmen won a series of easy victories before
entering and taking the capital itself, ending Safavid rule.

     Afghan supremacy was brief. Tahmasp Quli, a chief of the Afshar tribe,
soon expelled the Afghans in the name of a surviving member of the Safavid
family. Then, in 1736, he assumed power in his own name as Nader Shah. He went
on to drive the Ottomans from Georgia and Armenia and the Russians from the
Iranian coast on the Caspian Sea and restored Iranian sovereignty over
Afghanistan. He also took his army on several campaigns into India and in 1739
sacked Delhi, bringing back fabulous treasures. Although Nader Shah achieved
political unity, his military campaigns and extortionate taxation proved a
terrible drain on a country already ravaged and depopulated by war and
disorder, and in 1747 he was murdered by chiefs of his own Afshar tribe.

     A period of anarchy and a struggle for supremacy among Afshar, Qajar,
Afghan, and Zand tribal chieftains followed Nader Shah's death. Finally Karim
Khan Zand (1750-79) was able to defeat his rivals and to unify the country,
except for Khorasan, under a loose form of central control.