The Safavid dynasty, which reigned from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth century, links medieval with modern Iran. The Safavids witnessed wide-ranging developments in politics, warfare, science, philosophy, religion, art and architecture. But how did this dynasty manage to produce the longest lasting and most glorious of Iran's Islamic-period eras?Andrew Newman offers a complete re-evaluation of the Safavid place in history as they presided over these extraordinary developments and the wondrous flowering of Iranian culture. In the process, he dissects the Safavid story, from before the 1501 capture of Tabriz by Shah Ismail (1488-1524), the point at which Shiism became the realm's established faith; on to the sixteenth and early seventeenth century dominated by Shah Abbas (1587-1629), whose patronage of art and architecture from his capital of Isfahan embodied the Safavid spirit; and culminating with the reign of Sultan Husayn (reg. 1694-1722).Based on meticulous scholarship, Newman offers a valuable new interpretation of the rise of the Safavids and their eventual demise in the eighteenth century. "Safavid Iran," with its fresh insights and new research, is the definitive single volume work on the subject.

Safavid Iran

The Safavid World brings together thirty chapters on many aspects of the complex Safavid state, 1501–1722. With the latest insights and arguments, some offer overviews of the period or topic at hand, and others present new interpretations of old questions based on newly found sources. In addition to political history and religious life, the chapters in this volume cover economic conditions, commercial links and activities, social relations, and artistic expressions. They do so in ways that stretch both the temporal and geographical perimeters of the subject, and contributors also examine Safavid Iran with an eye to both its Mongol and Timurid antecedents and its long afterlife following the fall of the dynasty. Unlike traditional scholarship which tended to view the country as unique, sui generis, and barely affected by the outside world, The Safavid World situates Iran in a wider, regional or global context. Examining the Safavids from their foundations in the fourteenth century to their relations with the rest of the world in the eighteenth century, this study is essential reading for undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars of the Safavid world and the history and culture of Iran and the Middle East.

The Safavid World

The Safavids ruled Persia for nearly two and a half centuries. This study is divided into two sections, the first of which includes studies on the historiography and the religious politics of the period. The second section covers such subjects as trade, an

Safavid Persia

Dedicated to the renowned Safavid historian Roger Savory, this book brings together a collection of studies on the Safavid state of Iran (1501-1722) from the perspectives of political, social, literary, and artistic history. Savory, a doyen of Safavid studies in the 1960s and 1970s, was responsible for expanding and popularizing the study of Iran in the 16th and 17th century. To celebrate this legacy, well-established scholars of medieval and early modern Iran have contributed specific studies reflecting an array of research interests and specializations, which include critical re-examinations of issues of gender, literature, art and architecture, cultural and linguistic currents, illustrated historical chronicles, and courtly and administrative practices under the Safavid dynasty. This unique compilation is indicative of a growing interest in Iran and Iranian studies in both the academic and public spheres, and as such contains a number of new perspectives which will serve to supplement and re-interpret the existing corpus of Safavid scholarly literature to date. It will be an important text for scholars of world history and Middle East studies, as well as to historians in general.

New Perspectives on Safavid Iran

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the establishment of the new Safavid regime in Iran. Along with reuniting the Persian lands under one rule, the Safavids initiated the radical transformation of the religious landscape by introducing Imami Shi'ism as the official state faith and in this as in other ways, laying the foundations of Iran's modern identity. In this book, leading scholars of Iranian history, culture and politics examine the meaning of the idea of Iran in the Safavid period by examining contemporary experiences of both insiders and outsiders, asking how modern scholarship defines the distinctive features of the age. While sometimes viewed as a period of decline from the high points of classical Persian literature and the visual arts of preceding centuries, the chapters of this book demonstrate that the Safavid era was nevertheless a period of great literary and artistic activity in the realms of both secular and theological endeavour. With the establishment of comparable polities across western, southern and central Asia at broadly the same time, the book explores some of the literary and political interactions with Iran's Ottoman, Mughal and Uzbek neighbours. As the volume and frequency of European merchants and diplomats visiting Safavid Persia increased, especially in the seventeenth century, and as more Iranians recorded their own travel experiences to surrounding Muslim lands, the Safavid period is the first in which we can document and explore the contours of Iran's place in an expanding world, and gain insights into how Iranians saw themselves and others saw them.

Safavid Persia in the Age of Empires

"The Safavid phenomenon : an introductory essay / Michel Mazzaoui -- Naqshbandis and Safavids : a contribution to the religious history of Iran and her neighbors / Hamid Algar -- The imagined embrace : gender, identity, and Iranian ethnicity in Jahangiri paintings / Juan R.I. Cole -- A Safavid poet in the heart of darkness : the Indian poems of Ashraf Mazandarani / Stephen Frederic Dale -- Muhammad Baqir Majlisi, family values, and the Safavids / Shireen Mahdavi -- Anti-Ottoman concerns and Caucasian interests : diplomatic relations between Iran and Russia, 1587-1639 / Rudi Matthee -- The Central Asian hajj-pilgrimage in the time of the early modern empires / R.D. McChesney -- A seventeenth-century Iranian Rabbi's polemical remarks on Jews, Christians, and Muslims / Vera B. Moreen -- The genesis of the Akhbārī revival / Devin Stewart"-- OhioLink Library Catalog.

Safavid Iran and Her Neighbors

I.B.Tauris in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation The decline and fall of Safavid Iran is traditionally seen as the natural outcome of the unrelieved political stagnation and moral degeneration which characterised late Safavid Iran. "Persia in Crisis" challenges this view. In this ground-breaking new book, Rudi Matthee revisits traditional sources and introduces new ones to take a fresh look at Safavid Iran in the century preceding the fall of Isfahan in 1722, which brought down the dynasty and ushered in a long period of turbulence in Iranian history. Inherently vulnerable because of the country's physical environment, its tribal makeup and a small economic base, the Safavid state was fatally weakened over the course of the seventeenth century. Matthee views Safavid Iran as a network of precarious alliances subject to perpetual negotiation and the society they ruled as an uneasy balance between conflicting forces. In the later seventeenth century this delicate balance shifted from cohesion to fragmentation. An increasingly detached, palace-bound shah; a weakening link between the capital and the outlying provinces; the regime's neglect of the military and its shortsighted monetary policies combined to exacerbate rather than redress existing problems, leaving the country with a ruler too feeble to hold factionalism and corruption in check and a military unable to defend its borders against outside attack by Ottomans and Afghans. The scene was set for the Crisis of 1722. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of Iranian history and the period that led to two hundred years of decline and eclipse for Iran.

Persia in Crisis

In this volume, Kioumars Ghereghlou presents an edition, with preface and indexes, of a previously unpublished sixteenth-century Persian chronicle. Written by Qāsim Beg Ḥayātī, a court scribe to Shah Ṭahmāsp (r. 1524–76), it covers Safavid history beginning with the early part of the fourteenth century and closing with an account of Shah Ismāʿīl’s (r. 1501–24) rise to power and military campaigns in Iran. Dedicated to the Safavid princess Mihīn Begum (d. 1562), whom Ghereghlou credits as Ḥayātī’s coauthor, the chronicle is composed of two parts. Part one deals with the predynastic phase of Safavid history and ends with an account of Shaykh Ṣafī’s life and career. Part two tells the story of the Ṣafaviyya Sufi order, from the ascension of Shaykh Ṣadr al-Dīn Mūsā b. Shaykh Ṣafi (d. 1377) to the early years of Shah Ismāʿīl’s reign. Punctuating this account are two “tailpieces” (tadhʾīl), one on the history of the Safavid shrine in Ardabīl in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the other on the shrine’s superintendents who held this post in the early part of the sixteenth century. This edition makes available for the first time a chronicle that had long been thought lost. Rich in new details about the Ṣafaviyya Sufi order (ṭarīqa) in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it is an important historical source for scholars interested in this period of Persian history.

A Chronicle of the Early Safavids and the Reign of Shah Isma'il (907-930/1501-1524)

An original study of the transformation of Safavid Persia from a majority Sunni country to a Twelver Shi'i realm "Mysticism" in Iran is an in-depth analysis of significant transformations in the religious landscape of Safavid Iran that led to the marginalization of Sufism and the eventual emergence of 'irfan as an alternative Shi'i model of spirituality. Ata Anzali draws on a treasure-trove of manuscripts from Iranian archives to offer an original study of the transformation of Safavid Persia from a majority Sunni country to a Twelver Shi'i realm. The work straddles social and intellectual history, beginning with an examination of late Safavid social and religious contexts in which Twelver religious scholars launched a successful campaign against Sufism with the tacit approval of the court. This led to the social, political, and economic marginalization of Sufism, which was stigmatized as an illegitimate mode of piety rooted in a Sunni past. Anzali directs the reader's attention to creative and successful attempts by other members of the ulama to incorporate the Sufi tradition into the new Twelver milieu. He argues that the category of 'irfan, or "mysticism," was invented at the end of the Safavid period by mystically minded scholars such as Shah Muhammad Darabi and Qutb al-Din Nayrizi in reference to this domesticated form of Sufism. Key aspects of Sufi thought and practice were revisited in the new environment, which Anzali demonstrates by examining the evolving role of the spiritual master. This traditional Sufi function was reimagined by Shi'i intellectuals to incorporate the guidance of the infallible imams and their deputies, the ulama. Anzali goes on to address the institutionalization of 'irfan in Shi'i madrasas and the role played by prominent religious scholars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in this regard. The book closes with a chapter devoted to fascinating changes in the thought and practice of 'irfan in the twentieth century during the transformative processes of modernity. Focusing on the little-studied figure of Kayvan Qazvini and his writings, Anzali explains how 'irfan was embraced as a rational, science-friendly, nonsectarian, and anticlerical concept by secular Iranian intellectuals.

Mysticism in Iran

The Savafid dynasty represented, in political, cultural and economic terms the pinnacle of Iran's power and influence in its early modern history. The evidence for this -the creation of a nation state, military expansion and success, economic dynamism and the exquisite art and architecture of the period - is well-known. What is less understood is the extent to which the Safavid success depended on - and was a product of - a class of elite originating from outside Iran: the slaves of Caucasian descent and the Armenian merchants of New Julfa in the city of Isfahan. It was these groups, bolstered by Shah Abbas the Great (1589 – 1629) and his successors, who became the pillars of Safavid political, economic and cultural life. This book describes how these elites, following their conversion to Islam, helped to form a new language of Savafid absolutism. It documents their contributions, financed by the Armenian trade in Safavid silk, to the transformation of Isfahan's urban, artistic and social landscape. The insights provided here into the multi-faceted roles of the Safavid royal household offer an original and comprehensive study of slave elites in imperial systems common to the political economies of the Malmuk, Ottoman and Safavid courts as well as contributing to the earlier Abbasid, Ghaznavid and Saljuq eras. As such this book makes an original and important contribution to our understanding of the history of the Islamic world from the 16th to the 18th centuries and will prove invaluable for students and scholars of the period.

Slaves of the Shah

Published in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation.

Iran and the World in the Safavid Age

The Safavid dynasty originated as a fledgling apocalyptic mystical movement based in Iranian Azarbaijan, and grew into a large, cosmopolitan Irano-Islamic empire stretching from Baghdad to Herat. Here, Colin P. Mitchell examines how the Safavid state introduced and moulded a unique and vibrant political discourse, reflecting the social and religious heterogeneity of sixteenth-century Iran. Beginning with the millenarian-minded Shah Isma'il and concluding with the autocrat par excellence, Shah Abbas, Mitchell explores the phenomenon of state-sponsored rhetoric. A thorough investigation of the Safavid state and the significance of rhetoric, power and religion in its functioning, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran is indispensable for all those interested in Iranian history and politics and Middle East studies.

The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran

The Persian Mirror explores France's preoccupation with Persia in the seventeenth century. Long before Montesquieu's Persian Letters, French intellectuals, diplomats and even ordinary Parisians were fascinated by Persia and eagerly consumed travel accounts, fairy tales, and the spectacle of the Persian ambassador's visit to Paris and Versailles in 1715. Using diplomatic sources, fiction and printed and painted images, The Persian Mirror describes how the French came to see themselves in Safavid Persia. In doing so, it revises our notions of orientalism and the exotic and suggests that early modern Europeans had more nuanced responses to Asia than previously imagined.

The Persian Mirror

This book is about a Muslim Shi’i philosopher of the early 16th century, Najm al-Din Mahmud al-Nayrizi. Educated in Shiraz, he became interested in Avicennan and Suhrawardian philosophy. Apart from Nayrizi, the present study introduces his contemporary philosophers and provides an outlines of the main philosophical challenges of the time.

Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran

Iran Under the Safavids aims at providing, in non-technical language, a comprehensive history of the Safavid dynasty.

Iran Under the Safavids

Martin Dickson once confided to Stuart Cary Welch "that twenty five years would pass before our fellow specialists would fully comprehend what we had achieved." The "achievement" he was referring to is the monumental double volume The Houghton Shahnama (1981), still ill-understood thirty five years later. Their "achievement" is a treasure trove of information that needs to be rediscovered and reused. Three recent papers that tried to discredit Dickson and Welch provided the impetus to revisit some of the complex manuscripts that they had analyzed, including the British Library Khamseh (O. 2265) and the Cartier Divan of Hafez, to discover historical details that provide a better insight into Safavid society.

Reassessing Early Safavid Art and History, Thirty Five Years after Dickson & Welch 1981

Islamic Gunpowder Empires provides readers with a history of Islamic civilization in the early modern world through a comparative examination of Islam's three greatest empires: the Ottomans (centered in what is now Turkey), the Safavids (in modern Iran), and the Mughals (ruling the Indian subcontinent). Author Douglas Streusand explains the origins of the three empires; compares the ideological, institutional, military, and economic contributors to their success; and analyzes the causes of their rise, expansion, and ultimate transformation and decline. Streusand depicts the three empires as a part of an integrated international system extending from the Atlantic to the Straits of Malacca, emphasizing both the connections and the conflicts within that system. He presents the empires as complex polities in which Islam is one political and cultural component among many. The treatment of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires incorporates contemporary scholarship, dispels common misconceptions, and provides an excellent platform for further study.

Islamic Gunpowder Empires

The era of Safavid rule was a time of religious and political development in Iran, when the arts attained new heights of brilliance and architecture flourished. This volume deals with Safavid painting and the conservation of works from this period.

Safavid Art and Architecture

I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies The exceptional intellectual richness of seventeenth-century Safavid Iran is epitomised by the philosophical school of Isfahan, and in particular by its ostensible founder, Mir Damad (d. 1631), and his great student Mulla Sadra (aka Sadr al-Din Shirazi, d. 1636). Equally important to the school is the apophatic wisdom of Rajab 'Ali Tabrizi that followed later (d. 1669/70). However, despite these philosophers' renown, the identification of the 'philosophical school of Isfahan' was only proposed in 1956, by the celebrated French Iranologist Henry Corbin, who noted the unifying Islamic Neoplatonist character of some 20 thinkers and spiritual figures; this grouping has subsequently remained unchallenged for some fifty years. In this highly original work, Janis Esots investigates the legitimacy of the term 'school', delving into the complex philosophies of these three major Shi'i figures and drawing comparisons between them. The author makes the case that Mulla Sadra's thought is independent and actually incompatible with the thoughts of Mir Damad and Rajab Ali Tabrizi. This not only presents a new way of thinking about how we understand the 'school of Isfahan', it also identifies Mir Damad and Rajab Ali Tabrizi as pioneers in their own right.

Patterns of Wisdom in Safavid Iran

Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 10 (CMR 10) is a history of everything that was written on relations in the period 1600-1700 in the Ottoman and Safavid empires. Its detailed entries contain descriptions, assessments and comprehensive bibliographical details about individual works.

Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. Volume 10 Ottoman and Safavid Empires (1600-1700)

Mīrzā Makhdūm was one of the most interesting characters of Ottoman history. He was a high-ranking bureaucrat in the Safavid State, but after taking refuge in the Ottoman Empire, he began a career as a judge in Diyarbakir, Tripoli and Haramayn in the late sixteenth century. He lived with a dilemma not only in the countries in which he lived, but also in his family life. Since, his mother's side is Sunni, his father's side is Shi’a. His work on the Qizilbash titled Al-Nawākiḍ li-Bunyān al-Rawāfiḍ is crucial to understand the era. This study indicates the identity crisis of Mīrzā Makhdūm via investigating the Sunni-Shia conflict through the eyes of a scholar and tries to understand how a scholar from Iran has reached high ranks in the Ottoman Empire. Also,this study provides an exciting opportunity to understand the Safavid policy in the sixteenth century, the bureaucracy in the ilmiye class and the attitude of the Ottoman bureaucrats towards the Safavid scholars.

Mirza Makhdum Between Two Worlds: A Safavid Sadr in the Ottoman World and His Refutation of the Qizilbash Beliefs (Yeditepe Yayınevi)

"The Safavid dynasty originated as a fledgling apocalyptic mystical movement based in Iranian Azarbaijan, and grew into a large, cosmopolitan Irano-Islamic empire stretching from Baghdad to Herat. Here Colin Mitchell examines how the Safavid state introduced and moulded a unique and vibrant political discourse which reflected the social and religious heterogeneity of sixteenth-century Iran. Beginning with the millenarian-minded Shah Isma'il and concluding with the autocrat par excellence, Shah Abbas, Mitchell explores the phenomenon of state-sponsored rhetoric. He focuses on the large corpus of epistles, letters and missives produced by a developed Safavid chancellery which show how the Safavids forged and negotiated their political and religious sovereignty in a diverse and complex environment. A thorough investigation of the Safavid state and the significance of rhetoric, power and religion in its functioning, "The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran" is indispensable for all those interested in Iranian history and politics as well as the wider world of Middle East studies."--Bloomsbury publishing.

Using a wide range of archival and written sources, Rudi Matthee considers the economic, social and political networks established between Iran, its neighbours and the world at large, through the prism of the late Safavid silk trade. In so doing, he demonstrates how silk, a resource crucial to state revenue and the only commodity to span Iran's entire economic activity, was integral to aspects of late Safavid society, including its approach to commerce, export routes and, importantly, to the political and economic problems which contributed to its collapse in the early 1700s. In a challenge to traditional scholarship, the author argues that despite the introduction of a maritime, western-dominated channel, Iran's traditional land-based silk export continued to expand right up to the end of the seventeenth century. The book makes a major theoretical contribution to the debates on the social and economic history of the pre-modern world.

The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran

The comparative study of Persian historiography of the early modern Islamic empires, the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals, presenting in-depth case analyses alongside a wide array of primary sources to illustrate the extensive universe of literary-historical writing that Persian historiography can be found within.

Persian Historiography across Empires

The Safavid era (1501–1722) is one of the most important in the history of Persian culture, celebrated especially for its architecture and art, including miniature paintings that frequently represent singers and instrumentalists. Their presence reflects a sophisticated tradition of music making that was an integral part of court life, yet it is one that remains little known, for the musicological literature of the period is rather thin. There is, however, a significant exception: the text presented and analysed here, a hitherto unpublished and anonymous theoretical work probably of the middle of the sixteenth century. With a Sufi background inspiring the use of the nay as a tool of theoretical demonstration, it is exceptional in presenting descriptive accounts of the modes then in use and suggesting how these might be arranged in complex sequences. As it also gives an account of the corpus of rhythmic cycles it provides a unique insight into the basic structures of art-music during the first century of Safavid rule.

Music Theory in the Safavid Era

SHAH ʻABBAS (1571–1629) is the most well-known king of Iran’s Safavid dynasty (1501–1722), ruling at the height of its power and prestige. When Shah ‘Abbas came to power his country was in chaos. Yet within eleven years he had regained territory lost to his enemies, moved his capital city and begun a transformation of Iranian society. Few aspects of life were unaffected by his policies and the new capital he built, the spectacular Isfahan, is still referred to as nisf-i jahan, or “half the world”, by Iranians today. In this wide-ranging profile, Sholeh A. Quinn explores Shah ʻAbbas’s rise to power and his subsequent interactions with religious movements and artistic developments, reaching beyond the historical narrative to assess the true impact of the man and his politics. Thought provoking and comprehensive, this account is ideal for readers interested in uncovering the life and thoughts of a man who ruled during a period described by many as a golden age for the arts in Iran.

Shah Abbas

Between 1453 and 1526 Muslims founded three major states in the Mediterranean, Iran and South Asia: respectively the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires. By the early seventeenth century their descendants controlled territories that encompassed much of the Muslim world, stretching from the Balkans and North Africa to the Bay of Bengal and including a combined population of between 130 and 160 million people. This book is the first comparative study of the politics, religion, and culture of these three empires between 1300 and 1923. At the heart of the analysis is Islam, and how it impacted on the political and military structures, the economy, language, literature and religious traditions of these great empires. This original and sophisticated study provides an antidote to the modern view of Muslim societies by illustrating the complexity, humanity and vitality of these empires, empires that cannot be reduced simply to religious doctrine.

The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals

Historical Fiction lovers will feast on the freshness of a crusade through an ancient world spanning the five decades that brought the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, the collapse of the Great Persian Safavid Dynasty and the fall of the Mighty Mughal Empires as ruthless competitors traverse the continents and oceans hunting for the greatest pirate treasure every captured-a treasure that included not just millions of dollars of gold, silver and gemstones; it included the priceless relic the Blade of Safavid as well as the Mughal Emperor's own granddaughter, both taken when an armada of five pirate ships attacks the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb's treasure fleet on its return from its pilgrimage to Mecca.Lovers of action and adventure will be captivated by stories full of courage, tragedy and drama. In The Blade of Safavid author Kent Merrell blends history and fiction together so convincingly, this historical adult fiction novel sends adults both young and old scurrying to the their dusty encyclopedias or the internet seeking to meet legendary characters and decipher between fact and fiction.

The Blade of Safavid

*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading The town of Caldiran (Chaldiran) in Turkey is home to about 60,000 people. On a plain close to the Iranian border, it it backdropped by the Armenian Ranges and very close to a Faultline, which has ensured it's suffered from seismic activity many times in the past. But in the early 16th century, it was the site of different kinds of faultlines, serving as a battleground between the region's two greatest powers as they clashed over politics and religion. In the wake of taking Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire would spend the next few centuries expanding its size, power, and influence on the way to becoming one of the world's most important geopolitical players. It was a rise that would not truly start to wane until the 19th century, and while its most memorable conflicts were fought against the Europeans, the course of Ottoman history was greatly impacted by events against the other major Muslim power in its region: the Safavid Empire. Naturally, the two powers quickly took up the geopolitical positions of the old Byzantine and Persian Empires in the time before Islam and fought over much of the same territory, including Mesopotamia, the Caucuses, today's eastern Turkey and the Persian Gulf. Their first battle was fought in 1514, their first real war was fought from 1532-1555, and they continued to spar regularly until the early 19th century, when European colonialism forced them both onto the defensive. Echoes of these conflicts can be seen in the recent sparring between Iran and Turkey through proxies in Iraq and Syria. On August 23, 1514 the two sides clashed at Chaldiran in a contest for hegemony over the Middle East, and the results have affected the Middle East ever since. Regrettably, few concrete details of the actual battle survive, a not uncommon obstacle when studying battles from the Middle Ages. However, the course of the conflict can be reconstructed from the politics of the time, knowledge of the characters involved, the contemporary records are available, and what followed the battle. There is no lasting monument to the battle in Chaldiran on site, but there is on the Iranian side of the border, nearly 20 miles to the east near the village of Gala Ashaki. It consists of a domed tomb for a Persian general, Sayyed Sharif-al-Din Ali Shirazi, who fell in the battle. He was the chief religious cleric of Shah Ismail I, the first of the Safavid rulers of Persia and a leader who brought a monumental religious shift to the Middle East. Believing himself the "Shadow of God" and his chosen vessel, he set about transforming Persia and the globe through his fanatical religious militia, the Qizilbash. He meant to lead not only Persia but the entire Islamic world, but this vision was vehemently opposed by Sultan Selim I of the Ottoman Empire. Selim the Grim had fought tenaciously for possession of his throne, and he too believed himself chosen by God to rule all Muslims. The battle is depicted in a magnificent painting in Sayyed Sharif-al-Din Ali Shirazi's tomb. In the foreground of the representation, Shah Ismail I of Persia leads his Qizilbash in a charge against the Ottoman cavalry, riding over the corpses of the slain. In the middle, Sultan Selim (who did not actually participate in the battle, though he was present) leads an almost leisurely advance toward the Persian cavalry, preceded by two Janissaries armed with axes. In the background, the Ottoman artillery delivers a barrage into the Qizilbash, who are falling or fleeing. It seems to be a chronological depiction of the conflict, and though the figure Ismail is clearly the centerpiece, there is no attempt to mask the fact that the battle was a catastrophic defeat for the Persians.

The Battle of Chaldiran

This collection of Sonja Brentjes's articles deals with travels, encounters and the exchange of knowledge in the Mediterranean and Western Asia during the 16th and 17th centuries, focusing on three historiographical concerns. The first is how we should understand the relationship between Christian and Muslim societies, in the period between the translations from Arabic into Latin (10th - 13th centuries) and before the Napoleonic invasion of Ottoman Egypt (1798). The second concern is the "Western" discourse about the decline or even disappearance of the sciences in late medieval and early modern Islamic societies and, third, the construction of Western Asian natures and cultures in Catholic and Protestant books, maps and pictures. The articles discuss institutional and personal relationships, describe how Catholic or Protestant travellers learned about and accessed Muslim scholarly literature, and uncover contradictory modes of reporting, evaluating or eradicating the visited cultures and their knowledge.

Travellers from Europe in the Ottoman and Safavid Empires, 16th-17th Centuries

Ascending from obscurity and without dynastic credentials, Nadir Shah tried and failed to establish his right to rule the people of Iran from the 1720s until 1747. This biography of Nadir tells how Nadir Shah's novel strategies influenced successive rulers of Iran in their own defense of power.

Nadir Shah's Quest for Legitimacy in Post-Safavid Iran

A remarkable first-person narrative by a sixteenth-century Iranian ruler, the Memoirs of Shah Tahmasp I, Safavid Ruler of Iran (1514-1576), originally written in Persian, represent a vitally important primary source for the history of the Middle East in the period. In particular, the Memoirs shed light on the Safavid conflict with the Uzbeks and Ottomans, which played a decisive role in shaping the modern frontiers of the region. The Memoirs also represent an invaluable source for the internal political and religious life of the Safavid court, and the ways in which Shah Tahmasp, one of the most important rulers in Iranian history, wished to be remembered and viewed. This book represents the first English translation of this important text, and is furnished with an extensive introduction and notes that situate the work in its literary and historical context.

The Memoirs of Shah Tahmasp I

In the seventeenth century, the Persian city of Isfahan was a crossroads of international trade and diplomacy. Manuscript paintings produced within the city’s various cultural, religious, and ethnic groups reveal the vibrant artistic legacy of the Safavid Empire. Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Getty Museum, Book Arts of Isfahan offers a fascinating account of the ways in which the artists of Isfahan used their art to record the life around them and at the same time define their own identities within a complex society.

Book Arts of Isfahan

'Subaltern studies' refers to the importance of 'subordinate' groups in the making of history. The latter are usually defined as encompassing the urban and rural underclasses, the majority in any society, although generally the term is said to refer to all non-elites, including women. Most often the discourse concentrates on instances of social protest as points whereat the 'subalterns' make their 'voices' heard in response to, or even independent of, manipulations by the elite. The book draws on wide-ranging sources to be explored for direct and indirect access to these voices, and include elite Persian diplomatic and political-economic (court-level) materials but also those drawn from such a broad range of 'cultural' spheres as, for example, art and architecture (including cinema, for the modern period), prose, poetry and other media and religious materials (Sunni, Shi`i and Sufi) of all genres in all relevant languages. The overall project seeks also to explore attitudes toward the subaltern by the authors of these sources. Finally, the project aims also to identify problems in accessing/using the sources and questions/avenues for further research across Persianate history and, in the process, to establish an on-going network to chart pathways for further associated research projects and support for these.

Iranian/Persianate Subalterns in the Safavid Period: Their Role and Depiction

"The Safavid empire was one of the major political and social formations in the early modern world, but has attracted relatively little attention from historians, although this is changing. As a result, the study of Safavid institutions has long been characterized by an over reliance on Minorsky's excellent translation of the Tadhkirat al-Moluk (published in 1943) in the same way that scholars have overused Savory's translation of Iskander Beg Monshi's History of Shah Abbas the Great and his articles on Safavid government. Floor's work offers a fresh look at the subject matter, while it is the first detailed account of the state and army institutions and offices of the Safavid empire (1502-1736). It opens many new vistas and will stimulate many new avenues in the study of the Safavids in particular and the other regional Moslem empires of the 16-17[superscript th] centuries. The analysis is careful, solid and exhaustive, and is based on a tremendous amount of work. The book offers a thorough analysis and examination of virtually all the available sources of information (Persian chronicles and archival documents; European traveler accounts, memoirs, and archival sources). The Dutch material is of particular importance and their integration with the more familiar information is unique. In addition to scholars of Iran, Central Asia and the Middle East, it would also be of interest to those working in the field of comparative institutions in history, sociology and political science."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Safavid Government Institutions

Trade and Commerce Between Iran and India During the Safavid Period (1505-1707)

The study of the history of Safavid Iran has been rather neglected, although this situation is rapidly changing. This book deals with an important and very traumatic experience in the history of Iran, the fall of the Safavid dynasty, brought about by rebellious Afghans from Kandahar. The Safavids had governed Iran for 220 years by the fall of Isfahan in 1722, and such was their charisma that their legitimacy outlasted their reign. Subsequent rulers both established an administration modeled after that of the Safavids as well tried to bolster the legitimacy of their own regime by linking their dynasty to that of the Safavids. This book is entirely based upon the unpublished materials in the archives of the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC), and, in addition to the unabridged translation of the Diary of the Siege of Isfahan, it is a summary of all available information in those archives on the political and military situation in Iran between 1715 and 1730. Because of the nature of the materials offered here (mostly eye-witness accounts) as well as the geographical spread of the points of observation (Isfahan, Kerman, Bandar 'Abbas, Shiraz) much of the information offered here is of a unique nature. There are no other contemporary sources available, either published or unpublished, Persian or foreign, that have the same level of detail and the spread of geographical vantage points over the same period. An earlier version of this book was published in 1987 in Persian under the title Bar Oftadan-e Safaviyan va Bar Amadan-e Mahmud Afghan, though lacking most of the explanatory notes that embellish this publication in English.

The Afghan Occupation of Safavid Persia, 1721-1729

Safavid Persia, a prominent Persian empire that spanned from the 16th to the 18th century, is a crucial chapter in Iran's history. Known for its significant cultural and religious contributions, the Safavids consolidated Shia Islam as the state religion, reshaping Iran's identity. Under the leadership of Shah Abbas the Great, Safavid Persia experienced a period of remarkable economic prosperity and artistic flourishing, with the construction of stunning architectural marvels like the Isfahan's Imam Mosque. Their strategic positioning on the Silk Road facilitated trade and cultural exchange, while their intricate artistry and vibrant carpets gained international acclaim. Safavid Persia left an indelible mark on Iran, blending religious fervor with artistic excellence and trade prowess, making it a pivotal era in the nation's heritage.

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Safavid Persia

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