Safavid capture of Tabriz (1603)

The siege of Tabriz was a military conflict during the Ottoman–Safavid War (1603–1612). As a result of a successful siege, Tabriz was returned to the Safavids after 18 years of Ottoman rule.

Background and prelude
The previous Ottoman–Safavid War of 1578–1590 had ended with Shah Abbas I being forced to cede their possessions in the Southern Caucasus and western Iran to the Ottomans. The Ottomans began to treat their control of Tabriz seriously from that point on. The Ottoman historian Evliya Çelebi mentions the numerous buildings they had constructed in Tabriz and the surrounding area, particularly that of the governor, Ja'far Pasha. However, the Iranians were closely monitoring their former capital.

In 1602, with the eastern front at least temporarily stabilized and internal stability reestablished, Abbas's focused on regaining Azerbaijan and Shirvan, two of the most significant provinces that the Ottomans had gained. His advisors had always emphasized the strength of the Ottoman sultans and the size of their troops whenever he had brought up the prospect of regaining his lost land. In September 1603, Abbas attacked the Ottomans, thus initiating the Ottoman–Safavid War of 1603–1618.

Abbas benefited greatly from the timing of the war. Despite his defeat at Balkh, the Uzbek threat had ended for the time being, and his authority was no longer in question within Iran. On the other hand, war and internal uprisings significantly had damaged the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman army had been fighting the Austrians in Hungary for the last ten years in an persistent cycle of sieges and battles. Large-scale uprisings in Ottoman Anatolia had been sparked by discontent with the war and worsening economic conditions, and they persisted practically nonstop from 1596 to 1608. As soon as one insurrection was put down, another one started. Abbas first destroyed the Ottoman fortress at Nahavand, which they used as a staging area for upcoming attacks into Iran.

Capture of Tabriz
In the meantime, the Kurdish chieftain Ghazi Beg had rebelled against Ali Pasha, his suzerain and governor of Tabriz. The latter left the city largely undefended when he took a large number of his forces to punish Ghazi Beg, who had made a secret alliance with Abbas and quickly informed him of this. Abbas gathered the available soldiers, but hid his true motives by promoting the rumor that he was going south to thwart a Portuguese assault on Bahrain. On 14 September 1603, he quickly marched to the city of Qazvin. He stopped for a moment, then continued toward Tabriz, instructing the governor of Ardabil and darugha (constable) of Qazvin to reinforce him.

The Ottoman soldiers in Tabriz was caught off guard by Abbas. When he arrived in the city, several of them were already shopping at the market. Since Tabriz, like many other Iranian cities, had no protective wall surrounding it, conquering it was a easy task now that there was no Ottoman force to fight him.