User:HistoryofIran/Ismail I

Ismail I (, ; July 17, 1487 – May 23, 1524), was the founder of the Safavid dynasty of Iran, ruling as its King of Kings (shahanshah) from 1501 to 1524.

Born in the town of Ardabil in northwestern Iran, Ismail was the youngest son of Shaykh Haydar, the leader of the Safavid order. Founded by the eponymous patriarch of the family, the well-renowned Sufi leader Safi-ad-din Ardabili, the Safavids were initially a Sufi order, but gradually transformed into a militiant religious Shia movement.

Besides his ancestry from leading religious dignitaries, Ismail was also of princely origin on both sides, tracing his descent to the Turkmen Aq Qoyunlu and Greek Komnenos family of Trebizond. He forged a fictious lineage to the Twelve Imams, who were in return believed to have some ancestry from the pre-Islamic Sasanian Empire of Iran (224–651).

Background
The Safavid family was originally an aristocratic family of Kurdish landowners, who were predisposed towards the religion of Yarsanism. They immigrated from Kurdistan to Azerbaijan in the 12th-century. The eponymous patriarch of the family, Safi-ad-din Ardabili (d. 1334) was a well-renowned Sufi leader, who inherited the Zahediyeh Sufi order after the death of his teacher and father-in-law Zahed Gilani. The order, still Sunni Muslim, was renamed the Safaviyya and reformed to that of a religious movement. By the 15th-century, the Safaviyya had become Shia Muslims, and were increasingly changing into a fighting force. This change had not only occured due to the heterodoxy that was common in the region, but also due to the political vacuum in western Iran, which the Safavids intended to fill. To the west of the Safavids was the Ottoman Turks, who were expanding at a rapid rate, conquering both lands in the west and east, including Anatolia and the Balkans. The eastern neighbours of the Safavids were the disintegrating Timurid Empire, who had lost their western capital Tabriz to Turkmen dynasties—first to the Shia Kara Koyunlu (1380–1468), who were then supplanted by the powerful Sunni Aq Qoyunlu (1478–1501).

Although these Turkmen dynasties were from a nomadic background, they greatly endorsed the Iranian custom of kingship and court culture. The Safavids themselves inherited much of their Persianate governmental and courtly aspects from the Aq Qoyunlu. The Aq Qoyunlu leader Uzun Hasan ((r. 1453 – 1478)) was one of the main contenders during the political vacuum in western Iran, conquering western Timurid lands, and briefly establishing peace in his realm. Military and politically, Uzun Hasan represented a prototype of the upcoming Safavid Empire. Between 1456–1459, Ismail's grandfather Shaykh Junayd made an alliance with Uzun Hasan by marrying his sister Khadija Begum. With the support of Uzun Hasan, Junayd made several incursions into northern Anatolia (Trebizond) and Circassia, but was killed in March 1460 by the forces of the Shirvanshah Khalilullah I ((r. 1418 – 1465)) during a battle near Tabarsaran. He was succeeded by his and Khadija Begum's son Shaykh Haydar, who preserved the Aq Qoyunlu–Safavid alliance by marrying Uzun Hasan's daughter Halima Begum (also known by her Christian name of Martha) in 1472. Halima Begum's mother was the Christian princess Theodora Despina Khatun, the daughter of John IV ((r. 1429 – 1459)), the penultimate Byzantine Greek ruler of Trebizond. The Trebizond kingdom had fallen in 1461 to a Ottoman invasion led by sultan Mohammad II (Mehmed the Conqueror), who sent the captured royal family to the Ottoman capital of Constantinople, where they were executed two years later, allegedly due to secretly corresponding with Uzun Hasan.

The rise of the Ottomans put a great strain on the Turkmen tribes living in the area, which eventually led them to join the Safavids, who transformed them into a militant organisation, called the Qizilbash (meaning "red heads" in Turkish), initially a pejorative label given to them by the Ottomans, but later adopted as a mark of pride. The religion of the Qizilbash resembled much more the heterodox beliefs of northwestern Iran and eastern Anatolia, rather than the traditional Twelver Shia Islam. The beliefs of the Qizilbash comprised of non-Islamic aspects, varying from crypto-Zoroastrian beliefs to shamanistic practises, the latter which had been practised by their Central Asian ancestors.

However, a common aspect that all these heterodox beliefs shared was a form of messianism, devoid of the restrictions of the Islam practiced in urban areas. Concepts of divine inspiration and reincarnation were common, with the Qizilbash viewing their Safavid leader (whom they called morshed-e kamel, "the Perfect Guide") as the reincarnation of Ali and a manifestation of the divine in human form. The were a total of seven major Qizilbash "tribes", each named after an area they identified themselves with; the Rumlu presumably came from Rum (Anatolia); the Shamlu from Sham (Syria); the Takkalu from the Takkeh in southeastern Anatolia; the Ostajlu from Ostaj in the southern Caucasus. It is uncertain if the Afshar and Qajar were named after an area in Azerbaijan, or after their ancestors. All these tribes shared a common lifestyle, language, faith, and animosity towards the Ottomans.

Birth, imprisonment, flight and succession
Ismail was born on 17 July 1487 in the town of Ardabil. He was the third and youngest son of Haydar and Halima Begum. Ismail had four sisters; Fakhr-i Jahan Khanum, Malaka Khanum and two unnamed ones. Since the death of Uzun Hasan in 1478, the Aq Qoyunlu–Safavid alliance dissolved, and Haydar was killed on 9 July 1488 by the combined forces of the Shirvanshah Farrukh Yassar ((r. 1465 – 1500)) and the Aq Qoyunlu Ya'qub Beg ((r. 1478 – 1490)) during a battle near the city of Darband. Haydar and Halima's eldest son Ali Mirza Safavi thus became the new head of the Safavid order, but the latter, along with his mother and two brothers Ebrahim and Ismail, were arrested in Ardabil and imprisoned in the castle of Estakhr in the southern Iranian region of Fars.

In August 1493, they were freed by the Aq Qoyunlu prince Rustam Beg Bayandur ((r. 1493 – 1497)), who was one of the contenders for the throne following Ya'qub's death in 1490. Rustam wanted to use Ali Mirza Safavi and his followers (i.e. members of the Safavid order) to capture the throne. In turn, Rustam reportedly promised Ali Mirza Safavi to give him "the throne of Iran after his own death". In the ensuing period, Ali Mirza Safavi and his men assisted Rustam in defeating the incumbent Baysonqor. However, soon after, in 1494, Rustam realized that Ali Mirza Safavi and his order were an actual threat to his own position, and thus ordered for the arrest of Ali Mirza Safavi and his brothers. Ali Mirza Safavi and his brothers, accompanied by a small retinue, managed to escape from Rustam's camp and moved towards Ardabil. Rustam however was aware that the reunification of Ali Mirza Safavi and his men could mean possible danger to his own position. He thus "sent a force in hot pursuit" after the fugitives. Realizing his own inevitable fate, Ali Mirza Safavi appointed Ismail as his successor, and ordered him to move ahead to reach Ardabil. Ali Mirza Safavi himself was caught by the Aq Qoyunlu troops at Shamasbi near Ardabil, and killed. On the order of his mother, his body was taken to Ardabil where it was buried.

Refuge in Gilan and upbringing
Ismail and his supporters fled to the Caspian town of Lahijan in the northern Iranian region of Gilan. There Ismail received sanctuary by the Zaydi Shia ruler of Gilan and Daylam, Mirza Ali Karkiya. His family, the Karkiya, had the ruled area since the 1360s. Ismail, then aged seven, spent the next five years there. Growing up, he became well-versed in the distinctive Shia doctrine practiced by the Iranian sayyids, and after his father's death, also on how to lead a Sufi-style movement which was made up of Turkic tribal warriors. Ismail was tutored by the Iranian scholar Shams al-Din Lahiji in Persian and Turkish poetry and literature as well as theology. Ismail's words and conduct illustrated his many identities, which included Christian and Shia Muslim, Iranian and Turk. He was visited by notable devotees, such as the powerful Mir Najm Zargar Gilani, and the Karkiya princes Soltan Hossein and Amir Hashim.

Turkmen leaders also started to rally at Lahijan, allegedly to be close to Ismail but more likely to use a base for their expeditions and incursions. In the late 1490s, the guardians of Ismail worked in coordination with various tribes to hasten the impending fall of the Aq Qoyunlu, seizing control over several important places, such as Tarom and Qazvin. Ismail had a advisory group (ahl-i ikhtisas) made up of seven key dignitaries: Hossein Beg Shamlu (Lala Beg), Abdal Ali (Dada Beg), Khadem Beg Talish (Khulafa Beg), Qara Piri Beg Qajar, Elyas Beg Aighur-ughli, Rostam Beg Qaramanlu, and Bairam Beg Qaramanlu.

War with the Shirvanshah
By 1500, the Safavid army was large enough to launch a large expedition. There were initially conflicting opinions on where to attack, the plan to "liberate" Ardabil was sidelined, while proposals from Turkmen leaders to attack the Diyar Bakr region and the Christian part of the Caucasus were dismissed. Instead, Ismail was determined to avenge the death of his father against the Shirvanshah Farrukh Yassar, and justified this decision after having convinced his supporters that he had been told in a dream by one of the Twelve Imams to deal with Farrukh Yassar. Ismail assembled a force of 7,000 Qizilbash, and invaded Shirvan, defeating and capturing Farrukh Yassar at a battle near Gulistan in December. The victory was hailed as a "divine punishment" against the Shirvanshahs for the death of Ismail's grandfather and father. Farrukh Yassar was beheaded and his body burned, while the skulls of the dead Shirvanis were piled in pyramids, a common Turco-Mongol practice. The city of Baku was subsequently captured and almost completely destroyed by Khadem Beg Talish, who had the body of the former Shirvanshah Khalilullah I dug up, burned and publicly scattered.

Capture of Tabriz
With the defeat of Farrukh Yassar and the conquest of Shirvan, Ismail's fame among the Turkmens was unmatched, and they continued to flock to him in even bigger numbers. The Safavid-era historian Budaq Monshi Qazvini recalls a story he had heard about the summer of 1501, when Ismail received an Ottoman envoy in the city of Maragheh. Longing to witness Ismail, thousands had allegedly attempted to climb the minaret of the public mosque, which "in the twinkling of an eye" led to over 100 of people falling to their death. On 22 December, Ismail defeated a much larger army led by the Aq Qoyunlu leader Alvand Beg ((r. 1497 – 1504/5)) at the battle of Sharur in Nakhchivan. He immediately entered Tabriz, marking the start of the royal Safavid dynasty. Since the collapse of the Mongol Ilkhanate, Tabriz had been regarded as the leading the urban centre of the country. Both the Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu leaders had assumed the title of king (kesra or padeshah); Ismail followed their example, crowning himself as shah. It was also there that he declared Twelver Shia Islam as the official religion of the realm.

Conquest of Fars and Persian Iraq
In the winter of 1502 or 1503, Ismail contacted the Aq Qoyunlu leader Sultan Murad ((r. 1497 – 1514)), who was in control over Fars and Persian Iraq, albeit mostly nominally. In reality, his governors ruled freely. The provinces were in disarray due to ceaseless war, famine, plague, and oppression by the Aq Qoyunlu dignitaries. Ismail reminded Sultan Murad of the common lineage that the Safavids and Aq Qoyunlu shared, and offered him part of Persian Iraq in exchange for compliance, or war would occur. Although some of Murad's men advocated peace, the latter marched towards Ismail (whose army totalled 12,000) at head of 70,000 men, but was defeated near the city of Hamadan on 21 June 1503, losing 10,000 men and his amir al-umara (supreme commander) Güzel Ahmad Bayanduri. Ismail soon invaded Fars, capturing its capital of Shiraz on 24 September 1503 and entrusting it to Elyas Beg Dhu'l-Qadar, whose family would occupy the office for almost 50 years. Meanwhile, Murad fled to the city of Mar'ash, and would eventually later be killed in 1515 by a Safavid force in Diyar Bakr. Azerbaijan, Fars, and most of Persian Iraq was now under Safavid rule, while the Timurid rebel and ruler of Astarabad, Muhammad Husayn Mirza, had made an alliance with Ismail.

Conquest of Astarabad and Mazandaran
Ismail's next objective was to subjugate the Afrasiyabid ruler Kiya Husayn II ((r. ? – 1504)), whose had initially only ruled Firuzhkuh and Damavand, but by exploiting the downfall of the Aq Qoyunlu, had extended his rule over Khvar, Semnan and Ray. Not only did Kiya Husayn pose a threat militarily to the Safavids, but also ideologically, due to him also being a Shia Muslim. He had given sanctuary to many of Sultan Murad's troops, who had turned him hostile towards Ismail. A force led by the governor of Azerbaijan, Elyas Beg Aighur-ughli, was sent against Kiya Husayn, but they were defeated and massacred outside the fortress of Varamin. Ismail left his winter residence at Qom on 25 February 1504, seized the fortress of Gol-i Khandan on 17 March, and finally arrived at Firuzkuh on 29 March. Although the commander Amir Kiya Ali Damandar put up a heavy resistance against the Safavids, he eventually yielded, and was thus spared at the request of Najm Beg. The rest of the garrison, however, were massacred. Ismail besieged Kiya Husayn at the fortress of Osta, which surrendered the following month, on 13 May.

The fortress was completely destroyed, while its soldiers and refugees were massacred. Kiya Husayn was imprisoned in a iron cage which he himself had come up with, seeking to use it against any ruler in Iran he would capture. En route to Isfahan, Kiya Husayn managed to commit suicide at Kabud Gonbad; his body was publicly burned in the meydan (town square) of Isfahan, possibly done by Ismail in order to convince his own followers that Kiya Husayn was a heretic. This marked the end of the Afrasiyab dynasty, which had been in power since 1349. Safavid sources recount how two of Kiya Husayn's dignitaries, Morad Beg Jahan Shahi and Sayaltamash Beg, were skewered, roasted alive, and eaten by each of the Safavid commanders until "there was not a trace of meat or bone." This was done to serve as a warning to others. The remaining local rulers in Mazandaran and Astarabad subsequently pledged their allegiance to Ismail. A member of the Afrasiyab family, Sohrab Chalavi, is reported to have entered the service of Ismail I, who appointed him as the commander of the fortress of Ardahan in Azerbaijan.

Pacification of the western frontier, and the conquest of Diyar Bakr
Around the same time, the western frontiers of Ismail's realm suffered from incursions by the rulers of Kurdistan and Diya Bakr, Shir Sarim and Ala al-Dawla Dhu'l-Qadar respectively. As a result, Ismail mounted several expeditions against them in 1505 or 1506. Although Ismail managed to pillage Shir Sarim's camp near the Qizil Üzan river, the latter escaped. In 1506/7, another battle took place between Ismail and Shir Sarim, which resulted in heavy losses on both sides; the two high-ranking Qizilbash commanders Abdi Beg Shamlu (Ismail's brother-in-law) and Saru Ali Mohrdar Takkalu were killed, while Shir Sarim's son and brother were captured and executed.

Conquest of Arabian Iraq and southwestern Iran
Like Diyar Bakr, Arabian Iraq had been ruled by a Aq Qoyunlu commander since Ismail's capture of Tabriz in 1501. In the spring of 1508, Ismail invaded Arabian Iraq, resulting in the flight of its ruler, Barik Beg Purnak. Hossein Beg Laleh Shamlu subsequently entered the capital of Baghdad, where he had coins minted in Ismail's name, as well as the khutba read in the latters name. Abdal Beg Talish instigated a massacre of every Aq Qoyunlu dignitary discovered in Baghdad, while Ismail watched from afar, floating on the Tigris river and drinking wine. Ismail sat foot in Baghdad on 21 October 1508, where he had some of Barik Beg Purnak supporters executed. He also visited the Shia shrines at the cities of Karbala and Najaf. Sayyid Muhammad Kamuna was made the steward of Najaf, and given governorship over some towns in Arabian Iraq. Khadem Beg Talish was given the title of khalifat al-khulafa and installed as the governor of Baghdad. Ismail soon wrested the southwestern Iranian cities of Hoveyzeh, Dezful and Shushtar from the Musha'sha leader Sultan Fayyad, while the coastal cities of Hormuz and Lar recognized him as their suzerain. While Ismail was wintering in Shiraz between 1508–1509, an army of 10,000 led by his commanders Hossein Beg Laleh, Bairam Beg Qaramanlu, and Mir Najm Zargar Gilani, defeated and captured the ruler of Khorramabad, Malik Shah Rostam. The latter was taken to Ismail, who pardoned him, and reinstalled him as the ruler of Khorramabad. With the conquest of Arabian Iraq and southwestern Iran, Ismail had now conquered all of the former Aq Qoyunlu realm.

Reconquest of Shirvan
Meanwhile, the Shirvanshah prince Ibrahim II Shaykhshah (Farrukh Yassar's son), had driven out the Safavid governor of Shirvan, Shah Kaldi Aqa. As a result, Ismail invaded Shirvan in the winter of 1509 or 1510, recapturing Darband and Shamakhi, whilst making Baku and Shabaran re-acknowledge his authority. He then retrieved the body of his father and had it reburied in Ardabil. Meanwhile, Shaykhshah had fled to Bighurd.

Battle of Chaldiran
Following the ancient Iranian custom, royal women were to follow the shah to the battlefield. This had great repercussions for Ismail, whose lover Behruzeh Khanum was captured and taken to Constantinople.

Royal ideology
From an early age, Ismail was acquainted with the Iranian cultural legacy. When he reached Lahijan in 1494, he gifted Mirza Ali Karkiya a copy of the medieval Persian epic Shahnameh (Book of Kings) with over 300 illustrations. Owing to his fondness of Iranian national legends, Ismail named three of his four sons after mythological shahs and heroes of the Shahnameh; his oldest son was named Tahmasp, after the last shah of the Pishdadian dynasty; his third son Sam after the champion of the Pishdadian shah Manuchehr and ancestor of the celebrated warrior-hero Rostam; his youngest son Bahram after the Sasanian shah Bahram V ((r. 420 – 438)), famous for his romantic life and hunting feats. Ismail's expertise in Persian poetic tales such as the Shahnameh, helped him to represent himself as the heir to the Iranian model of kingship. According to the modern historian Abbas Amanat, Ismail was motivated to visualize himself as a shah of the Shahnameh, possibly Kaykhosrow, the archetype of a great Iranian king, and the person who overcame the Turanian king Afrasiyab, the nemesis of Iran. From an Iranian perspective, Afrasiyab's kingdom of Turan was commonly identified with the land of the Turks, in particular with the Uzbek Khanate of Bukhara in Central Asia. After Ismail defeated the Uzbeks, his victory was portrayed in Safavid records as a victory over the mythological Turanians. However, this fondness of Iranian legends was not only restricted to that of Ismail and Safavid Iran; Both Muhammad Shaybani, Selim I, and later Babur and his Mughal progeny, all associated themselves with these legends. Regardless of its increasing differences, Western, Central, and South Asia all followed a common Persianate model of culture and kingship.

Before his defeat at Chaldiran in 1514, Ismail not only identified himself as the reincarnation of Alid figures such as Ali and Husayn, but also as the personification of the divine light of investiture (farr) that had radiated in the ancient Iranian shahs Darius, Khosrow I Anushirvan ((r. 531 – 579)), Shapur I ((r. 240 – 270)), since the era of the Achaemenids and Sasanians. This was a typical Safavid combination of Islamic and pre-Islamic Iranian motifs. The Safavids also included and promoted Turkic and Mongol aspects from the Central Asian steppe, such as giving high-ranking positions to Turkic leaders, and utilizing Turkic tribal clans for their aspirations in war. They likewise included Turco-Mongolian titles such as khan and bahadur to their growing collection of titles. The cultural aspects of the Safavids soon became even more numerous, as Ismail and his successors included and promoted Kurds, Arabs, Georgians, Circassians, and Armenians into their imperial program. Moreover, the conquests of Genghis Khan and Timur had merged Mongolian and Chagatai aspects into the Persian bureaucratic culture, terminology, seals, and symbols.

Poetry
Ismail notably composed poetry in Azeri Turkish under the pen-name Khata'i, most likely to inspire his Turkmen followers. Ismail also sought to align himself with Persian literary traditions, even recruiting non-Shi'ite Persian poets and also requesting Hatefi to compose a historical epic in the same manner as his previous work—the Zafarnameh—which had been dedicated to Timur. Many former poets of the Aq Qoyunlu and Timurids had also joined the court of Ismail.

Lifestyle
Although Tabriz served as the capital of Iran, Ismail mostly roamed in other places during his reign, living the lifestyle of a nomadic pastoralist. This was not unusual; since the Mongol conquests, many rulers in Iran moved to warmer places during winter and vice versa. Ismail usually roamed in Azerbaijan, summering in Soltaniyeh and Takht-e Soleyman, as well as near Mount Sahand. He usually wintered in Tabriz. After his defeat at Chaldiran in 1514, a significant amount of his time was spent moving around the country, wintering twice in Nakhjavan (Nakhchivan) and once in Isfahan. This was the typical lifestyle of a Turkic nomad, which he had fully adjusted to. It was first under the late reign of Tahmasp that this custom was abandoned, when he permanently settled in his urban palace Qazvin in 1558.

Administration
The administration in Safavid Iran was a mix of Turco-Mongolian heritage (with offices like the qurchi, yasavul, yurtchi) and Perso-Islamic establishments, which included offices such as the divan-i parvanchi and the divan-i sadarat.

One of the leading groups of administrators were the Persian Savaji family, which had previously served the Aq Qoyunlu. Qadi Diya al-Din Nur Allah served as Ismail's envoy to Muhammad Shaybani in 1510, while his brother Qadi Nur al-Din Abd al-Rahman served as the chief judge (qadi) of Tabriz for twenty years, until his death in 1523. Ismail appointed a former Iranian vizier of the Aq Qoyunlu, named Amir Zakariya, as his first vizier. His family, the Kujuji, was the first prominent family to join the Safavids, and had worked for many previous dynasties in Iran, such as the Jalayirids, Timurids, the Qara Qoyunlu, and the Aq Qoyunlu.

Religious policy
He forged a fictious lineage to the Twelve Imams, who were in return believed to have some ancestry from the pre-Islamic Sasanian Empire of Iran (224–651).

Turks and Tajiks
One of the challenges that Ismail faced throughout his reign was how to rally the Qizilbash Turkmen (known as the "people of the sword" owing to their military abilities) whose fighting skills had brought him to the throne, and the native Iranians (known as the "people of the pen" owing to their bureaucratic abilities), who occupied the bureaucratic and religious offices, as they had done for centuries under the prior rulers of Iran.

Emergence of a clerical aristocracy
An important feature of the Safavid society was the alliance that emerged between the ulama (the religious class) and the merchant community. The latter included merchants trading in the bazaars, the trade and artisan guilds (asnaf) and members of the quasi-religious organizations run by dervishes (futuvva). Because of the relative insecurity of property ownership in Iran, many private landowners secured their lands by donating them to the clergy as so-called vaqf. They would thus retain the official ownership and secure their land from being confiscated by royal commissioners or local governors, as long as a percentage of the revenues from the land went to the ulama. Increasingly, members of the religious class, particularly the mujtahids and the seyyeds, gained full ownership of these lands, and, according to contemporary historian Iskandar Munshi, Iran started to witness the emergence of a new and significant group of landowners.

Appearance and skills
Ismail was described by contemporaries as having a regal appearance, gentlemanly in quality and youthfulness. He also had a fair complexion and red hair. His appearance compared to other dark-skinned Persians, his descent from the Safavid shaykhs, and his religious ideals, contributed to people's expectation based on various legends circulating during this period of heightened religious awareness in Western Asia.

An Italian traveller describes Ismail as follows:

"This Sophi is fair, handsome, and very pleasing; not very tall, but of a light and well-framed figure; rather stout than slight, with broad shoulders. His hair is reddish; he only wears moustachios, and uses his left hand instead of his right. He is as brave as a game cock, and stronger than any of his lords; in the archery contests, out of the ten apples that are knocked down, he knocks down seven."