political structure of the safavid empire

In response, the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II deported the Shiites of his empire from Anatolia to other regions where they would be unable to heed the Safavid call. Many of these are now symbols of Iranian nationhood. Even after their decline, the Safavids left an influential legacy with far reaching implications for Iranian art, religion, and culture. One of the most famous achievements of Tahmasps workshop was an illustrated version of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran written by the poet Ferdowsi in the tenth century. Below is the article summary. As a result, he signed a peace treaty in 1590 that gave nearly half his territory, including the former capital of Tabriz, to the Ottomans. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The maximum extent of the Safavid Empire under Shah Abbas I (CC BY-SA 4.0), The maximum extent of the Safavid Empire under Shah Abbas I (. It did not last forever, however. Started in the Safavid period, mirror mosaics became an enduring Persian decorative motif that was used by the subsequent dynasties. Some Safavid ceramic artists went so far as to place a fake Chinese workshop stamp on the back of their products to increase their value. In the sixteenth century, carpet weaving evolved from a nomadic and peasant craft to a well-executed industry with specialization of design and manufacturing. In practice, however, there were well defined limits to this absolutism, even when the shah was a strong and capable ruler. Shah Tahmasp supported both schools at a royal painting workshop where artistic masters were invited to work with luxury materials such as gold leaf and ground lapis lazuli (Figure 4.25). This came after a wave of New York exhibitions dedicated to Persian art and culture in 1934, during the millenary celebration of the birth of Firdausi (the author of the previously discussed. They sustained one of the longest running empires of Iranian history, lasting from 1501 to 1736. (credit: The Feast of Sada, Folio 22v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp by Ferdowsi/Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Arthur A. Houghton Jr., 1970 /Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain), This miniature created in the Mughal Empire in 1594 shows a scene from the, https://openstax.org/books/world-history-volume-2/pages/1-introduction, https://openstax.org/books/world-history-volume-2/pages/4-3-the-safavid-empire, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, Identify the factors that contributed to the rise of the, Discuss the similarities and differences between, Describe the political structure of the Safavid Empire. The Safavid Empire was less ethnically diverse than the Ottoman Empire. Bureaucracy and landed class who were considered the middle classes. Under them a political system emerged in which political and religious boundaries over-lapped. As an empire, the Safavids succeeded in placing the nomadic people groups of the region under their. The Common people were the lowest class on the pyramid in which they mainly consisted of farmers and herders. Silk was akin to gold in this era, and Safavid silk was renowned for both the high quality of its raw silk, as well as the exquisite designs of their embroidered textiles. Under the Peace of Amasya, concluded in 1555, Armenia and Georgia were divided between the two empires; the Ottomans gained control over Iraq and access to the Persian Gulf, while Irans control over Azerbaijan was guaranteed. One faction, which became known as the Sunnis, supported the candidacy of Abu Bakr al-Sadiq, Muhammads father-in-law. Fresco, c. 1597 C.E., Ali Qapu Palace (photo: The palaces of the Safavid era, such as the, Shah Mosque (Royal Mosque), Isfahan, Iran, begun 1611 (photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0). His son Ali Mirza took his place, but within a few years his capital at Ardabil was conquered by his enemies. To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org Throughout the rest of the decade, Ismail I fended off attacks from the Ottomans, stamped out the remnants of a rival faction, called the Ak Koyunlu, and continued to expand his territoryHamadan in 1503, Shiraz and Kerman in 1504, Najaf and Karbala in 1507, Van in 1508, Baghdad in 1509, Khorasan and Herat in 1510. Ismail I continued to expand his base in northwestern Iran. As a result of Mongol conquest, and relative religious tolerance of Ilhanids, Shi'a dynasties were established in IranSarbedaran in Khorasan being the most important. The Safavid Empire, based in Persia ( Iran ), ruled over much of southwestern Asia from 1501 to 1736. Shah Ism'l I, who established the Safavid dynasty in 907/15012, considered himself to be the living emanation of the godhead, the Shadow of God upon earth, and the representative of the Hidden Imm by virtue of direct descent from the Seventh Imm of the Twelver (Ithn'ashariyya) Sh'a, Ms al-Kzim. As the Safavids continued to push westward into Ottoman territory, Bayezids son Selim I responded by invading Iranian Azerbaijan, laying waste to Tabriz in 1514 and attempting to destroy the Qizilbash. Direct link to hdarwish825's post what succession rules was. Museums around the world commissioned Pope and Ackerman to organize symposia and exhibitions on the topic of Persian art, where works from the Safavid Empire were especially of interest. Though the majority of Muslims in Azerbaijan and Iran considered themselves Shia by the time the Safavid era ended in 1736, Nader Shah attempted to restore Sunnism as the dominant sect. The Safavid dynasty had its origins in a long established Sufi order, called the Safaviyeh, which had flourished in Azarbaijan since the early fourteenth century. Thus, the end of his reign, 1666, marked the beginning of the end of the Safavid dynasty. Total loading time: 0 Abbs I (r. 15881629) brought the dynasty to its peak; his capital, Efahn, was the centre of afavid architectural achievement. Thus, Abbas I was able to break the dependence on the Qizilbash for military might and centralized control. In these paintings, artists used mineral-based dyes, which produced brilliant and long-lasting colors (Figure 4.26). The Ardabil Carpet, Maqsud of Kashan, Persian: Safavid Dynasty, silk warps and wefts with wool pile (25 million knots, 340 per sq. However, the original ancestral line of the Safavids was a religious order of Sufi mystics that lived in Ardabil, a city now in Azerbaijan (Sufism is the mystical branch of Islam that originated during the, Shah Ismail, the founder of the Safavid dynasty, rejoined the western and eastern halves of the Iranian plateau through military achievement. He captured Tabrz from the Ak Koyunlu and became shah of Azerbaijan (1501) and Persia (1502). Two distinct schools of painting developed: the Turkmen school in western Iran and the Timurid school based in Herat (in todays Afghanistan). The Safavids (Persian: ) were a native Iranian dynasty from Azarbaijan that ruled from 1501 to 1736, and which established Shi'a Islam as Iran's official religion and united its provinces under a single Iranian sovereignty in the early modern period. Various groups of Persian-speaking peoples lived in the Iranian plateau and were usually described as Tajik.. What might account for the differences in style between the Safavid and Mughal paintings? To log in and use all the features of Khan Academy, please enable JavaScript in your browser. Although a majority of the people in the kingdom were Iranians, there were also some Arabs, Turks, and Armenians. First, by bringing the capital closer to the center of the empire and away from the Ottoman border, it safeguarded the court from the Turks. When Ismail crowned himself Shah in 1501, most of Irans population was Sunni. [2] Shah Abbas I recognized the commercial benefit of promoting the artsartisan's products provided much of Iran's foreign trade. The order in Ardabil was founded in the thirteenth century by the Sufi master Zahed Gilani, and little is known about its beliefs and practices in its . In this portrait of Shah Ismail by an Italian painter of the sixteenth century, for example, the shahs reddish hair, possibly an inheritance from his Greek grandmother, is clearly visible. 4, p. 14. They cleverly allied themselves with European powers in order to protect themselves from the Ottomans. is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings Initially, like most of Irans population, the Safavids were primarily Sunni Muslims. When the outside world finally began learning about the arts of Iran, it was through the lens and example of the Safavids. This clearly differentiated Iran from the Ottomans, who were Sunnis. The two states finally laid down arms and declared a peace that lasted more than thirty years. Roger M. Savory, "Safawidsiii, The establishment of the Safawid state,". Shiism was not officially tolerated by the Sunni caliphs of the Umayyad and Abbasid Empires because of its perceived challenge to their rule. OpenStax is part of Rice University, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. In fact, from Sheikh Junayd to Sheikh Ismail Ithe founder of the Safavid Empireall ruling Sheikhs of the Safavids had Turcoman mothers. In response, a Ghilzai Pashtun chieftain named Mir Wais Khan began a rebellion against the Georgian governor, Gurgin Khan, of Kandahar and defeated a Safavid army. In the previous century, Russia Muscovy had deposed two western Asian khanates of the Golden Horde and expanded its influence into the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia. As Vladimir Minorsky put it, friction between these two groups was inevitable, because the Qezelbash "were no party to the national Persian tradition." While the decoration of each of these buildings varied, the structural composition remained much the same, consisting of domes surrounded by four, Fresco, c. 1597 C.E., Ali Qapu Palace (photo: reibai, CC BY 2.0). In the fifteenth century, the Safaviyeh gradually gained political and military clout in the power vacuum precipitated by the decline of the Timurid dynasty. About 95 percent of Shia also believe Ali was the first of twelve infallible leaders chosen by God, so this sect is often called the Twelvers. In this period, handicrafts such as tile making, pottery, and textiles developed and great advances were made in miniature painting, bookbinding, decoration, and calligraphy. One of the most renowned Muslim philosophers, Mulla Sadra (1571-1640), lived during Shah Abbas I's reign and wrote the Asfar, a meditation on what he called "meta philosophy," which brought to a synthesis the philosophical mysticism of Sufism, the theology of Shi'ism, and the Peripatetic and Illuminationist philosophies of Avicenna and Suhrawardi Maqtul (1155-1191). When he declared Twelver Shiism to be the state religion of Iran, he hoped to unify his Iranian subjects by having them adopt a form of Islam that gave them a unique identity and distinguished them from their military and political enemies the Ottomans and the Uzbeks, who were both Sunni. Poetry lacked the royal patronage of other arts and was hemmed in by religious prescriptions. 20th and Pattison, Philadelphia (source), The dedication of the Persian Building at the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exhibition, October 6, 1926. He used state funds to construct schools where Shia beliefs were taught and to build shrines to Ali and members of his family. Never was the Divine Right of Kings more fully developed than by the Safavid shahs. The political structure of the Safavid Empire was structured like a pyramid with the Shah at the very top of the pyramid, similar to a pope. While silk had always been a highly sought after Persian commodity, dating back to ancient times, the Safavid era produced one of the most lucrative silk industries of the early modern world. The pope also hoped Abbas would allow the construction of a cathedral in his new capital city of Isfahan, but on their arrival his emissaries found three Roman Catholic churches already there (Figure 4.24). Tahmasp faced several challenges at home and abroad, however. Outside of Iran, Safavid art was the portal to the wider world of Persian art and architecture when art historians first began studying Islamic art in the early nineteenth century.

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