Shah Ismail I and the Founding of the Safavid Empire (1501)

Shah Ismail I founded the Safavid Empire in 1501, when, aged about 14, he captured the city of Tabriz in north-western Iran and was proclaimed shah. Leading a devoted army of Turkmen tribesmen called the Qizilbash, he went on to unite most of Iran within a decade and declared Twelver Shi’ism the official religion of his state. The dynasty he founded ruled until the 1720s, and the religious choice he made still shapes Iran today.

Background: a Sufi order turned military power

The Safavids took their name from Shaykh Safi al-Din (died 1334), a Sufi master who founded a religious order at Ardabil, in what is now north-western Iran. For more than a century the order was a respected mystical brotherhood with followers across Azerbaijan, eastern Anatolia and Syria.

In the fifteenth century its leaders became political and military figures. Ismail’s grandfather Junayd and his father Haydar led their followers in holy wars in the Caucasus, and both were killed in battle. Haydar gave his disciples a distinctive red cap with twelve gores, or folds, honouring the twelve imams of Shi’i Islam. From this cap the Ottomans called them the Qizilbash, “red heads”.

The region was then dominated by the Aq Qoyunlu (“White Sheep”), a Turkmen tribal confederation based at Tabriz. Ismail’s mother was a daughter of the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan, but the dynasty saw the Safavids as dangerous rivals. After Haydar’s death in 1488, his sons were imprisoned, and Ismail’s elder brother Ali was killed in 1494.

Ismail’s hidden childhood

Ismail was born in Ardabil on 17 July 1487. After his brother’s death, loyal followers smuggled the seven-year-old boy to Lahijan in Gilan, a mountainous province near the Caspian Sea, where a local ruler protected him for about five years. There he received religious instruction, including in Shi’i teaching.

In 1499, aged 12, Ismail left Gilan and called his followers to arms. Turkmen tribes such as the Ustajlu, Shamlu, Rumlu, Takkalu, Afshar and Qajar answered, seeing him as their spiritual guide and, in the most devoted cases, as a semi-divine figure. By 1500 he had an army of around 7,000 men.

The road to Tabriz

Ismail first attacked the Shirvanshah Farrukh Yasar, ruler of Shirvan in the eastern Caucasus, on whom he sought revenge for his father’s death. The Shirvanshah was defeated and killed in late 1500. Ismail then turned on the Aq Qoyunlu, who were weakened by succession quarrels.

In 1501 he defeated the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Alvand Beg at Sharur, near Nakhchivan, and marched into Tabriz, the region’s greatest city. There, in the summer of 1501, he was proclaimed shah. According to Safavid chronicles, he ordered that the Shi’i call to prayer be used and that the first three caliphs, revered by Sunnis, be publicly cursed, a practice that made the new regime’s break with Sunni tradition unmistakable.

Making Twelver Shi’ism the state religion

Twelver Shi’is believe that leadership of the Muslim community passed through twelve imams descended from the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law Ali, the last of whom went into hiding and will return. Before 1501 most people in Iran were Sunni Muslims, although Shi’i communities and reverence for Ali’s family were widespread.

Ismail’s decision to impose Twelver Shi’ism was bold. Contemporary accounts say advisers warned him that most of Tabriz’s population was Sunni, and that he replied he would enforce the change by the sword. Sunni scholars who resisted were persecuted or fled, and Sufi orders that would not conform were suppressed.

Because Iran had few trained Shi’i clerics, the Safavids invited scholars from Arab Shi’i centres, especially Jabal Amil in what is now southern Lebanon. The most influential under Ismail was Ali al-Karaki, who helped build a state-supported religious hierarchy. The conversion of the population took several generations and was largely complete by the seventeenth century.

Building an empire, 1501–1510

Ismail’s campaigns over the next decade were remarkably rapid. In June 1503 he defeated the last major Aq Qoyunlu ruler, Sultan Murad, near Hamadan, opening central and southern Iran. Over the following years he took Fars, Kerman, Isfahan, Yazd and Mazandaran, and in 1508 he captured Baghdad and the Shi’i shrine cities of Iraq.

In the east, the Uzbek leader Muhammad Shaybani Khan had seized Khorasan. In December 1510 Ismail defeated and killed him near Merv. According to well-attested accounts, Ismail had the khan’s skull made into a jewelled drinking cup. By then the Safavid state stretched from the Euphrates to the borders of Central Asia.

Ismail ruled with Qizilbash chiefs as provincial governors and commanders, and Persian bureaucrats as administrators. This combination of Turkmen military power and Persian administrative tradition remained a feature of the Safavid state for generations.

Conflict with the Ottomans

Ismail’s appeal reached deep into Ottoman Anatolia, where many Turkmen tribes revered him. In 1511 a pro-Safavid uprising led by Shahkulu spread across western Anatolia, alarming the Ottoman government. The new sultan Selim I, who took the throne in 1512, saw the Qizilbash as a religious and political threat.

On 23 August 1514 Selim defeated Ismail at the Battle of Chaldiran in north-western Iran, where Ottoman artillery and musket-armed Janissaries overwhelmed Safavid cavalry. Selim briefly occupied Tabriz and then withdrew, but Ismail’s aura of invincibility was broken. He never again led an army in person, and the Ottomans gained most of eastern Anatolia. Two years later Selim turned south and conquered the Mamluks in the Ottoman conquest of Egypt.

Ismail the poet

Ismail was also a poet. Writing as Khata’i, mainly in Azerbaijani Turkish, he composed verses that expressed devotion to Ali and the imams and that presented himself in exalted, even divine, terms. These poems circulated among the Qizilbash and contributed to the Turkish-language religious literature later treasured by Alevi and Bektashi communities in Anatolia.

Timeline

• 1487, 17 July: Ismail is born at Ardabil, son of Shaykh Haydar.
• 1494: After his brother Ali’s death, Ismail is taken into hiding in Gilan.
• 1499: Aged 12, Ismail leaves Lahijan and gathers Qizilbash followers.
• 1500: Ismail defeats the Shirvanshah Farrukh Yasar.
• 1501: Victory over Alvand Beg at Sharur; Ismail enters Tabriz and is proclaimed shah.
• 1503, June: Defeat of Sultan Murad near Hamadan opens central Iran.
• 1508: Safavid forces take Baghdad.
• 1510, December: Ismail defeats Muhammad Shaybani Khan near Merv.
• 1514, 23 August: Ottoman victory over Ismail at Chaldiran.
• 1524, 23 May: Ismail dies, aged 36; his son Tahmasp I succeeds.

Legacy

Ismail died on 23 May 1524 and was buried in the family shrine at Ardabil. His son Tahmasp I held the state together through decades of civil strife and war, and the dynasty reached its height under Shah Abbas the Great, who moved the capital to Isfahan.

The Safavid state gave Iran borders broadly similar to its modern ones and an enduring sense of political unity. Above all, Twelver Shi’ism became the faith of the great majority of Iranians, distinguishing the country from its mainly Sunni neighbours to this day. In Azerbaijan, Ismail is also remembered as a national poet and ruler.

Why it matters

Ismail I turned a Sufi brotherhood into a dynasty and, within a decade, into an empire. His decision to make Twelver Shi’ism the state religion created one of the most lasting religious and political divides in the Muslim world, and the long Ottoman-Safavid rivalry it provoked shaped the Middle East for two centuries.