Peace of Amasya (1555): Ottomans and Safavids Divide the Region

The Peace of Amasya was the treaty concluded on 29 May 1555 between the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and the Safavid shah Tahmasp I at the Anatolian city of Amasya. It ended a long series of wars between the two empires and was the first formal peace between them. The settlement left Iraq to the Ottomans, divided Armenia and Georgia, and kept the frontier largely quiet for more than two decades.

Background: Sunni Ottomans and Shia Safavids

The rivalry began soon after Ismail I founded the Safavid Empire in 1501 and made Twelver Shia Islam the state religion of Iran. Safavid propaganda won followers among the Turkmen tribes of eastern Anatolia, which the Ottomans saw as a direct threat. In 1514 Sultan Selim I defeated Ismail at the Battle of Chaldiran and briefly occupied Tabriz.

Under Suleiman the conflict returned. The two empires competed for eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus and Mesopotamia, and each sheltered the other’s rebels and princes.

Suleiman’s Persian campaigns

Suleiman led three major campaigns against the Safavids. In the “campaign of the two Iraqs” of 1533-36 the Ottomans occupied Tabriz and took Baghdad in late 1534, bringing Mesopotamia and its Shia shrine cities under Ottoman rule. A second campaign in 1548-49 again reached Tabriz but could not force a decisive battle.

The third campaign began in 1553 and is remembered for a dark episode before it even reached Iran: the execution of Suleiman’s eldest son, Prince Mustafa, in the army camp at Eregli in October 1553. In 1554 the Ottoman army ravaged the region of Nakhchivan and Yerevan. Tahmasp, as before, avoided pitched battle and relied on scorched-earth tactics, which made long Ottoman campaigns costly.

By the end of 1554 both sides wanted peace. A Safavid envoy reached the Ottoman camp at Erzurum to arrange a truce, and Suleiman withdrew to winter at Amasya, where a formal Safavid embassy arrived in the spring.

The terms

The treaty was recorded in letters exchanged between the two rulers rather than in a single modern-style document. Its main points were:

• Iraq: the Ottomans kept Baghdad and lower Mesopotamia, conquered in 1534.
• Azerbaijan: Tabriz and Azerbaijan remained Safavid, though the shah moved his capital to the safer city of Qazvin in these years.
• The Caucasus: Georgia and Armenia were divided. Western Georgia (Imereti and its neighbours) and western Armenia fell in the Ottoman sphere; eastern Georgia (Kartli and Kakheti) and eastern Armenia, including Yerevan and Nakhchivan, in the Safavid sphere. The area of Kars was to remain unfortified.
• Religion: the Safavids promised to stop the ritual public cursing of the first three caliphs, deeply offensive to Sunnis, and pilgrims from Iran were guaranteed safe passage to Mecca, Medina and the Shia shrines of Iraq.

Key people

Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520-66) led all three Persian campaigns in person. By 1555 he was about sixty, and his wars on several fronts, together with conflict among his sons, made a settlement in the east attractive.

Shah Tahmasp I (r. 1524-76) came to the throne as a boy and spent his early reign struggling with powerful Qizilbash tribal chiefs. His strategy of retreating and stripping the land before Ottoman armies preserved his state, and the peace gave him two decades to consolidate it.

Kara Ahmed Pasha was grand vizier during the final campaign and the peace talks, having replaced Rustem Pasha after the execution of Prince Mustafa in 1553. He was himself executed in September 1555, a few months after the treaty, and Rustem Pasha returned to office.

Consequences

The peace freed Suleiman to concentrate on the Mediterranean and Hungary. It also showed that the Ottomans could not conquer the Iranian plateau: repeated campaigns had taken Tabriz but never held it, and the Safavid state survived.

The settlement was tested in 1559, when Suleiman’s son Prince Bayezid rebelled, was defeated and fled to Tahmasp’s court. After long negotiations the shah handed him over, and Bayezid and his sons were executed in Iran in September 1561. Tahmasp’s choice preserved the peace.

The treaty lasted until 1578. After Tahmasp died in 1576 and Iran fell into civil strife, Sultan Murad III launched a new war that lasted until 1590. Later conflicts ended with the Treaty of Zuhab in 1639, which followed the Ottoman recapture of Baghdad and drew a border close to that of 1555.

Timeline

• 1501: Ismail I proclaims the Safavid state.
• 1514, 23 August: Ottoman victory at Chaldiran.
• 1534, late November-December: Ottomans take Baghdad.
• 1548-1549: Suleiman’s second Persian campaign.
• 1553, October: Execution of Prince Mustafa during the third campaign.
• 1554: Ottomans campaign in Nakhchivan; truce arranged at Erzurum in the autumn.
• 1555, 29 May: Peace concluded at Amasya.
• 1578: War resumes under Murad III.

Why it matters

The Peace of Amasya was the first time the two great Islamic empires of the region accepted each other’s existence on paper. It confirmed Ottoman rule over Iraq, which apart from a Safavid interlude in 1623-1638 lasted until the First World War, and laid out a division of the Caucasus and Mesopotamia that later borders largely followed.