Shah Abbas the Great: Reviving the Safavid Empire (1588-1629)

Shah Abbas I, known as Abbas the Great, ruled Safavid Iran from October 1588 until his death in January 1629. Taking the throne at the age of seventeen in a kingdom torn by civil war and foreign invasion, he rebuilt the army, recovered lost provinces from the Ottomans and Uzbeks, and moved the capital to Isfahan. His reign is generally regarded as the high point of the Safavid dynasty, though it was also marked by harsh treatment of rivals, his own sons and conquered peoples.

Background: a kingdom in crisis

The Safavid dynasty was founded by Shah Ismail I in 1501, who made Twelver Shia Islam the state religion of Iran. Its early power rested on the Qizilbash, Turkoman tribes whose cavalry won Ismail his throne. The Safavids faced two dangerous neighbours: the Ottoman Empire to the west, which had defeated Ismail at the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, and the Uzbeks of Central Asia to the north-east.

After the long reign of Shah Tahmasp I ended in 1576, the kingdom fell into turmoil. Qizilbash factions fought over the succession, and Abbas’s father, Mohammad Khodabanda, was a weak ruler with poor eyesight. The Ottomans invaded in 1578 and over the next years took Georgia, much of the Caucasus and, in 1585, Tabriz, while the Uzbeks under Abdullah Khan II attacked Khorasan and seized Herat in 1588.

Abbas, born in Herat on 27 January 1571, grew up as a figurehead for Qizilbash leaders in Khorasan. In 1588 Murshid Qoli Khan of the Ostajlu tribe brought him to Qazvin, where his father abdicated. Abbas soon had Murshid Qoli Khan killed, a sign of his determination to rule in his own right.

Buying time and building an army

Faced with war on two fronts, Abbas made peace with the Ottomans in 1590 through the Treaty of Constantinople. It was humiliating: Iran gave up Tabriz, most of Azerbaijan, Georgia and other western lands. But it freed him to deal with internal rebels and to rebuild his forces.

His key reform was to create an army loyal to the shah rather than to tribal chiefs. He expanded the corps of ghulams (“slaves” of the shah), mostly Georgian, Armenian and Circassian captives or converts who were trained as soldiers and administrators. He also raised regiments of musketeers (tufangchis) and an artillery corps. To pay them, he brought more provinces under direct royal control instead of assigning their revenues to Qizilbash governors.

Ghulams rose to the highest ranks. The most famous, Allahverdi Khan, a Georgian, became commander-in-chief and governor of Fars, and paid for the great bridge across the river at Isfahan, the Si-o-se-pol.

Wars with the Uzbeks and Ottomans

Abdullah Khan II died in 1598, and Uzbek power weakened. Abbas marched east, defeated the Uzbeks near Herat that year and recovered Mashhad and Herat. In 1601 he walked from Isfahan to Mashhad on pilgrimage to the shrine of Imam Reza, which he lavishly endowed as a Shia centre inside Iran.

In 1603, with the Ottomans distracted by war with the Habsburgs in Hungary and revolts in Anatolia, Abbas struck west. He retook Tabriz that year and Yerevan in 1604. When a large Ottoman army approached, he ordered a scorched-earth retreat, deporting the population of eastern Armenia, including the merchant town of Julfa, deep into Iran. In 1605 he defeated the Ottoman commander Cığalazade Sinan Pasha near Tabriz, at the Battle of Sufiyan.

The Treaty of Nasuh Pasha (1612), confirmed by the Treaty of Serav (1618), restored roughly the frontiers of 1555. In 1623–24 Abbas went further and captured Baghdad; an Ottoman attempt to retake it in 1625–26 failed, and the city remained Safavid until 1638.

Abbas also fought in Georgia, where campaigns in 1614–1617 against the kingdom of Kakheti were especially brutal. Tens of thousands of Georgians were killed or deported to Iran, and Queen Ketevan, held captive, was executed in Shiraz in 1624. She is venerated as a martyr in the Georgian Orthodox Church.

Isfahan, trade and diplomacy

The new capital and the silk economy

In 1598 Abbas began moving his capital from Qazvin to Isfahan. Around the old city he laid out a new royal quarter centred on the vast Naqsh-e Jahan Square, surrounded by a royal mosque, a palace gateway, a private mosque and a great bazaar. A tree-lined avenue, the Chahar Bagh, led to the river and to gardens and palaces.

Abbas wanted Isfahan to be a centre of trade as well as power. He resettled Armenian merchants from Julfa in a new suburb, New Julfa, and gave them privileges and a leading role in the export of raw silk, Iran’s most valuable product. The crown controlled much of the silk trade and used it to earn silver and to put pressure on the Ottomans, through whose lands much of the silk normally travelled.

He also improved roads and built caravanserais, many still known locally as “Shah Abbasi” caravanserais, though not all of them date from his reign.

Diplomacy with Europe and the Gulf

Because both Iran and the Christian powers of Europe were at war with the Ottomans, Abbas sought European allies. In 1598 the English brothers Anthony and Robert Sherley arrived at his court. Anthony led an embassy to Europe from 1599, and Robert later travelled as Abbas’s envoy to Rome, Madrid and London. Older histories credited the Sherleys with reforming the Safavid army, but historians now stress that Abbas’s reforms were already under way.

No lasting anti-Ottoman alliance emerged, but Abbas welcomed European merchants and missionaries. In 1622 Safavid troops, supported by ships of the English East India Company, captured the island of Hormuz from the Portuguese, who had held it since the early sixteenth century. Abbas developed the mainland port of Gombroon as Bandar Abbas (“the port of Abbas”). In the same year he took Kandahar from the Mughals.

Religion, art and court culture

Abbas presented himself as a devout Shia ruler and a descendant of the Safavid Sufi order. He patronised Shia shrines at Mashhad, Qom and Ardabil, and in 1608 he made a famous endowment of his personal property, including books, jewels, land and Chinese porcelain, to the shrine of the dynasty’s founder Sheikh Safi al-Din at Ardabil and to the Shia imams. Much of the porcelain later passed to the National Museum of Iran.

His attitude to other faiths was pragmatic. Armenian Christians in New Julfa enjoyed protection because they were useful to the crown, and Catholic missionaries such as the Carmelites were allowed to settle in Isfahan. At other times, however, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians faced pressure to convert, especially when religious and political goals coincided.

Court art flourished. The royal workshops produced fine silk textiles and carpets, and painters such as Reza Abbasi developed a new style of single-page drawings and paintings of courtiers, lovers and dervishes, collected in albums rather than illustrated books. This Isfahan style influenced Iranian painting for the rest of the century.

The man and his rule

European visitors described Abbas as energetic, approachable and curious, fond of moving incognito among his subjects. He was also ruthless. Haunted by the rebellions that had brought him to power, he feared his sons. In 1615 he had his eldest son, Mohammad Baqer (Safi Mirza), killed, and two other sons were blinded, which made them ineligible to rule.

He also changed the way princes were raised: instead of governing provinces, they were increasingly kept in the harem. Historians often see this as one cause of the weaker rulers who followed.

Abbas died in January 1629 in Mazandaran, on the Caspian coast, and was succeeded by his grandson Safi.

Timeline

• 1571, 27 January: Abbas is born in Herat.
• 1588, October: Abbas becomes shah at Qazvin after his father abdicates.
• 1590: Treaty of Constantinople cedes western provinces to the Ottomans.
• 1598: Abbas defeats the Uzbeks and recovers Herat; the move to Isfahan begins.
• 1603: War with the Ottomans resumes and Tabriz is recaptured.
• 1604–1605: Mass deportation of Armenians from the Aras valley, including Julfa.
• 1605: Victory over the Ottomans at Sufiyan near Tabriz.
• 1612: Treaty of Nasuh Pasha restores the frontiers of 1555.
• 1622: Capture of Hormuz from the Portuguese and of Kandahar from the Mughals.
• 1629, January: Abbas dies and is succeeded by his grandson Safi.

By the numbers

Army sizes come from Safavid and European accounts and should be treated as approximate.

Legacy

Abbas left Iran stronger, richer and more centralised than he found it. Isfahan became one of the largest cities in the world, admired by European travellers, and its monuments are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Safavid art, from carpets and silk textiles to painting and tilework, flourished under his patronage.

His legacy was mixed. The ghulam system weakened the Qizilbash but created new court factions, and his treatment of princes contributed to the less capable rulers who followed. Within a century of his death, Afghan forces captured Isfahan in 1722, effectively ending Safavid power. In Iran, however, Abbas is still remembered as a great king, and his name survives in Bandar Abbas and countless buildings.

Why it matters

Shah Abbas turned a failing state into a regional power that held its own against the Ottomans and shaped the borders of modern Iran. His capital, his trade policies and his contacts with Europe made Safavid Iran a major player in the early modern world.