Habsburg–Persian alliance

First contacts

Shah Ismail of Persia exchanged messages with Charles V, who was also king of Spain, and with Hungary’s Ludwig II, all hoping to join forces against the Ottoman Turks. Between 1516 and 1519, Charles sent an envoy to propose an alliance to the shah. In 1516, Ludwig II sent the Maronite friar Petrus de Monte Libano on the same errand. The replies to those letters are lost, but in 1523 Shah Ismail wrote in Latin to Charles V, again using Petrus as his messenger, offering to coordinate attacks on their common enemy. The envoys met Charles in Burgos in March 1524, asking for an alliance against the Turks. Charles agreed in principle, but the shah’s death later that year effectively ended the deal.

Ottoman–Safavid War

In February 1529, Charles V grew deeply worried as Ottoman forces neared Vienna. From Toledo, he wrote to Shah Tahmasp, who had succeeded his father Ismail, asking for a coordinated attack to split Ottoman strength. His envoy, the knight de Balbi, helped arrange an alliance meant to strike the Ottoman Empire from both Europe and Persia within a year. Tahmasp replied warmly, but the plan fell apart when Balbi took over a year to return.

By then, a rebellion by the Shaybanid Uzbeks forced Persia to make peace with the Ottomans. Around the same time, Charles’s brother Ferdinand sent two envoys, Pietro da Negro and Simon de Lillis, to Persia, but they achieved nothing. Further missions followed in 1532 and 1533. These diplomatic efforts did lead to the long Ottoman–Safavid War starting in 1532.

After that, whenever the Ottomans campaigned in Europe, the Persians would strike their eastern borders, forcing Sultan Suleiman to rush back to his capital. Meanwhile, Francis I of France, a Habsburg rival, formalized a Franco-Ottoman alliance in 1536 to counterbalance Habsburg power. In 1547, when Suleiman invaded Persia, France sent ambassador Gabriel de Luetz along on the campaign. De Luetz offered crucial military advice, such as where to place artillery during the Siege of Vān.

Further attempts

The Habsburgs celebrated whenever Persia fought the Ottoman Empire, as these five conflicts forced the Ottomans to fight on two fronts and weakened them considerably. After a period of internal instability in Persia, contact resumed in 1593 when Emperor Rudolf II sent a message from Prague to Shah ʿAbbās via the Persian minister in Moscow. The English adventurer Anthony Sherley later acted as an intermediary to pursue an alliance. Further diplomatic efforts to unite against the Ottomans continued into the 1600s, most notably through the Persian embassies to Europe of 1599–1602 and 1609–1615.