Ismail I
Founder of Safavid Iran, crowned shah in 1501 while still a teenager.
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via Wikipedia: Ismail I · see source
Ismail I (17 July 1487 - 23 May 1524) founded Safavid Iran and ruled as its first shah from 1501 until his death. His reign reunited Iran under native rule for the first time since the Islamic conquest, and the Safavid era is widely treated as the start of modern Iranian history.
He made Twelver Shia Islam the state religion, a decision with lasting effects on the country and the wider Islamic world. The dynasty he launched lasted more than two centuries. Writing as Khaṭāʾī, he was also a prolific poet in a southern Turkic dialect that foreshadowed Azerbaijani.
Lore & Background
Ismail was born in Ardabil to Shaykh Haydar, head of the Safavid Sufi order, and Halima Begum, a daughter of the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan and Despina Khatun of Trebizond. The order traced itself to Safi-ad-Din Ardabili, and earlier leaders had turned it into a fighting movement backed by the Qizilbash. His father was killed in 1488, and in 1494 the Aq Qoyunlu took Ardabil and killed his elder brother Ali Mirza Safavi, driving the young Ismail into hiding in Gilan. At twelve he re-emerged; in the summer of 1500 he gathered about 7,000 Qizilbash at Erzincan, beat the Shirvanshah Farrukh Yassar and took Baku, then defeated the Aq Qoyunlu at Sharur despite being heavily outnumbered.
Reader's Guide
After seizing Tabriz in July 1501, Ismail was crowned and took the title Pādshāh-i Irān, making Tabriz his capital and naming Husayn Beg Shamlu as vakil. Behind the young ruler, a circle of seven advisers, the ahl-i ikhtisas, steered the revolution.
His push into Eastern Anatolia set him against the Ottoman Empire, which crushed his army at the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514 and halted his conquests. He sank into depression and drink, and his eldest son Tahmasp I succeeded him in 1524. At its height the Safavid realm covered present-day Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Iraq.
Did You Know?
- In 1508 he destroyed the tombs of the Abbasid caliphs, Abu Hanifa and Abdul Qadir Gilani.
- He was a great-great-grandson of Emperor Alexios IV of Trebizond and King Alexander I of Georgia.
- He proclaimed himself the Mahdi and a reincarnation of Ali.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Ismail I (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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