User:Grandmaster/Safavids
The Safavid threat to the Ottomans was rendered at once more acute and more intimate by the Turkish origin of the Safavid family and their extensive support in Turkish Anatolia.
It is ironic that in the increasingly angry correspondence between the two monarchs that preceded the outbreak of hostilities, the sultan wrote to the shah in Persian, the language of urban, cultivated gentlemen, while the Shah wrote to the Sultan in Turkish - the language of his rural and tribal origins.
Bernard Lewis. The Middle East. ISBN: 0684832801
Shi'ism was reintroduced and imposed by the Safavids many centuries later, and they, I would remind you, were Turks. Until then Iran was a largely Sunni country. Iran in History by Bernard Lewis
The Azeri Turks are Shiites and were founders of the Safavid dynasty. Encyclopaedia Iranica. R. N. Frye. Peoples of Iran.
In 1501 Ismail, the leader of a Shiite religious group the Safavids, became Shah of Persia. Ismail was ethnically Turkish, as therefore was the Safavid dynasty that he now founded. His accession to power and the establishment of his family on the throne reignited the border wars between the rulers of Iran and those of the Middle East.
Christopher Catherwood. A Brief History of the Middle East: From Abraham to Arafat. ISBN-10: 1841198706
The establishment of the Gajar capital in Tehran at the end of the eighteenth century was merely the last manifestation of what may well be a permanent tendency in the life of Iran. There are manifold reason of this phenomenon. Moreover, the Turkish and Mongol origins of the earliest dynasties certainly played a major part in causing the capitals to be situated in the north, and especially along the main invasion route following Alburz into Azarbaijan. The princes of these basically nomadic states were anxious both to be near their tribes and to avoid the excessive heat of the climate farther to the south. This helps to explain the evolution of Tabriz, which, despite all the vicissitudes, was the capital successively of the Mongols, the Qara Qoyunlu, the Aq Qoyunlu, and finally the Safavids, all of whom stemmed originally from the Turkmen tribes of the north-west from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Tabriz was abandoned only for short periods, and always for other cities in the same region: Maragheh, whose, fertile pasture land had attracted Hulagu, Ardabil, the cradle of the Safavids; and Sultaniyeh.
The Cambridge History of Iran (in eight Volumes). Volume 1. The Land of Iran. Edited by W.B.Fisher, Cambridge at the University Press, 1968. Page 434.
The oldest poet of Azeri literature known so far (and indubitably of Azeri, not East Anatolian or Khorasani, origin) is Emad-al-din Nasimi (about 1369 – 1404, q.v.). Other important Azeri poets were Shah Esma'il Safawi "Khata'i" (1487 – 1524) and Fozuli (about 1494 – 1556,q.v.), an outstanding Azeri poet. During 17th – 20th centuries a rich Azeri literature continued to flourish, but classical Persian exercised great influence on the language and literary expression. On the other hand, many Azeri words (about 1.200) entered Persian (still more in Kurdish), since Iran was governed mostly by Azeri-speaking rulers and soldiers since 16th century (Doerfer, 1963-75); these loanwords refer mainly to administration, titles and conduct of war. [1]
Shah Abbas II (r. 1052 – 77/ 1642 – 66 q.v.) was himself a poet, writing Turkic verse with the pen name of Tani. [2]
Dr. Eric Hooglund, one of the most accomplished experts on Iran:
- Azeris make up about 20 percent of Iran's population. Since the 17th century they have been the ruling elite of Iran, and remain so. Most leaders in Iran such as Hamaney, the religious leader, have an ethnic Azeri background. The Azeris, who are part of the political elite are bilingual, speak Azeri and Persian. The Safawi dynasty was Azeri. The Kaja were Azeri. The difference between the present Islamic republic and the monarchy that became corrupt is that the domination of the country by Azeris has been diluted. In Tehran, which people joke about as the capital of Azerbaijan, there has been a lot of movement of non-Azeris into the city. So Tehran is no longer considered an Azeri city as it was from 1786 to 1979, almost 200 hundred years. A lot them are just "Persianized". Among Persians, and virtually everyone in the Iranian government who claim to be Persian, they have at least one or probably four Azeri grandparents who couldn't speak a word of Persian. They lose the language. Persian is considered among the elite. When you tell an Iranian that Islam mystic Mevlana Jalaladdin-i Rumi spent most the productive parts of his life in Konya, even people in Turk Tebriz, they won't believe it, they'll get mad. They won't agree because he wrote in Persian.
The origins of the Safavids are clouded in obscurity. They may have been of Kurdish origin (see R. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, 1980, p. 2; R. Matthee, "Safavid Dynasty" at iranica.com), but for all practical purposes they were Turkish-speaking and Turkified. Their eponymous ancestor, Safi-al-Din (1252-1334), was a disciple of Shaikh Zahed of Gilan, a Sunnite Sufi pir or spiritual leader. Safi-al-Din succeeded his pir and settled in Ardabil in eastern Azerbaijan, and founded the Safavid Order. He was buried there, and his tomb and the citybecame a place of pilgrimage for his devotees. In the course of time and under the leadership of Safi-al-Din's descendents, the order became a militant Shiite one, with golat or extremist features, receiving support from Turkish and Turkmen tribes in Azerbaijan and eastern Anatolia, such as the Shamlu, Ostajlu, Takallu, D¨u'l-Qadr, Qajar, and Afshar tribes, who had strong devotional ties to the heads of the Order. Encyclopaedia Iranica. Iran. The Safavids (1501-1722)
In the sixteenth century there came into being a great Persian empire. It was founded by an Azeri Turk named Ismail, leader of a religious sect which dated from the early fourteenth century, had long been confined to the Ardabil district of the north-west, and merged with Shi'ism in the mid-fifteenth.
Hugh Seton-Watson. Nations and States: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism. Taylor & Francis, 1977. ISBN 0416768105, 9780416768107
The Zands were an Iranian people, and their decades of dominance were one of the few periods, between the arrival of the Saljūqs and the twentieth century, during which effective political power was exercised by a dynasty that can be regarded as in some sense ethnically "Persian".
David Morgan. Medieval Persia, 1040-1797 (History of the Near East) ISBN: 0582493242
With the exception of some very local dynasties, the Zands were the only Iranian dynasty that had come to power since the Buyids in the 10th century. Encyclopaedia Iranica. Iran. Successors of the Safavids