Tahmasp I
Tahmasp I (Persian: طهماسب یکم, romanized: Ṭahmāsb or تهماسب یکم Tahmâsb; 22 February 1514 – 14 May 1576) was the second shah of Safavid Iran from 1524 until his death in 1576. He was the eldest son of Ismail I and his principal consort, Tajlu Khanum. Ascending the throne after the death of his father on 23 May 1524, the first years of Tahmasp's reign were marked by civil wars between the Qizilbash leaders until 1532, when he asserted his authority and began an absolute monarchy. He soon faced a long-lasting war with the Ottoman Empire, which was divided into three phases. The Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, tried to install his own candidates on the Safavid throne. The war ended with the Peace of Amasya in 1555, with the Ottomans gaining sovereignty over Iraq, much of Kurdistan, and western Georgia. Tahmasp also had conflicts with the Uzbeks of Bukhara over Khorasan, with them repeatedly raiding Herat. In 1528, at the age of fourteen, he defeated the Uzbeks in the Battle of Jam by using artillery.
Tahmasp was a patron of the arts and was an accomplished painter himself. He built a royal house of arts for painters, calligraphers and poets. Later in his reign, he came to despise poets, shunning many and exiling them to the Mughal court of India. Tahmasp is known for his religious piety and fervent zealotry for the Shia branch of Islam. He bestowed many privileges on the clergy and allowed them to participate in legal and administrative matters. In 1544 he demanded that the fugitive Mughal emperor Humayun convert to Shi'ism in return for military assistance to reclaim his throne in India. Nevertheless, Tahmasp still negotiated alliances with the Christian powers of the Republic of Venice and the Habsburg monarchy who were also rivals of the Ottoman Empire.
His succession was disputed before his death. When Tahmasp died, a civil war followed, leading to the death of most of the royal family. Tahmasp's reign of nearly fifty-two years was the longest of any member of the Safavid dynasty. Although contemporary Western accounts were critical, modern historians describe him as a courageous and able commander who maintained and expanded his father's empire. His reign saw a shift in the Safavid ideological policy; he ended the worshipping of his father as the Messiah by the Turkoman Qizilbash tribes and instead established a public image of a pious and orthodox Shia king. He started a long process followed by his successors to end the Qizilbash influence on Safavid politics, replacing them with the newly introduced 'third force' containing Islamized Georgians and Armenians.
Tahmasp was the second shah of the Safavid dynasty, a family of Kurdish origin,who were sheikhs of a Sufi tariqa (school of Sufism) known as the Safavid order and centred in Ardabil, a city in the northwestern Iran. The first sheikh of the order and eponym of the dynasty, Safi-ad-din Ardabili (d. 1334), married the daughter of Zahed Gilani (d. 1301) and became the master of his father-in-law's order, the Zahediyeh.[6] Two of Safi-ad-Din's descendants, Shaykh Junayd (d. 1460) and his son, Shaykh Haydar (d. 1488), made the order more militant and unsuccessfully tried to expand their domain.
Tahmasp's father, Ismail I (r. 1501–1524), who inherited the leadership the Safavid order from his grandfather, Shaykh Haydar, became shah of Iran in 1501, a state mired in civil war after the collapse of the Timurid Empire. He conquered the territories of the Aq Qoyunlu tribal confederation, the lands of the Chinggisid(Descendant of Genghis Khan) Uzbek Shaybanid dynasty in the eastern Iran, and many city-states by 1512.Ismail's realm included the whole territory of modern Iran, in addition to sovereignty over Georgia, Armenia, Daghestan, and Shirvan in the west, and Herat in the east.Unlike his Sufist ancestors, Ismail believed in Twelver Shia Islam and made it the official religion of the realm. He forced conversion on the Sunni population by abolishing Sunni Sufi orders, seizing their property, and giving the Sunni ulama (Islamic clergymen) a choice of conversion, death, or exile.From this, a power vacuum emerged which allowed the Shia ulama to create a clerical aristocracy filled with seyyid (descendant of Muhammad) and mujtahid (Islamic scholar expert in the Islamic law) landowners.
Ismail established the Qizilbash Turkoman tribes as inseparable members of the Safavid administration since they were the "men of the sword" who brought him to power. These "men of the sword" clashed with the other major part of his bureaucracy, the "men of the pen", who controlled the literati and were mainly Persian. Ismail created the title of vakil-e nafs-e nafs-e homayoun (deputy to the king) to resolve the dispute.The title of vakil surpassed both the amir al-umara (commander-in-chief; mostly bestowed upon Qizilbash leaders), and the vizier (minister and head of the bureaucracy) in authority. The holder of the title was the vicegerent of Ismail and represented him in the royal court.The creation of this new superior title could not cease the clashes between the Qizilbash leaders and Persian bureaucrats, which eventually climaxed in the Battle of Ghazdewan between the Safavids and the Uzbeks, in which Ismail's vakil, the Persian Najm-e Sani, commended the army. The Uzbek victory, during which Najm was captured and executed afterwards, was the result of the desertion of many of the Qizilbash.
The Uzbeks of Bukhara were a recurring problem on the Iranian eastern borders. The Safavids and the Shaybanids rose to power almost simultaneously at the turn of the sixteenth century. By 1503, when Ismail I had taken possession of large parts of the Iranian plateau, Muhammad Shaybani, Khan of Bukhara (r. 1500–1510), had conquered Khwarazm and Khorasan. Ismail defeated and killed Muhammad Shaybani in the Battle of Marv in 1510, returning Khorasan to Iranian possession, though Khwarazm and the Persianate cities in Transoxiana remained in Uzbek hands.Thereafter the possession of Khorasan became the main bone of contention between Safavids and Shaybanids.
In 1514, Ismail's prestige and authority were damaged by his loss in the Battle of Chaldiran against the Ottoman Empire. Before the war with the Ottomans, Ismail promoted himself as a reincarnation of Ali or Husayn.This belief weakened after Chaldiran, and Ismail lost his theological-religious relationship with the disappointed Qizilbash tribes who had previously seen him as invincible.This affected Ismail, who began drinking heavily and never again led an army; this permitted the seizure of power by the Qizilbash tribes which overshadowed Tahmasp's early reign.
Abu'l-Fath Tahmasp Mirza was born on 22 February 1514 in Shahabad, a village near Isfahan, as the eldest son of Ismail I and his principal consort, Tajlu Khanum.According to the narrative told by Iranian naqqals (coffeehouse storytellers), on the night of Tahmasp's birth, a storm erupted, with wind, rain, and lightning. Tajlu Khanum, feeling her labour pains beginning, suggested that the royal caravan camp in some village. The royal caravan thus headed to Shahabad. The kadkhoda (warden) of the village was a Sunni and did not let Tajlu Khanum enter his house, but a Shia resident of the village welcomed her into his modest house. By then, Tajlu Begum's pain had made her faint, and shortly after entering the house gave birth to a son.When the news reached Ismail, he was reportedly "heaped" with utmost joy and happiness, but refrained from seeing his son until his astrologers gave him an auspicious date to do so. When the auspicious hour arrived, the young boy was presented to Ismail and astrologers foresaw his future to be one entwisted with war and peace and that he would have many sons.Ismail named the boy Tahmasp after Ali, the first Imam, told him to do so in his dream.
In 1516, when Tahmasp Mirza was two years old, the province of Khorasan became his fief by Ismail's order.This appointment was specially done to emulate the Timurid dynasty, that followed the Turco-Mongol tradition of appointing the eldest son of a sovereign to govern a prominent province like Khorasan. The centre of this major province, the city of Herat, would go on to be the city where Safavid crown princes were raised, trained, and educated throughout the sixteenth century.In 1517, Ismail appointed the Diyarbakr governor Amir Soltan Mawsillu as Tahmasp's lala (tutor) and governor of Balkh, a city in Khorasan. He replaced the Shamlu and Mawsillu governors of Khorasan, who did not join his army during the Battle of Chaldiran for fear of famine. Placing Tahmasp in Herat was an attempt to reduce the growing influence of the Shamlu tribe, which dominated Safavid court politics and held a number of powerful governorships. Ismail also appointed Amir Ghiyath al-Din Mohammad, a prominent Herat figure, as Tahmasp's religious tutor.
A struggle for control of Herat emerged between the two tutors. Amir Soltan arrested Ghiyath al-Din and executed him the following day, but was ousted from his position in 1521 by a sudden raid by the Uzbeks who crossed the Amu Darya and seized portions of the city. Ismail appointed Div Sultan Rumlu as Tahmasp's lala, and the governorship was given to his younger son, Sam Mirza Safavi.During his years in Herat, Tahmasp developed a love for writing and painting. He became an accomplished painter and dedicated a work to his brother, Bahram Mirza. The painting was a humorous composition of a gathering of Safavid courtiers, featuring music, singing, and wine-drinking.
In the spring of 1524, Ismail became ill on a hunting trip to Georgia and recovered in Ardabil on his way back to the capital. But he soon developed a high fever which led to his death on 23 May 1524 in Tabriz.
The ten-year-old Tahmasp ascended the throne after his father's death under the guardianship of Div Sultan Rumlu, his lala, the de facto ruler of the realm.Rule by a member of the Rumlu tribe was unacceptable to the other Turkoman tribes of the Qizilbash, especially the Ostajlu and Takkalu. Kopek Sultan, governor of Tabriz and leader of Ostajlu, along with Chuha Sultan, leader of the Takkalu tribe, were Div Sultan Rumlu's strongest opponents. The Takkalu were powerful in Isfahan and Hamadan, and the Ostajlu held Khorasan and the Safavid capital, Tabriz. Rumlu proposed a triumvirate to the two leaders which was accepted, the terms were for sharing the office of amir al-umara.The triumvirate proved unsustainable, since all sides were dissatisfied with their share of power. In the spring of 1526, a series of battles in northwest Iran between these tribes expanded into Khorasan and became a civil war. The Ostajlu faction was quickly excluded and their leader, Kopek Sultan, was killed by order of Chuha Sultan.During the civil war, the Uzbeks raiders temporarily seized Tus and Astarabad. Div Sultan Rumlu was blamed for the raids and was executed.His execution was performed by Tahmasp himself.
At the behest of the young king, Chuha Sultan, the sole remaining member of the triumvirate, became de facto ruler of the realm from 1527 to 1530.Chuha tried to remove Herat from Shamlu dominance, which led to a conflict between the two tribes. In early 1530, the Herat governor, Hossein Khan Shamlu, and his men killed Chuha and executed every Takkalu in the retinue of the shah in the royal camp. This provoked the Takkalu tribe to rebellion, and a few days later, in an act of retaliation, they attacked the shah's retinue in Hamadan. One of the tribesman attempted to abduct the young Tahmasp, who had him put to death. Then Tahmasp ordered the general slaughter of the Takkalu tribe; many were killed, and many fled to Baghdad, where the governor, himself a Takkalu, put some to death to prove his loyalty. Eventually, the remaining Takkalu managed to flee to the Ottoman Empire. In the contemporary chronicles, the downfall of Chuha Sultan and the massacre of his tribe is dubbed "the Takkalu pestilence".Hossein Khan Shamlu thereafter assumed Chuha Sultan's position with the consent of the Qizilbash leaders.
While the civil war was ongoing among the Qizilbash, the Uzbeks under Ubayd Allah Khan conquered the borderlands.In 1528, Ubayd reconquered Astarabad and Tus and besieged Herat. Fourteen-year-old Tahmasp commanded the army and defeated the Uzbeks, distinguishing himself at the Battle of Jam. Safavid superiority in the battle was due to many different factors, one of them being their use of artillery, which they had learned from the Ottomans.The then governor of Herat and Tahmasp's regent, Hossein Khan Shamlu, distinguished himself during the battle and earned the respect of the shah. The victory, however, reduced neither the Uzbek threat nor the realm's internal chaos, since Tahmasp had to return to the west to suppress a rebellion in Baghdad. That year, the Uzbeks captured Herat; however, they allowed Sam Mirza to return to Tabriz. Their occupation did not last long, and Tahmasp drove them out in the summer of 1530. He appointed his brother, Bahram Mirza, governor of Khorasan and Ghazi Khan Takkalu, as Bahram's tutor.
By this point, Tahmasp had turned seventeen, and thus no longer needed a regent. Hossein Khan Shamlu circumvented this challenge by having himself named as the steward to Tahmasp's newborn son, Mohammad Mirza. Hossein Khan constantly undermined the shah's power and had angered Tahmasp many times. His confidence in his power, combined with the rumours that Hossein Khan intended to depose Tahmasp and place his brother, Sam Mirza, on the throne, finally led Tahmasp to rid himself of the powerful Shamlu amir. Thus Hossein Khan was overthrown and executed in 1533. His fall was a turning point for Tahmasp, who now knew that each Turkoman leader would favour his tribe. He reduced the influence of the Qizilbash and gave the "men of the pen" bureaucracy greater power, ending the regency.
Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566), sultan of the Ottoman Empire, may have considered a strong Safavid empire a threat to his ambitious plans in the west and northwest of his realm. During the first decade of Tahmasp's reign, however, he was preoccupied with fighting the Habsburgs and the unsuccessful attempt to seize Vienna. In 1532, while the Ottomans were fighting in Hungary, Suleiman sent Olama Beg Takkalu with 50,000 troops under Fil Pasha to Iran.Olama Beg was one of many Takkalu members who, after Chuha's death, took refuge in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans seized Tabriz and Kurdistan, and tried to obtain support from Gilan province.Tahmasp drove the Ottomans out, but news of another Uzbek invasion prevented him from defeating them. Suleiman sent his grand vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, to occupy Tabriz in July 1534 and joined him two months later. Suleiman peacefully conquered Baghdad and Shia cities such as Najaf.Whilst the Ottomans were on the march, Tahmasp was in Balkh, campaigning against the Uzbeks.
The first Ottoman invasion caused the greatest crisis of Tahmasp's reign. Its events however are difficult to reconstruct; on an unknown date, an agent from the Shamlu tribe unsuccessfully tried to poison Tahmasp; they revolted against the shah, who had recently asserted his authority by removing Hossein Khan.Seeking to dethrone Tahmasp, they chose one of his younger brothers, Sam Mirza (who had a Shamlu guardian) as their candidate. The rebels then contacted Suleiman and asked him for support in enthroning Sam Mirza, who promised to follow a pro-Ottoman policy.Suleiman recognised him as ruler of Iran, which panicked Tahmasp's court.Tahmasp reconquered the seized territory when Suleiman went to Mesopotamia, and Suleiman led another campaign against him. Tahmasp attacked his rearguard, and Suleiman was forced to retreat to Istanbul at the end of 1535 after losing all his gains except Baghdad.After confronting the Ottomans, Tahmasp rushed to Khorasan to defeat his brother. Sam Mirza surrendered and sought mercy from Tahmasp. The shah accepted his brother's pleads and banished him to Qazvin but otherwise executed many of his advisors, namely, his Shamlu guardian.
Eventually, Alqas Mirza was captured on the battlefield and imprisoned in a fortress, where he died. Suleiman ended his campaign, and by the fall of 1549 the remaining Ottoman forces retreated.The Ottoman sultan launched his last campaign against the Safavids in May 1554, when Ismail Mirza (Tahmasp's son) invaded eastern Anatolia and defeated Erzerum governor Iskandar Pasha. Suleiman marched from Diyarbakr towards Armenian Karabakh and reconquered the lost lands.Tahmasp divided his army into four corps and sent each in a different direction, indicating a Safavid army that had grown much larger than it was in the previous wars. With Tahmasp's Safavids holding the advantage, Suleiman had to retreat. The Ottomans negotiated the Peace of Amasya, in which Tahmasp recognised Ottoman sovereignty in Mesopotamia and much of Kurdistan; furthermore, as an act of obeisance towards Sunni Islam and Sunnis, he banned the holding of Omar Koshan (a festival commemorating the assassination of the second caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab) and expressing hatred towards the Rashidun caliphs, who are held dear by the Sunni Muslims. The Ottomans allowed Iranian pilgrims to travel freely to Mecca, Medina, Karbala, and Najaf.Through this treaty, Iran had time to increase its forces and resources as its western provinces had the opportunity to recuperate from the war. This peace also demarcated the Ottoman-Safavid frontier in the north-west without the cession of large areas of territory on the Safavid side.These terms, in circumstances favourable to the Safavids, were evidence of the frustration felt by Suleiman the Magnificent at his inability to inflict a greater defeat on the Safavids.
Tahmasp was interested in the Caucasus, especially Georgia, for two reasons: to reduce the influence of the Ostajlu tribe (who kept their lands in southern Georgia and Armenia after the 1526 civil war) and a desire for booty, similar to that of his father. Since the Georgians were mainly Christian, he used the pretext of Jihad (Islamic armed struggle against nonbelievers) to justify the invasion. Between 1540 and 1553, Tahmasp led four campaigns against the Georgian kingdoms.The Safavid army looted Tbilisi, including its churches and the wives and children of the nobility, in the first campaign.Tahmasp also forced the governor of Tbilisi, Golbad, to convert to Islam. The King of Kartli, Luarsab I (r. 1527/1534–1556/1558), managed to escape and went to hiding during Tahmasp's raiding.During his second invasion, ostensibly to ensure the stability of Georgian territory, he looted the farms and subjugated Levan of Kakheti (r. 1518/1520–1574).One year before the Peace of Amasya in 1554, Tahmasp led his last military campaign into the Caucasus. Throughout his campaigns, he took many prisoners, and this time he brought 30,000 Georgians to Iran. Luarsab's mother, Nestan Darejan was captured during these campaigns, but committed suicide upon incarceration. The descendants of these prisoners formed a "third force" in the Safavid administration and bureaucracy with the Turkomans and Persians and became a main rival to the other two during the later years of the Safavid Empire.Although this "third force" came to power two generations later during the reign of Tahmasp's grandson, Abbas the Great (r. 1588–1629), it began infiltrating Tahmasp's army during the second quarter of his reign as gholams (slave warriors) and qorchis (royal bodyguards of the shah) and became more influential at the apex of the Safavid empire.
In 1555, following the Peace of Amasya, eastern Georgia remained in Iranian hands and western Georgia was ruled by the Turks.Never again did Tahmasp appear on the Caucasus frontier after the treaty. Instead, the Governor of Georgia, Shahverdi Sultan, represented Safavid power north of the Aras River.Tahmasp sought to establish his dominance by imposing several Iranian political and social institutions and placing converts to Islam on the thrones of Kartli and Kakheti; one was Davud Khan, brother of Simon I of Kartli (r. 1556–1569, 1578–1599). Son of Levan of Kakheti, Prince Jesse also appeared in Qazvin during the 1560s and converted to Islam. In return, Tahmasp granted him favours and gifts. The prince was given the old royal palace for his residence in Qazvin, and became the governor of Shaki and adjacent territories. The conversion of these Georgian princes did not dissuade the Georgian forces who tried to reconquer Tbilisi under Simon I and his father, Luarsab I of Kartli, in the Battle of Garisi; the battle ended in a stalemate, with Luarsab and the Safavid commander Shahverdi Sultan both slain in battle.One of the most celebrated events of Tahmasp's reign was the visit of Humayun (r. 1530–1540), the eldest son of Babur (r. 1526–1530) and emperor of the Mughal Empire, who faced rebellions by his brothers. Humayun fled to Herat, travelled through Mashhad, Nishapur, Sabzevar, and Qazvin, and met Tahmasp at Soltaniyeh in 1544.Tahmasp honoured Homayun as a guest and gave him an illustrated version of Saadi's Gulistan dating back to the reign of Abu Sa'id Mirza (r. 1451–1469, 1459–1469), Humayun's great-grandfather; however, he refused to give him political assistance unless he converted to Shia Islam. Humayun reluctantly agreed, but reverted to Sunni Islam when he returned to India; however he did not force the Iranian Shias, who came with him to India, to convert. Tahmasp also demanded a quid pro quo in which the city of Kandahar would be given to his infant son, Morad Mirza. Humayun spent Nowruz in the Shah's court and left in 1545 with an army provided by Tahmasp to regain his lost lands; his first conquest was Kandahar, which he ceded to the young Safavid prince.Morad Mirza soon died, however, and the city became a bone of contention between the two empires: the Safavids claimed that it had been given to them in perpetuity, while the Mughals maintained that it had been an appanage that expired with the death of the prince.Tahmasp began the first Safavid expedition to Kandahar in 1558, after the death of Humayun, and reconquered the city.
Another notable visitor to Tahmasp's court was Şehzade Bayezid, the fugitive Ottoman prince who rebelled against his father, Suleiman the Magnificent, and went to the Shah in the autumn 1559 with an army of 10,000 to persuade him to begin a war against the Ottomans.Although he honoured Bayezid, Tahmasp did not want to disturb the Peace of Amasya. Suspecting that Bayezid was planning a coup, he had him arrested and returned to the Ottomans; Bayezid and his children were immediately executed.
Tahmasp's reign after the civil wars between the Qizilbash leaders became a "personal rule" that sought to control Turkoman influence by empowering the Persian bureaucracy. The key change was the 1535 appointment of Qazi Jahan Qazvini, who extended diplomacy beyond Iran by establishing contact with the Portuguese, the Venetians, the Mughals, and the Shiite Deccan sultanates.English explorer Anthony Jenkinson, who was received at the Safavid court in 1562, also sought to promote trade.The Habsburgs were eager to ally with the Safavids against the Ottomans. In 1529, Ferdinand I (r. 1558–1564) sent an envoy to Iran with the objective of a two-front attack on the Ottoman Empire the following year. The mission was unsuccessful, however, since the envoy took over a year to return.The first extant Safavid letters to a European power were sent in 1540 to Doge of Venice Pietro Lando (r. 1538–1545). In response, the Doge and the Great Council of Venice commissioned Michel Membré to visit the Safavid court. In 1540, he visited Tahmasp's encampment at Marand, near Tabriz. Membré's mission lasted for three years, during which, he wrote the Relazione di Persia, one of the few European sources which describe Tahmasp's court.In his letter to Lando, Tahmasp promised to "cleanse the earth of [Ottoman] wickedness" with the help of the Holy League. The alliance, however, never bore fruit.
One of the most important events of Tahmasp's reign was his relocation of the Safavid capital, which began what is known as the Qazvin period.Although the exact date is uncertain, Tahmasp began preparations to have the royal capital moved from Tabriz to Qazvin during a 1540s period of ethnic re-settlement.The move from Tabriz to Qazvin discontinued the Turco-Mongol tradition of shifting between summer and winter pastures with the herds, ending Ismail I's nomadic lifestyle.The idea of a Turkoman state with a center in Tabriz was abandoned for an empire centered on the Iranian plateau.Moving into a city that linked the realm to Khorasan through an ancient route, allowed a greater degree of centralisation as distant provinces such as Shirvan, Georgia, and Gilan were brought into the Safavid fold.The incorporation of Gilan in particular was vital to the Safavids. To ensure his permanent control on the province, Tahmasp arranged royal marriages with the influential families in Gilan.Qazvin's non-Qizilbash population allowed Tahmasp to bring new members to his court who were unrelated to the Turkoman tribes. The city, associated with orthodoxy and stable governance, developed under Tahmasp's patronage; the era's foremost building is Chehel Sotoun.
From the transition of capitals, a new era in history-writing emerged under Tahmasp's rule. The Safavid historiography, which until then relied only on historians outside of Safavid's influence, matured and became a valued project in Tahmasp's new court.Tahmasp is the only Safavid monarch to have recorded his memories, known as Tazkera-ye Shah Tahmasb.On the shah's behalf, Abdi Beg Shirazi, a secretary-accountant in the royal chancellery, wrote a world history named Takmelat al-akhbar, which he dedicated it to Pari Khan Khanum, Tahmasp's daughter. Although intended to be a world history, only the last part of the book which covers the reigns of Ismail I and Tahmasp up until 1570 was published.He also commissioned Abol-Fath Hosseini to rewrite Safvat as-safa, the oldest surviving text regarding Safi-ad-din Ardabili and the Sufi beliefs of the Safavids, in order to legitimise his sayyid claim. All of the historians under Tahmasp's patronage centred their works around one main goal: to tell the history of the Safavid dynasty. They defined themselves as 'Safavid' historians, as living in a Safavid period of Iranian history, a concept that had not been seen in the earlier chronicles of the dynasty. This new definement has its roots in the change of the capital and the urbanisation of the Safavid nomadic lifestyle. Historians such as Charles Melville and Sholeh Quinn thus consider Tahmasp's reign as the start of the "real flourishing of Safavid historiography".
