Shah Ismail I

ProfileShah Ismail I

Ismail was born in Ardabil in 1487 into the family that led the Safavid Sufi order. By then the order had become a fighting movement, followed by Turkmen tribesmen known as the Qizilbash, the "red heads", after their red caps. His father, Haydar, was killed in battle when Ismail was a baby, and his elder brother was killed a few years later. The boy was hidden in Gilan, near the Caspian Sea, where Shia teachers brought him up.

In 1499, aged about twelve, he came out of hiding to lead his followers, many of whom saw him in almost sacred terms. In 1501 his army took Tabriz, and he was crowned shah while still in his early teens. Within ten years most of Iran was his, and in 1510 he defeated the Uzbeks near Merv.

He declared Twelver Shi'ism the religion of his state. Iran had been mainly Sunni, and the change was imposed by force: Sunni scholars who resisted were killed or driven out, the Sufi orders were suppressed, and the public cursing of the first three caliphs was required. Shia scholars were brought from Iraq and Lebanon to teach the new faith, and over the next two centuries most of Iran became Shia.

His run of victories ended at Chaldiran in 1514, where the guns of the Ottoman sultan Selim I broke his cavalry. He never led an army again and left most of the work of government to others. He wrote poems in Turkish under the pen name Khata'i. He died in 1524 and was buried at Ardabil.

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Further reading

• library.howtomuslim.orgLost Islamic History, chapter 10By Firas Alkhateeb. Our notes on each chapter, with a timeline and a map, are in the Rawdah library.

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