5 - Safavid Persia

Summary

Despite recent research, the origins of the Safavid family are still obscure. Such evidence as we have seems to suggest that the family hailed from Kurdistān. What does seem certain is that the Safavids were of native Iranian stock, and spoke Āzarī, the form of Turkish used in Āzarbāyjān. Our lack of reliable information derives from the fact that the Safavids, after the establishment of the Safavid state, deliberately falsified the evidence of their own origins. Their fundamental object in claiming a Shi‘ī origin was to differentiate themselves from the Ottomans and to enable them to enlist the sympathies of all heterodox elements. To this end they systematically destroyed any evidence which indicated that Shaykh Safī al-Dīn Ishāq, the founder of the Safavid tarīqa was not a Shī‘ī (he was probably a Sunnī of the Shāfi‘ī madhhab), and they fabricated evidence to prove that the Safavids were sayyids, that is, direct descendants of the Prophet. They constructed a dubious genealogy tracing the descent of the Safavid family from the seventh of the Twelver Imāms, Mūsā al-Kāzim—a genealogy which is seduously followed by the later Safavid sources—and introduced into the text of a hagiological work on the life of Shaykh Safī al-Dīn, a number of anecdotes designed to validate the Safavid claim to be sayyids. Viewed dispassionately, the majority of these anecdotes appear ingenuous, not to say naïve.