- The origins of the Safavid family are shrouded in some mystery, and the mystery is compounded by ideological distortions which were perpetrated, during their political reign. Like many dynasties in history, in order to gain wider legitimacy, the Safavids claimed direct male descendant from the Prophet Muhammad. According to Professor Roger Savory, an eminent Safavid historian: "There seems now to be a consensus among scholars that the Safavid family hailed from Persian Kurdistan, and later moved to Azerbaijan, finally settling in the 5th/11th century at Ardabil. The oldest extant book on the genealogy of the Safavid family and the only one that is pre-1501 is titled “Safwat as-Safa” and was written by Ibn Bazzaz. Ibn Bazzaz who was a disciple of Shaykh Sadr-al-Din Ardabili, the son of the Shaykh Safi ad-din Ardabili. In the oldest extant manuscript of Ibn Bazzaz, the Shaykh is a descendant of a noble Kurdish men named Firuz Shah Zarin Kolah the Kurd of Sanjan. The Turkish Scholar Zeki Velid Togan examined the two oldest extant manuscripts of the Safwat as-Safa and compared two pre-1501 manuscripts with a manuscript after 1501. All references to the Sunnism of the Shaykh and Kurdish origin of Firuz were removed in the post-1501 manuscripts. Zeki Velid Togan remarks: "II ne fait aucun doute que les souverains Shah Isma'il et Shah Tahmasb se sont donne toutes les peines du monde pour effacer de I'histoire leur origin e kurde, pour attribuer au kurde Firouz la qualite de descendant du Prophete, et pour faire valoir que le Shaykh Safi etait un shaykh turc shiite, auteur de poemes turcs" (There is not any doubt that the sovereigns Shah Ismail and Shah Tahmasb gave each other all the sorrows of the world to erase their history, their Kurdish origin, to allot to Kurdish Firouz the quality of descendant of the Prophet, and to make the point that Shaykh Safï was a Turkish shaykh shiilte and Turkish author of poem)[1].
- Professor Roger Savory remarks on the Safwat As-Safa[2]:
| “ | Ebn Bazzaz completed this voluminous work (over 800 folios) around 759/1358, only twenty-four years after the death of Shaikh Safi-al-Din. It is written in a straightforward style, without much rhetorical embellishment. Ideologically-motivated alterations were already present in a manuscript dated 914/1508, during the reign of Shah Esmail I. Shah Tahmasb (930-84/1524-76) ordered Mir Abul-Fatha Hosayn to produce a revised edition of the Safwat al-Safa. This official version contains textual changes designed to obscure the Kurdish origins of the Safavid family and to vindicate their claim to descent from the Imams. | ” |
- According to Professor Richard Tapper[3]:
| “ | The Safavid Shahs who ruled Iran between 1501 and 1722 descended from Sheikh Sari ad-Din of Ardabil (1252 1334). Sheikh Safi and his immediate successors were renowned as holy ascetic Sufis. Their own origins were obscure: probably of Kurdish or Iranian extraction, they later claimed descent from the Prophet. They acquired a widespread following at first among the Local Iranian population, and later among die Turkic tribes people who had been advancing from Central Asia into Azarbaijan and Anatolia from the eleventh century onwards. | ” |
- According to the Islamic reference desk (a summary of the Encyclopedia of Islam)[4]:
| “ | Safawids: the dynasty which ruled Persia from 1501 till 1786. Turkish-speaking and quite probably of Kurdish origin, the dynasty took its name from Shaykh Safi al-Din al-Ardabili | ” |
- According to Mehrdad R. Izady[5]:
| “ | According to ibn Bazzaz, Shaykh Safi al-Din’s Kurdish ancestor, Piroz Shah Zarin Kulah, had emigrated, along with a larger Kurdish clan, from the Sanjar region in modern Syria in the 10th century | ” |
- Professor Heinz Halm opines[6]:
| “ | The eponymous forfather of the later Safavid dynasty, Shakh Safi al-din Ishaq was a dervish probably of Kurdish origin who enjoyed high religious prestige in his home town of Ardabil in Azarbayjan | ” |
- Professor Ehsan Yarshater remarks[7]: "...Azari [=Middle-Iranian language spoken in Azerbaijan before the Turkic conquest] lost ground [in Azerbaijan] at a faster pace than before, so that even the early Safavids, originally an Iranian-speaking clan (as evidenced by the quatrains of Shaikh Safi-al-Din, their eponymous ancestor, and by his biography), became Turkified and adopted Turkish as their vernacular..."
- Professor Vladimir Minorsky opines[8]:
| “ | The question of the language used by Shah Ismail is not identical with that of his "race" or "nationality". His ancestry was mixed: one of his grandmothers was a Greek princess of Trebizond. Hinz, Aufstieg, 74, comes to the conclusion that the blood in his veins was chiefly non-Turkish. Already, his son Shah Tahmasp began to get rid of his Turcoman praetorians. | ” |
- Professor. Farhad Daftary states[9]:
| “ | But the origins of the family of Shaykh Safi al-Din go back not to the Hijaz but to Kurdistan, from where, seven generations before him, Firuz Shah Zarin-kulah had migrated to Adharbayjan. | ” |
- In 1501, when Shah Ismail proclaimed his public allegiance to the Imami Faith, the Husaini/Musavi lineage of the Safavids had not yet been officially engraved upon their genealogical tree. It is true that during their revolutionary phase (1447-1501) Safavid pirs had played on descent from the family of the Prophet. Shaykh Safi al-Din’s hagiography Safvat as-Safa (by Ibn Bazzaz, 751/1350), was first tampered with during this very phase. As the initial revisions saw the transformation of Safavid identity as Sunni Kurds into blood descendant of Muhammad.[10]
- Ira M. Lapidus is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California at Berkeley. Here is a more general source:
| “ | The Safavid movement, founded by Shaykh Safi al-Din (1252-1334), a Sunni Sufi religious teacher descended from a Kurdish family in northwestern Iran.[11] | ” |
- The Safawid was originally a Sufi order whose founder, Shaykh Safi al-Din (1252-1334) was a Sunni Sufi master from a Kurdish family in north-west Iran[12]
- The Safavid family’s base of power sprang from a Sufi order, and the name of the order came from its founder Shaykh Safi al-Din. The Shaykh’s family had been resident in Azerbaijan since Saljuk times and then in Ardabil, and was probably Kurdish in origin.[13]
- The Safavid order had been founded by Shaykh Safi al-Din (1252-1334), a man of uncertain but probably Kurdish origin[14]
- It is true that during their revolutionary phase (1447-1501), Safavi guides had played on their descent from the family of the Prophet. The hagiography of the founder of the Safavi order, Shaykh Safi al-Din Safvat al-Safa written by Ibn Bazzaz in 1350-was tampered with during this very phase. An initial stage of revisions saw the transformation of Safavi identity as Sunni Kurds into Arab blood descendants of Muhammad.[15]
References edit
- ^ Z. V. Togan, "Sur l’Origine des Safavides," in Melanges Louis Massignon, Damascus, 1957, III, pp. 345-57
- ^ R.M. Savory. Ebn Bazzaz. Encyclopedia Iranica
- ^ Tapper, Richard, FRONTIER NOMADS OF IRAN. A political and social history of the Shahsevan. Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997. pp 39.
- ^ Emeri van Donzel, Islamic Desk Reference compiled from the Encyclopedia of Islam, E.J. Brill, 1994, pp 381
- ^ Izady, Mehrdad, The Kurds: A Concise Handbook. Taylor and Francis, Inc., Washington. 1992. pp 50
- ^ Heinz Halm, Shi'ism, translated by Janet Watson. New Material translated by Marian Hill, 2nd edition, Columbia University Press, pp 75
- ^ E. Yarshater, Encyclopaedia Iranica, "The Iranian Language of Azerbaijan"
- ^ V. Minorsky, The Poetry of Shah Ismail, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 10, No. 4. (1942), pp. 1053)
- ^ Farhad Daftary, Intellectual Traditions in Islam, I.B.Tauris, 2000. pp 147
- ^ Kathyan, Babayan, Sufis, Dervishes, Mullas: The Controversy over the Spiritual and Temporal Dominion in the Seventeenth-Century Iran ’, in Safavid Persia , 1996, pg. 124.
- ^ Ira Marvin Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies: “Iran: Mongol, Timirud and Safavid Empire”, Cambridge University Press, 2002. pg 233
- ^ Muhammad Kamal, Mulla Sadra's Transcendent Philosophy, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2006. pg 24
- ^ Gene Ralph Garthwaite, “The Persians”, Blackwell Publishing, 2004. pg 159 : Chapter on Safavids
- ^ Elton L. Daniel, The history of Iran, Greenwood Press, 2000. pg 83
- ^ Kathryn Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran , Cambridge , Mass. ; London : Harvard University Press, 2002. pg 143