‘Abbās the Great

Persian shah (r. 1587-1629)

• Born: January 27, 1571
• Birthplace: Iran
• Died: January 19, 1629
• Place of death: Ashraf, Mazandaran, Iran

The most well known of all Islamic-era shahs of Persia, ՙAbbās the Great was the chief architect of the modern Iranian state. His legacy includes great achievements in architecture, literature, textiles, and painting.

Early Life

The second son of the relatively weak and incompetent Soltān Moḥammad Shāh (r. 1578-1587), ՙAbbās (later known as ՙAbbās the Great) spent his youth in Mashhad and Herát under the tutelage of a regional governor. Royal intrigue and strife between the royal family and Persian tribal military leaders led to the assassination of his mother, the ambitious Queen Khayronnesa Begum, and his older brother, the crown prince Hamzeh. ՙAbbās himself at the age of sixteen, led by a second guardian and tutor, deposed his father after a successful march on the royal capital at Qazvīn.

On a historical note, an Iranian dynasty named for their Sufi ancestor, the Persian mystic Ṣafī od-Dīn (1252/1253-1334), established control in 1501 over the region that constitutes what is now called Iran. Known as the Ṣafavids, they made up the first native dynasty to control the region since the Arab Muslims had overthrown the Sāsānian Dynasty (224-651) nearly nine centuries earlier. Reigning for more than two hundred years, the Ṣafavids developed and expanded a middle Islamic empire between the Ottomans, centered in Turkey to the west, and the Mughals, in the Indian subcontinent to the east. Modern Iran owes to the Ṣafavids the territorial configuration of the country and its national religion, Twelver Shia Islam, which they established as the official religion, thus enhancing Iranian distinctiveness and separateness from their Sunni Muslim neighbors and contributing later to their sense of cultural and political nationalism.

In all, eleven Ṣafavid monarchs ruled over Persia, the last two in name only, from 1722, when a successful invasion and occupation by the Afghans took place, until 1736, when Nāder Shāh (r. 1736-1747) established his own short-lived dynasty. Among the Ṣafavid monarchs, the most famous and important was Shāh ՙAbbās I (ՙAbbās the Great), who ruled for more than forty years.

At his accession, ՙAbbās faced three serious tasks. First was the internal need to establish control and authority over local dynasties that had reasserted themselves during his father’s reign and the tribal leaders, mostly Turkoman, who constituted a Ṣafavid military aristocracy that had developed from the dynasty’s early days. Second was another internal issue, that of securing the throne against other claimants or threats from within the royal family. Third was the monumental chore of defending Persia against perennial incursions by the powerful Ottomans to the west and the troublesome Uzbeks to the east.

Life’s Work

From the beginning of his reign, ՙAbbās focused his attention on the organization of the military and the Ottoman and Uzbek threats. In 1590, ending a war that had begun early in his father’s reign, ՙAbbās signed the unfavorable Treaty of Istanbul with the Ottomans so as to avoid having to deal simultaneously with two military fronts. He was now in a position to challenge the Uzbeks, who had occupied Mashhad and Herát for a decade. He regained those two important cities.

At the same time, ՙAbbās began a long-term reorganization of the corps of musketeers and the artillery corps and formed a new cavalry corps paid directly out of the royal treasury and composed of former slaves, prisoners of war, and others, many of them Georgians and Circassians, who would be loyal to the Crown rather than to regional tribal affiliations. Subsequently, he was able to quell revolts by tribal leaders and groups, to dispose of the governor-tutor who had helped him attain the throne, and to proceed to pacify various Iranian provinces. In effect, he had permanently tipped the scales in favor of the Iranian city and settled life as opposed to earlier rural and nomadic ways. He was effecting a centralized governmental administration that would be his legacy in Persia in succeeding centuries. His annexation of vassal states and his incorporation of vast amounts of territory into Crown lands were other dimensions of this policy.

By 1603, however, ՙAbbās was ready to confront the Ottomans again on his own terms. In 1605, the Ṣafavid army inflicted a great defeat on them near Tabriz, regaining that important city and former Iranian capital in the process. A new treaty in 1612 reestablished old borders more favorable to Iran. In the meantime, ՙAbbās had annexed the island of Bahrain in 1601-1602. Later, in 1622, with British assistance, he took Hormuz Island from the Portuguese. In 1623-1624, ՙAbbās broke the peace he had made with the Ottomans and reclaimed Kurdish territory to the west. In short, as of the first quarter of the seventeenth century, ՙAbbās had made the Ṣafavid Empire as large territorially as Persia would ever be.

When ՙAbbās ascended the throne, the Iranian population was suffering from wretched living conditions. By the end of his reign, the economic lot of ordinary Iranians was better than it had ever been in history. One of the reasons for the improvement was the stability his military and centralizing policies achieved. Another reason has to do with the energy and resources he invested into improving communication and transportation in Persia by numerous construction projects of roads, bridges, and caravansaries. Other factors are apparent in the king’s development of Eşfahan.

In 1598, ՙAbbās had moved the Ṣafavid capital from Qazvīn to Eşfahan. He then undertook great projects of construction in his new capital, building avenues, palaces, mosques, and gardens. He established commercial and diplomatic ties with the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British. The multiracial composition of his military corps and his relocation of several thousand Armenian families from Azerbaijan to a new Jolfa in Eşfahan reflected a tolerant attitude on ՙAbbās’s part in general toward races and creeds. This led to the presence of foreign merchants and orders of Christian missionaries. He hoped, through good relations with Europe, to form an alliance against the Ottomans, which never happened. What did happen was economic growth, to which his interest in the arts also contributed. For example, ՙAbbās established textile workshops for export production that were the ancestors of contemporary Iranian carpet-weaving firms.

On the negative side of the ledger, it was in dealing with the problem of royal succession and protection of his throne that ՙAbbās exhibited uncharacteristic shortsightedness and instituted policies that contributed in the long run to the decline of the Ṣafavids. Plagued no doubt by the memory of the assassinations of his mother and brother, ՙAbbās was suspicious to the point of paranoia about the aims of members of the royal family and tribal leaders and princes who might rally around them or use them. After deposing his father, ՙAbbās had him blinded and apparently imprisoned. He ordered the executions of many tribal princes. He had two of his brothers blinded as well. In 1615, he ordered his eldest son, the crown prince Safi Mīrzā, assassinated, and later ordered the blinding of another son and two grandsons. (According to Islamic tradition, a blind person cannot succeed to a throne.) Furthermore, he confined potential heirs to the harem, preventing them from receiving any training necessary for future leadership roles. At ՙAbbās’s death, because none of his brothers or sons was alive or able to ascend the throne, his grandson Sam Mīrzā became the sixth Ṣafavid monarch with the title Shāh Safi I.

Significance

Without falling into the popular error of assuming that subsequent Ṣafavid rulers added no luster to the Iranian Empire and without minimizing the accomplishments of ՙAbbās the Great’s Ṣafavid predecessors, one can hardly overemphasize the achievements of this astute ruler. To be sure, ՙAbbās had his major shortcomings, among them his paranoia with respect to threats to the throne and a superstitious tendency (an astrologer’s warning had contributed to his decision to order the assassination of Prince Safi Mīrzā). In addition, he was a despot and hardly enlightened with respect to the rights of his subjects.

Yet ՙAbbās had uncommon vision and sense of purpose. He saw the need for secure borders, a centralized state and administrative system, and a standing army loyal to the Crown. He understood the significance of Twelver Shia Islam as the cultural core to Iranian life and paid special attention to Shia Muslim shrines, particularly those at Ardabīl and Mashhad, and to his role as a Sufi leader in the Ṣafavid order. He had a sense of the grandeur of Iranian traditions, which he expressed most forcefully in making Eşfahan one of the world’s great capitals, leading to its hyperbolic epithet as “Half the World.” Yet he accomplished much more, especially in terms of his legacy to Iran. Accordingly, he stands in many Iranian minds alongside Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, Shāpūr I, and others as one of the greatest Iranian monarchs.

ՙAbbās’s manifold legacy played a significant part in the imperial government of Persia (renamed Iran in 1935) of the short-lived Pahlavi Dynasty (1926-1979) and in the Islamic Republic of Iran instituted by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. In the former era, Reza Shah Pahlavi and Moḥammad Reza Pahlavi strove both to carry forward ՙAbbās’s policies of centralizing power and to instill in the Iranian population loyalty based primarily on obedience and respect toward the traditional institution of Iranian monarchy. They modeled their behavior as absolute monarchs on such historical forebears as ՙAbbās the Great. ՙAbbās’s particular devotion to the Twelver Shia faith, which the Ṣafavids promulgated as an official religion, became the theocratic basis for the Iranian state.

Of equal significance is that Persia survived to inherit such legacies from ՙAbbās. His strengthening of the Ṣafavid state and provision of a model for Ṣafavid, Afshar, Zand, and Qajar successor monarchs were efficacious in giving Persia the means to avoid becoming directly subject to colonial powers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in contrast to the experience of most of Persia’s Near Eastern, Central Asian, and South Asian neighbors.

Bibliography

Dimand, M. S. “ Ṣafavid Textiles and Rugs.” In Highlights of Persian Art, edited by Richard Ettinghausen and Ehsan Yarshater. New York: Wittenborn Art Books, 1981. Surveys sixteenth and seventeenth century production, with emphasis on achievements during the reigns of Shah Ṭahāsp I (r. 1524-1576) and ՙAbbās.

Eskandar Beg Monshi. The History of Shah ՙAbbās the Great. 2 vols. Translated by Roger M. Savory. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1978. A concise, comprehensive history by the chief secretary of ՙAbbās’s court and the most important source of Ṣafavid history in general. Ends with a discussion of ՙAbbās’s death and funeral.

Jackson, Peter, and Laurence Lockhart, eds. The Timurid and Ṣafavid Periods. Vol. 6 in The Cambridge History of Iran. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Includes four chapters dealing with ՙAbbās: “The Ṣafavid Period,” a chronological treatment of the period with a biographical sketch of his life and a characterization and assessment of his reign; “Carpets and Textiles”; “ Ṣafavid Architecture”; and “The Arts in the Ṣafavid Period.”

Mathee, Rudolph P. The Politics of Trade in Ṣafavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. This study of the Ṣafavid silk trade contains a chapter about ՙAbbās and the Iranian economy, political situation, and anti-Ottoman diplomacy during his reign.

Melville, Charles, ed. Ṣafavid Persia: The History and Politics of an Islamic Society. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Contains fifteen essays that examine historiography, religious policies, and the silk industry under the Ṣafavids.

Savory, Roger M. Iran Under the Ṣafavids. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980. A treatment that emphasizes the monarchy and the royal court by the leading Western authority on Ṣafavid history.

Welch, Anthony. Artists for the Shah: Late Sixteenth Century Painting at the Imperial Court of Iran. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976. Describes the transitional nature of Ṣafavid painting of the period with political and historical contexts.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Shah ՙAbbās and the Arts of Isfahan. New York: Asia Society, 1973. A catalog of an important exhibition at Asia House Gallery in New York City and Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.