Tahmasp I family Safavid dynasty
Background
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. 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.
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