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Safavid order

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The Safavid order, also called the Safaviyya (Persian: صفویه), was a Sufi order (Tariqa)[1][2] founded by the Kurdish[3][4] mystic Safi-ad-Din Ardabili (1252–1334 AD). It held a prominent place in the society and politics of North Western Iran in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but today it is best known for having given rise to the Safavid dynasty.

Foundation and evolution[edit]

The Safaviyya, while initially founded Safi-ad-Din Ardabili under the Shafi'i school of Sunni Islam, later adoptions of Shia concepts by the children and grandchildren of Safi-ad-Din Ardabili resulted in the order becoming associated with Twelverism.[3][4] Safī al-Din's importance in the order is attested in two letters by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani.[5][6][7][8] In one, Rashid al-Din pledges an annual offering of foodstuffs to Safī al-Din' and in the other, Rashid al-Din writes to his son, the governor of Ardabil, advising him to show proper respect and comportment to the mystic.[9]

After Safī al-Din's death, leadership of the order passed to his son, Sadr al-Dīn Mūsā, and subsequently passed down from father to son, and by the mid-fifteenth century, the Twelver Safawiyya changed in character, evolving into to an extreme and intolerant form of Twelver Shi'ism, becoming militant under Shaykh Junayd and Shaykh Haydar by proclaiming Jihad against the Christians of Georgia, and becoming exaggerative by adopting messianic beliefs about its leadership and antinomian practices outside of the norm of Twelver Islam at the time.[5][6][7][8]

Haydar's grandson, Ismail, further altered the nature of the order when he founded the Safavid empire in 1501 and proclaimed Twelver Shi'ism as the state religion, at which point he imported Twelver Shia Ulama largely from Lebanon and Syria to transform the order into a Twelver Shi'i dynasty.[5][6][7][8]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1345, Sheikh Safi al-Din
  2. ^ "Imamzadah Shaykh Ṣafi al-Din Ardabili | Exterior view of Shaykh Safi Tomb. The courtyard wall of Chilakhana courtyard appears in the background, while the Haramkhana is seen in the right foreground".
  3. ^ a b Newman, Andrew J., Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire, (I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2006), 152.
  4. ^ a b R.M. Savory. Ebn Bazzaz. Archived 2009-05-29 at the Wayback Machine Encyclopædia Iranica
  5. ^ a b c Floor, Willem; Herzig, Edmund (2015). Iran and the World in the Safavid Age. I.B.Tauris. p. 20. ISBN 978-1780769905. In fact, at the start of the Safavid period Twelver Shi'ism was imported into Iran largely from Syria and Mount Lebanon (...)
  6. ^ a b c Savory, Roger (2007). Iran Under the Safavids. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 30. ISBN 978-0521042512.
  7. ^ a b c Abisaab, Rula. "JABAL ʿĀMEL". Encyclopaedia Iranica. Retrieved 15 May 2016.
  8. ^ a b c Alagha, Joseph Elie (2006). The Shifts in Hizbullah's Ideology: Religious Ideology, Political Ideology and Political Program. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-9053569108.
  9. ^ G. E. Browne, Literary History of Persia, vol. 4, 33–4.
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