Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

SHAH ABBAS I
Abbas I, styled the Great King of Persia of the Safavid dynasty, second son and successor of Muhammad Khudabanda, was born on 1 Ramzan 978/27 January 1571, and died in 1038/19 January

1629, after a reign of 42 years. He strengthened the Safavid dynasty by expelling Ottoman and Uzbek troops from Persian soil and by creating a standing army. He also made Isfahan the capital of Persia, artistic achievement reached a high point in his reign. Abbas improved communications by the construction of roads, bridges and caravanserais. He enriched Isfahan, which became his new capital in

1006/1597-8, with mosques, palaces and gardens ; but he also built
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palaces at Kazwin, and at Ashraf and Farahabad on the Caspian, where he spent an increasing amount of time in his later years. He explored the possibility of diverting some of the head-waters of the Karun into the basin of the Zayanda-Rud.
Although endowed with great qualities, Abbas could be ruthless, and his family fell victims to his desire for security. His father, Muhammad Khudabanda, and two brothers. Abu Talib and Tahmasp, were blinded and incarcerated at Alamut, a son. Muhammad Bak’ir Mirza, was executed on a charge of treason in

1022/1613, and another, Imam Kuli, was made heir-apparent in

1030/1620 during an illness of Abbas, but was blinded on the latter’s recovery. Throughout his reign, Abbas attached great importance to maintaining the pir-u-murshid relationship with his subjects hence he made frequent visits to the Shi’ite shrines at Ardabil, Mashhad, where he repaired the damage caused by the Uzbegs, and, after their capture from the Ottomans, to those at Karbala’ and Najaf. ’
As I have already discussed the origin of Safavids, the Safavid dynasty, founded by Shaykh Safi-al-Din (1252-1334), a Sunni sufi religious teacher descended from a Kurdis family in northwestern Iran, also represented a resurgence of popular Islam in opposition to chaotic and exploitative military nomination. The Safavid movement, however, unlike the others, led to the conquest of Iran and the establishment of a new dynasty which would reign from

1501 to 1722 A.D. The founder began by preaching a purified and restored Islam. His son, Sadr-a!-Din, who headed the order from

1334 until 1391, made it into a hierarchical, politically sensitive, and propertied organization. He was the first head of the order to claim descent from the Prophet (PBUH). He expanded the family compound in Ardabil, providing it with schools and residences, and broadened the movement’s missionary activities. He organized the hierarchy of the murshid who was the head of the order,’ and the Caliphs who were his direct agents, and supervised the missionaries, assistants, students, and novices.
In the fifteenth century, the Safavid movement became a powerful political force in northwestern Iran and eastern Anatolia. The Safavids took advantage of the break up of the Timurid regime and of the bitter Turkish tribal conflicts to turn from preaching to mihant action. Shaykh Junayd (Sufi Master, 1447-60) was the first
Encyclopedia of Britannica. vol, I, P.9

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murshid to emphasize the importance of jihad and together followers from eastern Anatolia whom he led against Christian populations in Georgia and Trebizon. The wars against the Christians, were soon turned against established Muslim states, which he denounced as infidel regimes, 1501 Isma’il occupied, Tabriz and proclaimed himself Shah of Iran over the remainder of the decade he conquered

1;he rest of Iran.

While the rival Ottoman empire to the west seized eastern Anatolia and the Shaybanid empire to the east took control of Transoxania as far as the Oxus River, Isma’il established the borders that have defined Iran until the present day. These borders divided the Middle East into separate realms of Turkish Ottoman, Iranian, and Inner Asia Muslim Cultures. Political rivalries cut off the Ottoman empire from Islamic culture in Iran, and reinforced a growing cultural divide between Iran and Inner Asia.
The struggle to centralize political power was set back b> several ineffectual reign in the late sixteenth century, but the state building program was resumed by Shah Abbas (1588-1629), Abbas attempted to transform the whole political system of Iran by reducing the power of the uymaqs through the consolidation of a slave army and a new centralized administration supported by a revived economy and by the reassertion of both religious and the royal bases of monarchical legitimacy. Abbas began with the reconstruction of the army. He rallied loyal Qazilbash supporters, usually by favoring middling and lesser lords against the great chieftains, and organized them into the forces called Shab-Seven or lovers of the Shah. He supplemented these troops with Georgian and Armenian slaves commanded by a Georgian convert named Allahberdi Khan. Musket and artillery units were organized to give the Shah’s armies modern fire power and to make them equal to the Ottoman janissaries.
Shah Abbas’s military and administrative reforms were partly financed b> an elaborate mercantilist venture. He stimulated silk production and marketed the product through state-controlled merchants. By bringing Armenian merchants to Isfahan and making them intermediaries between the Shah and foreign customers, the royal court gained a strong position in Iranian trade. Abbas also established royal factories to produce luxury products for royal use and for international sale. Carpet-making, which began as a cottage industry, was centralized in great factories in Isfahan. Silk-making also became a toyal industry, producing velvets, damasks, satins, and
taffetas to be sold in Europe. Safavid ceramicists produced their o\\n ”China” based on Chinese porcelains with the help of Chinese workmen imported to establish the new industry, throughout Iran, trade was stimulated by the construction of roads and caravarsaries.”
Under Abbas I the Safavid monarchy reached the height of its political power. His reign was a glorified house hold state with the ruler surrounded by his personal servitors, soldiers, and administrators. The ruler closely controlled the bureaucracy and tax collection, monopolized the manufacture and sale of important cloth goods and other products, built great cities, and maintained shrines and roads as an expression of his fatherly concern for the welfare of his people though his reign marked the apogee of the Iranian state, his achievement was flawed. Abbas never succeeded in establishing a fully centralized regime. The military and administrative policies that reduced the power of Turkish hordes did not succeed in replacing them. His commercial policies had only a short-lived success, his religious and artistic efforts were eventually appropriated by others. Ultimately the rural elites proved too powerful, and urban merchant and rural landlords support took weak to sustain a centralized state. The Shahs were also hostile to nonMuslim communities. Decrees of Abbas I made it possible for a convert to Islam from Judaism or Christianity to claim the property of his relatives. In 1656, Shah Abbas II granted extensive powers to his wazirs to force Jews to become Muslims. AI-Majlisi, following on these precedents, persuaded Shah Hussain (1688-1726) to decree the forcible conversion of Zoroastrians. The Shi’i Ulama, however, were less harsh in their treatment of Armenians. The Armenians maintained good relations with the Iranian regime because of their shared hostility to the Greek Orthodox Church whose base was in the Ottoman empire. Also, Armenians and Georgians provided important recruits for the Shah’s military and commercial establishments.
It has been commonly said that the Safavid dynasty reestablished, after nine hundred years of foreign interruption, the old Persian empire of the Achaemenids and Sasanids, or else, more recently, that the Safavid dynast> mere the emergence of Persia’ as a national state in the sense. Each nation is founded on a valid point. The Safavid empire was a more adequate heir to the Sassan’any empire, in its absolutist administrative and cultured i
Ahmad Ayub. History of Persia, P.80.