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TURKOMANS BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES: THE ... - Bilkent University

TURKOMANS BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES: THE ... - Bilkent University

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CHAPTER IX<br />

<strong>THE</strong> AFTERMATH:<br />

<strong>THE</strong> WANING OF <strong>THE</strong> QIZILBASH POWER<br />

9.1. <strong>THE</strong> DECLINE OF TRIBAL DOMINANCE IN SAFAVID IRAN<br />

Immediately after the establishment of the routinized Safavid state, more or less the<br />

same process that once occurred in the Ottoman case started in Iran: the inevitable<br />

contest between the sedentary bureaucracy and nomadic military appeared; and in time,<br />

parallel to the development of the bureaucratic governmental machine, the tribal<br />

founders of the state had been gradually diffused from the ‘center’, shifting to the<br />

periphery as an opposition party to the arising ‘imperial regime’. In the Safavid case, the<br />

lines of differentiation between the two contesting parties were even more clear-cut. In<br />

addition to the anthropological, religious, and political inconformity, the ethnic<br />

foundations of the two parties were also recognizably different: on one side, there was<br />

the tribal qizilbash (overwhelmingly Turcoman) military aristocracy constituting and<br />

controlling the army and holding the posts of provincial governorships; on the other side<br />

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