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

the Qizilbash-Sufism natural waned after the defeat of Shah Ismail in Çaldıran. 1963 When
narrating the event nearly a century later, Eskandar Beg Munshi, the historian of Shah
Abbas the Great, says that “without doubt God, in his most excellent wisdom, had
decreed that Shāh Isma’īl should suffer a reverse at the battle of Chāldirān, for had he
been victorious in this battle too, there would have been a danger that the belief and faith
of the unsophisticated (italics are mine) qizilbāsh in the authority of the Shāh would
have reached such heights that their feet might have strayed from the straight path of
religious faith and belief, and they might have fallen into serious error.” 1964
Although they were rare, the protests against the temporal authority of the shah
were seen even in Ismail’s lifetime. Only two years after Çaldıran, the qizilbash
governor-general of Horasan made a powerful challenge to Ismail’s authority, and
“within a year of Ismail’s death, civil war broke out between the qizilbash tribes fighting
for the control of the state with little or no regard for the sacrosanct nature of not only
the Shah’s character but also his authority, in both its spiritual and temporal aspects.” 1965
It is interesting to note that two decades later, one of the leading qizilbash chiefs, Ulāma
Beg Tekelu, not only simply challenged the authority of Shah Tahmasb, but also offered
his services to the Ottoman army and fought against the Shah in Sultan Süleyman’s
ranks upon realizing that he could not seize a high office within the Safavid state
machinery. This evidence clearly shows that “the extent to which the qizilbash had
1963
Savory, “The Safavid State and Polity”, p. 200.
1964
Eskandar Beg Monshi, History of Shah ‘Abbas the Great,vol. I, trs. Roger M. Savory, Colorado:
Westview Press, 1978, pp. 71-2.
1965
Savory, Iran under the Safavids, p. 46. Also consider his “The Consolidation”, pp. 93-94.
595