44 Facts About Ismail I

Ismail I was the founder and first shah of Safavid Iran, ruling from 1501 until his death in 1524.

Ismail I's reign is one of the most vital in the history of Iran, and the Safavid period is often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history.

Ismail I's predecessors had transformed the religious order into a military movement supported by the Qizilbash.

The Safavids took control of Azerbaijan, and in 1501 Ismail I was crowned as king.

Ismail I fell into depression and heavy drinking after this defeat and died in 1524.

Ismail I caused sectarian tensions in the Middle East when he destroyed the tombs of the Abbasid caliphs, the Sunni Imam Abu Hanifa an-Nu'man, and the Sufi Muslim ascetic Abdul Qadir Gilani in 1508.

Ismail I contributed to Persian literature, though few of his Persian writings survive.

Ismail I's father was the sheikh of the Safavid tariqa and a direct descendant of its Kurdish founder, Safi-ad-din Ardabili.

Ismail I was the last in this line of hereditary Grand Masters of the order, prior to his founding of a ruling dynasty.

Ismail I had married Uzun Hassan in a deal to protect the Empire of Trebizond from the Ottoman Turks.

Ismail I was a great-great-grandson of Emperor Alexios IV of Trebizond and King Alexander I of Georgia.

Ismail I was bilingual in Persian and a Southern Turkic dialect, a precursor of modern Azeri Turkic.

Ismail I's ancestry was mixed, from various ethnic groups such as Georgians, Greeks, Kurds and Turkomans; the majority of scholars agree that his empire was an Iranian one.

Ismail I proclaimed himself the Mahdi and a reincarnation of Ali.

In 1488, Ismail I's father was killed in a battle at Tabasaran against the forces of the Shirvanshah Farrukh Yassar and his overlord, the Aq Qoyunlu, a Turkic tribal federation which controlled most of Iran.

In 1494, the Aq Qoyunlu captured Ardabil, killing Ali Mirza Safavi, the eldest son of Haydar, and forcing the seven-year-old Ismail I to go into hiding in Gilan, where under the Kar-Kiya ruler Soltan-Ali Mirza, he received education under the guidance of scholars.

Ismail I's rise to power was made possible by the Turkoman tribes of Anatolia and Azerbaijan, who formed the most important part of the Qizilbash movement.

Shortly before his attack on Shirvan, Ismail I had made the Georgian kings Constantine II and Alexander I of the kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti, respectively, attack the Ottoman possessions near Tabriz, on the promise that he would cancel the tribute that Constantine was forced to pay to the Aq Qoyunlu once Tabriz was captured.

Ismail I appointed his former guardian and mentor Husayn Beg Shamlu as the vakil of the empire and the commander-in-chief of the Qizilbash army.

Ismail I's army was composed of tribal units, the majority of which were Turkmen from Anatolia and Syria with the remainder Kurds and Chagatai.

Ismail I appointed a former Iranian vizier of the Aq Qoyunlu named Amir Zakariya as his vizier.

Ismail I enforced this new standard by the sword, dissolving Sunni Brotherhoods and executing anyone who refused to comply to the newly implemented Shi'ism.

One year later, Ismail I forced the rulers of Khuzestan, Lorestan, and Kurdistan to become his vassals.

Ismail I then began destroying Sunni sites in Baghdad, including the tombs of Abbasid Caliphs and tombs of Imam Abu Hanifah and Abdul Qadir Gilani.

Ismail I appointed Najm-e Sani as the new vakil of the empire due to the death of Mas'ud Gilani.

In 1512, Najm-e Sani was killed during a clash with the Uzbeks, which made Ismail I appoint Abd al-Baqi Yazdi as the new vakil of the empire.

Selim and Ismail I had been exchanging a series of belligerent letters prior to the attack.

Ismail I's army was more mobile, and his soldiers were better prepared, but the Ottomans prevailed in large part due to their efficient modern army and possession of artillery, black powder and muskets.

Shah Ismail I's death ensued after a few years of a very saddening and depressing period of his life.

Mirza Shah Husayn was assassinated in 1523 by a group of Qizilbash officers, after which Ismail I appointed Zakariya's son Jalal al-Din Mohammad Tabrizi as his new vizier.

One of the main problems of Ismail I's reign was the integration of the Safavid order into the administrative structure inherited from previous Muslim polities.

Ismail I sought to stabilize the newly established Safavid state and restore economic prosperity to the realm, but some of his supporters wanted to continue the revolutionary struggle.

Ismail I made the office of sadr an appointee of the shah; this office was held by an Iranian.

From an early age, Ismail I was acquainted with the Iranian cultural legacy.

Ismail I's father and grandfather were reportedly considered divine by their disciples, and Ismail I taught his followers that he was a divine incarnation, as is demonstrated by his poetry.

Historian Cornell Fleischer argues that Ismail I took part in a broader trend of messianic and millenarian claims, which were being expressed in the Ottoman Empire.

Besides his self-identification with Muslim figures, Ismail I presented himself as the personification of the divine light of investiture that had radiated in the ancient Iranian shahs Darius, Khosrow I Anushirvan, Shapur I, since the era of the Achaemenids and Sasanians.

Ismail I wrote in Turkish and Persian, although his extant verses in the former vastly outnumber those in the latter.

Ismail I used some words and forms not found in modern Turkish speech.

Ismail I was deeply influenced by the Persian literary tradition of Iran, particularly by the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, which probably explains the fact that he named all of his sons after characters from the Shahnameh.

Ismail I's work is most popular in Azerbaijan, as well as among the Bektashis of Turkey.

Ismail I was described by contemporaries as having a regal appearance, gentlemanly in quality and youthfulness.

Ismail I's hair is reddish; he only wears moustachios, and uses his left hand instead of his right.

Ismail I is as brave as a game cock, and stronger than any of his lords; in the archery contests, out of the ten apples that are knocked down, he knocks down seven.