20 Facts About Qizilbash

Origin of the Qizilbash can be dated from the 15th century onward, when the spiritual grandmaster of the movement, Shaykh Haydar, organized his followers into militant troops.

The Qizilbash were originally composed of seven Turkic-speaking tribes, Rumlu, Shamlu, Ustajlu, Afshar, Qajar, Tekelu, and Zulkadar, who spoke Azerbaijani.

Qizilbash were a coalition of many different tribes of predominantly Turkic-speaking background united in their adherence to Safavi Shia Islam.

Qizilbash adhered to heterodox Shi'i doctrines encouraged by the early Safavi sheikhs Haydar and his son Ismail I They regarded their rulers as divine figures, and so were classified as ghulat "extremists" by orthodox Twelvers.

Today, the remnants of the Qizilbash confederacy are found among the Afshar, the Qashqai, Turkmen, Shahsevan, and others.

Related searches

The religion of the Qizilbash resembled much more the heterodox beliefs of northwestern Iran and eastern Anatolia, rather than the traditional Twelver Shia Islam.

The beliefs of the Qizilbash consisted of non-Islamic aspects, varying from crypto-Zoroastrian beliefs to shamanistic practises, the latter which had been practised by their Central Asian ancestors.

Concepts of divine inspiration and reincarnation were common, with the Qizilbash viewing their Safavid leader as the reincarnation of Ali and a manifestation of the divine in human form.

The Qizilbash defeated the Uzbeks and secured Samarkand at the Battle of Marv.

However, in 1512, an entire Qizilbash army was annihilated by the Uzbeks after Turcoman Qizilbash had mutinied against their Persian wakil and commander Najm-e Thani at the Battle of Ghazdewan.

However, in 1507, Shah Ismail and the Qizilbash overran large areas of Kurdistan, defeating regional Ottoman forces.

Only two years later in Central Asia, the Qizilbash defeated the Uzbeks at Merv, killing their leader Muhammad Shaybani and destroying his dynasty.

The Qizilbash were badly defeated; casualties included many high-ranking Qizilbash amirs as well as three influential ulama.

Qizilbash was the ward of the powerful Qizilbash amir Ali Beg Rumlu who was the de facto ruler of the Safavid kingdom.

Qizilbash appointed the Governor of Herat and his former guardian and tutor, Ali Quli Khan Shamlu the chief of all the armed forces.

Turcoman Qizilbash nevertheless remained an important part of the Safavid executive apparatus, even though ethnic Caucasians came to largely replace them.

Qizilbash conceal their real identity, outwardly professing to be orthodox Sunnis to their Turkish or Bulgarian neighbours, or alternatively claim to be Bektashis, depending who is addressing them.

Between the late seventeenth century and 1822, the term "Qizilbash" was used in Ottoman administrative documents to identify Twelver Shiites in what is today Lebanon.

The Ottomans were aware they had no link to the Anatolian or Iranian Qizilbash, employing the term only as a means to delegitimize them or justify punitive campaigns against them.

Some of Nadir's Qizilbash soldiers settled in Afghanistan where their descendants had successful careers in the army, government, the trades, and crafts.