74 Facts About Tahmasp I

Tahmasp I was the second shah of Safavid Iran from 1524 until his death in 1576.

Tahmasp I was the eldest son of Ismail I and his principal consort, Tajlu Khanum.

Tahmasp I soon faced a long-lasting war with the Ottoman Empire, which was divided into three phases.

Tahmasp I had conflicts with the Uzbeks of Bukhara over Khorasan, with them repeatedly raiding Herat.

Tahmasp I was a patron of the arts and was an accomplished painter himself.

Tahmasp I built a royal house of arts for painters, calligraphers and poets.

Tahmasp I bestowed many privileges on the clergy and allowed them to participate in legal and administrative matters.

Nevertheless, Tahmasp I still negotiated alliances with the Christian powers of the Republic of Venice and the Habsburg monarchy who were rivals of the Ottoman Empire.

When Tahmasp I died, a civil war followed, leading to the death of most of the royal family.

Tahmasp I's reign saw a shift in the Safavid ideological policy; he ended the worshipping of his father as the Messiah by the Turkoman Qizilbash tribes and instead established a public image of a pious and orthodox Shia king.

Tahmasp I started a long process followed by his successors to end the Qizilbash influence on Safavid politics, replacing them with the newly-introduced 'third force' containing Islamized Georgians and Armenians.

Tahmasp I was the second shah of the Safavid dynasty, a family of Kurdish origin, who were sheikhs of a Sufi known as the Safavid order and centred in Ardabil, a city in the northwestern Iran.

Tahmasp I conquered the territories of the Aq Qoyunlu tribal confederation, the lands of the Chinggisid Uzbek Shaybanid dynasty in the eastern Iran, and many city-states by 1512.

Tahmasp I forced conversion on the Sunni population by abolishing Sunni Sufi orders, seizing their property, and giving the Sunni a choice of conversion, death, or exile.

In 1516, when Tahmasp I Mirza was two years old, the province of Khorasan became his fief by Ismail's order.

Tahmasp I replaced the Shamlu and Mawsillu governors of Khorasan, who did not join his army during the Battle of Chaldiran for fear of famine.

Tahmasp I became an accomplished painter and dedicated a work to his brother, Bahram Mirza.

The ten-year-old Tahmasp I ascended the throne after his father's death under the guardianship of Div Sultan Rumlu, his, the de facto ruler of the realm.

One of the tribesman attempted to abduct the young Tahmasp I, who had him put to death.

Fourteen-year-old Tahmasp I commanded the army and defeated the Uzbeks, distinguishing himself at the Battle of Jam.

The victory reduced neither the Uzbek threat nor the realm's internal chaos, since Tahmasp I had to return to the west to suppress a rebellion in Baghdad.

Tahmasp I appointed his brother, Bahram Mirza, governor of Khorasan and Ghazi Khan Takkalu, as Bahram's tutor.

Hossein Khan Shamlu circumvented this challenge by having himself named as the steward to Tahmasp I's newborn son, Mohammad Mirza.

Tahmasp I's fall was a turning point for Tahmasp, who now knew that each Turkoman leader would favour his tribe.

Tahmasp I reduced the influence of the Qizilbash and gave the "men of the pen" bureaucracy greater power, ending the regency.

Tahmasp I drove the Ottomans out, but news of another Uzbek invasion prevented him from defeating them.

Tahmasp I reconquered the seized territory when Suleiman went to Mesopotamia, and Suleiman led another campaign against him.

Tahmasp I attacked his rearguard, and Suleiman was forced to retreat to Istanbul at the end of 1535 after losing all his gains except Baghdad.

Tahmasp I led an unsuccessful revolt against Tahmasp, who conquered Derbant in the spring of 1547 and appointed his son Ismail as governor.

Tahmasp I promised to restore Sunni Islam in Iran and encouraged the Sultan to lead another campaign against Tahmasp.

Tahmasp I did not fight the exhausted Ottoman army but laid waste the entire region from Tabriz to the frontier; the Ottomans could not permanently occupy the captured lands, since they soon ran out of supplies.

Tahmasp I divided his army into four corps and sent each in a different direction, indicating a Safavid army that had grown much larger than it was in the previous wars.

The Ottomans negotiated the Peace of Amasya, in which Tahmasp I recognised Ottoman sovereignty in Mesopotamia and much of Kurdistan; furthermore, as an act of obeisance towards Sunni Islam and Sunnis, he banned the holding of and expressing hatred towards the Rashidun caliphs, who are held dear by the Sunni Muslims.

Tahmasp I was interested in the Caucasus, especially Georgia, for two reasons: to reduce the influence of the Ostajlu tribe and a desire for booty, similar to that of his father.

Between 1540 and 1553, Tahmasp I led four campaigns against the Georgian kingdoms.

Tahmasp I forced the governor of Tbilisi, Golbad, to convert to Islam.

One year before the Peace of Amasya in 1554, Tahmasp I led his last military campaign into the Caucasus.

Never again did Tahmasp I appear on the Caucasus frontier after the treaty.

Tahmasp I sought to establish his dominance by imposing several Iranian political and social institutions and placing converts to Islam on the thrones of Kartli and Kakheti; one was Davud Khan, brother of Simon I of Kartli.

Tahmasp I demanded a quid pro quo in which the city of Kandahar would be given to his infant son, Morad Mirza.

Tahmasp I became seriously ill in 1574 and neared death twice in two months.

Tahmasp I, recovered from his illness, returned his attention to affairs of state.

Tahmasp I had the longest reign of any member of the Safavid dynasty: nine days short of fifty-two years.

Tahmasp I died without a designated heir and the two factions in his court clashed for the throne.

One of the most important events of Tahmasp I's reign was his relocation of the Safavid capital, which began what is known as the Qazvin period.

Qazvin's non-Qizilbash population allowed Tahmasp I to bring new members to his court who were unrelated to the Turkoman tribes.

Tahmasp I commissioned Abol-Fath Hosseini to rewrite Safvat as-safa, the oldest surviving text regarding Safi-ad-din Ardabili and the Sufi beliefs of the Safavids, in order to legitimise his claim.

All of the historians under Tahmasp I's patronage centred their works around one main goal: to tell the history of the Safavid dynasty.

Tahmasp I rejected his father's claim of being a mahdi, becoming a mystical lover of Ali and a king bound to sharia, but still enjoyed villagers travelling to his palace in Qazvin to touch his clothing.

Tahmasp I held firmly to the controversial Shia belief in the imminent coming of the Mahdi.

Tahmasp I refused to allow his favourite sister, Shahzada Sultanim, to marry, because he was keeping her as a bride for the Mahdi.

Tahmasp I claimed connections with Ali and Sufi saints, such as his ancestor Safi al-Din, through dreams in which he foresaw the future.

Tahmasp I had other superstitious beliefs too; for instance, his obsession with the occult science of geomancy.

Tahmasp I observed that Tahmasp was worsipped by his people as a godlike being possessing a frail and old body.

Tahmasp I wanted the poets of his court to write about Ali, rather than him.

Tahmasp I sent copies of the Quran as gifts to several Ottoman sultans; overall, during his reign, eighteen copies of the Quran were sent to Istanbul and all were encrusted with jewels and gold.

Tahmasp I saw Twelverism as a new doctrine of kingship, giving the authority in religious and legal matters, and appointing Shaykh Ali al-Karaki as the deputy of the Hidden Imam.

Tahmasp I embarked on a wide-scale urban program designed to reinvent the city of Qazvin as a centre of Shiite piety and orthodoxy, expanding the Shrine of Husayn.

Tahmasp I ordered the practice of Sufi rituals and had Sufis and come to his palace and perform public acts of piety and for Eid al-Fitr.

Tahmasp I was the namesake of one of the most celebrated illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnameh, which was commissioned by his father around 1522 and completed during the mid-1530s.

Tahmasp I encouraged painters such as Kamal ud-Din Behzad, bestowing a royal painting workshop for masters, journeymen, and apprentices with exotic materials such as ground gold and lapis lazuli.

Tahmasp I's artists illustrated the Khamsa of Nizami, and he worked on Chehel Sotoun's balcony paintings.

Tahmasp I lost interest in the miniature arts around 1555 and, accordingly, disbanded the royal workshop and allowed his artists to practice elsewhere.

Tahmasp I refused to allow poets in his court and ceased to regard them with favour.

Tahmasp I's coins were characterised by the region they were minted in.

Tahmasp I had a poor relationship with Ismail, whom he imprisoned on suspicion that his son might attempt a coup against him.

Tahmasp I probably had thirteen daughters, eight of whom are known:.

Tahmasp I's reign started in an era of civil wars between the Qizilbash leaders after the death of Ismail I, whose charismatic characterisation as Messiah, which had driven the Qizilbash to follow him, came to an end with Tahmasp's succession.

In contrast to his father, Tahmasp I did not possess charisma in any political or spiritual sense, nor was he old enough to prove himself a fierce warrior on the battlefield, a quality valued by the Qizilbash.

Tahmasp I knew that he could not replace his father as a charismatic spiritual leader, and while he struggled to restore his family's legitimacy amongst the Qizilbash, he had to craft a public figure of himself to convince the wider population of his right to rule as the new Safavid shah.

Tahmasp I thus established a standard public image for Safavid kings: a zealous monarch who functioned as a representative of the Hidden Imam.

Tahmasp I thus created the core of the force that changed the political balance of the empire in his grandson's time.

Tahmasp I made little impression on Western historians, who often compared him with his father.

Tahmasp I is portrayed as a "miser" and a "religious bigot".