The Rise of Shia' Hegemony in the Safavid Iran
Behzad Hassani
student of medicine at the University of Toronto
Shah Ismail, the self-proclaimed Adam in new clothing, and the companion of Hallaj on the gallows, declared Ithna Ashari Shiism as the official and compulsory religion of his new Qizilbash state in 1501 A.D. following his victory over Aq Quoyunlu and the fall of Tabriz. The motivations behind such paradoxical declaration have been the subject of heated debate in the scholarly spheres. This is to be expected as Shiism was neither the religion of the sedentary population of Iran nor of Ismail’s Qizilbash followers, who created the Safavid Empire on their horse backs. In essence, there existed no Shiite infrastructure in Iran upon which the Safavids could build!
In this brief account, the rationale behind the institution of Shiite hegemony over Iran and its role in consolidation of Safavid dominion will be explored in the context of two recognizable periods: (1) formation and rise of the early Safavid state (Qizilbash state) made possible by the unwavering support of the devout militant dervishes, and (2) consolidation of the state of Iran whose centralized and sedentary structure could not be reconciled with the Turkic Sufi and nomadic ethos. Some scholars have postulated that Ismail’s sole motivation for imposing Shiism upon Iran was “political” and, in the modern sense, a manifestation of the Machiavellian manipulative genius at its finest. They contend that Khatai saw in Shiism a convenient vessel of identity, and a means of differentiating his kingdom from his Sunni neighbors: the Ottomans to the West, the Uzbeks and the Timurid remnants to the East . I do not agree with such modern, secular, and Western assessment of the medieval Iranian psyche. It is now well established that Ismail’s ambitions rested in Anatolia, Syria, and by extension in Egypt. It was only after the defeat of Chaldiran that he shifted his charismatic gaze to Iran. The famous Orientalist, Bernard Lewis has uttered a few wise words about such ethno- and politico-centric analysis of the Safavid religious policies: “When modern man ceased to accord first place to religion in his own concerns, he also ceased to believe that other men, in other times, could ever truly have done so, and so he began to re-examine the great religious movements of the past in search of interests and motives acceptable to modern minds.” I do not claim that Ismail was not politically motivated, but I do contend that the culturally constructed dichotomous contrasts, such as “religious versus secular”, linguistically distort our understanding of interactions between the two ideological labels, generalize across the intricate differences within each category, and thus obscure the interpenetrations of the two spheres. The proper approach, I believe, would begin from the microcosm of the young Ismail’s life and his childhood years in the Shiite court of Gilan, and would further expand the analysis to his macrocosmic role as the perfect spiritual guide of Sufi Qizilbash. Ismail was also the political leader of the sedentary and centralized state of Iran, and as such was bound by pragmatism and confined by bitter political necessities, which were reflected in his choice of a new official religion and in his decision to marginalize the power of his Qizilbash devotees.
Despite the scarcity of comprehensive historical accounts of his early years, it is likely that Shah Ismail was deeply influenced by his encounter with the Shiite doctrine in the Zaidi court of Gilan, where he was raised by Shiite tutors during his seven-year stay before marching against the Aq Qoyunlu. Following such encounter, he may have felt that the esoteric nature of Shiism, often believed to be the esoteric Islam in itself, shared much with the many Sufi and heterodox tendencies (Quasi-Shiite) of the Qizilbash Sufis to whose beliefs he must have adhered in order to secure loyalty. Qizilbash tribes lived in a disputed area between the Ottomans and the Safavids, and both sides were in constant struggle to recruit the nomadic warriors to their service. Aside from the nomadic structure of the Safavids, a sharp contrast to the sedentary and centralized style of the Ottomans, the Sufi religious values of the Safavids much appealed to the Qizilbash Ghazis, and contributed to their subsequent migration and recruitment to the Safavid service. Veneration for Ali and the family of the Prophet as well as the vengeance for the martyrdom of Hossein, were manifest themes of the Qizilbash ethos, and were elaborated in the religious/heroic epics of Abu Muslimnameh and Junaydnama. These were utilized initially by ancestors of Ismail to incite the Qizilbash to take up arms and fight for the Safavid cause. Such esoteric emphasis could not be found in the Timurid-style Sunni tradition of the time which had greatly elaborated on the exoteric jurisprudence at the expense of mystical ideas.
One could argue that this charismatic leader believed in his place in Shiism. In his hymns aimed at his Ghazi followers, he claimed to be the manifestation of God and the reincarnation of a host of prophets such as Khidr, Jesus, and Moses. As the Perfect Guide to his militant dervishes, he supported his claim to divinity by concocting a Hosseini (Musavi) genealogy, and adopted the position of the representative of Mahdi, thus placing his earlier messianic claims within the Shiite Imamite framework. This task could not be accomplished through adherence to the Sunni tradition. The infallible Ismail, now the keeper of the Mohammedan Light, was worshipped as the Godhead by his devout followers, who would enter the battlefield unarmed, believing that his divine powers would shield them from harm. Needless to say, such divine characterization of Ismail, entrenched in the Qizilbash millenarian extremism or the Ghuluww, was the anathema of Ithna Ashari Shiism, and Ismail and the later Safavid kings as well as the Shiite doctors would take the appropriate steps to suppress these beliefs. Nevertheless, the Qizilbash hegemony over the early Safavid court, in the provinces, and in the military necessitated the allowance for such ghuluww, even if it had to be done within the compromised framework of Shiism. The Shiite clergies, on the other hand, did not openly express their reservations about such heretical views, for they had been given the chance of employment and a sympathetic hearing from the Shah, and hoped to see their dream of a successful Shiite state come true during the Safavid reign.
As the successor of the Timurids in the east and the Turkoman in the west, Shaykh Ismail took on the ancient Iranian title of “Shah”. Once again in the history of Iran, the struggle of “routinization of charisma” was bound to perpetuate: the ancient Persian tradition of monarchy necessitated centralization of the state through structured bureaucracy and elaborate legal and court systems. This was to be administered by the Iranian elite with whom the Shah would have to contend if he desired to utilize their expertise. The same tradition believed that kingship and religion were twins, and Ismail knew that in order for him to establish a stable and unified imperium, he had to forge a uniform and organized religion with a written theological and legal tradition and an elaborate system of clerical class; this system must have the potential to become the new orthodoxy of his domains. The Shah needed to support the Olamas and be supported by them. This support was to come from the esoteric Imamite Shiism as the exoteric Sunni doctrines did not appeal to the masters of Qizilbash state.
However, this new orthodoxy was to be propagated among the general populace of Iran, who predominantly followed the Hanafi school of Sunni jurisprudence. It is fair to say that the ground had been set for the acceptance of Shiism during the previous two centuries, the time of “religiously promiscuous ambiance”, and a period in which veneration of Ali and the family of the Prophet was widespread and entrenched in the psyche of the Iranian population. In this atmosphere of religious eclecticism, the pro-Ali and pro-House sentiments of the population facilitated the propagation of the Shiite doctrine, at least superficially, during the early Safavid dominion. Thus, one could argue that the main challenge which the Shah faced was the nomadic-to-sedentary transition and the centralization of state.
Heterodoxies such as the Qizilbash millenarian extremism had to be contained: the intense and volatile millenarian expectations of the Qizilbash were detrimental to the stable and enduring infrastructure needed for the “temporal” administration of a centralized empire. Furthermore, there existed the need to institutionally domesticate the sedentary and nomadic masses of Iran, a task which, in turn, necessitated the institution of a more dogmatic and other-worldly kind of religion; the earthly connotations of ghuluww were deemed dangerous to stability. Henceforth, began the erosion of Qizilbash Islam and the genuine Safavid element, and the consolidation of Twelver Shiism in Iran. Once again, the pioneers of the revolution were the first people to be eliminated.
The early political influence of Qizilbash and the dependence of the Shah on their military power rendered the erosion of Qizilbash Islam gradual, involving two civil wars; the institutional betrayal of the Qizilbash was only finalized later at the time of Shah Abbas with the adoption and integration of the ghulam (slave) system. Nevertheless, the tension between the contradictory functions of Sufi pir and Shah, between the contrasting natures of Qizilbash ghuluww and Imamite Shiism, and between the mutually exclusive modes of subsistence of nomadism and sedentarism, arose and persisted since the inception of the Safavid rule. The sources of such conflict must first be assessed in order for us to appreciate the vitality of a new organized religion to the Safavid rulers’ consolidation of political hegemony.
First and foremost, there existed the need to limit the political power and contain the revolutionary fervor of the Qizilbash. In addition to spiritual implications, the concept of equality that lay at the core of the steppe and Sufi systems had political connotations as the Qizilbash expected to share in the governing of the newly conquered domains; this was further reinforced by the Turco-Mongolian concept of corporate sovereignty. The militant dervishes were the ones to capture Baghdad and they were the ones to enforce law and order in the new dominion. In return, they received the most esteemed and politically influential posts at the court and battlefield, and their adherence to the heretical notion of ghuluww had to be tolerated by the newly-imported clergies. However, this political monopoly was incompatible with the centralizing policies of the Kings of Iran. Furthermore, the Turkic belief that charisma (the parallel of Persian khvarneh) could be transmitted to all collateral members of the Safavid house, would allow them to align themselves politically with different members of the family. This adherence to the decentralizing concept of corporate sovereignty was detrimental to the stability of the state: Shah Tahmasb only “became king in fact” and won the total obedience of Qizilbash when he crushed the first civil unrest and demonstrated his political and military sagacity . In addition to political decentralization, the policies of land distribution among the Qizilbash further contributed to the instability of the provinces: domains were parceled out among the oymaqs, and the Safavid governors of these appanages were assigned to Qizilbash Atabaks, thus ensuring economic monopoly by the Qizilbash . Due to political and economic concerns, discussed above, Ismail and the later Safavids sought the support of the Imamite ulama to undercut the political power of Qizilbash by countering the Qizilbash Islam.
Shaykh Ali Karaki, one of the first Shiite mujtahids to establish roots in the Safavid court, was instrumental to the process of weakening. He issued a fatwah allowing the cursing of Abu Muslim, the hero whom the Qizilbash worshipped, and banned the recitals of the epic-romance of Abu Muslimnama, in an attempt to publicly suppress Qizilbash beliefs. Following the adoption of the Imamite Shiite identity, Shah Ismail’s genealogy was altered to overshadow the former identification of Safavids with Abu Muslim, a messiah in his own right, by forging a Musavi lineage. This, of course, allowed Ismail to maintain the loyalty of the dervishes by appealing to Abu Muslim’s cause of returning the political power to the righteous family of the Prophet. Nevertheless, the above efforts signaled a shift away from the Qizilbash Islam to the Sharia-minded ulama’s version of Imamism. Furthermore, Ismail permitted the massacre of the old Lahijan Sufis who had granted him refuge only a few years back, and Tahmasb ordered the bloody suppression of the extremist Turkmen tribes on account of heresy, as they proclaimed him to be the Mahdi . Tahmasb further crushed the millenarian Nuqtavi movement to which many Qizilbash had turned as a spiritual expression of their political rebellion. The dervishes were being denied access to their traditional means of livelihood both on the lands and at court. Their renunciation of unconditional devotion to the Safavid Murshid, in order to reinstitute Sufi and steppe paradigms of rule and authority, paved the way to a heavier emphasis on the Sharia-minded ulama and Twelver Shiism. Yet, the suppression of ideas was not confined to the belittling of the Qizilbash ethos, and impacted other Sufi schools and the Sunni Islam as well.
Suppression of popular Sufism took place predominantly towards the end of the reign of Tahmasb. The crack-down took the form of eradication of the organized Sufi orders, such as Naqshbandiyya, Khalvatiyya, Ismailiyya , who posed political threat to the Safavid hegemony . However, the fact that some Shiite Sufi orders, such as Nurbakhshiyya and Nimatullahiyya, were tolerated under early Safavids may imply that the conflict was not with Sufism per se, but rather with the Sunni elements within the organized Sufi thought. Furthermore, orders of Qalandariyya and Malamatiyya, who lacked congregational organization and emphasized, instead, on the individualistic mode of spiritual activity, were safe from persecution under the Safavids as they posed no political threat to the throne. Nevertheless, later Safavids pursued a ruthless policy of eradication of both popular and intellectual Sufi thought as the dogmatic Shiite clerics solidified their Imamite hegemony over the collective Iranian psyche during the post-Abbas years of the Safavid dynasty.
Decline of Sunnism, however, was only gradual, and occurred over nearly two centuries, as the Hanafi majority of the Iranian population had to be converted to the newly-imported version of Islam. As mentioned above, the infrastructure needed to implement an organized doctrine of Shiism was not in place in Iran, and although, many clergies were imported from Lebanon and Iraq, the doctors had much with which to struggle. Qizilbash ghuluww was to be tolerated early on, and the messianic claims of Ismail were to be interpreted in a Shiite framework. Sunnism was to persist in Iran until post-Abbas period by which time the Shiite ulama had consolidated their grasp on the religious sphere of Iran. Nevertheless, the suppression of Sunnism constituted a basic principle of the Safavid state policy which, in addition to insistence on the formal profession of Shiism, took on the form of ritual anathematization of the first three orthodox caliphs, a policy that was enforced by the ruthless “corps of Shiite militants”. The new paradigm further entailed forced conversion; albeit confined to certain locale and not widespread, this policy brought about the massacre of those who refused the new good religion.
Thus far, we have explored the socio-political conditions of the early Safavid era which necessitated the adoption of Shiism as the compulsory religion of Iran. However, we have neglected to assess the substance of the Shiite doctrine at the time of its imposition upon the Iranian population. It appears that the Safavid kings, except for the later monarchs, were not interested in the principles of the Shiite jurisprudence, and sought to utilize, merely, the outward manifestations of Shiism for political gains. Aside from the harsh anathema of the orthodox caliphs, the Safavids favored, on a gentler note, the Shiite call to prayer which included the name of Ali. The mention of the 12 Imams in the Friday khutba, and coinage in their names were other means of solidifying the Shiite hegemony. The most important technique of all, however, was the ritual mourning of Ali’s murder and the commemoration of the martyrdom of Husain and the 72 martyrs of Karbala during the months of Muharram and Safar. Though present in the Sunni, ghulat and other heterodox traditions of Iran, these rituals underwent a peculiar evolution under the Safavids, and constituted a “catalyst of emotive feelings of persecution, widely spread in popular Shiism, which could always be utilized in some way to fulfill political aims,” The mourners of Husain would cut themselves with knives, dishevel their hair, beat their chests and foreheads with their fists, all to express their grief and remorse for the innocent Husain . The devotional and folkloric passion plays expanded, at the time of Abbas, into great religious and civil festivals, and further adopted an anti-Sunni disposition: ceremonies such as camel sacrifice were held on the last day of the Muharram feast to allow the Shiites to express their feelings of revenge and hatred of the Sunnis by directing their anger against the camel. Such propaganda doubtlessly solidified the Shiite hegemony over the populace. This was intended by the Safavid monarchs who took no interest in the true Shiite theology. The monarch’s disposition was reminiscent of that of the Achaemenid king who would publicly harness the divinity of the khvarneh bestowed upon him by Ahura Mazda, and yet, would take no active interest in the intricate matters of religion. Truly, the Safavids had learned well from their predecessors!
I recall seeing a banner in Tehran in my childhood years that reverently illustrated a quotation from Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme spiritual leader of the Islamic Republic, which declared that “the months of Muharram and Safar truly rescued Islam from utter annihilation and imminent corruption”. I often thought that the Pir’e Jamaran was referring to the heroic uprising of Husain and his devout followers who fought against the infectious Omavid contamination of Islam. Now I believe that it was the traumatic passion plays and festivals of the Safavid times which, through the portrayal of the martyrs’ tragic stories, consolidated and thus saved the Shiite absolutism in Iran. The quest of historical Husain is beyond me; however, I have always felt the power and the presence of the mythical Husain in the Muharram ceremonies in cities and villages of Iran.
A new Iranian dynasty had risen to throne. A new official religion was proclaimed and consolidated by the will of the Safavid monarch. The Qizilbash Sufis, the pioneer revolutionaries of the Safavid cause, were degraded and humiliated in the court of the magnificent Abbas, were replaced by the ghulams and Shah-sevans on the battlefields, and were faced with the utter annihilation of their traditional channels of livelihood following the dismantlement of the Tiyul system of land appanage by Abbas. Their red twelve-fold headgear was beginning to be associated with the twelve Imams rather than the Qizilbash tribes: their heterodox version of Islam had been eradicated. As the wine bottles from court cellars were publicly smashed, much to the demise of the French missionaries, and as music and dance were banned from the weddings, and as the Islamic garb became the norm on the streets of Isfahan, the Sharia-minded version of Shiite Islam rose to become hegemonic in Iran for centuries to come.
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