Ismail I (Persian: اسماعیل یکم, romanized: Ismāʿīl; 17 July 1487 – 23 May 1524) was the founder and first shah of Safavid Iran, ruling from 1501 until his death in 1524. His reign is one of the most vital in the history of Iran, and the Safavid era is often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history. Under Ismail, Iran was unified under native rule for the first time since the Islamic conquest of the country eight-and-a-half centuries earlier.
Ismail inherited leadership of the Safavid Sufi order from his brother as a child. His predecessors had transformed the religious order into a military movement supported by the Qizilbash (mainly Turkoman Shiite groups). The Safavids took control of northwestern Iran, with Tabriz as the capital. In 1501, Ismail was crowned as shah (king). In the following years, Ismail conquered the rest of Iran and other neighbouring territories. His expansion into Eastern Anatolia brought him into conflict with the Ottoman Empire. In 1514, the Ottomans decisively defeated the Safavids at the Battle of Chaldiran, which brought an end to Ismail's conquests. Ismail fell into depression and heavy drinking after this defeat and died in 1524. He was succeeded by his eldest son Tahmasp I.
One of Ismail's first actions was the proclamation of the Twelver denomination of Shia Islam as the official religion of the Safavid state, marking one of the most important turning points in the history of Islam, which had major consequences for the ensuing history of Iran. He caused sectarian tensions in the Middle East when he destroyed the tombs of the Abbasid caliphs, the Sunni Imam Abu Hanifa, and the Sufi Muslim ascetic Abdul Qadir Gilani in 1508.
The dynasty founded by Ismail I would rule for over two centuries, being one of the greatest Iranian empires and at its height being amongst the most powerful empires of its time, ruling all of present-day Iran, the Republic of Azerbaijan, Armenia, most of Georgia, the North Caucasus, and Iraq, as well as parts of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. It also reasserted Iranian identity in large parts of Greater Iran. The legacy of the Safavid Empire was also the revival of Iran as an economic stronghold between the East and the West, the establishment of a bureaucratic state, its architectural innovations, and patronage for fine arts.
Ismail I was also a prolific poet who under the pen name Khaṭāʾī (Arabic: خطائي, lit. 'the wrongful') contributed to the literary development of a southern Turkic dialect, which is often called Ajami Turkic and seen as a precursor to the Azerbaijani language. He also contributed to Persian literature, though few of his Persian writings survive.
Ismail I was born to Shaykh Haydar and his wife Halima Begum on 17 July 1487, in Ardabil. His father Shaykh Haydar, who was born to Shaykh Junayd and the Aq Qoyunlu princess Khadija Begum, was the sheikh of the Safavid tariqa (Sufi order) and a direct descendant of its Kurdish founder, Safi-ad-Din Ardabili (1252–1334). In 1301, Safi-ad-Din had assumed the leadership of the Zahediyeh, a significant Sufi order in Gilan, from his spiritual master and father-in-law Zahed Gilani. The order was later known as the Safavid. Ismail also proclaimed himself the Mahdi and a reincarnation of Ali. Ismail was the last in this line of hereditary Grand Masters of the order, prior to his founding of a ruling dynasty.
His mother Halima Begum was the daughter of Uzun Hasan, the ruler of the Turkoman Aq Qoyunlu dynasty, by his Pontic Greek wife Theodora Megale Komnene, better known as Despina Khatun. Despina Khatun was the daughter of Emperor John IV of Trebizond. She had married Uzun Hassan in a deal to protect the Empire of Trebizond from the Ottoman Turks. Ismail was a great-great-grandson of Emperor Alexios IV of Trebizond and King Alexander I of Georgia.
Roger Savory suggests that Ismail's family was of Iranian origin, likely from Iranian Kurdistan, and later moved to Azerbaijan where they, alongside Persian, adopted the form of Turkic spoken there. Ismail spoke both Persian and a Southern Turkic dialect, a precursor of modern Azeri Turkic, in which he wrote much of his poetry, as it was aimed at his Turkic qizilbash followers in order to spread his views, while also often writing in Persian. His ancestry was mixed, because his Iranian (likely Kurdish) ancestors often intermarried with Turkmen, Byzantine Greek, and Georgian princesses to form alliances (such as his mother Halima Begum, paternal grandmother Khadija Begum and his maternal grandmother Theodora Megale Komnene).
The Safavids have been described by some as "Turkamans of remote Kurdish descent", and the Safavid conquest was described by a few as "the third Türkmen wave" to hit Iran, after the Seljuks and the Qara Qoyunlu/ Aq Qoyunlu. However, the overwhelming majority of scholars agree that the resulting empire was an Iranian one, and the state was again officially designated as "Iran" after a lapse of several centuries.
A fabricated genealogy developed by the Safavids claimed that Sheikh Safi (the founder of the order and Ismael's ancestor) was a lineal descendant of the Seventh Twelver Shia Imam and therefore of Imam Ali and the Prophet Mohammad.
In 1488, Ismail'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 to go into hiding in Gilan, where under the Kar-Kiya ruler Soltan-Ali Mirza, he received education under the guidance of scholars.
When Ismail reached the age of twelve, he came out of hiding and returned to what is now Iranian Azerbaijan along with his followers. Ismail'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.
It is often assumed that Ismail led the Safavid movement to victory by himself, even though he was only twelve years old when he emerged from hiding to begin his conquests and not older than fourteen when he was crowned Shah. In fact, a group of seven advisers known as the ahl-i ikhtisas directed the Safavid revolution.
Conquest of Iran and its surroundings
In the summer of 1500, Ismail rallied about 7,000 Qizilbash troops at Erzincan, including members of the Ustajlu, Rumlu, Takkalu, Dhu'l-Qadar, Afshar, Qajar, and Varsaq tribes. Qizilbash forces passed over the Kura River in December 1500 and marched towards the Shirvanshah's state. They defeated the forces of the Shirvanshah Farrukh Yassar near Cabanı (present-day Shamakhi Rayon, Azerbaijan Republic) or at Gulistan (present-day Gülüstan, Goranboy, Azerbaijan), and subsequently went on to conquer Baku. Thus, Shirvan and its dependencies (up to southern Dagestan in the north) were now Ismail's. The Shirvanshah line nevertheless continued to rule Shirvan under Safavid suzerainty until 1538, when, during the reign of Ismail's son, Tahmasp I (r. 1524–1576), it was placed under the rule of a Safavid governor. After the conquest, Ismail had Alexander I of Kakheti send his son Demetre to Shirvan to negotiate a peace agreement.
The successful conquest alarmed the ruler of the Aq Qoyunlu, Alvand, who subsequently proceeded north from Tabriz and crossed the Aras River in order to challenge the Safavid forces. Both sides met at the Battle of Sharur, which Ismail's army won despite being outnumbered by four to one. Shortly before his attack on Shirvan, Ismail 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. After eventually conquering Tabriz and Nakhchivan, Ismail broke the promise he had made to Constantine II and made the kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti both his vassals.