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Introduction: New Perspectives on the Ottoman-Safavid War of 1578–1590

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2025

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Sacha Alsancakli*
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Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo, Japan
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Email: sacha.alsancakli@aa.tufs.ac.jp
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Abstract

The war of 1578–1590 marked a turning point in Ottoman-Safavid relations. It followed thirty-three years of peace and ushered in over half a century of nearly continuous crisis and bloodshed. Militarily, the conflict was centered primarily in the Caucasus, where the Ottomans achieved significant territorial gains, formalized in the Treaty of Constantinople (1590). This war is among the better documented of the Ottoman-Safavid conflicts thanks to a wealth of contemporary sources, particularly from the Ottoman side. However, the lack of contemporary Safavid sources, as well as the neglect of local and global perspectives, has led to a biased and partial understanding, which the present special section seeks to address. Two of this section’s articles focus on the Caucasus campaign of 1578–1579, emphasizing Ottoman interactions with local populations and the daily experiences of ordinary soldiers (Alsancakli and Stevens). Two other articles examine Safavid relations with Russia and the Italian states in the context of a potential anti-Ottoman alliance (Rybar and Trentacoste). All four contributions are based on the presentation and publication or translation of previously unknown or overlooked primary sources.

Keywords

OttomansSafavidswar of 1578–1590CaucasusRussiaItalian states

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Iranian Studies , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , January 2026 , pp. 147 - 158
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Association for Iranian Studies.

The fall of the Aqqoyunlu and emergence of the Safavids in 907/1501, in Tabriz, led to nearly a century and a half of conflict between the Ottoman Empire and Iran over control of the borderland regions of Kurdistan, Azerbaijan and the Caucasus, and Arabian Iraq. The catastrophic rout of Ismāʿīl I (r. 907–930/1501–1524) by Selīm I (r. 918–926/1512–1520) at Chāldirān in 920/1514 marked a first episode in the struggle, and a second war began in 939/1532 between the sons and successors of the two rulers, Süleymān I (r. 926–974/1520–1566) and Ṭahmāsp I (r. 930–984/1524–1576), concluded by the signature of the Treaty of Amasya in 962/1555. This treaty confirmed the Ottoman conquests of Van and Baghdad, while the Caucasus was divided between the two states and Tabriz, the former Safavid capital, was returned to Iran.Footnote 1

War broke out again twenty-three years later, during the reign of Murād III (r. 982–1003/1574–1595), who sought to seize the opportunity presented by post-Ṭahmāsp Qizilbash anarchy in the Safavid realm to advance into Azerbaijan and the Caucasus. Ruled by the weak and incompetent Khudābanda (r. 985–995/1578–1587) and undermined by infighting between opposing courtly-military factions, the Safavids were no match for the Ottomans and, taking over after his father’s abdication in 995/1587, ʿAbbās I (r. 995–1038/1587–1629) was quick to sue for peace with the sultan. After twelve years of devastating conflict, both parties signed the Treaty of Constantinople in 998/1590, confirming Ottoman gains in the Caucasian borderlands. Further hostilities then occurred in 1012–1021/1603–1612, 1025–1027/1616–1618, and 1033–1049/1623–1639, after which the conflict was finally settled with the Treaty of Zuhab, which largely confirmed the provisions of the Treaty of Amasya signed nearly a century earlier.Footnote 2 Peace then prevailed throughout the remainder of the Safavid state’s existence, up to the fall of Isfahan in 1135/1722.Footnote 3

As seen in this rough outline, the war of 986–998/1578–1590 was a turning point in Ottoman-Safavid relations, reigniting the conflict between the two states and plunging the region into nearly six decades of uninterrupted war and bloodletting. In line with this historically significant role, it is also one of the better studied wars of the early modern Islamic world, as manifest in the useful overview of Western, Turkish, and Iranian scholarship on the topic provided by Rudi Matthee.Footnote 4 To the benefit of scholars, there is a vast array of contemporary sources written on this conflict, more numerous and diverse than is the case for other wars between the two states.

Yet, despite this wealth of resources, our vision of the events of 1578–1590 remains partial. Through its four contributions, the present special section helps foster new perspectives by examining some of the war’s unseen and neglected dimensions, hopefully paving the way for a broader reassessment of the conflict.

Comparative Safavid and Ottoman state practices and theories

Primary sources constitute the foundation of any research endeavor and, for the war of 1578–1590, the absence or unavailability of such sources has led to the Safavid perspective being largely overlooked in favor of Ottoman-oriented works and scholarship. Indeed, Safavid sources on the conflict are very few, especially when compared with the amplitude and diversity of Ottoman historiography.

There are, for example, several Ottoman ġazavātnāme on the 986–987/1578–1579 Caucasus campaign written by authors who took part.Footnote 5 By contrast, the Safavid source closest to the events is the Khulāṣat al-Tavārīkh (The Essence of Histories) by Qāżī Aḥmad Qumī, written in 999/1590–1591, a year after the end of the war, and Qāżī Aḥmad did not participate in the events.Footnote 6 In fact, the only sources written by Safavid participants in the war are two texts produced in foreign lands by former Safavid commanders, namely the Sharafnāma by Sharaf Khān Bidlīsī (d. 1009/1600) and, in a more extensive account, the Relaciones by Don Juan de Persia, formerly known as Orūch Beg Bāyat (d. after 1650).Footnote 7

Official history writing and record keeping are instruments of state power, and the discrepancy between Ottomans and Safavids in this regard can, in a broader sense, be attributed to differences in state ideologies and ruling practices. Whereas the Ottoman Empire was a “bureaucratic empire” in the classical age, i.e., an autocratic state “governed on the basis of bureaucratic centrism and the rule of law,” the Safavid king functioned as the head of a tribal state shaped by the ruler’s interpersonal connections with the Qizilbash ruling aristocracy.Footnote 8 These ideological and governmental differences also extended to the administration of borderlands and newly acquired dominions: as soon as the Ottomans conquered new territories, they were gradually integrated into the empire’s administrative system through tried-and-tested means, while, by contrast, the Safavids treated regional elites as Qizilbash-like aristocrats entering into covenants based on personal loyalty to the king.Footnote 9

As military bureaucrats, Ottoman governors in the provinces frequently changed posting in the course of their careers, supposedly to prevent them from establishing and maintaining close relationships with local elites and building regional power bases.Footnote 10 Qizilbash emirs could also be dismissed and even executed, but, until the early seventeenth century, Qizilbash factions usually retained control of specific regions of the realm, each governed “with absolute authority” by a khan who “[did] not recognize in his dominion any supremacy of the King.”Footnote 11 This is in stark contrast with the Ottoman practice of müsādere (confiscation)—the appropriation of the possessions of deceased members of the ruling ʿaskerī class, including governors, leaving only a small portion to their heirs.Footnote 12

This differentiated understanding of the state and its operation ultimately led to divergent record-keeping practices. On the one hand, due to its highly bureaucratic nature, the Ottoman state relied on extensive reports and exchanges between the center and provinces to function.Footnote 13 Even when no longer needed, these documents and reports were carefully preserved, resulting in an estimated 150 million records kept in Istanbul alone, mostly at the former Ottoman Archives of the Prime Ministry (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi).Footnote 14 Thanks in large part to this extant documentation, scholars of the Ottoman Empire have been able to examine the workings of the state apparatus and the Porte’s decision-making process in detail, and the study of Ottoman institutional history is fairly well established.Footnote 15 This is further facilitated by a steady stream of publications sponsored by the Directorate of State Archives of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey, as well as numerous MA and PhD dissertations defended at universities in the country.Footnote 16

Safavid documents, on the other hand, are few and far between, numbering in the low thousands in terms of collections published so far.Footnote 17 It is unsurprising, though somewhat ironic, that a good part of extant Safavid documentation is today found in Ottoman archives in Turkey. In fact, Ottoman records such as diplomatic and intelligence reports can occasionally tell us more about the Safavid state and society than Safavid sources.Footnote 18 Less prone to record-keeping than their archnemesis to the west, the Safavids also met a much more brutal end, leading to the dispersion and destruction of the bulk of their archives.Footnote 19

The Ottoman bureaucratic hypertrophy manifested in an abundance of documents and a surplus of personnel in search of patrons and positions in the empire’s capital or at the provincial level. From these experiences, a diversity of historical works emerged, including ġazavātnāme and universal or dynastic chronicles. On the Safavid side, chronicle authors were usually employed in the shah’s central administration; in general, Qizilbash emirs did not patronize Persian letters or seem to have cared for their cultivation.Footnote 20 In Iran, the age-old distinction between Turkish “men of the sword” and Tajik “men of the pen” remained relevant, and a general distrust and hostility seems to have prevailed between the two classes.Footnote 21

By contrast, although the Ottomans also had distinct career paths for soldiers (seyfiye), religious scholars (ilmiye), and administrators (kalemiye), ultimately, military commanders, ulema, and bureaucrats all belonged to the imperial ʿaskerī class and could move between these career paths.Footnote 22 The careers of Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī (d. 1008/1600) and Āṣafī Dāl Meḥmed Çelebi (d. 1006/1597–1598), authors of two important sources on the war of 1578–1590, are exemplary in this regard: before turning thirty, Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī “had begun careers in all three of the major Ottoman professional paths: Learning, Pen, and Sword,” whereas, from the late 1570s, Āṣafī, a “close friend and apprentice” of ʿĀlī, rapidly progressed “from scribe, to financial official, … to sancak beği, to paşa.”Footnote 23 They both took part in the Ottoman campaign of Shirvan in 1578–1579 as, respectively, campaign secretary of the serdār Lala Muṣṭafā Paşa (d. 988/1580) and teẕkereci of the governor of Shirvan, Özdemiroġlu ʿOs̱mān Paşa (d. 993/1585), and wrote ġazavātnāme dedicated to their patrons after the campaign.Footnote 24

Usually brief but very popular texts, ġazavātnāme were an ideal means to an end for ambitious Ottoman bureaucrats looking to make a name for themselves, and the reign of Murād III was especially prolific in this regard.Footnote 25 In Safavid Iran, although accounts of victorious campaigns were occasionally produced, the genre of ġazavātnāme was absent; furthermore, Safavid historiographical writing seems to have been less diverse in terms of genres and style.Footnote 26 Literacy also appears to have been higher in the Ottoman Empire, as suggested by the writings of Ebūbekir b. ʿAbdullāh (d. after 992/1584), a low-level military officer who composed a ġazavātnāme on the campaign of Shirvan in 1578–1579, something even top-level Safavid commanders usually did not do.Footnote 27 Admittedly, there were not a lot of people like Ebūbekir, but there are other examples, such as ʿOs̱mān Aġa of Timişoara (d. after 1145/1732), another low-ranking military officer who spent twelve years as a prisoner in Austria, a time he later recounted in a memoir called Gāvurların Esīri (Prisoner of the Infidels).Footnote 28

Similar to the ġazavātnāme, the genre of naṣīḥatnāme, or “books of counsel,” is another popular genre of Ottoman literature absent from Safavid compositions.Footnote 29 Where intellectuals such as Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī, author in the early 1580s of a Counsel for Sultans (Nuṣḥat al-Salāṭīn), engaged in that “peculiarly Ottoman literary genre, the literature of reform devoted to diagnosis of the causes of Ottoman decline and prescription of measures to reverse it,” the Safavid tendency was to downplay or erase political setbacks and military defeats, which can partly explain the lack of Safavid historiography on the war of 1578–1590.Footnote 30 Thus, in addition to the difference in record-keeping practices, Safavid historiographical culture appears to have been more imitative and less innovative than that of the Ottomans.

Special section: New perspectives from below and beyond

Aside from the Ottoman bias of classical narratives on the war of 1578–1590, two important dimensions of the conflict, albeit on opposite scales, have been altogether neglected: the local borderlanders’ experiences of the war and the global role of foreign powers, notably Russia and the Italian states.

When it comes to the borderlands and their local historiography, there is a comparative lack of interest in the available sources, largely the result of decades, if not centuries, of scholarly focus on the centers of imperial power. This focus has been grounded in a “center/periphery” vision through which people of the borderlands are seen as marginal communities impacted by regional state policies but with no agency of their own. Considering the frontier as an alternative and shared center for borderlanders, however, opens new avenues for research and new interpretive possibilities.Footnote 31 To facilitate this recentering, scholars can benefit from the local historiographic traditions that existed in many “peripheral” provinces of Iran; for our purposes, specifically in the regions of the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus, and Kurdistan, the study of which has remained limited, even more so in the case of non-historiographic texts and the (albeit small) body of works produced in languages other than Persian and Turkish.Footnote 32

On the global stage, there exists a sea of archives related to European and Russian involvement with the Safavids, most of which remains untapped, hidden like a proverbial needle in a haystack among repositories containing thousands or even millions of documents. Studies already conducted nonetheless reveal the great potential of such archives for the study of Safavid Iran and its relations with foreign powers, particularly in the case of Russia and the Italian states, where the Safavids were seen as potential partners in an anti-Ottoman alliance.Footnote 33

Originating from a panel held at the 5th Congress on Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies in Lyon on July 10–13, 2023, the present special section comprises four contributions that address these two dimensions. Guided by the idea that careful engagement with primary sources should be central to any reassessment of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict of 1578–1590, all four contributions present and publish or translate previously neglected or entirely unknown texts or archival documents.

In the first contribution, I present a little-known source on the Caucasus campaign of 1578–1579, the so-called Tārīḫ-i ʿOs̱mān Paşa (History of Osman Pasha), composed between 988–992/1580–1584 by Ebūbekir b. ʿAbdullāh, a cavalryman in the Ottoman army. I notably focus on Ebūbekir’s description of his time with Ottoman commander Özdemiroġlu ʿOs̱mān Paşa in the strategic North Caucasian fortress city of Derbent, a passage I analyze and present in translation. Although Ebūbekir sometimes gets mixed up in the complex socio-politics of the peoples he encountered, he provides many intriguing details about the religious and cultural life of the region, comparable to accounts found in local histories produced in the Caucasus around the same period.

The second contribution also relates to the 1578–1579 campaign, with Samuel Stevens presenting a hitherto unknown Ottoman source, the anonymous Tevārīḫ-i Futuḥ-i Şirvān (History of the Conquest of Shirvan), likely written in the years following the campaign. After introducing the only known manuscript of the work, housed in the library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, Stevens explores the narrative of the Tevārīḫ, specifically examining its portrayal of an “ideal Ottoman commander,” exemplified in this case by Lala Muṣṭafā Paşa and Özdemiroġlu ʿOs̱mān Paşa, as well as the Tevārīḫ’s evidence of hostility towards the celebrated Ṣoḳullu family of Ottoman notables.

In the third contribution, Lukas Rybar moves beyond the grim realities of the battlefield to discuss Safavid-Rurikid-Habsburg diplomatic efforts during the final years of the 1578–1590 war. Beginning in 994–995/1586–1587 with Muḥammad Khudābanda’s dispatch of Hādī Beg as an envoy to the Russian court, these negotiations aimed to create an anti-Ottoman alliance, particularly on the Caucasian front, and continued until 1590. However, the new ruler, ʿAbbās I, aware of Safavid weakness at the time, favored a more cautious approach, ultimately leading to the signature of the Treaty of Constantinople. Through a thorough and careful analysis of archival documents, including the separate and complex dealings between the Rurikids and the Habsburgs, Rybar examines the intricate geopolitical context and outcomes of this endeavor.

The possibility of an anti-Ottoman alliance with the Safavids was also explored at various times by several Italian states, and Italian interest in the Ottoman-Safavid conflicts is the focus of the section’s fourth and final contribution by Davide Trentacoste. Beginning with a broad overview of Italian interest in Safavid Iran, Trentacoste publishes and translates two documents produced in this context. The first document, dating from the very beginning of the 1578–1590 war, is an intelligence report presented in Florence to the Tuscan Secretariat of State. The second document shifts the investigation to the resumption of hostilities in 1012/1603 and the decisive Battle of Ṣūfiyān in 1014/1605, which is discussed in a report for the Gonzaga Duke of Mantua. This demonstrates that interest in Iranian and Ottoman affairs was shared by other Italian states beyond Venice and Tuscany, offering a promising avenue for future research on the topic.

When writing about war, it is easy to overlook the human dimension of events, especially when working with sources produced primarily in elite contexts, far removed from the realities of the “common people” on both sides of the border. Yet, the Ottoman-Safavid war of 1578–1590 was, above all, a story of human tragedy and environmental disaster. By the end of the conflict, the battleground provinces of Azerbaijan and Shirvan, where most of the fighting occurred, had been reduced to barren swathes of scorched earth and depopulated land by the Safavid and Ottoman armies and commanders. Today, as wars continue to rage and tragedies unfold, let us remember that there is another way.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Lukas Rybar, Samuel Stevens, and Davide Trentacoste for their contributions, as well as Werner Gaboreau, who took part in the original panel in Lyon in July 2023, Ladan Niayesh, who chaired it, and participants in the discussion. I also wish to thank Artem Andreev, Ahmad Guliyev, and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on the articles. Finally, I am grateful to Nasrin Rahimieh, editor-in-chief, Farshad Sonboldel, deputy editor, and the entire team at Iranian Studies for their critical comments and help in putting this special section together, as well as Andrea Williams, content manager at Cambridge University Press, and all her team for the copy-editing and typesetting of the articles.

Footnotes

1 On these conflicts, see Adel Allouche, The Origins and Development of the Ottoman-Ṣafavid Conflict (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1983).

2 On the Treaty of Zuhab, also called the Treaty of Qaṣr-i Shīrīn, see notably Sabri Ateş, “Treaty of Zohab, 1639: Foundational Myth or Foundational Document?,” Iranian Studies 52, no. 3–4 (2019): 397–423.

3 On this period of peace, see Selim Güngörürler, The Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran, 1639–1682. Diplomacy and Borderlands in the Early Modern Middle East (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024). On the fall of the Safavids, see Rudi Matthee, Persia in Crisis. Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan (London: I.B.Tauris, 2012); Laurence Lockhart, The Fall of the Ṣafavī Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).

4 Rudi Matthee, “The Ottoman-Safavid War of 986–998/1578–90: Motives and Causes,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 20, no. 1–2 (2014): 1–20.

5 For references, see the articles by Samuel Stevens and myself in the present special section.

6 See Qāżī Aḥmad b. Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ḥusayn al-Ḥusaynī al-Qumī, Khulāṣat al-Tavārīkh, ed. Iḥsān Ishrāqī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1363sh/1984).

7 As governor of the frontier province of Nākhchivān, Sharaf Khān was a leading Safavid commander in the first months of the war, before rallying the Ottomans in Shavvāl 986/December 1578. Although he discusses the battle of Kura/Koyungeçidi in the Sharafnāma, Sharaf Khān does not mention his own participation. Orūch Beg Bāyat served the Safavids for the full duration of the war and, in 1007/1599, he was appointed first secretary of an embassy sent by ʿAbbās I to Europe to establish an anti-Ottoman alliance. In 1602, Orūch Beg converted to Christianity in Valladolid and was baptized as Don Juan de Persia, thereafter remaining in Spain where he published his Relaciones in 1604; Book 2, chapters 4–12 are devoted to the war of 1578–1590. See Scheref, prince de Bidlis, Scheref-Nameh ou Histoire des Kourdes, ed. Vladimir Véliaminof-Zernof, vol. 2 (Saint Petersburg: Académie Impériale des Sciences, 1860–1862), 257–258; Don Juan de Persia, Relaciones de Don Juan de Persia (Valladolid: Juan de Bostillo, 1604), ff. 63r–109r; English translation by Guy Le Strange as Don Juan of Persia. A Shiʿah Catholic, 1560–1604 (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1926), 133–213.

8 İ. Metin Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants. The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550–1650 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 31, a reworking of the author’s Sancaktan Eyalete. 1550–1650 Arasında Osmanlı Ümerası ve İl İdaresi (Istanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Matbaası, 1978); Rhoads Murphey, “Continuity and Discontinuity in Ottoman Administrative Theory and Practice during the Late Seventeenth Century,” Poetics Today 14, no. 2 (1993): 421. Vladimir Minorsky notes that the Safavid army, like that of its Qaraqoyunlu and Aqqoyunlu predecessors, was organized “on purely tribal principles,” an important factor in its defeat against a “modernized” Ottoman army at Chāldirān. See Tadhkirat al-Mulūk. A Manual of Safavid Administration (circa 1137/1725). Persian Text in Facsimile (B.M. Or. 9496), trans. Vladimir Minorsky (London: Luzac & Co., 1943), 30–31; Masashi Haneda, Le Châh et les Qizilbāš. Le système militaire safavide (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1987); Faruk Sümer, Safevî Devletinin Kuruluşu ve Gelişmesinde Anadolu Türklerinin Rolü (Şah İsmail ile Halefleri ve Anadolu Türkleri) (Ankara: Güven Matbaası, 1976).

9 On Ottoman integration of new lands, see Halil İnalcık, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest,” Studia Islamica 2 (1954): 103–129. On the Safavids, the Italian traveler Pietro Della Valle (d. 1652) noted that “all of [the king’s] servants, no matter from which nation, who settle in this country, enroll in the militia as among the Turks and immediately become Qizilbash, and natural nobles of the country with all their offspring.” As an illustration, Kurdish and Lurish emirs are listed among Qizilbash office holders in records compiled by Iskandar Beg Turkmān for the reigns of Ṭahmāsp I and ʿAbbās I; they are also mentioned in the anonymous late sixteenth/early seventeenth-century Tārīkh-i Qizilbāshān (History of the Qizilbash). According to Haneda, the Kurdish and Lurish emirs were positioned on the right wing of the Safavid army during battle, alongside the Rūmlū, Shāmlū, Turkmān, Takkalū, and others. See Majmūʿa-yi tārīkh-i Īran. Tārīkh-i Qizilbāshān, az rū-yi nuskha-yi munḥaṣir bi fard-i Kitābkhāna-yi Millī-yi Malik, taʾlīf shuda bayn sālhā-yi 1007–1013, ed. Mīr Hāshim Muḥaddis̱ (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Bihnām, 1361sh/1982), 40–44; Iskandar Beg, Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi ʿAbbāsī, ed. Īraj Afshār (Tehran: Chāpkhāna-yi Mūsavī, 1334–1335sh/1956), vol. 1, 138–142, vol. 2, 1084–1087; English translation as Eskandar Beg Monshi, History of Shah ʿAbbas the Great, trans. Roger M. Savory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978), vol. 1, 222–228, vol. 2, 1309–1315; Viaggi di Pietro Della Valle, il pellegrino, Con minuto ragguaglio di tutte le cose notabili osservate in essi, Descritti da lui medesimo in 54 Lettere familiari, Da diversi luoghi della intrapresa pellegrinatione, mandate in Napoli All’erudito, e fra’ più cari, di molti anni suo Amico, Mario Schipano, Divisi in trè Parti, Cioè la Turchia, la Persia, et l’India, co’l ritorno in Patria (Venice: Pressa Paolo Baglioni, 1663–1664), vol. 2, 70; Haneda, Le Châh et les Qizilbāš, 52–53, 60; Tadhkirat al-Mulūk, 14–15; Akihiko Yamaguchi, “Shāh Ṭahmāsp’s Kurdish Policy,” Studia Iranica 41, no. 1 (2012): 101–132.

10 Taking the governorships of Rumelia and Anatolia as case studies, Metin Kunt has shown that, between 986–996/1578–1588, thirteen of fifteen governors (86.6%) held the same post for two years or less, although the vast majority of new appointments were made to governorships in the same general region. Furthermore, in frontier provinces such as Diyarbekir and Van, the rules appear to have been more flexible; for example, Köse Ḫüsrev Paşa, who played a key role in initiating the war of 1578–1590, seems to have remained governor of Van from 975/1567–1568 until his death in 995/1587, as evidenced by the charitable foundations he established in the region. See Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants, 72–76; Scheref, Scheref-Nameh, vol. 1, 348–351; Semavi Eyice, “Hüsrev Paşa Külliyesi,” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 19 (1999): 49–51; Salih Uluçay, “El Aman Hanı ve Köse Hüsrev Paşa Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme,” Bitlis Eren Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi 1, no. 1 (2012): 71–74; Sacha Alsancakli, “Le Šarafnāma de Šaraf Xān Bidlīsī (ca. 1005/1596–1597) : composition, transmission et réception d’une chronique des dynasties kurdes entre les Safavides et les Ottomans” (PhD diss., Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2018), vol. 1, 227–231. For a general overview on governors and governorship in the Ottoman state, see Nejat Göyünç, “Osmanlı Devletinde Taşra Teşkilâtı (Tanzimat’a Kadar),” in Osmanlı, 6, Teşkilât, ed. Güler Eren (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye Yayınları, 1999), 77–88.

11 Della Valle, who visited Isfahan in 1617, noted that “today the King [ʿAbbās I] wishes to reform [that practice], as indeed [the Qizilbash emirs] hold excessive power within their countries.” See Viaggi di Pietro Della Valle, vol. 2, 71–72. On Shāh ʿAbbās’s reforms, see Roger Savory, Iran under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 76–103.

12 From the time of Meḥmed II (r. 848–850/1444–1446 and 855–886/1451–1481), müsādere “became a tradition applied to all statesmen that had a little wealth, save for the ulema,” on the premise that such wealth “belonged to the office, rather than the person.” See Cengiz Tomar and Tuncay Öğün, “Müsâdere,” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 32 (2006): 67–68; Tuncay Öğün, “Osmanlı Devletinde Müsâdere Uygulamaları,” in Osmanlı, 6, Teşkilât, ed. Güler Eren (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye Yayınları, 1999), 371–383.

13 There is much literature on Ottoman archival and record-keeping practices, mostly focused on the period after the creation of the Ḫazīne-i Evrāḳ in 1262/1846. For general overviews, see notably Necati Aktaş and Yusuf Halaçoğlu, “Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi,” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 5 (1992): 122–126; Bernard Lewis, “Başvekalet Arşivi,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition 1 (1986): 1089–1091; Belgelerle Arşivcilik Tarihimiz, I (Osmanlı Dönemi) (Ankara: T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü, Osmanlı Arşivi Daire Başkanlığı, 1999), and the references included therein; and Mübahat S. Kütükoğlu, Osmanlı Belgelerinin Dili (Diplomatik) (Istanbul: Kubbealtı Akademisi Kültür ve Sanat Vakfı, 1998), a foundational text on Ottoman paleography and diplomatics.

14 On the preservation of documents, see Kütükoğlu, Osmanlı Belgelerinin Dili, 1; Belgelerle Arşivcilik Tarihimiz, 5; Yoichi Takamatsu, “Formation and Custody of the Ottoman Archives during the Pre-Tanzimat Period,” The Memoirs of the Toyo Bunko 64 (2006): 125. On the estimate of 150 million documents, which is found in multiple works but of unknown origin, see Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi Rehberi (Istanbul: T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü, Osmanlı Arşivi Daire Başkanlığı, 2010), xxvii. The former Ottoman Archives of the Prime Ministry is now known as the Ottoman Archives of the Directorate of State Archives of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey (T.C. Cumhurbaşkanlığı Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı Osmanlı Arşivi). On the localization of other Ottoman archives in Turkey and the former Ottoman territories, see Suraiya Faroqhi, Approaching Ottoman History. An Introduction to the Sources (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 49–61.

15 On the uses of the Ottoman archives, including for studies beyond institutional history, see Marc Aymes and Christopher Markiewicz, “Setting Off for the Archives,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ottoman History, ed. Alexis Wick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025), 13–26; Faroqhi, Approaching Ottoman History, 82–109. One little-noted dimension is the process of the formation of these archives and, more broadly, “document-processing” in the empire. To quote Cornell Fleischer, “we do not know all that is there, who put it there, and why.” See Cornell H. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire. The Historian Mustafa Âli (1541–1600) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 3; Takamatsu, “Formation and Custody.”

16 On the Caucasus, see, for example, İsmet Binark, ed., Osmanlı Devletle Azerbaycan Türk Hanlıkları Arasındaki Münâsebetlere Dâir Arşiv Belgeleri (Karabağ-Şuşa, Nahçıvan, Bakü, Gence, Şirvan, Şeki, Revan, Kuba, Hoy), I (1578–1914) (Ankara: T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü, Osmanlı Arşivi Daire Başkanlığı, 1992); İsmet Binark, ed., Osmanlı Devletle Azerbaycan Türk Hanlıkları Arasındaki Münâsebetlere Dâir Arşiv Belgeleri (Karabağ-Şuşa, Nahçıvan, Bakü, Gence, Şirvan, Şeki, Revan, Kuba, Hoy), II (1575–1918) (Ankara: T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü, Osmanlı Arşivi Daire Başkanlığı, 1993).

17 See, notably, ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Navāʾī, Shāh Ṭahmāsb-i Ṣafavī. Majmūʿa-yi asnād va mukātibāt-i tārīkhī hamrāh bā yāddāshthā-yi tafṣīlī (Tehran: Bunyād-i farhang-i Īrān, 1349sh/1971); ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Navāʾī, Shāh ʿAbbās. Majmūʿa-yi asnād va mukātibāt-i tārīkhī hamrāh bā yāddāshthā-yi tafṣīlī (Tehran: Bunyād-i farhang-i Īrān, 2535–2537shāh/1976–1978); Lajos Fekete, Einführung in die persische Paläographie. 101 persische Dokumente (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1977), nos 78–82. Almost nothing about the war of 1578–1590 is to be found in these published collections.

18 See, for example, the goods and treasures of Ismāʿīl I listed in two documents kept in the Topkapı Palace Museum Archives in Istanbul and published by Vural Genç, “From Tabriz to Istanbul: Goods and Treasures of Shāh Ismāʿīl Looted after the Battle of Chāldirān,” Studia Iranica 44, no. 2 (2015): 227–276; and intelligence reports related to Iran published in Arşiv Belgelerine Göre Osmanlı’da İstihbarat (Istanbul: T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü, Osmanlı Arşivi Daire Başkanlığı, 2017).

19 According to Vladimir Minorsky, the “constant shifting of capitals” may also have played a role. See Tadhkirat al-Mulūk, 6.

20 Pietro Della Valle wrote: “[The Qizilbash] say that Persian is too sweet and too suave a tongue and that, in effect, it is made for women, and for poetry, and it is very worthy for these; Turkish, however, is deeper, and made for soldiers; and, thus, the King, and the worthy people pride themselves on speaking it.” See Viaggi di Pietro Della Valle, vol. 2, 12; this passage is discussed in Willem Floor and Hasan Javadi, “The Role of Azerbaijani Turkish in Safavid Iran,” Iranian Studies 46, no. 4 (2013): 573.

21 On this distinction, see Savory, Iran under the Safavids, 32; Roger M. Savory, “The Principal Offices of the Ṣafawid State during the Reign of Ismaʿīl I (907–30/1501–24),” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 23, no. 1 (1960): 91–105; Roger M. Savory, “The Principal Offices of the Ṣafawid State during the Reign of Ṭahmāsp I (930–84/1524–76),” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 24, no. 1 (1961): 65–85. As early as 1943, in his edition of the Tadhkirat al-Mulūk (pp. 14–19, 187–188), Vladimir Minorsky wrote of the relations between Iranians and Turks in Safavid Iran as ranking among “matters which … would merit detailed investigation and require much preliminary research in the sources.” This remains the case. For earlier periods of Iranian history, notable studies on the topic include David Durand-Guédy, Iranian Elites and Turkish Rulers: A History of Iṣfahān in the Saljūq Period (London: Routledge, 2010); Jean Aubin, Émirs mongols et vizirs persans dans les remous de l’acculturation (Paris: Association pour l’avancement des études iraniennes, 2015).

22 For a summarized overview of these distinctions and career paths, see Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, 5–7. Detailed studies include İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devleti Teşkilâtından Kapukulu Ocakları (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1943–1944); İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Saray Teşkilâtı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1945); İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Merkez ve Bahriye Teşkilâtı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1948); and İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin İlmiye Teşkilâtı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1965).

23 See Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, 60–61, 81–82.

24 See Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿÂlî, Nusret-nâme, ed. H. Mustafa Eravcı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2014); Hacı Mustafa Eravcı, Âsafî Dal Mehmed Çelebi ve Şecâʿatnâme (Istanbul: MVT Yayıncılık, 2009); and Âsafî Dal Mehmed Çelebi, Şecâʾatnâme. Özdemiroğlu Osman Paşa’nın Şark Seferleri (1578–1585), ed. Abdülkadir Özcan (Istanbul: Çamlıca, 2006).

25 Ġazavātnāme works have most often been used to “fill the blanks” left by Ottoman dynastic or universal chronicles, to quote from Mustafa Erkan’s article in the İslâm Ansiklopedisi; thus, the ġazavātnāme genre has rarely been conceptually examined, with even Agâh Sırrı Levend’s classic study on the topic not analyzing it from the perspective of role and function. For recent attempts at doing so, see Sultan Çetinkaya Tahtacı, Les récits des ghaza chez les Ottomans du XVe siècle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2024); Sultan Çetinkaya Tahtacı, “Bir Edebi Tür Olarak Gazavatnameler ve Dönemsel İçerik Analizi,” Avrasya İncelemeleri Dergisi-Journal of Eurasian Inquiries 13, no. 1 (2024): 1–20; see also Agâh Sırrı Levend, Ġazavāt-nāmeler ve Mihaloğlu Ali Bey’in Ġazavāt-nāmesi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1956); Mustafa Erkan, “Gazavatnâme,” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 13 (1996): 439–440.

26 Accounts of victorious campaigns were, for example, composed about Safavid victories against the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf, with three texts by Qadrī Shīrāzī (fl. early seventeenth century): the Jangnāma-yi Kishm, the Fatḥnāma, and the Jārūnnāma. See Maurizio Pistoso and Maria Cristina Pudioli, “Le guerre del Golfo [Materiali per una storia letteraria della Persia safavide],” Studi Orientali e linguistici 4 (1988): 61–95, and further references therein. On attempts at categorizing the different genres and schools of Safavid historiography, see Sholeh A. Quinn, Historical Writing During The Reign of Shah ʿAbbas. Ideology, Imitation and Legitimacy in Safavid Chronicles (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000); Tilmann Trausch, Formen höfischer Historiographie im 16. Jahrhundert. Geschichtsschreibung unter den frühen Safaviden: 1501–1576 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2015).

27 On higher literacy rates in the Ottoman Empire, see Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, 9.

28 See Richard F. Kreutel, Die Autobiographie des Dolmetschers ʿOsmān Aġa aus Temeschwar (Cambridge: Gibb Memorial Trust, 1980); English translation as Osman of Timişoara, Prisoner of the Infidels. The Memoir of an Ottoman Muslim in Seventeenth-Century Europe, trans. Giancarlo Casale (Oakland: University of California Press, 2021).

29 Unlike traditional Perso-Islamic advice literature of the “mirror for princes” type, the Ottoman naṣīḥatnāme was “a new genre of political reform literature” characterized by particularly critical engagement with contemporary politics. See Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, 95–105; İskender Pala, “Nasihatnāme,” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 32 (2006): 409–410.

30 See Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, 8; Andreas Tietze, Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī’s Counsel for Sultans of 1581 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1981–1982). Another example is the Kanûn-nâme-i Sultânî li ʿAzîz Efendi. Aziz Efendi’s Book of Sultanic Laws and Regulations: An Agenda for Reform by a Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Statesman, ed. and trans. Rhoads Murphey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Office of the University Publisher, 1985).

31 As Owen Lattimore observed in 1962, “border populations, working together, … become a ‘we’ group to whom others of their own nationality, and especially the authorities, are ‘they’,” and thus, “it is often possible to describe the border populations on both sides of a frontier, taken together, as a joint community.” See Owen Lattimore, Studies in Frontier History. Collected Papers, 1928–1958 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 470. A good example of applying this paradigm to the Ottoman-Iranian borderlands is the book by Sabri Ateş, The Ottoman-Iranian Borderlands. Making a Boundary, 1843–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); also, on the role of Qajar and Pahlavi border-making practices in the shaping of Iranian national identity, Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions. Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804–1946 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).

32 For a general overview of Iranian local historiography, see Charles Melville, “Persian Local Histories: Views from the Wings,” Iranian Studies 33, no. 1–2 (2000): 7–14, and the bibliography therein, as well as the entire special issue of Iranian Studies, with case studies about Herat, Sistan, and Isfahan, among others. More recently, see also Mimi Hanaoka, Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography. Persian Histories from the Peripheries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). On local historiography of the Caspian region, see Charles Melville, “The Caspian Provinces: A World Apart. Three Local Histories of Mazandaran,”, Iranian Studies 33, no. 1–2 (2000): 45–91. See also several works of local historiography from Gīlān and Māzandarān, such as Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān, ed. ʿAbbās Iqbāl; Awliyāʾ Allāh Āmulī, Tārīkh-i Rūyān, ed. Manūchihr Sutūda; Ẓahīr al-Dīn Marʿashī, Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān va Rūyān va Māzandarān, ed. Muḥammad Ḥusayn Tasbīḥī; Tārīkh-i Gīlān, ed. Manūchihr Sutūda; Shams al-Dīn ʿAlī Laḥījī, Tārīkh-i Khānī, ed. Manūchihr Sutūda; Mullā ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Fumanī, Tārīkh-i Gīlān, ed. Manūchir Sutūda; and Shaykh ʿAlī Gīlānī, Tārīkh-i Māzandarān, ed. Manūchihr Sutūda. For full citations, see the bibliography in Melville’s article. References to the local histories of the Caucasus can be found in my article in this special issue. As for Kurdistan, see the above-mentioned Sharafnāma by Sharaf Khān Bidlīsī, a chronicle of Kurdish dynasties, as well as its continuations published in various emirates, and the prolific tradition of nineteenth-century historiography in the Ardalān emirate, on which see Abdollâh Mardukh, “Aux sources de l’historiographie kurde,” Studia Iranica 21, no. 1 (1992): 103–117; Akihiko Yamaguchi, “The Safavid Legacy as Viewed from the Periphery: The Formation of Iran and the Political Integration of a Kurdish Emirate,” in Mapping Safavid Iran, ed. Nobuaki Kondo (Fuchu, Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 2015), 127–154. One example of vernacular literature is the Kurdish mas̱navī by Ehmedê Xanî (d. 1119/1707), Mem û Zîn (Mem and Zin), which includes striking remarks on the destruction brought upon by the Ottoman-Iranian wars. See Ehmedê Xanî, Mem û Zîn, ed. Perwîz Cîhanî (Istanbul: Nûbihar, 2010), 214–217; English translation as Ahmed Khani, Mem and Zin, trans. Salah Saadalla (Duhok: Spîrêz, 2008), 31.

33 For references, see the articles by Lukas Rybar and Davide Trentacoste in the present special section.

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