Background

When the Safavids came to power in 1501, Persia had been under Turkic domination for several centuries. The Turks organised themselves into patronage networks based on fictive kinship, whereby small pastoralist clans and often also farming villages received protection from Turkic khans, who in turn might affiliate with greater khans in a nested structure. Conventionally, historians of the Middle East and Inner Asia refer to these patronage networks as tribes, and larger nested structures as tribal confederations. Each Turkic dynasty was simply a clan that was able to position itself at the apex of this pyramidal structure, balancing the interests of the confederations under their authority and redistributing revenue to them to maintain their loyalty.

The Safavid dynasty had a different origin but was still in many ways embedded in this pattern. It began as a Sufi order, which in the fifteenth century converted to Shīʿīsm and became committed to waging jihad, especially in the Caucasus. It was able to wage war because it could draw on the military power of a set of Turkic tribal confederations who had become disciples of the Ṣafavī Sufi shaykhs. The members of these Turkic confederations were known collectively as Qizilbāsh (“red head”) after the distinctive red turbans the aristocratic elites of these tribes wore as an emblem of their discipleship.

Around 1500, the Qizilbāsh embarked on a campaign of conquest under Ismāʿīl Ṣafavī, the heir to leadership of the Ṣafavī Sufi order, and defeated the Aq Quyunlu to become the new major power on the Iranian plateau. Their Sufi shaykh took the title of shah and became Ismāʿīl I, founder of the Safavid dynasty. When Ismāʿīl I died in 1524 he left four sons. The eldest son, the ten-year-old Ṭahmāsp, became the new shah.

Historiography

It is a commonplace in Safavid historiography that during the first decade of his reign Ṭahmāsp had no political significance. According to this narrative, the Qizilbāsh usurped the empire from the shah and ruled it as a Qizilbāsh state. Although they retained the shah as a figurehead, they paid no attention to him and allowed him no practical role in governance. Meanwhile, each tribe fought the other for mastery over the other tribes, symbolised in their possession of the office of vakīl, a position established by Ismāʿīl I as a kind of royal deputy in charge of both military and administrative matters. This state of affairs continued until Ṭahmāsp reached early adulthood, at which time he asserted his power over the Qizilbāsh and restored the royal prerogative.

This conventional view is ultimately based on the work of Roger Savory, one of the leading figures of Safavid studies in the twentieth century, who wrote a series of articles and also one influential book-length survey of the dynasty entitled Iran under the Safavids. According to Savory, during the years 1524 to 1533 the shah had no authority. The Qizilbāsh had had great faith in Shah Ismāʿīl and believed him to be in some sense divine, but they lost that faith in 1514 when the Ottomans defeated them at the Battle of Chāldirān. With Ismāʿīl's aura of invincibility gone, the only motivation the Qizilbāsh had for continuing to uphold the empire was tribal interest. When Ismāʿīl died in 1524 and was succeeded by the youthful Ṭahmāsp, there was no check on tribal ambitions. That led to a period that he called the Qizilbāsh Interregnum. The Interregnum came to an end in 940/1533 when Ṭahmāsp ordered the execution of the amīr al-umarā, Ḥusayn Khān Shāmlū:

Savory went on to write that Ṭahmāsp's execution of Ḥusayn Khān Shāmlū intimidated the other amirs into obedience, and Ṭahmāsp immediately began making executive decisions about who would be the top personnel of his administration, after ten years of being at the mercy of the Qizilbāsh. Savory gives no explanation for how Ṭahmāsp was suddenly able to take control of the tribes and make them subordinate to him. Savory calls this ten-year period, between the death of Shah Ismāʿīl and Ṭahmāsp's later assertion of authority, the Qizilbāsh Interregnum.Footnote ² He also used the phrases “virtual interregnum” and “military government”.Footnote ³

This notion of a Qizilbāsh Interregnum has become a widely accepted part of the received narrative of Safavid history. Hans Roemer adopted it, repeating it in the Safavid chapters of The Cambridge History of Iran. As Roemer put it, “The first decade of his reign, the period from 930/1524 to 940/1533, has the appearance of an interregnum during which power was wielded not by the shah himself but by Qizilbāsh amirs”.Footnote ⁴ Roemer said that the Qizilbāsh were motivated by two things: a “lust for power” and a desire to roll back Ismāʿīl's policy of granting offices of state to ethnic Persians.Footnote ⁵

In Rula Abisaab's summary of this period in her book Converting Persia, she stands squarely in the Savory-Roemer tradition.

A different perspective on the period has been presented in the work of Kathryn Babayan. Like Savory and Roemer, she believed that the Qizilbāsh were disobedient and rebellious during Ṭahmāsp's minority: “the Qizilbash were in open revolt the first twelve years of his reign (1524-36)”.Footnote ⁷ But their periodisation is different. For Savory, Ṭahmāsp became the undisputed ruler of the empire in 940/1533, when he ordered the execution of Ḥusayn Khān Shāmlū. For Babayan, Ṭahmāsp became the undisputed ruler in 943/1536, when Sām Mīrzā's rebellion fizzled out and Sām returned to Ṭahmāsp's court and apologised. This is based on her interpretation of Ṭahmāsp's early reign as a period of contested succession. According to Babayan, the Safavids continued the Turco-Mongolian practice of regarding sovereignty as residing in the ruling family as a whole, rather than in an individual.

Elsewhere she said that in 1527 Ṭahmāsp “was only thirteen years old and would have to wait another seven years before his reign would be free of different Qizilbāsh coalitions attempting to place his brother Sam Mirza on the throne”.Footnote ⁹ More recently she wrote, “Tahmasp emerged from a thirteen-year civil war (1524–36) that had erupted over the issue of succession at Isma‘il's death”.Footnote ¹⁰ This is different from the Savory narrative, in which Ṭahmāsp was simply sidelined. For Babayan, the shah continued to be important in a way, but any descendant of Ismāʿīl could legitimately become shah and the Qizilbāsh could essentially choose who their shah would be from among Ismāʿīl's sons. Both Colin Mitchell and Rudi Matthee have relied on Babayan's interpretation.Footnote ¹¹

The Babayan thesis and the Savory-Roemer thesis are not entirely compatible, not only in how they periodise the Interregnum, but also in the motivations of the Qizilbāsh for their usurpation of power. For Savory, and especially for Abisaab who stands in that tradition, the Qizilbāsh were in rebellion because they resented the presence of Persians in high levels of government. Savory also suggested that the loss at Chāldirān cooled Qizilbāsh devotion to the Safavid house. During the Interregnum the Qizilbāsh amirs were basically trying to elbow the shah out of the way and create a new Turkic-oriented basis for the state. Babayan by contrast argued that devotion to the Safavid house never wavered. The reason for Ṭahmāsp's troubles was rather that he had no more claim to the throne than his brothers did, and the different tribes disagreed about which Safavid prince to put on the throne. Despite these differences, both interpretations have coexisted in the literature unquestioned, and have sometimes been mixed together. Colin Mitchell for example repeated Babayan's argument that the tribal fighting in the early part of Ṭahmāsp's reign was because all of Ismāʿīl's sons had equal claim to the throne, but then dated the end of the Interregnum to the execution of Ḥusayn Khān Shāmlū (rather than the reconciliation of Sām Mīrzā, as would fit Babayan's argument).Footnote ¹²

The end result in the scholarly literature has been an assumption that Ṭahmāsp's reign had two strongly contrasted phases: one during which he had no political role or significance while the Qizilbāsh ran the country as their own as if he did not exist, followed by a second, longer phase during which the Qizilbāsh quietly submitted to Ṭahmāsp's commands. A question that has never been raised with regard to Savory's narrative, let alone answered, is how the transition between the two phases took place. If the Qizilbāsh had no respect for the office of shah, and if their project during the Interregnum was to remake the Safavid state as an empire by and for the Qizilbāsh, then why did they abandon that project when the shah reached the age of twenty? When the shah ordered the execution of Ḥusayn Khān Shāmlū why did the other Qizilbāsh go along with it? Or, if they approved of it, why did another Qizilbāsh amir not step forward at that point and continue the Interregnum?

Moreover, this narrative fails to account for how the loyalty shown to Ismāʿīl could go into abeyance, only to reassert itself. Prior to Ṭahmāsp's reign, the Qizilbāsh followed his father on their conquests of the Aq Quyunlu and Timurid lands. After Ṭahmāsp reached adulthood they continued to follow him, accepting a rank subordinate to him in the political hierarchy. It seems unlikely that all of that loyalty simply disappeared during the ten years of Ṭahmāsp's minority only to reappear later.

The conventional narrative also suggests that the Qizilbāsh had a problem with the shah's minority, that either they objected to following a mere boy or saw the youth of the shah as an opportunity to seize control for themselves. But their fathers had followed Ismāʿīl on his campaigns of conquest when he was in his early teens. Savory argued that the Qizilbāsh ceased to respect the Safavid house following the defeat at Chāldirān, but that seems unlikely given how their devotion is portrayed during Ṭahmāsp's adulthood.Footnote ¹³ On the other hand, it is hard to dispute that the Qizilbāsh amirs were making the decisions during Ṭahmāsp's minority. If the Qizilbāsh had not usurped the shah's prerogatives, then what accounts for their dominance in Safavid politics during his early reign?

The shah and the Qizilbāsh

There are two aspects to Ṭahmāsp's political status during those years. First was his de jure role as shah, which the Qizilbāsh never ceased to recognise. It is worth noting that, unlike in the Turkic polities that came before, there was no disputed succession after the death of Ismāʿīl I. Although Ismāʿīl had four sons, Ṭahmāsp's status as Ismāʿīl's successor was never called into question or challenged during his minority.Footnote ¹⁴ The Qizilbāsh recognised Ṭahmāsp as the rightful shah and treated him with the respect and ceremony due him. As will be discussed below, the chronicles periodically report one or more amirs making obeisance at the feet of Shah Ṭahmāsp even during his early minority.

The second aspect to his political status was his engagement in command decisions, which was rare to non-existent in the early years of his reign. According to the conventional narrative, this is because the Qizilbāsh made a point of marginalising him. But it would be more consistent with the sources to say that the shah disregarded his responsibilities and deferred to whatever strong personality happened to be running the court. This would be an entirely natural thing for Ṭahmāsp to do, given that he was still a boy when he came to the throne. He was inexperienced and may well have lacked interest. It was not that the Qizilbāsh seized control from Ṭahmāsp. Rather, Ṭahmāsp simply declined to exercise the power he always latently had.

This interpretation solves the great gaping hole in the Savory-Roemer narrative. If the Qizilbāsh usurped the shah's authority and ruled the country in spite of the shah's desires rather than merely in the absence of them, then what accounts for Ṭahmāsp being able to assert his control over the Qizilbāsh at the age of twenty? He had no army independent of them with which to subdue them. They were his army. If the Qizilbāsh had chosen to disregard the shah in 1524, why did they not also disregard him in 1533? When reading the coverage of the early 1530s in the sources, the fact is inescapable that the Qizilbāsh acknowledged the shah's pre-eminence in the state as soon as he began making command decisions.

This article therefore calls into question the very notion of a Qizilbāsh Interregnum. Ṭahmāsp was actually an important figure politically during the 1524–33 period. In one respect this was because he was a figurehead. He still commanded the respect of the tribes, and he served at times as a symbol of Qizilbāsh unity. Beyond that, he was the constitutional basis for the state. The several men who governed the empire during the regency did so in his name and at his pleasure. When they were deposed and killed, it was because he had ordered it. When a new one came to power, it was because he had authorised it. That is not to say that the vakīls who governed on his behalf were always popular among the Qizilbāsh, or that the Qizilbāsh always approved of the vakīl in power. But they did always respect the shah's role in the system. The Qizilbāsh never tried to remove Ṭahmāsp from his role or bypass him, and they never tried to replace him with someone else.

While Ṭahmāsp in his early years generally stayed out of day-to-day decision-making, allowing for example the regent to favour certain clients in government appointments, this is not the same as saying that the vakīls had usurped the authority of the shah. It would be more accurate to say that the shah delegated his authority to the vakīl. We cannot, after all, say that any Safavid shah ever really controlled the Qizilbāsh. That goes for Ismāʿīl I as much as for Ṭahmāsp. The Qizilbāsh followed the shah because they wanted to. The shah could not force his will over them; they were the ones with the military power. The shah ruled because the Qizilbāsh recognised him as their ruler. That was true during Ṭahmāsp's minority as much as it was at any time during the first Safavid century. The reality of Qizilbāsh loyalty to the Safavid line is underlined by the events of Ṭahmāsp's early reign, when the Qizilbāsh could have jettisoned the Safavid dynasty but did not, instead keeping Ṭahmāsp on the throne and continuing to adhere to him as shah.

The crisis of 1525

The death of Ismāʿīl in 1524 came at an inopportune moment for the Safavid regime. After a long period of administrative stability, both the amīr al-umarā, Chāyān Sulṭān Ustājlū, and the vazīr, Mīrzā Shāh Ḥusayn Iṣfahānī, had died in quick succession in 929/1523. Each had been in office since the reorganisation of the government following the Battle of Chāldirān in 920/1514. Mīrzā Shāh Ḥusayn Iṣfahānī was assassinated by a disgruntled Qizilbāsh tribesman accused of embezzling funds and facing punishment.Footnote ¹⁵ Chāyān Sulṭān Ustājlū died of natural causes and was succeeded both as leader of the Ustājlū and as amīr al-umarā by his son Bāyazīd, but Bāyazīd also died within a short time.Footnote ¹⁶ Kupik Sulṭān, Chāyān's brother and Bāyazīd's uncle, became the new leader of the Ustājlū.Footnote ¹⁷ But Shah Ismāʿīl chose to revise the decade-old convention of investing the Ustājlū chief with the office of amīr al-umarā. Ismāʿīl had the new Ustājlū chief, Kupik Sulṭān Ustājlū, share the office with another leading amir, Dīv Sulṭān Rūmlū. Moreover, Ismāʿīl stated in his will that after his death Dīv Sulṭān should be lala (i.e. atabeg, or tutor/guardian) of the young Ṭahmāsp. This effectively made Dīv Sulṭān the regent on Ismāʿīl's death.Footnote ¹⁸ Dīv had been one of the most prominent amirs during the last ten years of Ismāʿīl's reign, leading several military campaigns into the Caucasus on Ismāʿīl's behalf. The Rūmlū were a small tribe, so Dīv did not have a powerful constituency to fall back on for support. This likely made him more agreeable to the other amirs. This power-sharing arrangement led to tension between Kupik and Dīv. Dīv technically had higher standing as the lala of the shah, but Kupik commanded greater power as leader of one of the largest tribes, located on choice land in southern Azerbaijan. For a year after Ismāʿīl died the tribes were at peace, but there was increasing tension at court with Kupik Sulṭān Ustājlū gaining influence over the young shah. The Ustājlū controlled the region around Tabriz, which gave them security from direct challenge by Dīv. As a result Dīv Sulṭān was politically marginalised.

So in the following summer of 1525, under the pretext of preparing a campaign against the Uzbeks, Dīv left Tabriz and went east. He met the Qizilbāsh amirs of southern and central Persia at a prearranged rendezvous point that was supposed to be the staging ground for the campaign into Khurāsān. Instead, Dīv made an appeal to them to help him in his power struggle against Kupik. He told the gathered amirs that the Ustājlū had violated the will of Shah Ismāʿīl by usurping Dīv's authority. One source, Ḥasan Rūmlū, quotes Dīv Sulṭān as saying, “The shah was assigned to me for education and guidance. Kupik Sulṭān has corrupted [him]” (shāh dīn panāh mutavajja-yi tartīb va raʿāyat-i man būd kupik sulṭān afsād kard), suggesting that Kupik Sulṭān had gained the favour of the young Ṭahmāsp.Footnote ¹⁹ This would mean that the two sides in the conflict both based their position on obedience to the shah. Dīv Sulṭān Rūmlū's authority as regent was based on the will of the late Shah Ismāʿīl, while at the same time, Kupik Sulṭān Ustājlū's informal authority to run the empire was based on the favour of the young Shah Ṭahmāsp. This could conceivably represent a kind of inverse of Savory's argument. For Savory, the conflicts among the Qizilbāsh were caused by them losing their faith in the shah and no longer being motivated to uphold the shah's authority. But in this case both sides based their conflict on a desire to uphold the shah's will. This is probably overstating things since undoubtedly the Ustājlū simply wanted to maximise their own position within the Safavid system, but it certainly appears that they did so in the name of the shah and with his tacit approval, rather than in spite of the shah or in disregard of him.

Moreover with regard to Dīv Sulṭān, it is immaterial whether his appeal to the other tribes for support was made out of sincere loyalty to Ismāʿīl's wishes or a cynical ploy motivated merely by personal ambition. In either case, his justification was what the shah had wanted, so the shah's wishes must have carried weight with his fellow Qizilbāsh. It is also worth noting that Dīv Sulṭān's support came from a whole range of Qizilbāsh tribes. The sources name several Takalū amirs, including Chūha Sulṭān Takalū who would play a significant role later. Other tribes that were represented include Rūmlū, Dhū ’l-Qadr, Dūrqatlū, and Shāmlū. There was even an Ustājlū amir present, Muntashā Sulṭān Ustājlū, despite the fact that this coalition was designed to unseat the Ustājlū from political dominance.Footnote ²⁰ This shows that amirs could have loyalties other than to their tribe, and that loyalty to the shah was still operative among them.

Invoking the shah's will had the desired effect. The amirs agreed and set out toward Tabriz in support of Dīv Sulṭān's claim. As the coalition approached Tabriz, the Ustājlū amirs discussed how to respond. Some urged armed confrontation, but Kupik Sulṭān Ustājlū decided against it. The historian Ḥasan Rūmlū quoted him as saying, “We are both servants of our shah and lovers of our court. We will not fight each other”.Footnote ²¹ We can see in Kupik's statement that he, and presumably other Qizilbāsh, saw Shah Ṭahmāsp as their lord. He also casts him as the symbol of Qizilbāsh solidarity. When the Qizilbāsh coalition under Dīv's leadership arrived at Tabriz, Kupik and Dīv went together into the shah's presence and paid their respects by kissing his feet.Footnote ²²

While the quote from Kupik Sulṭān is only found in Ḥasan Rūmlū, the other sources corroborate that Kupik Sulṭān chose not to fight, but rather to make peace and join with Dīv in making obeisance to the shah. The Takmilat discusses the episode more briefly, but says that Kupik Sulṭān, “trusting that mildness would prevent fitna”, welcomed the tribes and met with them peaceably.Footnote ²³ The Jahān-ārā says that Kupik Sulṭān welcomed them peacefully, motivated by the desire both of “the well-being of his own soul and the preservation of the Safavid state” (banābar salāmat-i nafs va malāḥiẓa-yi ṣiyānat-i dawlat).Footnote ²⁴

We cannot be sure that Kupik Sulṭān spoke the words that Ḥasan Rūmlū attributes to him, since they are reported in only one source written fifty years after the fact. We also cannot be certain of Kupik Sulṭān's internal thoughts and motivations. But we can be reasonably certain of two things: that Kupik Sulṭān elected not to fight Dīv but rather make peace, and that the two of them together appeared before Ṭahmāsp and made obeisance to him immediately after meeting. Their going to Ṭahmāsp was in fact part of the peace process.

Regarding the fact that Kupik chose not to fight, the sources cast this as his magnanimous desire to preserve the Safavid state from fitna; as he was concerned about the future of this great dynastic empire. If we assume however that Kupik was motivated by purely pragmatic considerations, it is easy to explain why he chose not to fight. He could very well have believed that the Ustājlū did not stand a chance against the combined forces of the other Qizilbāsh. But what about the latter fact, which all the sources report, that they made obeisance to the shah as part of their reconciliation? As with Dīv at the meadows of Lār, we do not have to assume that he did it out of a genuine love for the dynasty. But assuming he did not love the dynasty, why then did they go to the shah and bow before him? Even assuming Kupik and Dīv had no love for Ṭahmāsp, we have to concede that many of the rank and file Qizilbāsh must have had a genuine loyalty to him.

The takeover of Chūha Sulṭān Takalū

Following the resolution of the crisis of 931/1525, the Ustājlū became politically marginal and in the following year went into rebellion. The Safavid forces under Dīv's command defeated them in battle and the survivors fled into exile in Gīlān, which was at the time an independent kingdom. Meanwhile, Dīv Sulṭān governed the country on Ṭahmāsp's behalf for the next two years. During that time tensions arose between Dīv Sulṭān Rūmlū and the second-ranking Qizilbāsh amir, Chūha Sulṭān Takalū. As Khūrshāh b. Qubād put it, each was planning to do away with the other, and “the final arrow of Chūha Sulṭān's scheming reached the target of his desire”, by getting Dīv killed.Footnote ²⁵ Būdāq Munshī adds the details that Chūha saw Dīv as an obstacle to his own ambition, and that Chūha had become a close friend or confidant (ham dāstān) of the Queen Mother, Begum Mawṣillū.Footnote ²⁶

On 26 Shavvāl 933 / 25 July 1527, Dīv was killed and Chūha took over as regent. The Safavid chroniclers are quite terse about the circumstances of the changeover, merely reporting that Dīv was killed in the dīvānkhāna at Chūha's instigation.Footnote ²⁷ But whom did Chūha instigate? A non-Safavid source, Sharaf al-Dīn Bitlīsī, adds a further detail, that the young shah threw a spear at Dīv, thus signalling his desire that Dīv be executed, whereupon his royal bodyguards, the qurchīs, fell on him and killed him.Footnote ²⁸ Without any direct information on Ṭahmāsp's motivations at the time (he does not mention the incident in the Tadhkira) it is impossible to say whether he was forced or whether he participated willingly but later felt embarrassed or betrayed by Chūha and therefore did not want to acknowledge his involvement in bringing Chūha to power voluntarily. If the Queen Mother favoured him then it is possible she played a role in persuading Ṭahmāsp to lend him his support. In any case, though, Ṭahmāsp's participation was key―and that is the important point here. Chūha's path to power lay through getting Ṭahmāsp on his side.

This change of power is the transition between what historians call the Rūmlū and Takalū periods of the Interregnum. It is usually understood as an example of the anarchy of the Interregnum period and an instance of a Qizilbāsh amir seizing power arbitrarily. But it is important that we do not lose sight of the shah's role. Chūha could not simply assassinate Dīv Sulṭān. Presumably if he did, he would be implicated in the plot and would not become vakīl. Instead, he needed Ṭahmāsp to execute Dīv. He also needed Ṭahmāsp to trust and favour him. So he came to power as vakīl because he persuaded Ṭahmāsp to make him vakīl. Ṭahmāsp was still the indispensable man in the Safavid political system.

The Battle of Jām, 1528

The Uzbeks invaded Safavid Khurāsān in 932/1526 under the leadership of ʿUbayd Khān, having heard about the Ustājlū rebellion as well as a lack of effective leadership in Safavid-held Khurāsān and unrest in Herat.Footnote ²⁹ The Uzbeks occupied Khurāsān for two years, for much of that time laying siege to Herat. Finally in 934/1528, with Chūha Sulṭān in charge, a Safavid army set out to confront the Uzbeks. The two armies met at Jām in Khurāsān. The battle went badly for the Safavids, and many Qizilbāsh fled the battlefield, including Chūha Sulṭān. But the young shah, now fourteen years old, remained on the battlefield with his qurchīs. The battle seemed to be over and the Uzbeks were plundering the Qizilbāsh camp, unaware that a contingent of Safavid troops under the direct command of Ṭahmāsp was still on the battlefield. Some Qizilbāsh from that contingent captured some Uzbeks and learned from them that ʿUbayd Khān, the Uzbek commander, was camping nearby. Ṭahmāsp ordered his men to camp for the night and search for ʿUbayd in the morning. The next morning they spotted ʿUbayd with some other Uzbeks and attacked, killing a number of Uzbeks and wounding ʿUbayd. With their leader injured, the Uzbeks retreated toward Transoxiana. The Qizilbāsh under Ṭahmāsp pursued them part of the way, killing what stragglers they could find.Footnote ³⁰

This series of events is revealing of what status Ṭahmāsp held in the Safavid state. As regent Chūha had of course organised the campaign, but it is notable that he brought Ṭahmāsp along. If the Qizilbāsh did not respect Ṭahmāsp's authority then it is unclear why he should need to be there. It appears his presence was necessary because the Qizilbāsh still saw him as their real leader, at least symbolically. The Qizilbāsh were fighting for him, not for Chūha. Moreover, neither Ṭahmāsp nor the qurchīs and other Qizilbāsh around him followed Chūha into retreat when the battle turned against them. They stayed on the field and Ṭahmāsp seized the initiative. He took on a command role, leading Qizilbāsh troops against ʿUbayd's position and then in pursuit toward the north. The fact that it was Chūha Sulṭān that organised the expedition shows that he was the executive in charge of the daily decisions of the state. Certainly one could not plausibly argue that Ṭahmāsp was making state decisions on his own at this point. But although he was not taking an active role in administering the state, he was his own man, not beholden to the vakīl. And, more importantly, we can see that the Qizilbāsh at this point saw him that way too. When Ṭahmāsp chose to step forward and take action, as at Jām, the Qizilbāsh did not fail to follow him.

Nevertheless, little changed in how the state was governed. Chūha continued to make executive decisions on behalf of Ṭahmāsp, who was still a teenager and not actively governing. The Battle of Jām showed that the shah could act independently and that the Qizilbāsh remained loyal to him, but Ṭahmāsp was still under the tutelage of the vakīl and deferred matters of state to him. For example, during the Uzbek siege of Herat in 936/1530 Chūha chose not to come to Herat's defence. As the historian Khūrshāh b. Qubād reports, the shah received repeated appeals for aid, but Chūha made the decisions and at first he did not want to help them.Footnote ³¹ Ḥusayn Khān had grown in estimation in the eyes of the shah at the Battle of Jām―Chūha had fled the field and Ḥusayn had not―and so Chūha saw him as a political threat.Footnote ³²

Meanwhile, in 936/1530 the estrangement of the Ustājlū, who had in the meantime rebelled and gone into exile, came to an end. They were reconciled with Chūha Sulṭān and, returning to the royal camp, showed their subservience to the shah by approaching his throne, bowing, and kissing the floor in front of him. They received grants of territory and resumed their status as members of the Qizilbāsh confederation.Footnote ³³ Once again, we see the symbolic role that the shah played during his minority of being the formal leader of the Qizilbāsh and the symbol of their unity. While their reconciliation was with the vakīl, they still approached Ṭahmāsp as their sovereign and paid their respects. Chūha Sulṭān exercised executive power, but did so in the name of Ṭahmāsp.

The Takalū Disaster

Chūha Sulṭān governed the state on Ṭahmāsp's behalf for four years, from 933/1527 until he was killed in 937/1531. During Chūha's tenure as vakīl, the Takalū and their Persian clients were favoured with the best appointments. Meanwhile Ḥusayn Khān Shāmlū governed Herat and Khurāsān in the name of the shah's brother, Sām Mīrzā. The Shāmlū had been assigned Khurāsān since the days of Shah Ismāʿīl. ʿUbayd Khān led the Uzbeks on yet another siege of Herat, as a result of which Ḥusayn Khān Shāmlū negotiated a surrender of the city in exchange for allowing the Shāmlū Qizilbāsh defenders to leave. The Shāmlū, along with Sām Mīrzā, trekked across the desert and arrived in Fārs when the Safavid court―including Shah Ṭahmāsp and Chūha Sulṭān Takalū ―were in summer quarters at Gundamān outside Isfahan. Chūha invited them to visit the royal camp promising that they would receive a better land grant than Khurāsān, which the Shāmlū had just lost to the Uzbeks. Upon arrival Sām Mīrzā rejoined his siblings in the harem and did not emerge to rejoin his tutor, Ḥusayn Khan. Ḥusayn undoubtedly found this distressing since Sām Mīrzā was his trump card. The Shāmlū were in a vulnerable position. They had lost their lands in Khurāsān and they no longer enjoyed the protection and clout that came with hosting a royal prince. On top of that, since they had had to evacuate their allotted territory, all their women and children were there with them, essentially as refugees.

That evening Chūha sent a delegation to Ḥusayn's tent to invite him to a feast the next day at Chūha's pavilion. Chūha knew Ḥusayn would be angry and suspicious, so he gave orders to the delegation to try to ameliorate Ḥusayn through flattery and reassurances.Footnote ³⁴ Separately, some of Shah Ṭahmāsp's servants warned Ḥusayn Khān that Chūha was plotting to kill him at the feast.Footnote ³⁵ Ḥusayn held council with his lieutenants. They believed flight was impossible, so they would instead strike first. They would attempt to kill Chūha that night before Chūha could kill them the following day.

So that night Ḥusayn Khān led a contingent of Shāmlū into the royal camp.Footnote ³⁶ Chūha fled to the royal pavilion where the Shāmlū caught up with him. In the resulting combat two stray arrows lodged in Shah Ṭahmāsp's crown. Savory offered this anecdote as evidence that Ṭahmāsp lacked authority in the Safavid state.Footnote ³⁷ Before Savory, a similar view was put forward by Martin Dickson in his unpublished PhD dissertation.Footnote ³⁸ But it is unclear why that would be the case. Many monarchs have stood in the midst of battle, and some of them received blows, with no diminishing of royal authority. Savory and Dickson may have meant that the Shāmlū did not meekly submit to Chūha as the royally-appointed vakīl, but it is not necessary to assume that the Shāmlū rebellion against Chūha was a reflection of their opinion of the shah. The Shāmlū showed no disregard for the shah himself. If Babayan were right and the Qizilbāsh's loyalty was to the Safavid house while individual members of it were expendable, then we might expect Ḥusayn Khān to try to overthrow Ṭahmāsp at this point and replace him with Sām Mīrzā. On the contrary, at no point during these events did any Qizilbāsh call into question Ṭahmāsp's position as shah. Moreover, Savory and Dickson overlook an important point―why did Chūha flee to the royal tent for protection in the first place? If the Qizilbāsh did not respect Ṭahmāsp's authority, then Chūha could not have hoped to gain anything by being in Ṭahmāsp's tent. He must have gone there because he believed that Ṭahmāsp's presence would command respect among the Qizilbāsh.

The qurchīs accompanying the shah, who were of the Dhū ’l-Qadr tribe, joined with the Shāmlū against Chūha Sulṭān and the Takalū, and one of the Dhū ’l-Qadr wounded Chūha Sulṭān. His fellow Takalū retrieved Chūha and brought him out of harm's way, but the wound was fatal and he soon died.Footnote ³⁹ Nevertheless the Takalū regrouped and managed to drive back the Shāmlū, who withdrew from the area.

It is worth underlining a point here that has often been glossed over. Ḥusayn Khān did not make a play for leadership when he stormed the camp that night. All of the sources report the same motivation: the Shāmlū were convinced that Chūha Sulṭān was plotting the murder of their chiefs at a banquet the next day. They were unable to flee quickly because they had their families with them, so their only option was to strike Chūha first and kill him before he killed them. There is no reason to read this as a challenge to the shah's position. His attacking Chūha did not reflect a lack of respect for the office of the shah or a desire to undermine the shah's authority. It was simply an act of self-preservation.

The death of Chūha created a vacancy in the office of vakīl, and it was not obvious who the next holder of the office should be. The other tribes did not at first put forward an alternate candidate. Eventually Ḥusayn Khān would receive the appointment, but at the moment he was away, having fled to Fārs with the rest of the Shāmlū following their night attack on the camp. In the meantime, who was to be in charge? If we were to follow the established narrative (that the Qizilbāsh took power away from the shah and then fought over it amongst themselves), then we would expect the tribes present at the camp to fight over who would get the office, with the chief of each tribe a contender. Or perhaps we would see two coalitions of tribes, each putting forward an amir on their side. Neither of these things happened. Instead, the eldest son of the late Chūha received the office by default.

The new vakīl was Chūha's eldest son Shāh Qubād. Though Ṭahmāsp approved of the appointment initially, he soon changed his mind. According to ʿAbdī Beg Shīrāzī, Ṭahmāsp was put off by the exceeding arrogance of Shāh Qubād and his brothers (as he put it, they were a hundred times more conceited than Chūha had been), and Ṭahmāsp saw that the other tribes did not like this entrenchment of Takalū privilege. A few weeks passed, and fighting broke out again. The other tribes as a united front objected to Shāh Qubād. ʿAbdī Beg portrays Ṭahmāsp as the instigator of the anti-Takalū coalition, rallying them to the royal tent and calling upon them to take up arms against the Takalū.Footnote ⁴⁰ That is unlikely to be what happened, since the other sources do not report this, but rather show the shah turning away from the Takalū only after the other tribes began fighting them.Footnote ⁴¹ Ṭahmāsp's own memoir does not report on the incident. After some days of combat, the other tribes defeated the Takalū and drove them from the region.

We can see in the Takalū Disaster a vivid contrast between Ṭahmāsp's symbolic significance as head of state and his practical engagement in political affairs. The tribes took it upon themselves to fight against a reinforcement and institutionalisation of Takalū hegemony, despite the fact, as far as we can tell, that the new Takalū vakīl had been officially appointed by the shah. On the other hand, the tribes were not fighting against Ṭahmāsp himself. They neither put forward another Safavid prince as sovereign nor did they propose an end to the Safavid dynasty. The fact that Ṭahmāsp was universally acknowledged as the rightful head of state is illustrated by an incident that according to Ḥasan Rūmlū happened shortly before the final defeat of the Takalū. A “well-wisher” of the Takalū (az havākhwāhān-i takalū) named Yānchī Qulī went to the royal tent to take Ṭahmāsp to the Takalū camp. Ṭahmāsp first ordered the man killed, and then ordered a general massacre of the Takalū. The Takalū rushed the royal tent, but the qurchīs (the royal guards) fought against them and drove them back.Footnote ⁴² Yānchī Qulī's act would make no sense if Ṭahmāsp were politically irrelevant. Clearly he thought that having Ṭahmāsp in the Takalū camp would lend legitimacy to the Takalū leadership in the eyes of their opponents. Ṭahmāsp still held authority even within the ranks of the Takalū. No other sources confirm or deny Ḥasan Rūmlū's anecdote, but assuming it is true, it would also suggest that Ṭahmāsp was with the anti-Takalū coalition at the time that hostilities broke out (since a Takalū tried to bring him to their camp rather than vice versa) and was on their side.

At the end of the affair, Ṭahmāsp sent a robe of honour to Ḥusayn Khān Shāmlū, summoned him to the royal camp, and appointed him amīr al-umarā alongside the leading Ustājlū, ʿAbd Allāh Khān. Both were cousins of the shah.Footnote ⁴³ The following three years are regarded as a period of either Shāmlū hegemony or joint Shāmlū-Ustājlū hegemony.Footnote ⁴⁴ The appointment of Ḥusayn Khān may well have been at the insistence of the other tribes, though we cannot say for certain. Ḥusayn Khān and the Shāmlū were not present when the massacre and expulsion of the Takalū took place. They had already withdrawn to Shiraz. So he did not become vakīl by seizing the office by force, as the conventional view of the regency would suggest. He was selected in absentia. Appointing him was either the shah's idea or that of the other, non-Shāmlū amirs. The former option is certainly possible given the fact that Ḥusayn Khān had grown in the esteem of the shah following the Battle of Jām, when Chūha Sulṭān had fled the field but Ḥusayn Khān had not. But even if we assume that it was the Qizilbāsh tribes that called for the appointment of Ḥusayn Khān, the fact remains that Ḥusayn Khān became vakīl because Ṭahmāsp sent him a robe of honour and summoned him. The Qizilbāsh could simply have ignored Ṭahmāsp and appointed Ḥusayn directly, but they did not do so.

The end of the regency

From this point on, the sources report no more fighting among the tribes. In fact, the sources say virtually nothing about Safavid court politics during the period that Ḥusayn Khān Shāmlū was co-amīr al-umarā. The most notable things to happen during these years were another invasion of Khurāsān by the Uzbek ʿUbayd Khān during the years 1532–33 and an Ottoman invasion in 1534–35 (the “Campaign of the Two Iraqs”), the latter precipitated by the defection of Ūlāma Sulṭān Takalū. These two invasions, occurring one after the other, together constituted the most serious threat that the Safavid state faced during the reign of Ṭahmāsp.

In response to ʿUbayd Khān's occupation of Khurāsān, Ṭahmāsp and the Qizilbāsh went to its relief in a campaign in 1533. As the Safavids approached, the Uzbek grand khan in Transoxiana died, and ʿUbayd Khān withdrew with his Uzbeks to claim the succession.Footnote ⁴⁵ (ʿUbayd would reign as grand khan of the Uzbeks from 1533 until his death in 1540.) Ṭahmāsp, arriving in Herat during the winter of 1533–34, installed his teenage brother Sām Mīrzā as governor under the tutelage of Āghzivār Khān Shāmlū.Footnote ⁴⁶ The Shāmlū were thereby re-established in Khurāsān as their primary power base. Meanwhile, Ūlāma Takalū became friendly with the Ottomans and urged them to invade Persia, telling them that the shah and his amirs were off in Khurāsān leaving Azerbaijan defenceless. Ibrahim Pasha, the Ottoman vizier, invaded Safavid Azerbaijan in the spring of 1534, with Sultan Suleiman following shortly thereafter.

Ṭahmāsp rushed back to Azerbaijan in response to the Ottoman invasion, but it was clear that the Qizilbāsh forces were no match for the Ottomans. According to the Safavid sources, the Ottomans brought ninety thousand troops, whereas Ṭahmāsp's army numbered seven thousand.Footnote ⁴⁷ There was a great deal of anxiety among the Qizilbāsh at the prospect of facing such seemingly insurmountable odds. Unsurprisingly some of the amirs thought that they were better off switching to the Ottoman side while there was still time. The principal amirs with this viewpoint were Ghāzī Khān Takalū, one of the highest ranking Takalū still in Safavid service, and Ḥusayn Khān Shāmlū, the co-amīr al-umarā. These two, along with a handful of other amirs, took an oath to defect to the Ottomans together. Ṭahmāsp was informed about this and called Ḥusayn into his tent, where he was stabbed and then hacked to pieces. When Ghāzī Khān heard about it he fled to Ūlāma Sulṭān at Vān.Footnote ⁴⁸

The rebellion of Sām Mīrzā

As the Ottomans moved in from the west, a second problem arose for the Safavid regime – the rebellion of Sām Mīrzā and Āghzivār Sulṭān in Herat. Sām and Āghzivār ordered their Qizilbāsh troops to plunder the population of the city to raise resources for a military campaign. By February of 1535 they had organised their forces and set off. There is evidence that they may have intended at some point to launch a civil war against Ṭahmāsp with Ottoman assistance. Sultan Suleiman, who at the time was engaged in the Campaign of the Two Iraqs, wrote to Sām Mīrzā calling him his son and granting him Iran as a vassal state.Footnote ⁴⁹ But rather than march west, which would have forced a two-front war on the beleaguered Safavids, they marched south and laid siege to the Mughal-controlled city of Qandahār. If Qizilbāsh loyalty to Ṭahmāsp was weak, then nothing should have prevented them from marching on Persia and helping Ūlāma Sulṭān and Ḥusayn Khān overthrow him. Their marching south suggests a fear of Ṭahmāsp and the Qizilbāsh, or at least a feeling that they lacked a sufficient following to confront Ṭahmāsp for leadership of the Qizilbāsh. Dickson believed that their foray against Qandahār was meant as a propagandistic tool to draw attention to themselves among the disaffected Qizilbāsh across Persia, so that once they were gathered together in Khurāsān they could mount an attack against Ṭahmāsp.Footnote ⁵⁰ In the end their project failed. The Mughals were too strong for them. The Mughal prince Mīrzā Kāmrān came to the relief of Qandahār with a large army, and as they approached, Sām Mīrzā and Āghzivār Khān lifted the siege and moved out into the countryside. Mīrzā Kāmrān caught up with them and engaged them in battle. The numbers reported for the participants in the battle give a sense of the smallness of Sām Mīrzā's rebellion. Ḥasan Rūmlū wrote that Sām Mīrzā had two thousand troops against twenty thousand on the Mughal side.Footnote ⁵¹ Unsurprisingly the Mughals won. Āghzivār Khān was killed and Sām Mīrzā fled into the desert with the surviving Qizilbāsh. Sām had Bāshadan Qarā and his comrades killed and sent their heads to Ṭahmāsp, saying that the rebellion was their idea and that he repented of it.

Dickson hypothesised what he called the Grand Sedition: a conspiracy including Sām and Āghzivār in Khurāsān, Ḥusayn Khān and Ghāzī Khān in the royal court, the Ottomans, and possibly also the Uzbeks, to overthrow Ṭahmāsp and replace him as shah with Sām Mīrzā, whom the rebellious Qizilbāsh amirs and the Ottomans presumably would have seen as more pliable than Ṭahmāsp.Footnote ⁵² Assuming this conspiracy existed, a significant complication for the conspirators was that most of the Qizilbāsh amirs remained loyal to Ṭahmāsp. With the Ottoman host, vastly outnumbering the Qizilbāsh, bearing down from the west, with the Shāmlū in Herat in open rebellion against royal authority, and with the Uzbeks ready to invade, Ṭahmāsp still remained in power and was able to order the execution of Ḥusayn Khān. The sources report the execution in a matter of fact way and give no sense that this was a surprising or revolutionary move, as we would expect in Savory's narrative of a dramatic break between a period of Qizilbāsh hegemony and a period of Ṭahmāspian hegemony, so to speak. No such break occurred. Since Ṭahmāsp was always the acknowledged sovereign, the Safavid historians saw no need to highlight this as a watershed moment. The Qizilbāsh defections in the winter of 1534–35 are easily explained by the direness of the Ottoman threat, and one does not need to assume an underlying lack of loyalty or respect for the royal person to explain it. The rebellion of Sām Mīrzā and Āghzivār Khān cannot be taken as evidence of widespread disaffection with Ṭahmāsp, since the rebellion was of such small scale and never presented a threat to him.

The Sām Mīrzā affair has implications for our understanding of the nature of sovereignty in the Safavid polity. As noted earlier in this article, Kathryn Babayan believed that the early Safavids adhered to a notion of corporate sovereignty―that any descendant of Ismāʿīl could become shah. But as we have seen, none of Ṭahmāsp's brothers were put forward during his minority as a rival candidate for the throne, and when Sām Mīrzā did rebel in 1535—almost eleven years after Ismāʿīl's death—it failed to gain traction among the Qizilbāsh. Evidently the early Safavids did not in fact practice corporate sovereignty, a fact that distinguishes them from their Turco-Mongolian predecessors. The early Safavids continued the pattern of succession typical of Sufi orders, where a shaykh or pīr designates his successor during his lifetime. The fact that the Turkic Qizilbāsh respected this pattern further shows their undiminished loyalty to the Safavid house during Ṭahmāsp's childhood.