Some aspects of the Safaviyyih Sufi order's development before 1501 are well known to scholars.Footnote 1 The standard narrative begins with an account of Shaykh Safi al-Din Ishaq of Ardabil (d. 1334), derived from the Safwat al-Safaʾ (The Acme of Purity). The subsequent reworkings of this nearly contemporary hagiographic account reveal multiple stages in the development of what became the later official Safavid genealogy, which traces the dynasty's ancestry back to the seventh imam of the Twelver Shiʿa, Musa al-Kazim.Footnote 2 Little more than the names and isolated anecdotes are known for Safi al-Din's four successors.Footnote 3 More detailed accounts survive of the militarization of the order under Shaykh Junayd, followed by his and his son Haydar's deaths (1460 and 1488, respectively) in separate battles against the Shirvanshah, who ruled what is today northern Azerbaijan. The distinctive headgear which gave the movement its nickname Qizilbash (“red-head”) is ascribed to Haydar. Finally, the standard narrative concludes with Haydar's son Ismaʿil, his youth spent in hiding and then his imperial conquest,Footnote 4 culminating in his capture of the Aqquyunlu capital at Tabriz in 1501.
These details, and most of the scholarly debates about them, reflect the interests of the (predominantly Persian) sources on which scholars have drawn. Most of these sources postdate the conquests of Ismaʿil in the first years of the 16th century, conquests which transformed the Safavi family from leaders of a militant Sufi order into an imperial dynasty. Such sources are deeply influenced by the correspondingly transformed political needs of the new shahs.
Before 1500, the Middle East was a region not only of many competing states, but also of multiple literate classes authoring historical texts in several languages. These different literate classes possessed distinct interests, and therefore the texts they composed do more than simply add detail to what may be learned from sources in a single language; they also broaden the picture to include events and evaluative frameworks considered insignificant or embarrassing by authors from any single tradition. For the history of the Safavi shaykhs and the Safaviyyih order before Ismaʿil's imperial conquests, unknown or overlooked Armenian sources provide new perspectives, especially as these developments affected the Armenian population, which made up a substantial portion of the subjects of Ismaʿil's new empire. This article uses Armenian reports of a Sufi order turning militant, thence to conquer Iran in 1501, to supplement the Persian sources, and to demonstrate the value of non-Muslim sources for Islamic political and religious history, even in the late medieval period.
This paper will first sketch the state of scholarship on the rise of the Safavid order to imperial conquest, as much to suggest how historians have followed the interests of Persian sources as to set the stage for new information revealed by additional sources. Before turning to two new Armenian texts describing the Safaviyyih order, a short section contextualizes these sources relative to the late medieval Armenian historical tradition and the better-known Armenian historians of the Safavid period. The final two sections translate and analyze the new sources, a literary history from the 1440s and an extensive scribal colophon, for what they contribute to our understanding of the Safaviyyih order and of the context in which it arose. While historians of early Islam have long recognized the value of non-Muslim sources, Islamicists of the later medieval period have typically overlooked sources in languages other than Arabic and Persian, including those discussed here.
THE SAFAVIYYIH BEFORE 1501 IN MODERN SCHOLARLY DEBATES
Persian sources have conditioned not only the historical outline sketched above but also the scholarly debates regarding the history of the early Safavid dynasty. Following biographical sources from the dynasty's later imperial phase, Hans Roemer pointed out that no “Safavid tradition” could have been passed down from father to son in the generations immediately preceding 1501, as both Junayd and Haydar died before their sons were old enough to know them.Footnote 5 This fact, combined with Shah Ismaʿil's own elaborate poetry, has tempted some scholars to explain the empire without reference to Ismaʿil's predecessors.Footnote 6 Even the significance of the Safaviyyih order's “prehistory” for the conquests and the subsequent dynasty cannot be taken for granted.
In response to the discontinuity of the 15th-century Safavid dynasty, scholars have attempted to demonstrate two types of continuity before and after Ismaʿil. Roger Savory suggested that Safavid continuity could be found in the central personnel surrounding the young Ismaʿil, an insight that is independent of his teleological insistence that by the 1480s the Safaviyyih order had become a “revolutionary movement” whose “momentum” needed to be “maintained.”Footnote 7 Adel Allouche subsequently documented precisely which high-ranking leaders of the Safaviyyih provided such continuity in Ismaʿil's childhood, and suggested a similar model for his father Haydar's own youth.Footnote 8 Jean Aubin apparently independently ascribed significance to the khulafāʾ (the shaykh's deputies) who guided Ismaʿil in his minority, differing in a few details, and his reconstruction was followed recently by Colin Mitchell.Footnote 9 Most recently, Ali Anooshahr emphasized the importance of “old veteran” informants for the account of Ismaʿil's rise to power in Amini Haravi's Futuhat-i Shahi (Conquests of the Imperial Majesty), an account which reveals the influence of his father's advisers upon the young leader.Footnote 10 These might be termed models of structural continuity in the Safavid order.
Other scholars have sought to demonstrate cultural continuity between the earlier and later Safavids.Footnote 11 The Shiʿism of the Safavid dynasty, proclaimed by Ismaʿil upon his capture of Tabriz and unique among the early modern Islamic empires, has led scholars to debate when the earlier Safaviyyih adopted sectarianism. Savory singled out Khwaja ʿAli as the shaykh under whom “the esoteric doctrine of the Safavid Order first assumed an unequivocally Shiʿi character.”Footnote 12 Michel Mazzaoui declared that no hint of Shiʿism could be found before Junayd,Footnote 13 whom Allouche and Aubin likewise identified as the first Shiʿi in the line.Footnote 14 Andrew Newman suggested an extremely late date for the adoption of Shiʿism by the Safaviyyih. He argued that not even Shah Ismaʿil should be understood as a doctrinaire Twelver Shiʿi; instead, Shiʿism was merely one of many legitimating discourses surrounding him as monarch.Footnote 15
Although he rehearsed the typical considerations, Hans Roemer called into question the enterprise of identifying the earliest Shiʿi Safavi shaykh, due both to the inconclusive nature of the evidence and to the lack of a clear division between Sunni and Shiʿi beliefs in the 15th century.Footnote 16 The discussion of Safavi shaykhs’ religious leanings is rightly complicated by the realization that not all who honored ʿAli belonged to the Shiʿa. Even the militantly anti-Safaviyyih historian Fazl Allah Khunji-Isfahani composed a poem in honor of the twelve imams, which Aubin used as evidence for what he referred to as “the uncertain frontier between Sunnism and Shiʿism.”Footnote 17 To discuss this lack of distinction, scholars introduced the category of “folk Islam,” as distinct from the more precise theology of the ʿulamaʾ.Footnote 18
The category of “folk Islam” is problematic in a couple of ways. First, the term presumes a class distinction that is not found in the sources. Even most of the ʿulamaʾ, the alleged advocates of “high Islam,” were themselves adherents of this folk Islam, as Khunji-Isfahani's just-cited poem in praise of the twelve imams demonstrates. Second, the idea of the Safavi shaykhs adopting folk Islam for political purposes has led to notions of the Safavids’ “populist” appeal.Footnote 19 While the substantial military support of the Türkmen Qizilbash for the Safavid dynasty is undoubted, it is less clear whether a movement that appealed primarily to a nomadic sector of the population should be termed populist.Footnote 20
Some studies have attempted to provide a clearer cultural context for the preimperial Safavid dynasty by exploring comparable movements. Kathryn Babayan asserted continuities of political culture between the early Safavids on the one hand and both late medieval Sufism and the Central Eurasian steppe societies on the other,Footnote 21 while Mitchell described “a pastiche of various orthodox and heterodox Islamic practices.”Footnote 22 But most scholars working on the Safaviyyih have sought comparable phenomena among other Sufi or messianic movements. Mazzaoui contextualized the origins of the Safavids in terms of late medieval Shiʿism and the ghulāt, “exaggerators” who ascribed divine attributes to certain early Muslims such as ʿAli.Footnote 23 Babayan herself called attention to the Nuqtavi order's competition for Qizilbash loyalties, as well as the broader interest in Persian epics of Abu Muslim in the 15th century.Footnote 24 Shahzad Bashir contrasted the militant turn of Safaviyyih to the enduring quietism of the equally messianic Nurbakhshiyyih order.Footnote 25
One key difference between the Safaviyyih and the various other movements considered by Mazzaoui, Babayan, and Bashir seems to be the adoption of ghazā, raiding non-Muslims.Footnote 26 Scholars have typically discussed the Safaviyyih's raids against Christian populations outside dār al-Islām, lands ruled by Muslims.Footnote 27 Mazzaoui regarded the militarization of the Safaviyyih as “very difficult to explain,” though he followed Khunji-Isfahani in ascribing these attacks to the Safavids’ new religious extremism and their political goals.Footnote 28 This latter motivation was emphasized by Savory as well.Footnote 29 Roemer suggested mixed motivations for these raids, including adherence to a ghāzī ideal, providing sustenance to the thousands of supporters alleged to have rallied around Junayd and Haydar, and those supporters’ thirst for adventure.Footnote 30 Allouche also attributed the militarization of the order to the martial inclinations of the recruits they attracted, although he presents this process as less conscious than Roemer does.Footnote 31 Most other scholars present the fact of militarization without explaining it. All of them regard the transformation of the Safaviyyih into a military force as an unprecedented development under Junayd after 1447.
Scholarly discussions of these subjects are hindered by the fact that the most informative sources have readily apparent problems. Historians writing in the 16th century, after the Safavid dynasty came to power, provided abundant information about the ruling dynasty's Sufi predecessors, but they also shaped those accounts to serve political purposes at the Safavid imperial court.Footnote 32 These sources anachronistically heightened the importance of the Safavid order for a period earlier than it had in fact achieved prominence.Footnote 33 They also glossed over embarrassing details, such as that during Junayd's lifetime, it was not Junayd but his uncle Jaʿfar who led the order in Ardabil.Footnote 34 The official genealogy also went through some reworking, a process which began earlier than 1501, as Kazuo Morimoto has documented.Footnote 35 Sources that precede the transformation of the Sufi order into an imperial dynasty may avoid the pitfalls of the Safavids’ later political teleology.
If 15th-century sources are to be preferred, most of them are not very informative. The tombstones of Haydar and his otherwise unknown brother Khwaja Jamshid give little beyond the date of the former's death and their genealogy back to the founder of the order.Footnote 36 The Kitab-i Diyarbakriyyih (Book of Diyar Bakr) alluded briefly to the Safavi shrine at Ardabil, but apparently not to any living shaykhs.Footnote 37 The references in Mirkhwand's text to meetings between Shaykh ʿAli of Ardabil and Timur were based on a misreading of Yazdi's Zafarnama (Book of Victory). Where the earlier historian had referred to Shaykh ʿAli Oirat, the ruler of Erbil, the most recent edition of the Rawzat al-Safaʾ (The Garden of Purity) omitted “Oirat” and added a dāl to the place name, thus making “Ardabil.”Footnote 38 Unfortunately, the fact that Mirkhwand's text is not available in a critical edition means we remain unsure whether the error was Mirkhwand's, a scribe's, or the editor's. By far the most informative source from the 15th century, from an author well-placed at the Aqquyunlu court, is the account of Fazl Allah b. Ruzbihan Khunji-Isfahani.Footnote 39 Even here, Khunji-Isfahani's narration of the Safaviyyih order is only background to Haydar's attack on the Shirvanshah, and an example to show that holy ancestors do not guarantee holy descendants. Roemer suggested that Khunji-Isfahani's hostility to Haydar may have led him to exaggerate the beliefs of the Safavi shaykh's followers.Footnote 40 To these narrative histories must be added briefer notices and occasional references, such as the genealogy documented by Morimoto.Footnote 41
Given the state of this evidence, it is unclear whether Junayd was ever the leader of the Safaviyyih order in Ardabil. Most scholars, following Persian sources from the Safavid period, presume that Junayd was the legitimate leader of the Safaviyyih order who was ousted by his uncle Jaʿfar,Footnote 42 but this may reflect only a later historiographical tradition in which the supporters of Junayd's son Haydar and his descendants justified the succession which eventually resulted. It is clear that Haydar was imposed upon the Safaviyyih in Ardabil by Uzun Hasan in the aftermath of his conquest of the area.Footnote 43 An odd word choice by Khunji-Isfahani leaves ambiguous whether Junayd obtained leadership of the order, or simply an inheritance that excluded his ancestors’ sanctity.Footnote 44 It is possible that in fact Jaʿfar succeeded immediately after Shaykh Ibrahim, and his nephew Junayd was expelled as a potential rival. Junayd's travels and interest in militarizing the Sufis may have been attempts to secure what he regarded as his rightful role, a role that he was unable to achieve before his death. Junayd's alliance with the Aqquyunlu sultan may reflect the latter's desire to cultivate a rival to the Safavid shaykh Jaʿfar, whose alliance with Qaraquyunlu lent legitimacy to that dynasty. Indeed, the list presented by Morimoto suggests that Junayd was considered secondary to enumerating the genealogy of the Safavi shaykh.Footnote 45
Another question that has been only lightly discussed in the scholarship is the source of the funds which financed the militarization of the order. Roemer, citing Persian documents, spoke of Shaykh Safi al-Din endowing the order.Footnote 46 Savory discussed alleged attempts by Sadr al-Din Musa to prevent Safavi waqf lands from being expropriated or taxed during the unstable 14th century.Footnote 47 Allouche reports on the basis of a 17th-century source that Shaykh Khwaja ʿAli received land endowments from Timur, although Savory, using the same evidence, reported the gift was promised but never delivered.Footnote 48 Nevertheless, it costs more to equip and feed an army of several thousand on campaign than it does to lead a sedentary Sufi order. As Roemer suggested, there may have been a financial motivation among others for the raids of Junayd and Haydar upon the Christians outside of Islamic rule, in particular the Georgians and the Cherkes.Footnote 49 The economic dimension of Safavid development may merit increased attention.
In light of this state of the evidence, all sources need to be evaluated with an awareness of their relationship to the Safavid dynasty, especially after its conquests in the early 16th century. Previously unknown or underused sources are always welcome, among which sources from additional perspectives may have particular value for shedding sidelights upon unclear aspects of the Safaviyyih order before the Safavid Empire.
ARMENIAN SOURCES ON SAFAVID ORIGINS
The Armenians were an important component of Safavid society, with their own historiographical tradition. Yet that tradition experienced a sharp break in the 16th century, sharper even than Persian historiography did. The first two major Armenian historians of the Safavid Empire were Aṛak‘el of Tabriz (d. 1670) and Zak‘aria the Deacon (d. 1699), but the information they give about the Safaviyyih order in the years before Ismaʿil's conquest of Tabriz in 1501 is limited and very confused. Both historians regarded Shaykh Haydar as the direct son of Shaykh Safi al-Din rather than his descendant after many generations, and while correctly reporting his marriage alliance to the Aqquyunlu ruler Yaʿqub, they mistakenly identified Yaʿqub as the grandson of the Qaraquyunlu ruler Jahanshah.Footnote 50 Both likewise ascribed the death of Shaykh Haydar to his own poisoned feast that he served to the Sultan Yaʿqub, rather than to death in battle.Footnote 51 As John Woods noted, the Safavid-era chronicles of Hasan Rumlu and Saʿd al-din ascribe the death of the Aqquyunlu ruler to poison, although naturally those texts do not blame the Safavi shaykh, who in fact predeceased the Sultan Yaʿqub by two years.Footnote 52 Aṛak‘el also misreported the date of Shaykh Haydar's death as 933 of the Armenian calendar (1484 c.e.).Footnote 53 As opposed to the Persian tradition that the childhood of Shah Ismaʿil was spent in Istakhr, Aṛak‘el repeats a tradition that the child was sheltered on the island of Aght‘amar in Lake Van.Footnote 54 More reliable than these late histories, but also much more limited, a very brief Armenian chronicle of the early 16th century describes Shah Ismaʿil's initial conquest of the city of Erciş, on the northern shore of Lake Van.Footnote 55 The text does not provide any backstory on Ismaʿil, however, beyond identifying him as the leader of the “redhead” Sufis (karmir glukh sōfik‘) of Ardabil.Footnote 56 Therefore, even this text is of limited use for reconstructing the history of the Safaviyyih order before the imperial conquests of Shah Ismaʿil.
Yet earlier Armenian authors had noted the Safavi shaykhs even before they attained sufficient prominence to appear in Persian histories. These earlier sources do not share the same concerns as later authors, Armenian or Persian, writing under the established Safavid dynasty. They were not interested, for example, in the lineage of the Safavi shaykhs or their Shiʿi credentials. Instead, they were primarily concerned with how particular Muslim leaders affected the Armenian population. The typical answers, violence and financial exactions, would not endear any ruler to the population ruled, and thus these earlier sources, much like Khunji-Isfahani's history, take an extremely negative view of the shaykhs mentioned. While that is no surprise, the details reported may prove useful to Safavid historians.
Two centuries separated Aṛak‘el from the close of the medieval Armenian historiographical tradition, which ended with T‘ovma of Metsop‘ (d. 1446), an Armenian abbot of a monastery north of Erciş. Since this historiographical tradition ended before the Safaviyyih shaykhs attained political standing through intermarriage with the Aqquyunlu rulers, one might not expect to find much of value on the origins of the Safavids from Armenian sources. Yet T‘ovma referred twice to the shaykh of Ardabil, and thus constitutes an important contemporary source for how the Safaviyyih were perceived by at least one Armenian leader in the 1440s.Footnote 57 An abbreviated translation of these texts was provided by Vladimir Minorsky, but it has had little impact on scholarship on Safavid origins.Footnote 58 Indeed, given that scholarly opinion has inclined to the view that “nothing of any great significance happened” under Shaykh Ibrahim,Footnote 59 these two references to that Safavi leader partially fill in a gap in the history of the order before Junayd's militarization. Because of certain errors in Minorsky's translation and the limitations of his commentary, I have considered it worthwhile to present the selections anew here.
Nor are literary histories the only Armenian sources useful to Persian historians. Armenian colophons, notes at the end of manuscripts that identify the circumstances of copying, often supply information about current events as well.Footnote 60 Like inscriptions, such colophons are usually closely contemporary with what they describe but very limited in perspective. Nevertheless, they sometimes record events of general regional interest, and often with a perspective not found among the elite histories composed to flatter the rulers involved. As such, their value lies primarily in how they augment other historical sources.Footnote 61
The text translated here is known not from its original manuscript, but from two copies of it that were made subsequently. The contents suggest that this text formed part of a colophon composed in the summer or early fall of 1488. Unfortunately, the place where the colophon was composed, which is often of critical importance for evaluating the scribe's perspective, was not reported in the sources I have been able to access.Footnote 62 The manuscript containing the colophon was in the Armenian church of St. Karapet in the eastern Anatolian city of Muş in 1846 or 1847, when the text translated here was copied into a miscellaneous manuscript by Nerses Sargsean, whose copy made its way to the Mekhitarist monastery in Venice. The 1924 catalogue of that library included a transcription of this portion from the 1840s manuscript.Footnote 63 In the meantime, another Armenian church leader named Ghewond P‘irghalemean transcribed this text into his collection of historical records in the last third of the 19th century, from which it was included in L. S. Khach‘ikyan's collection of 15th-century manuscript colophons.Footnote 64 As Khach‘ikyan noted, the second half of this text has circulated independently in other manuscripts with a variant beginning and ending.Footnote 65 The text given by Khach‘ikyan is the one translated here, with differences from Barsegh Sargisean's catalogue noted.
SELECTIONS FROM T‘OVMA OF METSOP‘
The history of T‘ovma of Metsop‘ contains two brief passages which probably refer to the leader of the Safaviyyih order,Footnote 66 in the context of an account of the military campaign of the Qaraquyunlu ruler Jahanshah into Georgia in 1440:
The king of Tabriz and tyrannical prince named Jahanshah gathered an army, deployed troops, and taking the evil leaderFootnote 67 of Ardabil and every qadi and mudarris [teacher],Footnote 68 he came upon the land of the Georgians. And many times he sent an envoy, [for the Georgian king] to come to him in submission and to give him the customary tax. But he was unwilling, and he answered the envoy harshly . . .
And the filthy tyrant [Jahanshah] again summoned to himself the evil leaders of his faith, and he says, “Have others, fromFootnote 69 our ancient kings, done such a good deed and [displayed] bravery?” And they say, “No, you are worthy of more honor and glory than the Prophet!”Footnote 70 And the filthy shaykh of Ardabil says, “God has forgiven whatever evils which you have doneFootnote 71 in the land, and for seven years,Footnote 72 whatever you do will be forgiven. But I give you one piece of advice: sinceFootnote 73 they have blasphemed our leader and call him a doltFootnote 74 and kachal [bald-head?],Footnote 75 impose tax and kharāj [land-tax] upon all the Christians, so that they may deny Jesus and turn from their law to our law.”Footnote 76 And they imposed kharāj and heavy taxes upon this entire peopleFootnote 77 in order that perhaps through many afflictions they might turn them from their religious life.
The earlier passage says little more than that the “leader of Ardabil” accompanied the Qaraquyunlu ruler Jahanshah on campaign in Georgia. How certain can we be that this leader is the Safavi shaykh? The “leader” is mentioned in conjunction with “every qadi and mudarris,” implying a religious leader rather than a military commander or governor.Footnote 78 Thus the “leader of Ardabil” is likely the same figure as the “shaykh of Ardabil” mentioned in the second paragraph. There may have been shaykhs in Ardabil in 1440 other than the leader of the Safaviyyih order, of course. Yet the fact that the Safavi shaykhs had Qasim-i Anvar as a dāʿī in Herat, and others elsewhere, suggests that the leader of the Safaviyyih was the most prominent shaykh in Ardabil.Footnote 79 Within two decades the Safavi shaykh Jaʿfar had a marriage alliance with the Qaraquyunlu ruler named here, which makes the identification of the “shaykh of Ardabil” with Jaʿfar's brother and predecessor Ibrahim more likely. It may be objected that later Safavi tradition did not remember Shaykh Ibrahim as a ghāzī, yet this need not be an obstacle to the identification. The expedition may have been forgotten, either accidentally due to the discontinuities in the Safavi tradition between the death of Junayd and the rise of Ismaʿil, or expediently to obscure former political links that became embarrassing after the Aqquyunlu destroyed the Qaraquyunlu in 1469. Thus it seems most plausible that the “leader of Ardabil,” whom the Armenian author presumes is familiar to his readers, is Shaykh Ibrahim of the Safaviyyih.
No particular action is ascribed to the Safavi shaykh in this paragraph. However, the otherwise unattested relationship between Shaykh Ibrahim and the Qaraquyunlu ruler may relate to the marriage alliance between Jahanshah and Shaykh Ibrahim's brother and effectual successor, Shaykh Jaʿfar.Footnote 80 Perhaps the shaykhs of the Safaviyyih in the 1440s and 1450s ascribed as much significance to their alliance with the Qaraquyunlu rulers as Junayd and Haydar later did to their marriages to Aqquyunlu princesses. In contrast, the presence of Shaykh Ibrahim in a military expedition to Georgia, even in an apparently nonmilitary capacity, may have inspired his son Junayd not only to seek a military command but also to target nearby Christian states. Although scholars ascribe the militarization of the Safavi movement to Junayd, his father's presence on campaign with the Qaraquyunlu ruler may indicate a mediating stage in the militarization of the order.
It is surprising, however, that the Safavi shaykh was significant enough to the Armenian author to be singled out for individual mention among the other Islamic religious leaders present. Because the author died in 1446, this cannot be due to subsequent militaristic and then imperial developments in the Safavi order. The shaykh of Ardabil may have been specifically introduced here to anticipate the dialogue reported in the second selection, which is the only other paragraph where the Sufi leader is mentioned.
The second paragraph records a dialogue, likely fictional, between the victorious Jahanshah and the Islamic religious leaders, in which the former is fishing for compliments. The account of Islamic leaders comparing Jahanshah favorably to Muhammad is surprising, to say the least, and may simply reflect the Armenian author's disdain for the Muslims’ religion and integrity.Footnote 81 The Safavid shaykh then assures Jahanshah of God's forgiveness of any sins the ruler may have committed, and even gives a carte blanche for the following seven years. Like the former response, this economy of forgiveness may reflect not so much the shaykh's beliefs as T‘ovma's own calumny, but it would be worth investigating whether Sufi leaders made such pronouncements of forgiveness in such circumstances.
Equally surprising, perhaps, is the ascription to the Safavi shaykh of the advice to impose taxes upon the Christian population. The fact that this tax is being levied particularly on Christians, and as punishment for negative things the Christians say about the Muslim prophet, suggests that something like the jizya is envisioned here, even though the term was not used. Scholars often presume that the jizya has continually been enforced,Footnote 82 whereas this passage suggests that the tax was imposed only after a military campaign in 1440. There are a few different possible resolutions to this contradiction. First, perhaps the issue is not the initial imposition of the jizya upon this population, but rather an increase in the amount of the jizya. Second, the Qaraquyunlu rulers are known to have granted tax exemptions to monasteries,Footnote 83 and perhaps this particular advice is to rescind those privileges rather than to impose a new tax upon the bulk of the Armenian population. Third, perhaps this proposal applies only to the conquered areas, signaling a shift in status for the Georgian kingdom from a semi-independent tributary vassal to a region directly taxed by Muslim overlords. This option is less likely, since for T‘ovma “this people” typically indicates the Armenians. Even if this third interpretation is correct, it is surprising that the imposition of jizya upon conquered Christians was not thought to be automatic, but required an individual to propose the idea.
In either case, the Armenian author presents the Sufi shaykh as arguing for using taxation as a means to encourage conversion to Islam, which would only make sense if the tax was specific to Christians. This is not the usual way in which Sufis are considered to have encouraged Islamization, but it is a plausible argument for a Muslim religious leader to make. The image formed of the Safavi shaykh in the history of T‘ovma of Metsop‘ is a hostile Muslim religious leader in the service of the Qaraquyunlu ruler, flattering him with false religious assurances (from the Armenian author's perspective) and attempting to coerce Christians to convert to Islam.
TRANSLATION OF THE 1488 COLOPHON
The second text consists of two accounts of hostile interactions between Sufis and the Christian population under Muslim rule.
In the year 937 [1488] there was terror in many places, and the Muslim peopleFootnote 84 was divided, for in the land of ChaghataiFootnote 85 there were many battles and the shedding of blood, and the Sultan of Egypt and the Khvandgar of Rum killed and massacred each other.Footnote 86 And the great Sufi of the city Ardabil [i.e., the Safavi shaykh, Haydar] gathered by his letters all his Sufis from the whole earth. For it was their statutes and custom that every year the red-hatFootnote 87 Sufis were hurrying to his call from every land, and they were taking up arms for him with their own wages. And instead of receiving anything from him, they themselvesFootnote 88 were giving to him much gold and silver, and in all battles wherever he went they were willingly fighting and dying in front of him. At this I too marveled and I was astonishedFootnote 89 at such fleeting mindless simplicity, that those who had wandered from truthfulness were calling this man, the deceiving sodomite, a great prophet, and they were praising his name with miracles, that with dry feet he passes over rivers, and with his axe made of feltFootnote 90 he cuts stone, iron, and everything. And with many other false reports they were exalting the one conspicuous for evil. He also gathered in this year about 40,000 men, and traveling with deception he entered Shamakhi, and he struck down all who were within reach from the Christians and Muslims. He cut down men and women with a sword, and he burned the whole city with fire, with the textilesFootnote 91 and whatever was in it. He would gather the little children to himself and pile five or six up on top of each other, and he himself struckFootnote 92 from above with a spear, piercing as far as the lowest child. Lifting them up with the spear, he straightened up, and the miserable children were fainting with their feet and hands at the ends of the spears. He was applauding joyfully and saying, “This is true ghazā [raiding].” With his sword he cut up all the animals, horse and mule, camel and sheep, and thus he did not spare either man or beast. This bad news the lord of Shamakhi brought to Tabriz, to the Padishah, his son-in-law Yaʿqub, and he recounted it to him. He dispatched the great prince Sulayman with many soldiers, who came to battle with great diligence, and when he conquered, he cut down everyone indiscriminately. On his side, too, many died.
Again in the same year there was a God-chastising wrath on the Sufis of the land of Koter. Near the monastery Aparanits‘Footnote 93 there is a village of the Sufis named Atabuk‘, and they were causing many afflictions to come upon the monks, and they were always cutting off the water to the monastery and were not allowing them to rest. In the days of Carnival a certain one of them was making a wedding for his son, and all were gathered there and they made much sport in parody. Then they brought a basket and put it in the middle, like a holy altar, with a brick on top, like the Gospel. Bringing dogs with a black leash they even made them stand in a circle, and they gave them names like the vardapets [teachers of doctrine] and the bishops whom they knew. Then two old men admonished them and said, “Do not make such sport! That is a great crimeFootnote 94 for you, who make your filthy dogs imitate the pure servants of God.” And they raved even more from malice, and they carried in someone they were falsely representing as dead, so that afterward they might raise him up, and he was not raised, but he was received as a pledge concerning eternal death. And then they brought wine,Footnote 95 crumbled bread, and were giving it to the dogs in the likeness of communion. At the same time God's chastising wrath came upon them, for there was a quake and a horrible explosion, and all who were in the house were killed by terrible thunder, except the two old men. The prince of Terjan came and saw the horrible event and was frightened. Drawing a sword, he intended to cut down the remaining ones himself, but the mullahs did not permit him, so he removed the remaining ones from the village and in their place he established Christians and made things easy.Footnote 96
The two paragraphs of this text are independent episodes, and the Sufis in the second were perhaps not the Safaviyyih, since the former paragraph specifies “red-hat Sufis” while the latter merely indicates the village where these Sufis lived. The first paragraph presents a wide perspective on regional events, while the second paragraph is much more local. Indeed, the two paragraphs may only be linked by date, the subject matter of Sufis, and the author's rejoicing in these Sufis’ defeats.
The scribe situates his first report in the context of warfare and disturbances among Muslims from Anatolia to Central Asia, showing an awareness of wars among Timurids and between Ottomans and Mamluks. In this context, the “great Sufi of Ardabil” was presented as engaged in annual raiding,Footnote 97 drawing from a network of Qizilbash followers spread “throughout the earth.” On an economic note, the Armenian scribe presents the Safavi irregulars as paying the shaykh for the privilege of fighting rather than receiving wages as mercenary soldiers. By contrast, Anooshahr emphasized, based on Amini Haravi's Futuhat-i Shahi, that “rapid distribution of plunder was the engine that drove” Ismaʿil's later conquests.Footnote 98 The Armenian scribe's statement is perhaps less a reliable statement of financial transactions than part of his characterization of the qizilbash as insane fanatics. The author also reports the surprising religious views of the Sufis. The appellation “a great prophet” falls short of Khunji-Isfahani's report that the Safaviyyih called Haydar “Son of God” and “what is worshipped” (maʿbūd),Footnote 99 and it is unclear whether the Persian polemicist or the Armenian scribe is more accurate. The former drew an explicit if perhaps inaccurate parallel with Christian Trinitarianism in order to discredit the Sufi order, while the latter may have downplayed resemblances that might reflect negatively on his own community. In either case, the ascription of miracles to the living shaykh is a noteworthy addition to what is known of Safavid beliefs in this period. It was not unusual to ascribe miracles to Sufi shaykhs, but such reports are hagiographic and usually substantially posthumous, whereas this is a nearly contemporary account of beliefs during the leader's lifetime.
The account of Haydar's attack on Shamakhi largely agrees with Khunji-Isfahani's, although this Armenian scribe assigned a number to the size of Haydar's army, which is probably no more reliable than such estimates usually are. This text also indicates that Haydar's attack on Shamakhi was “with deception.” This may indicate that Haydar captured the city through some trickery unreported by Khunji-Isfahani.Footnote 100 Alternatively, the Armenian scribe may be referring to Haydar's duplicitous request of Yaʿqub that he be allowed to pass through Shirvan for his raid on the Cherkes, as Khunji-Isfahani reports.Footnote 101 While Khunji-Isfahani's account focused primarily on the high politics between Muslim rulers, the Armenian report emphasizes the suffering of the subject population, both Muslim and Christian, and the atrocities committed by the shaykh.
Khunji-Isfahani drew a sharp distinction between raids against Georgian Christians and raids against “protected” non-Muslims under Muslim rule; Haydar's attacks on “protected peoples” were an example his lawlessness.Footnote 102 In contrast, raiding the sedentary population, whether Muslim or Christian, seems to have been the normal manner of supporting an army on campaign in the 15th-century Middle East. The Aqquyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan, Yaʿqub's father, had plundered the Armenian population around Muş in 1460, and the region around Kayseri in 1464.Footnote 103 This was such an established procedure that a Syriac chronicler assumed that an army that did not do so must have received strict orders from the commander not to harm the crops.Footnote 104 Even Khunji-Isfahani's narration reveals that the army of his patron Yaʿqub was expected to graze their mounts among the crops of the Muslim peasants around Ardabil when they arrived on the way to confront Shaykh Haydar. The historian praised the sultan's promise to credit any loss of crops to the peasants’ tax burden, but this solution was also exceptional.Footnote 105 Khunji-Isfahani's account still presented damage to the crops as inevitable. This shows that plundering the sedentary population was normal, and that, despite Khunji-Isfahani's polemic, Haydar's raid of the dhimmī population was not unusually wicked behavior. Indeed, while raiding the Georgians or Cherkes may have granted the Safavi shaykh much prestige, raiding unarmed non-Muslim populations under Islamic rule was likely more lucrative, due to both proximity and ease.
The scribe also reported details of the battle that confirm other accounts. These include the relationship between the Shirvanshah and Sultan Yaʿqub, to whom the Muslim ruler appealed for help, the name of the general leading the Aqquyunlu relief force, and the significant losses sustained by the relief army. The most noteworthy omission of the text is the lack of any mention of Haydar's death during the battle described here. This silence may indicate that the Armenian account is based on an initial report of the battle's outcome before the shaykh's demise became widely known. This seems unlikely, however, given that the text also alludes to equally distant events of the Ottoman–Mamluk war somewhat later in the summer. Perhaps the final sentence about indiscriminate slaughter was understood to include the Safavi shaykh's death. Otherwise, the failure to mention the death of Haydar is surprising and unexplained.
Instead of a battle with regional significance, the second paragraph reports a local instance of interreligious mockery, which the scribe placed in the context of long-standing harassment of the Armenian monks by the nearby Sufi villagers, including repeated threats to the monastery's water supply. On this occasion, the Sufis lampooned the Christian clergy whom they knew. The identification of the season as Carnival is significant. European Christians considered parodies of clergy fair game at precisely that time of year, and it is possible that the Sufi “sport” was a long-standing Christian carryover, perhaps given a new edge in the context of a Sufi village, rather than a hostile Muslim innovation. In any event, the misbehaving Sufis were duly warned by “two old men,” who are not otherwise identified, even by religious identification. Were these two men Muslims, with more respect for Christian clergy than their fellow Sufis? Or could they have been two old Armenians, invited to the wedding by Muslim neighbors? The text does not say. The game began to go awry when the person pretending to be dead in order to be raised actually did die, and then a lightning strike killed all the miscreants involved, sparing only the two elders who warned them.
The mention of the prince of Terjan is surprising, since the most likely location for this event is approximately 400 kilometers away from that region. But Turkic princes in this period were highly mobile, so perhaps he happened to be traveling through the area, though this was probably not part of the territory that he ruled.Footnote 106 In any event, the Muslim prince wished to finish the job started by the lightning, and was only prevented from slaughtering the survivors by the ʿulamaʾ. Instead, the remaining Muslims in the town were deported elsewhere, and it was repopulated with Christians, showing that the Islamization of particular locales was not exclusively one-directional in this period.
CONCLUSION
The history of the Safaviyyih before the empire founded by Ismaʿil remains obscure in its details, even if scholars have established certain outlines. The difficulty of clarifying the subject is related to the limited viewpoints of the available sources, especially in light of the political climate created by the descendants of the Safavi shaykhs once enthroned over a Persian empire. In this context, not only earlier sources, but also sources from otherwise unrepresented viewpoints, are particularly valuable. This article presented two Armenian sources, one a history composed in the second quarter of the 15th century, and the other a lengthy colophon. The former presented the least known Safavi shaykh, Ibrahim, as active on the religious side of the Qaraquyunlu ruler's military expedition, and as advocating financial pressure upon Christians (or perhaps specifically upon monks) both as a penalty for blaspheming Muhammad and as an inducement to convert to Islam. The colophon presented a “view from below” of the raid in which Haydar was killed, and also described a scene of inter-religious mockery by a group of Sufis and its disastrous end.
These Armenian sources are reminders that the Safavid dynasty arose in a multireligious environment. This environment was a necessary precondition for the ghazā that gained them political credibility and attracted Türkmen adherents. The role of ghazā in the militarization of the Safaviyyih has been emphasized by scholars, who typically define it as attacks upon Christian Georgians and Cherkes not under Muslim rule. While it is true that Junayd and Haydar both attacked such outsiders, the mountains through which they marched to get to the edge of dār al-Islām were also inhabited by Christian populations, and the standard method for provisioning an army in the 15th century seems to have been plundering the sedentary population. In other words, the Safavi ghazā was not only directed outward; it was also directed downward. According to Islamic legal theory of the time, dhimmī populations were not to be attacked or enslaved by Muslims, but such legal niceties rarely stopped commanders of armies on the move. Such considerations may also add a dimension to our understanding of the economic development of the Safaviyyih, which enabled Ismaʿil to undertake his conquests.
The Armenian populations should not be regarded as “outsiders” in Islamic or Safavid history. They were an integral part of the population over which Safavid emperors would claim the divine right to rule. The Armenian segment of the population has received limited treatment by historians of either the late medieval Middle East or the Safavid Empire,Footnote 107 perhaps because most Armenians lived outside of Iran's modern borders or because such groups are excluded by the typical scholarly bifurcation of Safavid society into Türkmen and Tajik.Footnote 108 This dichotomy may have some utility for understanding how the Safavid dynasty ruled, but it ignores the various segments of the population which did not participate in that government, such as the Kurds and Lurs, Jewish populations, and Syriac as well as Armenian Christian groups. The linguistic and religious diversity of the late medieval environment in which the Safavid dynasty arose may attenuate its “Iranian-ness,” but it may also make the new dynasty's rise to power more explicable.
