ABSTRACT
Safavid visual arts have long been the subject of close and sustained scholarly scrutiny. Taqi al-Din began writing the Kholasat around 1569 and continued adding to it until his death around 1607. The main body of the work covers the history of Persian poetry from Rudaki to the beginning of the sixteenth century and is perhaps more valuable as a massive anthology of poetry than as a historical source. At the height of the migration, not all the poets went to India, and those who did so were motivated less by religious ideology than by political instability and economics. With the death of Shah Tahmasb in 1576, Iran entered a period of political instability and internecine warfare that has been likened to a civil war and was not fully resolved until well into the reign of Shah ‘Abbas. After ‘Abbas’s administrative reforms, the Safavid state gained greater stability and economic prosperity.
