ABSTRACT
It has been argued that the establishment of the Safavid dynasty in Iran at the start of the sixteenth century, which was based on the support of the Sufi-esque Turkish warriors (called the qizilbAsh), was inherently unstable from the perspective of running an efficient and orderly state.1 The qizilbAsh promoted and venerated Isma‘cl (d. 1524) who was the leader of the Safavid Sufi YarCqa which had originally emerged in Azerbaijan as a Sunni order. Isma‘cl became the first Shah of the new dynasty, and officially adopted the Shc‘ite creed for the whole of Iran. His Shc‘-ism was combined with a form of Sufism, and these Sufi inclinations and those of the people of Iran were evident to European travellers (“This Sophy [sefc ] is loved and revered by his people as a God”),2 and the qizilbAsh regarded him as the living emanation of the godhead. Yet the messianic atmosphere of the Safavid period3 and the qizilbAsh thirst for conquest and plunder inevitably had to be domesticated and tamed in order for the dynasty to function. The use of a legalistic form of Shc‘-ism was the method promoted by the Safavid dynasty. Shc‘ite scholars were patronised and supported by the Shah, and these forces were able to marginalise the qizilbAsh, and promote a form of Shc‘-ism in which the return of the Mahdc was pushed into the distant future. The Shah’s charismatic Sufi persona was transformed into one that was more stable and less open to an ecstatic and emotional following. He became the champion of twelver Shc‘ism and claimed to be the representative of the Mahdc on earth (which was not always enthusiastically accepted by the Shc‘ite clerics, who believed that this prerogative was theirs). The denominational transformation in Safavid Iran affected the Sufi orders which had traditionally been of a Sunni colouring. Nasr has witnessed a gradual tendency towards Shc‘-ism among the orders in the pre-Safavid period,4 an argument that has been rejected by Algar,5 yet there is a consensus that the Sufi orders in Iran were faced with an intolerant and “totalitarian” state. In effect the orders had to either conform to Safavid Shc‘-ism or relocate elsewhere. Orders such as the Dhahabiyya, the Nerbakhshiyya and the Ni‘matullahiyya adopted Shc‘ism, while the Qadiriyya and Naqshbandiyya abandoned Iranian territory.6
