ABSTRACT
The centerpiece of social change in the "long" Safavid period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries is the fall of the dynasty itself to a fairly small invading party of Afghan tribesmen at Isfahan in 1722, the event to which the Polish Jesuit Krusinski alludes in such perceptive terms. This chapter presents a large measure to the "remote Causes" that prepared this event, starting with an inventory of the types of social change that occurred in Iran from 1500 to 1722, including those both internal and external to the social formation and its constituent parts—tribal nomads, urban groups, peasants, and the court. It provides a context to evaluate the various theories that have been put forward to explain the dramatic fall of the dynasty and to contribute to this debate by drawing attention to the role played by fiscal crisis tendencies, and political and ideological problems of the Safavid state.
