Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
60. The Emergence of the Safavids- Part 1 of 2
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
We continue with the series, History, Science and Faith in Islam. Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one of the eminent scholars of our times, has called this series “A clear and detailed history of the Islamic world from the advent of Islam to the modern period”. It is designed to foster a renewal of faith based on knowledge. In this session we will cover the emergence of the Safavids in Persia.
The origins of the Safavid dynasty in Persia must be sought in the Sufic Islam that developed in the immediate aftermath of the Mongol devastations and in the political convulsions in the border areas of Persia and Anatolia after the Timurid invasions. Between the year 1219 when Genghiz Khan’s troops crossed the Amu Darya in Kazagistan, and 1261 when the Mamlukes finally stopped the Mongol forces at Ayn Jalut, the central mass of Islam was obliterated. Central Asia, Persia, Iraq, Afghanistan, as well as parts of Syria and Pakistan lay in ruins. In some areas, as much as ninety percent of the population was killed. Major centers of learning like Bukhara, Samarqand, Herat, and Baghdad were razed to the ground. Libraries were burned, scholars butchered, monuments demolished, dams destroyed, and the general population was enslaved. To grasp the magnitude of the calamity from a global Islamic perspective, it must be recalled that this was the same period when the Christians captured much of Spain, including Seville and Cordoba.
Faced with this enormous calamity, Muslims turned to their own spiritual roots. Gone were the ulema who could discuss the fine details of theology or argue the relative merits of the various mazhabs. The Abbasid Caliphate, which had become an empty shell, disappeared. Faced with total obliteration, the schisms between the various sects and mazhabs were temporarily shelved. In the pre-Mongol period, Persia, Iraq and Syria had witnessed countless feuds among followers of the Shafi’i, Hanafi and IthnaAshari schools of Fiqh. What emerged in place of a theological Islam dominated by the ulema was a Sufic Islam nurtured by the Sufis.
Sufic Islam was different from pre-Mongol theological Islam in its emphasis on the spiritual content of faith as contrasted with its ritualistic content. The warriors of Central Asia had failed to prevent the triumph of the Mongols. The ulema, who depended on the warrior rulers for their survival, had been obliterated. A religious vacuum was thus created. Times were hard and it was not clear whether Islam itself would survive in Central Asia and Persia. The faithful therefore turned to the reservoir of their inner souls. The sword of the Mongol could decapitate a ruler but it could not touch the spirit of a believer. The common Sufic, in search of leadership, gravitated to the Sufi masters.
The Sufic approach, from its very infancy, had stayed above the political infighting that has characterized Shi’a-Sunni relations since the assassination of Ali ibn Abu Talib (r). Sufi practices were an amalgam of Shi’a and Sunni practices. The Sufis, always suspect in the eyes of the theological establishment, had to be circumspect in their practices. In their emphasis on the transmission of knowledge through a teacher (murshid, pir, qutub), the Sufis were closer to the Shi’a approach. In their adherence to the Shariah, they were closer to the Sunni methodology. Furthermore, Ali ibn Abu Talib (r) was accepted by most Sufi orders as the patron-Imam and special honor was accorded to Ahl-al Bait (household of the Prophet).
Esoteric knowledge of God’s presence through irfan (intuitive knowledge of the Divine Presence) was emphasized as much as the exoteric knowledge of the Divine through adherence to Shariah. To escape persecution, elements of taqiyya (concealment of true religious faith from the enemy) were also accepted. Some tareeqas incorporated music and sama’a in their practices. It was this Islam, incorporating in it the spirituality of the soul, but with a lesser emphasis on its outward shell, that survived the Mongol age. And it was this Sufic Islam that was introduced into Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and much of Africa. The Arab core of the Islamic world was less influenced by this approach because it escaped the Mongol devastations thanks to the victory of the Mamlukes at Ayn Jalut. Even to this day, in a melting pot such as America, one sees this difference in emphasis among Muslim groups. Those from the Arab world emphasize the Shariah and strict adherence to its rules, whereas those from the Indo-Pak subcontinent, Indonesia, Malaysia and Africa emphasize its spiritual content.
It was this Islam, neither Shi’a nor Sunni but based on tasawwuf or tazkiyatunnafs, that was the preeminent religion in 13th and 14th century west-central Asia. And it was from its womb that the Safavid, the Moghul and the Ottoman Empires emerged. The confluence of Shi’a-Sunni ideas in tasawwuf makes it easier for a determined organized group to swing the populace one way or the other. Thus it was that the Safavids found it easier to tilt to the IthnaAshariFiqh in Persia, whereas their cousins among the Great Moghuls of India and the Ottomans tilted towards the Hanafi Fiqh. What was initially a tilt in a social political movement was hardened into bitter Shi’a-Sunni rivalry in later centuries as the Ottomans and the Safavids fought over the control of Azerbaijan and Iraq, while the Moghuls and the Safavids crossed swords over control of southern Afghanistan. Political and military ambitions were clothed in religious slogans and expressed in religious jargon, further widening a rift that runs through Islamic history like an earthquake fault. The Shi’a-Sunni differences were political, not religious, which were amplified by interested rulers and theologians.
It is noteworthy that the emergence of sufic Islam sustained one of the greatest periods of creativity in Islamic literature, poetry, music, mathematics and art. It was during this period that the Farsi language attained its linguistic zenith and developed into the lingua franca in much of Asia. Turkish literature flourished and the Urdu language was born in India. Many of Timur’s descendants, Shah Rukh, Abu Said, Ulugh Beg and Hussain Baiqara, were patrons of art and literature. Some of the greatest literary figures of this age were Hafiz of Shiraz, Abu IshaqInju of Shiraz. Emir Khusro of Delhi, Jalaluddin Rumi of Turkey; Abu Ishaq of Shiraz, Abdur Rahman Jami; Mir Ali Navai; NuruddinGhazani of Samarqand; Shihabuddin Abdallah; and Zaheeruddin Babur, founder of the Moghul dynasty of India.
The area around the Caspian Sea, from Tabriz to Jeelan, was a center for Sufi activities. It was in this milieu that ShaykhSafiuddinIshaq (1252-1334), after whom the Safavid dynasty is named, was born. ShaykhSafiuddin received his ijaza from ShaykhTajuddinJeelani, a member of the Qadariya order. ShaykhJeelani saw in the young Safi a combination of Sufi rectitude, political astuteness, and mundane practicality, and gave his daughter in marriage to him. Shaykh Safi established his own religious order in Ardabil, a city about 200 miles east of Tabriz. Those were unstable times, when the Il Khanid dynasty had ended and various Turkish tribes were jostling for political power. Under ShaykhSafiuddin, Ardabil became a refuge for many who were fleeing the tumult in the surrounding countryside. Shaykh Safi’s fame spread, bringing him the patronage of the courts and donations from the rich. The Shaykh used this wealth to provide relief to the poor and succor for the oppressed. The Safaviyya brotherhood grew and developed a widespread following among the Turks, Persians, Syrians, Iraqis and Kurds of Azerbaijan and eastern Anatolia. To this brotherhood, Shaykh Safi was the Pir and Murshad e Kamil (supreme spiritual leader) as well as its temporal ruler. The followers accorded the Murshad their unquestioned loyalty and total trust. The origins of the zeal with which the Safaviyya brotherhood followed Shah Ismail a hundred years later (circa 1500), is to be found in the discipline, comradeship, loyalty and organization that was established by ShaykhSafiuddin.
A great deal has been written by Safavid chroniclers to claim that Shaykh Safi was a Shi’a. It is more likely that Shaykh Safi was neither Shi’a nor Sunni but belonged to that universal Sufic Islam, based on tasawwuf, that had emerged in the post-Mongol period and had brought about an amalgam of Sunni and Shi’a elements. It was also claimed by the Safavids that Shaykh Safi was a Sayyid, a person in the lineage of Ali and Fatima. This claim, whether true or not, is relevant only to the extent that throughout Islamic history, kings and emperors have sought to establish the legitimacy of their rule by claiming to be descendants of the Prophet. Compare, for instance, the desire of Indonesian and Malaysian Sultans, during the 14th and 15th centuries, to marry their daughters to Sayyids from Arabia so as to establish the legitimacy of their rule. The Sayyids who seized power in Delhi following the withdrawal of Timur provide yet another example of this practice.
Into the lineage of Shaykh Safi was born Ismail I in 1487, claiming his descent from the family of Ali ibn Abu Talib (r) and his spiritual legacy from Shaykh Safi. Ismail I was the founder of the Safavid dynasty of Persia, which lasted until 1736, and influenced cultural and political developments in much of Asia.
A second major element in the emergence of the Safavids was the migration of the Turkish tribes. We have observed earlier that the paramount religious-historical events of the last thousand years occurred towards the end of the first millennium, when the Germans were converted to Catholic Christianity (9th century), the Turks accepted Islam (8th and 9th centuries), and the Russians joined the Eastern Orthodox Church (10th and 11th centuries). The movement of Turkish tribes across Central Asia into Persia, Anatolia, India, Syria and Egypt had an impact on global history similar to that of Germanic movements in Europe. The Turks, a dynamic, resilient, restless people, moved in waves in search of pastures for their herds and room for their growing populations. The first wave, led by the tribe of Oghuz, crossed the Amu Darya in the 11th century and was responsible for the disintegration of the Ghaznavi Empire and the emergence of the Seljuk Empire. The Seljuks moved further west, established their capital at Konya in Turkey, and from there dominated much of Central and West Asia for more than a hundred years. It was the shield of the Seljuks that protected the Muslim heartland from the sword of the Crusaders. The collapse of the Seljuk Empire by 1308 may be compared with the explosion of a star. The Turks who had fought under a single banner now divided themselves up into dozens of smaller groups, each group headed by a chief, and marched out from their Turkish heartland in all directions. Military allegiance often shifted depending on the reputation of the chief and the opportunities provided by him. Expansion into Byzantine territories in Europe, and Georgia and Armenia to the northeast was sanctioned by the doctrine of ghazza. To justify encroachments into neighboring Muslim territories to the east, the Turkish chiefs were always careful to obtain a fatwa from the local kadis under one pretext or the other. It was one of these tribes, led by Uthmanali, which founded the Uthmania (Ottoman) Empire.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
Back to Pakistanlink Homepage
