The Safavid order, also called the Safaviyya (Persian: صفویه), was a Sufi order (Tariqa)[1][2] founded by the Kurdish[3][4] mystic Safi-ad-Din Ardabili (1252–1334 AD). It held a prominent place in the society and politics of North Western Iran in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but today it is best known for having given rise to the Safavid dynasty.
Foundation and evolution
The Safaviyya, while initially founded Safi-ad-Din Ardabili under the Shafi'i school of Sunni Islam, later adoptions of Shia concepts by the children and grandchildren of Safi-ad-Din Ardabili resulted in the order becoming associated with Twelverism.[3][4] Safī al-Din's importance in the order is attested in two letters by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani.[5][6][7][8] In one, Rashid al-Din pledges an annual offering of foodstuffs to Safī al-Din' and in the other, Rashid al-Din writes to his son, the governor of Ardabil, advising him to show proper respect and comportment to the mystic.[9]
After Safī al-Din's death, leadership of the order passed to his son, Sadr al-Dīn Mūsā, and subsequently passed down from father to son, and by the mid-fifteenth century, the Twelver Safawiyya changed in character, evolving into to an extreme and intolerant form of Twelver Shi'ism, becoming militant under Shaykh Junayd and Shaykh Haydar by proclaiming Jihad against the Christians of Georgia, and becoming exaggerative by adopting messianic beliefs about its leadership and antinomian practices outside of the norm of Twelver Islam at the time.[5][6][7][8]
Haydar's grandson, Ismail, further altered the nature of the order when he founded the Safavid empire in 1501 and proclaimed Twelver Shi'ism as the state religion, at which point he imported Twelver Shia Ulama largely from Lebanon and Syria to transform the order into a Twelver Shi'i dynasty.[5][6][7][8]
See also
- Safavid dynasty family tree
- Safvat as-Safa
- Safavid dynasty
- Musha'sha'iyyah, a rival Isma'īlī Shi'ā sect