Safavid Persia

In 1501, a fourteen-year-old boy rode into Tabriz at the head of an army and declared himself shah. Ismail I was the heir of a Sufi religious order that had spent two centuries accumulating followers in northwestern Iran and eastern Anatolia. His family, the A Persian dynasty that ruled Iran from 1501 to 1736, founded by Shah Ismail I. The Safavids converted Iran to Twelver Shi'a Islam, created a centralized bureaucratic state, and presided over a cultural golden age. Their legacy defined the borders and religious identity of modern Iran., had transformed from contemplative mystics into militant political operators over several generations. By the time Ismail inherited leadership of the order, its followers — the Qizilbash, named for their distinctive red headgear — were less a spiritual community than a tribal military confederation willing to kill and die for their young master.

Ismail was not modest about his claims. He declared himself the hidden imam returned, a figure of messianic importance in Shi'a theology. He wrote poetry under a pen name identifying himself with God. His Qizilbash warriors believed him literally divine. And within a decade, this teenager conquered all of Iran, most of Iraq, and parts of the Caucasus.

Then he did something more consequential than any military conquest. He declared The second-largest branch of Islam, distinguished from Sunni Islam primarily by the belief that leadership of the Muslim community should have passed directly from the Prophet Muhammad to his cousin and son-in-law Ali and his descendants. Twelver Shi'ism, the dominant form in Iran, holds that twelve divinely appointed imams succeeded Ali, the last of whom is in occultation and will return as a messianic figure. the official religion of his empire.