Whatever the judgments of taste, it is nonetheless true that there was a Persianate literary culture at this time that maintained itself from Istanbul to Delhi and Samarkand. This in turn had a strong impact on contemporary and later poetic compositions in Turkish and Urdu, reflecting the wider intellectual, religious, and court influences. But in some ways this Persianate culture was weakest in the Persian capital, where the court language was Turkic and mullahs tended to be more in favor than poets.16 Many poets and other Persians emigrated to the fabulously wealthy Moghul court.
As a consequence of political instability and the existence of competing polities within the cultural space of Persianate influence, there had been by accident conditions in Persia in previous centuries that permitted considerable (albeit erratic) pluralism of religion and relative freedom of thought. Over the period of strong Safavid rule, the central territorial core of the Iranian plateau was kept safe from invasion, which after the trauma of the preceding centuries must have seemed an invaluable blessing. But some previous freedoms wilted and narrowed.
The Shi‘ism of the Safavids and the ulema under their rule had from the beginning more than a streak of extremism and intolerance within it, and this tendency was intensified by the religious conflict with the Ottomans. The Safavids from the outset tended to be more earnestly religious than many previous Sunni rulers had been. This is a delicate subject, but it is important to look at it squarely. The Sufis were increasingly out of favor, and intellectual life was channeled into the madresehs. There were always hangers-on and pseudo-mullahs who could attract a following among the luti (unruly youths) of the towns by being more extreme than their more reflective, educated rivals; and the perceived history of persecution suffered by the Shi‘a did not always prompt a sensitivity to the vulnerability of other minorities once the Shi‘a became the dominant sect. Notions of the religious impurity (najes) of unbelievers, especially Jews, contributed to a general worsening in the condition of minorities, and after 1642 there was a particularly grim period of persecution and forced conversions. Orders were issued that Jews should wear distinguishing red patches on their clothing to identify themselves, that their word at law was near worthless, that they must not wear matching shoes, fine clothes, or waist sashes, that they must not walk in the middle of the street or walk past a Muslim, that they must not enter a shop and touch things, that their weddings must be held in secret, that if they were cursed by a Muslim they must stay silent, and so on.17 Many of these would-be rules (running directly contrary to the spirit of proper tolerance accorded to People of the Book in Islam, and reminiscent of similar ugly rulings imposed in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages and at other times) probably reflect the aspirations of a few extremist mullahs rather than the reality as lived. Conditions would have varied greatly from town to town and changed over time, but they were still indicative of the attitudes of some and appeared to legitimize the actions of others. As authority figures in villages and towns, humane, educated mullahs were often the most important protectors of the Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians.18 But other, lesser mullahs frequently agitated against these vulnerable groups.
Some have suggested that even among the ulema the close relationship between the Safavid state and the Shi‘a clergy was not a healthy phenomenon. The over-close relationship led some mullahs to overlook the strong distrust of politics, kingship, and secular authority that is deeply entrenched in Shi‘ism (and is perhaps one of its most attractive characteristics) in their scramble for the good things that the Safavid shahs had on offer—appointments, endowments, and a chance to wield some political authority.19 As is often the case with unchecked processes that involve greed, this one brought some of the senior Shi‘a clergy to shipwreck at the end of the Safavid period.
After the death of Abbas the Great in 1629, the Safavid dynasty endured for almost a century. But except for an interlude in the reign of Shah Abbas II (1642–1666) it was a period of stagnation. Baghdad was lost to the Ottomans again in 1638, and the Treaty of Zohab in 1639 fixed the Ottoman/Persian boundary in its present-day position between Iran and Iraq. Abbas II took Kandahar from the Moghuls in 1648, but thereafter there was peace in the east also.
Militarily, the Safavid state probably reached its apogee under Shah Abbas the Great and Abbas II. But despite its classification with Ottoman Turkey and Moghul India as one of the Gunpowder Empires (by Marshall G. S. Hodgson), there is good reason to judge that the practices and structures of the Safavid Empire were transformed less by the introduction of gunpowder weapons than those other empires were. Cannon and muskets were present in Persian armies, but as add-ons to previous patterns of warfare rather than elements transforming the conduct of war, as they were elsewhere. The mounted tradition of Persian lance-and-bow warfare, harking back culturally to Ferdowsi, was resistant to the introduction of awkward and noisy firearms. Their cavalry usually outclassed that of their enemies, but Persians did not take to heavy cannon and the greater technical demands of siege warfare as the Ottomans and Moghuls did. The great distances, lack of navigable rivers, rugged terrain, and poor roads of the Iranian plateau did not favor the transport of heavy cannon. Most Iranian cities were either unwalled or were protected by crumbling walls that were centuries old—this at a time when huge, sophisticated, and highly expensive fortifications were being constructed in Europe and elsewhere to deal with the challenge of heavy cannon. Persia’s military revolution was left incomplete.20
Alcohol seems to have played a significant part in the poor showing of the later Safavid monarchs. From the time of Shah Esma‘il and before, drinking sessions had been a part of the group rituals of the Qezelbash, building probably on the ancient practices of the Mongols and the Turkic tribes in Central Asia, but also on ghuluww Sufi practice and the Persian tradition of razm o bazm—fighting and feasting. There is a story that Esma‘il drank wine in a boat on the Tigris while watching the execution of his defeated foes after his conquest of Baghdad in 1508,21 and his drinking accelerated after his defeat at the Battle of Chaldiran. Some accounts even suggest that alcohol was instrumental in his early death in 1524. Within the wider Islamic culture that was hostile to alcohol, it seems that in court circles wine had all the added allure of the forbidden. One could draw a parallel with the way in which binge drinking is a feature of British and other traditionally Protestant societies whose religious authorities tended in the past to frown on alcohol consumption. Shah Tahmasp appears to have stopped drinking in 1532/1533, maintaining his pledge until his death in 1576, but alcohol was blamed by contemporaries as a cause or a contributory factor in the deaths of his successor Shah Esma‘il II, of Shah Safi (reigned 1629–1642), and of Shah Abbas II (1642–1666).22
Some of this can perhaps be attributed to a moralizing judgment on rulers who were thought to have failed more generally. For writers who disapproved of alcohol, drinking wine was a sufficient explanation for (or at least a sign of) incompetence, indolence, or general moral weakness and bad character. (Shah Abbas I drank too, without damaging his reputation.) But there is too much evidence for the drinking to be dismissed as the invention of chroniclers. The reign of Shah Soleiman represents the apotheosis of the phenomenon.
Soleiman came to the throne in 1666 and reigned for the next twenty-eight years. A contemporary reported,
He was tall, strong, and active, a little too effeminate for a monarch—with a Roman nose, very well proportioned to other parts, very large blue eyes and a middling mouth, a beard dyed black, shaved round and well turned back, even to his ears. His manner was affable but nevertheless majestic. He had a masculine and agreeable voice, a gentle way of speaking and was so very engaging that, when you had bowed to him he seemed in some measure to return it by a courteous inclination of his head, and this he always did smiling.23
Soleiman’s reign was for the most part quiet. Some fine mosques and palaces were built, but one could take those as material symbols of the growing diversion of economic resources into religious endowments, an
d of the blinkered, inward-looking tendency of the monarch and his court. Both of these were to prove damaging in the long run. Soleiman showed little interest in governing, leaving state business to his officials.
Sometimes he would amuse himself by forcing them (especially the most pious ones) to drink to the dregs an especially huge goblet of wine (called the hazar pishah). Sometimes they collapsed and had to be carried out. If they stayed on their feet, the shah might, for a joke, order them to explain their views of important matters of government.24
Shah Soleiman himself drank heavily, despite occasional outbreaks of temperance induced by health worries and religious conscience.25 His pleasure-loving insouciance was the natural outcome of his upbringing in the harem. He had little sense of the world beyond the court and little interest in it. He merely wanted to continue the lazy life he had enjoyed before, augmented by the luxuries he had formerly been denied. But some contemporary accounts say that when drunk he could turn nasty, that on one occasion he had his brother blinded, and that at other times he ordered executions.
It is a testament to the strength and sophistication of the Safavid state and its bureaucracy that it continued to function despite the lack of a strong monarch. In other Islamic states this situation often permitted the emergence of a vizier or chief minister as the effective ruler. In Isfahan it seems that the influence of other important office holders (as well as that of Maryam Begum, the shah’s great aunt, who came to dominate the harem) was enough to prevent any single personality achieving dominance. But as time went on the officials acted more and more in their own private and factional interests, against the interests of their rivals, and less and less in the interest of the state. Bureaucracies are not of themselves virtuous institutions—they need firm masters and periodic reform to reinforce an ethic of service if they are not to go wrong. And if the officials see their masters acting irresponsibly, they will imitate their vices.
The influence of the politically inclined ulema at court strengthened as the shah’s involvement in business slumped, and one leading cleric, Mohammad Baqer Majlesi, has been associated with a deliberate policy of targeting minorities for persecution (at least in the case of Hindu Indian merchants) to appeal to the worst instincts among the people and thereby enhance the popularity of the regime.26 Persecution was episodic and unpredictable, sometimes concentrating on the Indians or Jews, sometimes on the Armenians, sometimes on the Sufis, or the Zoroastrians, or Sunni Muslims in the provinces. In general, minorities—even Jews and Christians, who should have enjoyed protection as People of the Book—were disadvantaged at law, subject to everyday humiliations, and vulnerable to the ambitions of rabble-rousing preachers who might seek greater fame for themselves by inciting urban mobs against them. The cleric Majlesi’s personal responsibility for a worsening of the situation from the reign of Shah Soleiman onward has been disputed (for example, his treatise Lightning Bolts Against the Jews turns out on examination to be rather more moderate in setting out the provisions of Islamic law on the minorities than its title might suggest27), but he was an influential figure and was briefly to become dominant in the succeeding reign. His voluminous writings also included strong blasts against Sunnis and Sufis. The movement was broader than just Majlesi (whom it may have suited to appear radical to one constituency and moderate to another), but it is important to remember that it represented only one strand of Shi‘ism at the time; other Shi‘a ulema were critical of Majlesi’s repressive policy.28
As Shah Soleiman’s reign drew to a close, the Safavid regime looked strong but had been seriously weakened. Its monuments looked splendid, but the intellectual world of Persia, once distinguished for its tolerance and vision, was now led by narrower, smaller minds.
5
THE FALL OF THE SAFAVIDS, NADER SHAH, THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INTERREGNUM, AND THE EARLY YEARS OF THE QAJAR DYNASTY
Morghi didam neshaste bar bareh-e Tus
Dar pish nahade kalleh-e Kay Kavus
Ba kalleh hami goft ke afsus afsus
Ku bang-e jarasha o koja shod naleh-e kus
I saw a bird on the walls of Tus
That had before it the skull of Kay Kavus.
The bird was saying to the skull “Alas, alas”
Where now the warlike bells? And where the moan of the kettledrums?
—attributed to Omar Khayyam
According to a story that was widely repeated, when Shah Soleiman lay dying in July 1694, he left it undecided which of his sons should succeed him. Calling his courtiers and officials, he told them—“If you desire ease, elevate Hosein Mirza. If the glory of your country be the object of your wishes, raise Abbas Mirza to the throne.”1 Once Soleiman was dead, the eunuch officials who supervised the harem decided for Hosein because they judged he would be easier for them to control. Hosein was also the favorite of his great aunt, Maryam Begum, the dominant personality in the harem, so Hosein duly became shah.
Such stories present historians with a problem. Their anecdotal quality, though vivid, does not fit the style of modern historical writing, and even their wide contemporary currency cannot overcome a reluctance to accept them at face value. The deathbed speech, the neat characterization of the two princes, and the cynical choice of the bureaucrats—it is all too pat. But to dismiss it out of hand would be as wrong as to accept it at face value. It is more sensible to accept the story as a reflection of the overall nature of motivations and events, even if the actual words reported were never said. The story reflects the impression of casual negligence, even irresponsible mischief, that we know of Shah Soleiman from other sources. As the consequences will show, it also gives an accurate picture of the character of Shah Sultan Hosein, and the motivation of his courtiers. It is quite credible that Shah Soleiman left the succession open and that over-powerful officials chose the prince they thought would be most malleable.
Initially, Shah Sultan Hosein appeared to be as pious and orthodox as Mohammed Baqer Majlesi, the pre-eminent cleric at court, could have wished. Under the latter’s influence the bottles from the royal wine cellar were brought out into the meidan in front of the royal palace and publicly smashed. Instead of allowing a Sufi the honor of buckling on his sword at his coronation, as had been traditional (reflecting the Sufi origins of the Safavid dynasty), the new shah had Majlesi do it instead. Within the year orders went out for taverns, coffee houses, and brothels to be closed, and for prostitution, opium, “colorful herbs,” sodomy, public music, dancing, and gambling to be banned—along with more innocent amusements like kite flying. Women were to stay at home, to behave modestly, and were forbidden to mix with men who were not relatives. Islamic dress was to be worn. The new laws were applied despite the protests of treasury officials, who warned that there would be a huge drop in revenue, equivalent to 50 kg of gold per day, because the state had made so much money from the taxation of prostitution and other forms of entertainment. To make sure the new order was widely publicized, it was read out in the mosques, and in some it was carved in stone over the door. A later order stipulated that Majlesi, as Shaykh ol-eslam (the title given to the senior cleric in Isfahan), should be obeyed by all viziers, governors, and other secular officials across the empire. Anyone who broke the rules, or had done so in the past, was to be punished.2 It was a kind of Islamic revolution.
Yet within a few months of his taking the throne, Shah Sultan Hosein was drinking as much as his father had, and his great aunt, Maryam Begum (perhaps affronted among other things at Majlesi’s attack on women’s freedoms), had reasserted her dominance at court. The Sufis were eclipsed but not wholly suppressed. The decrees did not achieve temperance at court and were probably widely flouted, but they contributed to an atmosphere of renewed intolerance and repression of minorities. This was to prove especially damaging in the frontier provinces, where Sunnis were in the majority in many areas—notably in Baluchistan, Herat, Kandahar, and Shirvan. Such was Majlesi’s achievement by the time of his death in 1699. Other clerics at court followed in his sp
irit thereafter.
Shah Sultan Hosein was a mild-tempered, well-meaning man. He had no streak of cruelty in his character, and there is no record of his having ordered any executions over the period of his reign (which, like that of his father, also lasted twenty-eight years). His sequestered upbringing and indolent nature meant that he disliked being disturbed or bothered with problems. The indications are that he was what we would call institutionalized, and as a result was lacking in confidence with the world outside the palace or with people he did not know. He enjoyed wine and eating, but otherwise was pious and humane, putting his energies into a new complex of gardens and pavilions at Farahabad, southwest of Isfahan. His courtiers and officials encouraged him to leave state business to them. His other main interest was sex. His emissaries collected pretty girls from all over his domains (from any group or religion except the Jews), brought them to Isfahan, and delivered them to the shah’s harem for his enjoyment. After a time, if they became pregnant, they would be taken away again, well furnished with money and presents. Some were married off to prominent nobles, so that when male children were born, they became the heirs of those nobles.3
One could make an argument that the world would have been a better place if there had been more monarchs like Shah Soleiman and Shah Sultan Hosein—pacific, passive, interested in little more than building pleasure pavilions, making garden improvements, drinking, and silken dalliance. But war and politics, like nature, abhor a vacuum. Persia in 1700 was, as states go, well placed: it had strong, natural frontiers, and its traditional enemies were either as passive as itself or distracted by more pressing troubles. The state of the economy has been debated, but it now seems that what were once taken as signs of economic decline were in fact signs mainly of the failure of the state to adapt to economic change.4 The expansion of European trade to dominance, subordinating and damaging the economies of Asia, had yet to happen. Persian architects still produced beautiful buildings—the Madar-e Shah madreseh in Isfahan shows the loveliness of Safavid style in this last phase. The state administration continued to function despite the shah’s negligence and was still capable of raising taxation (albeit less than it should have raised) and powerful armies. But the Safavid state had a soft center, and the wider world was no less harsh and competitive than in the days of the Mongols and their successors. The story of the end of the Safavids is a powerful reminder that the prime concern of a state is always (or should always be) security—what Machiavelli called mantenere lo stato (to maintain the state). The rest—the palaces, the sophisticated court, the religious endowments, the parks and gardens, the fine clothes, paintings, jewelry, and so on, however delightful—were mere froth.
A History of Iran Page 17
