The royal harem of the Safavid ruler played an important role in the history of Safavid Persia (1501-1736).
The royal harem of the Safavid ruler played an important role in the history of Safavid Persia (1501-1736).
The Safavid harem consisted of mothers, wives, slave concubines and female relatives, and was staffed with female slaves and with eunuchs who acted as their guards and channel to the rest of the world. [1] Shah Sultan Hossain's (r. 1694–1722) court has been estimated to include five thousand slaves; male and female, black and white, of whom one hundred were black eunuchs. [2]
The monarchs of the Safavid dynasty preferred to procreate through slave concubines, which would neutralize potential ambitions from relatives and other inlaws and protect patrimony. [1] The slave concubines (and later mothers) of the Shah's mainly consisted of enslaved Circassian, Georgian and Armenian women, captured as war booty, bought at the slave market (see Crimean slave trade), or received as gifts from local potentates. [3]
The slave concubines were sometimes forced to convert to Shia Islam upon entering the harem, and referred to as kaniz . [4] [5]
In contrast to the common custom in Islamic courts to allow only non-Muslim women to become harem concubines, the Safavid harem also contained Muslim concubines, as some free Persian Muslim daughters were gifted by their families or taken by the royal household to the harem as concubines. [6]
These women were educated in accomplishments and then either became consorts, or served as the maids of the consorts. One of the women educated in the Imperial harem was the famous Teresa Sampsonia. [7]
The enslaved harem women could achieve great influence, but there are also examples of the opposite: Shah Abbas II (r. 1642–1666) burned three of his slave-wives (concubines) alive because they refused to drink with him, [8] as well as another wife for lying about her menstruation period, [9] and Shah Safi (r. 1629–1642) stabbed his wife to death for disobedience. [8]
In the early Safavid period, young princes were placed in the care of a lala (high-ranking Qizilbash chief who acted as a guardian) and eventually given charge of important governorates. [10] Although this system had the danger of encouraging regional rebellions against the shah, it gave the princes education and training which prepared them for dynastic succession. [10]
This policy was changed by Shah Abbas I (1571-1629), who "largely banished" the princes to the harem, where their social interactions were limited to the ladies of the harem and eunuchs. [11] This deprived them of administrative and military training as well as experience of dealing with the aristocracy of the realm, which, together with the princes' indulgent upbringing, made them not only unprepared to carry out royal responsibilities, but often also uninterested in doing so. [11]
The confinement of royal princes to the harem was an important factor contributing to the decline of the Safavid dynasty. [10] [12]
The administration of the royal harem constituted an independent branch of the court, staffed mainly by eunuchs. [13] These were initially black eunuchs, but white eunuchs from Georgia also began to be employed from the time of Abbas I. [13]
Slave eunuchs performed various tasks in many levels of the harem as well as the general court. Eunuchs had offices in the general court, such as in the royal treasury and as the tutors and adoptive fathers of non-castrated slaves selected to be slave soldiers (ghilman), as well as inside the harem, and served as a channel between the secluded harem women and the outside court and world, which gave them a potentially powerful role at court. [1]
The mothers of rival princes together with eunuchs engaged in palace intrigues in an attempt to place their candidate on the throne. [10] From the middle of the sixteenth century, rivalries between Georgian and Circassian women in the royal harem gave rise to dynastic struggles of an ethnic nature previously unknown at the court. [14] When Shah Abbas II died in 1666, palace eunuchs engineered the succession of Suleiman I and effectively seized control of the state. [15] [16]
Suleiman set up a privy council, which included the most important eunuchs, in the harem, thereby depriving traditional state institutions of their functions. [15] The eunuchs' influence over military and civil affairs was checked only by their internal rivalries and the religious movement led by Muhammad Baqir Majlisi. [16] The royal harem reached such proportions under Sultan Husayn (1668–1726) that it consumed a large part of state revenues. [16]
After the fall of the Safavid dynasty, which occurred soon afterwards, eunuchs were never again able to achieve significant political influence as a class in Persia. [16]
Abbas I, commonly known as Abbas the Great, was the fifth shah of Safavid Iran from 1588 to 1629. The third son of Shah Mohammad Khodabanda, he is generally considered one of the greatest rulers of Iranian history and the Safavid dynasty.
Tahmasp II was the penultimate Safavid shah of Iran, ruling from 1722 to 1732.
Harem refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family. A harem may house a man's wife or wives, their pre-pubescent male children, unmarried daughters, female domestic servants, and other unmarried female relatives. In the past, harems also enslaved concubines. In former times some harems were guarded by eunuchs who were allowed inside. The structure of the harem and the extent of monogamy or polygamy has varied depending on the family's personalities, socio-economic status, and local customs. Similar institutions have been common in other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations, especially among royal and upper-class families, and the term is sometimes used in other contexts. In traditional Persian residential architecture the women's quarters were known as andaruni, and in the Indian subcontinent as zenana.
Suleiman I was the eighth Shah of Safavid Iran from 1666 to 1694. He was the eldest son of Abbas II and his concubine, Nakihat Khanum. Born as Sam Mirza, Suleiman spent his childhood in the harem among women and eunuchs and his existence was hidden from the public. In 1666, after the death of his father, the nineteen-year-old Sam Mirza was crowned king under the regnal name, Safi II, after his grandfather, Safi I. He had a troublesome reign as Safi II, which convinced his court astrologers that he should undergo a coronation once again. Thus, in 20 March 1668, simultaneously with Nowruz, he was crowned king with a new name, Suleiman I.
Abbas II was the seventh Shah of Safavid Iran, ruling from 1642 to 1666. As the eldest son of Safi and his Circassian wife, Anna Khanum, he inherited the throne when he was nine, and had to rely on a regency led by Saru Taqi, the erstwhile grand vizier of his father, to govern in his place. During the regency, Abbas received formal kingly education that, until then, he had been denied. In 1645, at age fifteen, he was able to remove Saru Taqi from power, and after purging the bureaucracy ranks, asserted his authority over his court and began his absolute rule.
Allahverdi Khan was an Iranian general and statesman of Georgian origin who, initially a gholām, rose to high office in the Safavid state.
The History of slavery in Iran (Persia) during various ancient, medieval, and modern periods is sparsely catalogued. Slavery was abolished in Iran in 1929.
Safavid Iran or Safavid Persia, also referred to as the Safavid Empire, was one of the largest and long-standing Iranian empires after the 7th-century Muslim conquest of Persia, which was ruled from 1501 to 1736 by the Safavid dynasty. It is often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history, as well as one of the gunpowder empires. The Safavid Shāh Ismā'īl I established the Twelver denomination of Shīʿa Islam as the official religion of the empire, marking one of the most important turning points in the history of Islam.
Mirza Mohammad Taqi, better known as Saru Taqi was a eunuch in Safavid Iran, who served as the Grand Vizier of the Safavid king (shah) Safi and the latter's son Abbas II until he was assassinated on 11 October 1645.
The Ordubadi family, otherwise known as the Nasiri family, was an Iranian family, which was descended from the medieval philosopher and polymath Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. The family was from Ordubad, a town which lay on the banks of the Araxes river, and is first mentioned during the Mongol invasions and conquests. The family thereafter disappears from sources, and is first mentioned several decades later when the Safavid dynasty conquered Iran and its surroundings in the 15th century. The leader of the family Bahram Khan Ordubadi, began serving the Safavid king (shah) Ismail I, who appointed him as the civil administrator (kalantar) of Ordubad.
Mohammad Beg, was a Muslim of Armenian origin, who served as the Grand Vizier of the Safavid king (shah) Abbas II from 1654 to 1661.
The Military of Safavid Iran covers the military history of Safavid Iran from 1501 to 1736.
Teresa Sampsonia was an Iranian-English noblewoman of the Safavid Empire of Iran. She was the wife of Elizabethan English adventurer Robert Shirley, whom she accompanied on his travels and embassies across Europe in the name of the Safavid King (Shah) Abbas the Great.
Mohammad Baqer Mirza better known in the West as Safi Mirza (صفیمیرزا) was the oldest son of Shah Abbas the Great, and the crown prince of the Safavid dynasty during Abbas' reign and his own short life.
Dilaram Khanum was a Safavid Georgian concubine of Safavid crown prince Mohammad Baqer Mirza, and the mother of King Safi.
Zeynab Begum was the fourth daughter of Safavid king (shah) Tahmasp I, is considered to be one of the most influential and powerful princesses of the Safavid era. She lived during the reigns of five successive Safavid monarchs, and apart from holding diverse functions, including at the top of the empire's bureaucratic system, she was also the leading matriarch in the royal harem for many years, and acted on occasion as kingmaker. She reached the apex of her influence during the reign of King Safi. In numerous contemporaneous sources, she was praised as a "mainstay of political moderation and wisdom in Safavid court politics". She was eventually removed from power by Safi in 1632.
Mirza Mohammad Mahdi Karaki was an Iranian cleric and statesman, who served as the grand Vizier of the Safavid king (shah) Abbas II, and the latter's son and successor Suleiman I. He was the son of Mirza Habibollah Karaki, who served as the sadr-i mamalik from 1632/3 till his death 1650.
Anna Khanum was the consort of the Safavid king Safi. She was the mother of her husband's successor, King Abbas II.