Safaviyya

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The Safaviyya (Persian : صفویه‎) was a tariqa (Sufi order) [1] [2] founded by the Kurdish [3] [4] [5] mystic Safi-ad-din Ardabili (1252–1334). It held a prominent place in the society and politics of northwestern Iran in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but today it is best known for having given rise to the Safavid dynasty. While initially founded under the Shafi'i school of Sunni Islam, later adoptions of Shi'i concepts such as the notion of the Imamate by the children and grandchildren of Safi-ad-din Ardabili resulted in the order ultimately becoming associated with Twelverism.

Persian language Western Iranian language

Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and some other regions which historically were Persianate societies and considered part of Greater Iran. It is written right to left in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script, which itself evolved from the Aramaic alphabet.

A tariqa is a school or order of Sufism, or specifically a concept for the mystical teaching and spiritual practices of such an order with the aim of seeking Haqiqa, which translates as "ultimate truth".

Sufism, or Taṣawwuf, variously defined as "Islamic mysticism", "the inward dimension of Islam" or "the phenomenon of mysticism within Islam", is mysticism in Islam, "characterized ... [by particular] values, ritual practices, doctrines and institutions" which began very early in Islamic history and represents "the main manifestation and the most important and central crystallization of" mystical practice in Islam. Practitioners of Sufism have been referred to as "Sufis".

Contents

Founder and foundation

Safī al-Din grew up in Ardabil, but left it for lack of adequate teachers, traveling to Shiraz and then Gilan. In Gilan, he became the disciple of Zahed Gilani, leader of the Zahidī Sufi order. He eventually became Zahid's chief disciple and married his daughter. Upon Zahed Gilani's death, the Zahidiyyah came under Safī ad-Din's leadership and was renamed the Safawiyyah.

Ardabil City in Iran

Ardabil is an ancient city in northwestern Iran, and the capital of Ardabil Province. Located in the northeastern part of Iran's historic Azerbaijan region, at the 2011 census, Ardabil's population was 564,365, in 156,324 families. The dominant majority in the city are ethnic Iranian Azerbaijanis and the primary language of the people is Azerbaijani.

Shiraz City in Fars, Iran

Shiraz is the fifth-most-populous city of Iran and the capital of Fars Province. At the 2016 census, the population of the city was 1,869,001 and its built-up area with "Shahr-e Jadid-e Sadra" was home to 1,565,572 inhabitants. Shiraz is located in the southwest of Iran on the "Rudkhaneye Khoshk" seasonal river. It has a moderate climate and has been a regional trade center for over a thousand years. Shiraz is one of the oldest cities of ancient Persia.

Zahed Gilani Grandmaster (Murshid Kamil) of the famed Zahediyeh Sufi Order at Lahijan

Taj Al-Din Ebrahim ibn Rushan Amir Al-Kurdi Al-Sanjani ‎ (1216–1301), titled Sheikh Zahed Gilani, was an Iranian Grandmaster of the famed Zahediyeh Sufi Order at Lahijan. He is also known as Sultân-ûl Khalwatiyya and Tadj’ad-Dīn Ebraheem Zāheed al-Geylānī as well.

Safī al-Din's importance is attested in two letters by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani. In one, Rashid al-Din pledges an annual offering of foodstuffs. In the other, Rashid al-Din writes to his son, the governor of Ardabil, advising him to show proper consideration to the sheikh. [6]

Rashid-al-Din Hamadani Persian physician

Rashīd al-Dīn Ṭabīb, also known as Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlullāh Hamadānī, was a statesman, historian and physician in Ilkhanate-ruled Iran. He was born into a Persian Jewish family from Hamadan.

Growth of the order

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. By the mid-fifteenth century, the Safawiyyah changed in character and became militant under Shaykh Junayd and Shaykh Haydar, launching jihads against the Christians of Georgia. The later Safawiyyah is considered "ghulat", meaning it had messianic beliefs about its leadership and shiite antinomian practices outside of the orthodox norm of Twelver Islam.

Sadr al-Din Musa(1305-1391)(صدر الدين) was the son and successor of Safi-ad-din Ardabili. His mother was Bibi Fatima, daughter of Zahed Gilani. Sadr al-Din directed the Safaviyya for 59 years. During this time, the activities of the Safaviyya were viewed with favour by Timur, who provided an endowment for the shrine of Safi-ad-din Ardabili in Ardabil, and allowed Sadr al-Din to collect taxes. Timur also offered Sadr al-Din to request any favour from himself, and Sheikh Sadr al-Din asked for the release of Turkish prisoners captured by Timur from Diyarbakır. Timur accepted this request, and the freed prisoners became Sadr al-Din’s loyal disciples. The descendants of these freed prisoners, emigrating by the thousands into Gilan Province, would later aid his family to found a dynasty.

Shaykh Junayd Safavid sheikh

Sheikh Junayd was the son of Shaykh Ibrahim. After the death of his father, he assumed the leadership of the Safaviyya from 1447–1460.

Shaykh Haydar

Shaykh Haydar or Sheikh Haydar was the successor of his father as leader of the Safaviyya from 1460-1488. Haydar maintained the policies and political ambitions initiated by his father. Under Sheikh Haydar, the Safaviyya became crystallized as a political movement with an increasingly extremist heterodox Twelver Shi'i coloring and Haydar was viewed as a divine figure by his followers. Shaykh Haydar was responsible for instructing his followers to adopt the scarlet headgear of 12 gores commemorating The Twelve Imams, which led to them being designated by the Turkish term Qizilbash "Red Head".

Haydar's grandson, Ismail, further altered the nature of the order when he founded the Safavid empire in 1501 and proclaimed Twelver Shi'ism the state religion, at which point he imported ulama largely from Lebanon and Syria to make the Safavid practices orthodox. [7] [8] [9] [10]

Ismail I Shah of Persia

Ismail I, also known as Shah Ismail I, was the founder of the Safavid dynasty, ruling from 1501 to 23 May 1524 as Shah of Iran (Persia).

Ulama class of Muslim legal scholars

In Sunni Islam, the ulama, are the guardians, transmitters and interpreters of religious knowledge, of Islamic doctrine and law.

Lebanon Country in Western Asia

Lebanon, officially known as the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus is west across the Mediterranean Sea. Lebanon's location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian hinterland facilitated its rich history and shaped a cultural identity of religious and ethnic diversity. At just 10,452 km2, it is the smallest recognized sovereign state on the mainland Asian continent.

See also

The oldest extant book on the genealogy of the Safavid family is Safvat as-safa and was written by Ibn Bazzaz in 1350, a disciple of Sheikh Sadr-al-Din Safavi, the son of the Sheikh Safi ad-din Ardabili. According to Ibn Bazzaz, the Sheikh was a descendant of a Kurdish man named Firooz Shah Zarrin Kolah who was from Sanjar, southeast of Diyarbakir. The male lineage of the Safavid family given by the oldest manuscript of the Safwat as-Safa is: "Sheykh Safi al-Din Abul-Fatah Ishaaq the son of Al-Sheykh Amin al-din Jebrail the son of al-Saaleh Qutb al-Din Abu Bakr the son of Salaah al-Din Rashid the son of Muhammad al-Hafiz al-Kalaam Allah the son of ‘Avaad the son of Birooz al-Kurdi al-Sanjari." Later Safavid Kings themselves claimed to be Seyyeds, family descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

The Safvat as-safa, also spelled Safvat al-safa or Safwat al-safa, is a hagiography of the Sufi shaykh Safi-ad-din Ardabili (1252–1334), founder of the Safaviya Sufi order.

The Musha‘sha’iyyah were a Shi'i sect founded and led by Muhammad ibn Falah, an Iraqi-born theologian who believed himself to be the earthly representative of Ali and the Mahdi. From the middle of the 15th century to the 19th century, they came to dominate much of western Khuzestan Province in southwestern Iran.

Related Research Articles

Safi-ad-din Ardabili Iranian poet

Sheikh Safi-ad-din Is'haq Ardabili (1252–1334), was the Kurdish and Sunni Muslim eponym of the Safavid dynasty, founder of the Safaviyya order, and the spiritual heir and son in law of the great Sufi Murshid Sheikh Zahed Gilani, of Lahijan in Gilan province in northern Iran. Most of what we know about him comes from the Safvat as-safa, a hagiography written by one of his followers.

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Qizilbash or Kizilbash is the label given to a wide variety of Shi'i militant units that flourished in Azerbaijan, Anatolia and Kurdistan from the late 15th century onwards, some of which contributed to the foundation of the Safavid dynasty of Iran.

Firuz Shah Zarrin Kolah was a Kurdish dignitary, and the seventh in the ancestral line of Shaykh Safi Ardabili, the eponym of the Safavid dynasty of Iran.

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Safavia may refer to

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Khvajeh Ali Safavi was a son of Sadr al-Dīn Mūsā and grandson of Safi-ad-din Ardabili. He assumed leadership of the Safavid order after his father's death. According to Rudi Matthee / Encyclopedia Iranica, under Khvajeh Ali, the convinctions of the Safavid order apparently shifted towards Shia Islam "under the influence of their main supporters—Turkmen tribes who adhered to a popular brand of Shiʿism". Originally, the order seemingly bore "Sunni convinctions".

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References

  1. ↑ http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1345, Sheikh Safi al-Din
  2. ↑ http://archnet.org/sites/1595/media_contents/40812
  3. ↑ Newman, Andrew J., Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire, (I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2006), 152.
  4. ↑ R.M. Savory. Ebn Bazzaz. Archived 2009-05-29 at the Wayback Machine .Encyclopædia Iranica
  5. ↑ V. Minorsky, "The Poetry of Shāh Ismā‘īl I," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 10/4 (1942): 1006–53.
  6. ↑ G. E. Browne, Literary History of Persia, vol. 4, 33–4.
  7. ↑ Floor, Willem; Herzig, Edmund (2015). Iran and the World in the Safavid Age. I.B.Tauris. p. 20. ISBN   978-1780769905. In fact, at the start of the Safavid period Twelver Shi'ism was imported into Iran largely from Syria and Mount Lebanon (...)
  8. ↑ Savory, Roger (2007). Iran Under the Safavids. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 30. ISBN   978-0521042512.
  9. ↑ Abisaab, Rula. "JABAL ʿĀMEL". Encyclopaedia Iranica. Retrieved 15 May 2016.
  10. ↑ Alagha, Joseph Elie (2006). The Shifts in Hizbullah's Ideology: Religious Ideology, Political Ideology and Political Program. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. p. 20. ISBN   978-9053569108.


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