The Safavid Decline

Instead, with no serious external enemies, the Safavid rulers paid less att ention to governance, and the resultant neglect left the dynasty less able to deal with problems from drought, lower agricultural productivity, disease, internal dissent, and nomadic raiders. The succession of bad leaders began with Abbas’s successor, Safi I (r. 1629–42), who killed potential rivals to his throne as well as most of the generals, officers, and councilors he inherited from his father. In the wake of this cruelty, court politics became even more intense and selfi sh as the Qizilbash actively tried to regain their power and infl uence. Nearly all of the later Safavid shahs had numerous shortcomings, including a disruptive religious zeal by one and addictions to drink, drugs, and general profl igacy among the others. As each year passed, Persia’s tribes and neighbors challenged the Safavids, and the prestige and authority of the central state weakened with each setback.

Through the end of the seventeenth century the Uzbeks and the Mughals from India encroached on and captured Safavid territory and cities in the east. In 1664 the Russian czar Alexis sent Cossacks on a raid deep into Iran, where they caused considerable damage before withdrawing. The Afghans began to push into the empire in the early eighteenth century, meeting little resistance from Safavid forces, which were undermined by dissension between the Turkman and Persian levies. Sensing the Safavids’ weakness, the Afghans occupied Khorasan in 1717. When Shah Sultan Hussein (r. 1694–1722) tried to convert his Afghan subjects in eastern Iran from Sunni to Shia Islam, one Afghan chief rebelled and pushed the Safavid army out of Kandahar and most of Afghanistan. In 1722, the chief ’s son, Mahmud, went to war with the Safavids, marching west to besiege and capture Esfahan, the Safavid capital since 1598.

The Safavids made a stand outside the city with an army made up of royal guard troops, Persian cavalry, and tribal cavalry provided by Lurs and Arabs of the southwest. The army’s overall capabilities were mixed, but it had a battalion of twenty-four cannon whose commander was assisted by a French mercenary. With his major commanders divided over tactics, Sultan Hussein decided to attack the advancing Afghan army near the town of Golnabad. After the two armies formed up on the batt lefi eld, the impatient Safavid royal guard and Arab cavalry on the right flank launched an att ack that briefly threatened to get behind the Afghan line.

The commander of the Safavid center, however, held his troops fast, unwilling to engage the enemy. This inaction might not have been fatal if the Arabs had continued to push into the Afghan rear, but the tribal horsemen left the fight to loot their adversary’s camp. When the Lur tribal cavalry on the left moved forward, it was drawn into a crossfire volley of one hundred small Afghan cannon called zanburak, or “Little Wasp,” which were carried by camels and fired from the kneeling animal’s back. The Afghans then charged the Lurs and swept them from the battlefield, continuing on to overrun the Safavid artillery. With the Safavid center still immobile, Mahmud had the rest of his army move to the Afghan left to surround and destroy the royal guard. As the surviving guardsmen tried to escape, the rest of the army began its retreat to Esfahan. During the subsequent six- month siege of the city, nearly one hundred thousand citizens died of starvation and illness before Esfahan finally fell. Mahmud ravaged the capital and killed many of the remaining Persian nobility, after which he claimed the title of shah.

Military Forces in Safavid Persia