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Ghazā and Ghazā Terminology in Chronicles from the Sixteenth-Century Safavid Courtly Sphere

Tilmann Trausch

Abstract

In the later decades of the fifteenth century, adherents of the Safavid order started raiding the regions of the northern Caucasus and eastern Anatolia. As most of these raids involved Christian principalities, they have earned the Safavid shaikhs Joneyd and Haydar the reputation as ghāzis, as fighters for faith against the infidels. This paper explores how scribes from the sixteenth-century Safavid courtly sphere integrated the order’s early military activities into their narratives of the Safavid past. Further, it ex-amines what sound information may be derived from the narratives on these poorly documented events. The paper concludes with the suggestions that a) those doing in history in Safavid times were much less concerned with Islamic “holy war” than mod-ern historians are, and b) their narratives indicate that attempts to establish territorial rule may have outweighed the fight-for-faith motif.

Keywords

Joneyd – Haydar – Esmāʿil – Safavids – chronicles – ghazā

Safavid Ghazā as Historical and Historiographical Problem1

Based on over one hundred and fifty years of modern research on Safavid Iran, the recent decades have witnessed quantitative and qualitative progress in studying the dynasty that is said to have founded modern Iran.2 Concerning the Safavids’ politico-military history alone, myriad studies exist today and

1 I thank Emma O’Loughlin Bérat for kindly offering to proofread my English.2 For the changing tone, see, for example, Hinz; Savory 1971; Mitchell; the discussion is sum-

marized by Matthee.

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241Ghazā and Ghazā Terminology in Chronicles

Journal of persianate studies 10 (2017) 240–268

despite being predominantly smaller-scale specifically-focused articles,3 these studies have deepened considerably our understanding of the political and military developments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

However, many of these studies somewhat disregard the early stages of the Safavid era, the history of the Safavid shaikhs prior to 1501. Usually, the shaikhs’ lifetimes are mentioned only in passing,4 with Michel Mazzaoui’s The Origins of the Ṣafawids: Šīʿism, Ṣūfism, and the Ġulāt from 1972 being the most promi-nent exception (Mazzaoui 1972). This disregard is explainable. Apart from very few exceptions like the Safvat al-Safā of Ebn Bazzāz, the hagiography of the Safaviyya’s founder Sheykh Safi al-Din Eshāq Arbdabili, or the Tārikh-e ʿālam-ārā-ye Amini of the rather hostile chronicler Fazlollāh b. Ruzbehān Khonji-Esfahāni, there is an almost total lack of sources of any larger scope that may be considered as primary for the politico-military history at that time. The adher-ents of the Safavid order were literarily rather unproductive prior to Esmāʿil I’s time and the early shaikhs lacked the supra-regional importance to be men-tioned prominently in sources from outside their immediate sphere of influ-ence. To Hamdallāh Mostowfi, for example, Sheykh Safi al-Din was a side note at best (see Mostowfi, 675).

Consequently, our knowledge of the enterprises of Esmāʿil’s immediate predecessors is sparse, and the generally accepted outline of events has not been scrutinized for quite a long time. According to the outline, around the middle of the fifteenth century, the adherents of a once-quietist Sufi order from Ardabil turned militant and expansionist under Esmāʿil’s grandfather Joneyd, raiding the regions of the north-western Iranian highlands, the south-ern Caucasus, and eastern Anatolia in predominantly religiously motivated military expeditions (ghazā, ghazv; pl. ghazavāt) against everyone deemed to be infidel. This narrative constitutes Mazzaoui’s “ghāzī backgrounds of the Safavid state” (Mazzaoui 1971, 79).5

Moreover, many of the problems modern historians face when discussing aspects of both historical ghazā and its historiographical implementations (see for example Darling; Imber 2000) apply to the Safavid case as well. Indeed, the early scholars’ treatment of the topic had its history: the discussion of the impact of ghazā on the genesis of the Ottoman Empire—centred around

3 Specific as compared to the full account political histories like Savory 1980; Roemer 1989; and Newman.

4 See, for example, Newman (10–11), the most recent political history of the Safavid dynasty, mentioning them only in a few sentences of the introduction.

5 For other examples from various times, see Hinz; Savory 1980, 16; Roemer 1986, 204–09; Dale, 67; Daniel, 85–86; Yildirim, 131–32.


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the so-called Wittekian thesis—regularly served explicitly or implicitly as a role model (see most notably Mazzaoui 1971). Postulated in the 1930s by the Austrian Orientalist Paul Wittek, this historical paradigm sees the ideology of ghazā, understood as a religiously-motivated holy war against the unbeliev-ers, as the cohesive moment in the formative phase of the Ottoman Empire. By promoting the fight-for-faith motif, the early Ottomans allegedly attracted recruits, bound their (military) following, and were ultimately able to expand from a small border principality to a centralized empire spanning three conti-nents (Wittek).6

Consequently, the relationship between subject and sources, between nar-rated events and allegedly factual texts, has often been problematic. In accor-dance with contemporary understandings of research, the way led most often from subject to source. Although expressed somewhat strictly, one might in-deed wonder if Ali Anoorshahr’s view of the treatment of the subject in chron-icles of early Ottoman times does not apply to many studies based on their Persian counterparts as well. Anooshahr states that:

… no matter what position contemporary scholars have taken on the role of ghaza in the genesis of the Ottoman Empire, the losers have consis-tently been the historical sources.

Anooshahr 2009, 8

When the Safavids’ leaders prior to 1501 were an issue at all in modern scholar-ship, the debate usually centred on ghazā; and while this is with good justifi-cation, ghazā is not what is particularly striking when it comes to the sources which are usually consulted to substantiate this perspective. Consequently, it is worth putting the existing knowledge on early Safavid ghazā to the test. Before discussing the topic viewed through the prism of Ottoman historiogra-phy, one should see what the sources actually say about Safavid ghazā.

There are few contemporary sources of sufficient scope. Hence, the chron-icles from the sphere of the Safavid court(s) prior to the enthronement of ʿAbbās I (those completed between 1501 and 1587 in Herat and Qazvin; for de-tails see Quinn 2000, 14–18) are the sources of choice:

1. Sadr al-Din Ebrāhim Amini’s Fotuhāt-e shāhi, completed between 1520 and 1531 in Herat.

2. Gheyās al-Din Khvāndamir’s Habib al-siyar, completed in 1524 in Herat.

6 After having been accepted for over 50 years, the Wittekian thesis became a subject of con-troversy in the 1980s, with debates continuing today; summarized by Lowry, 5–13.




3. Yahyā b. ʿAbd al-Latif Qazvini’s Lobb al-tavārikh, completed in 1542 in Qazvin.

4. Amir Mahmud b. Khvāndamir’s Tārikh-e Shāh Esmāʿil va Shāh Tahmāsb-e Safavi, completed in 1550 in Herat.

5. Qāzi Ahmad Ghaffāri Qazvini’s Nosakh-e jahān-ārā, completed in 1564/65 in Qazvin.

6. ʿAbdi Shirāzi’s Takmelat al-akhbār, completed in 1570 in Qazvin.77. Budāq Monshi Qazvini’s Javāher al-akhbār, completed in 1577 in Qazvin.8. The known parts of Hasan Rumlu’s Ahsan al-tavārikh, completed in 1578

in Qazvin.

Despite the fact that they are not contemporary and some of them were writ-ten thousands of kilometres away in Khorasan, they are, arguably, amongst the best we have. With regard to the historiographical dimension of the topic in Safavid times, they are all the more interesting, since the narrative shape of the Safavid past was set up in these first decades of their rule.

To do the historical as well as the historiographical aspects of Safavid ghazā justice, two questions shall be put forth: First, what may be said about the early Safavids’ military activities—usually attributed to ghazā, based on these texts? Second, what is ghazā’s role in the narratives? As they deal with the found-ing, establishment, and notably the expansion of the order in the last decades before 1501—the latter being a matter commonly related to ghazā—the most suitable passages are the ones covering the Safavid family’s history prior to the death of Esmāʿil’s father Haydar.

As a result of the clashes of the second half of the fifteenth century—and not least because of the increasing contrast between the main branches of Islam in the region—the military following of the order, the (predominantly) Turkmen tribesmen usually referred to as Qezelbāsh, came to be known as the Shiʿite fanatics par excellence, fighting against their Sunnite neighbours, as well as the Christian principalities in the Caucasus. While the beginnings of the political aspirations of the Safavid order are still under debate,8 the religious fanaticism of the Qezelbāsh is generally accepted today when dealing with the history of the early Safavids. This is substantiated by scattered information from a variety of sources. Ahmed Azfar Moin, for example, cites Giovan Maria Angiolello, a contemporary Venetian traveller:

7 However, this text does not mention Esmāʿil I’s predecessors at all; see Shirāzi, 33–36.8 The discussion is summarized by Gronke, 354–57.


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This monarch is almost, so to speak, worshipped, more especially by his soldiers, many of whom fight without armour, being willing to die for their master. They go into battle with naked breasts, crying out “Schiac, Schiac,” [shaikh] which, in the Persian language, signifies “God, God.” Others consider him a prophet; but it is certain that all are of opinion that he will never die.

Azfar Moin, 76

The fact that the terms ghazā, ghazv and ghāzi can be found in almost all chronicles from the Safavids courtly sphere supports this story.

Still, both historical Safavid ghazā and its historiographical treatment lack sufficient analysis as of yet. What do the numerous occurrences of the terms ghazā, ghazv and ghāzi actually signify? What kind of historical incidents do they refer to? How do the authors weave them into their narratives? Why do they do so? And do they attribute the same meaning to them as we do today? Few scholars would claim today that there is an “immediate equivalence of word and world” (Wansbrough, 7) and, indeed, the mere occurrence of ghazā terminology does not suffice to draw conclusions on early Safavid military en-terprises of any larger scope. While this paper cannot claim to do a full-scale analysis of the whole semantic field of ghazā terminology, it will hopefully contribute to our understanding of the politico-military developments which preceded the Safavids’ coming to power in 1501, as well as to their role in the narration of the Safavid past in the decades succeeding it.

The Appearance of Ghazā in the Texts

Starting from the texts instead of a subject, the problem of Safavid ghazā is first of all one of terminology. Ghazā, ghazv and ghāzi appear in four different (although overlapping) ways:

(1) When ghazā is part of the content: Ghazā, ghazv and ghāzi are used when describing concrete acts of war. Faction A moves to region B to wage ghazā against the non-Muslims, ghāzi C fights and defeats non-Muslim D.

(2) As term for a group and/or its members: Ghāzi, ghāziyān and ghuzāt denote the military following of the Safavids.

(3) As part of epithets: Used not only in a similar way but addressing almost the same group of people as the term for a group, yet with a stylisti-cally more sophisticated approach: “The ghāziyān of pure character




(ghāziyān-e pāk-tinat),” “the army of the asylum of ghazā (sepāh-e ghazā-panāh),” and so forth.

(4) When ghazā is part of the chronicles’ political agenda: Ghazā, ghazv and ghāzi are used when making programmatic declarations of the devotion of the Safavid leaders to the war against the infidels.

However, this is true only for the chapters on Joneyd and Haydar, which fea-ture the terms ghazā, ghazv and ghāzi almost exclusively.9 From Firuz Shāh (seventh in the ancestral line of Sheykh Safi al-Din and first of the Safavid fam-ily who allegedly settled in Ardabil) to Joneyd’s father Ebrāhim, ghazā plays no role whatsoever in the texts. This is why the debate about Safavid ghazā always was, and still needs to be, based on the reports of Esmāʿilʼs grandfather and father.10

The Decisive Military Developments under Joneyd and Haydar

When speaking of Joneyd and Haydarʼs military activities one usually means four specific events:

1. Joneydʼs raid on Shirvān in 1459/60.2. Haydarʼs first raid on Shirvān in 1484/85.113. Haydarʼs second raid on Shirvān in 1486/87.124. Haydarʼs third raid on Shirvān in 1487/88.

Not all of them are referenced in every text and there are other events related to ghazā as well, notably Joneyd’s unsuccessful attempt on Byzantine Trebizond in 1456; nonetheless, this is what the discussion on Safavid ghazā is about. But while many scholars have subsumed Haydarʼs campaigns in particular under the topic of “holy war” against the Christian Circassians of the Caucasus,13 the scribes of the sixteenth century did not. While their texts differ in detail, they

9 For one of the rare exceptions see Amini, 3–4.10 On a side note, the scribes’ use of the diverse forms of the Arabic root ghazv is by no

means consistent and ghazv, the old-fashioned term for ghazā, is overall a rare excep-tion (see, for example, Amini, 43). By contrast, ghazā—as a description of activities—and ghāzi—as a denomination of the ones performing them—appear frequently.

11 The sources give slightly different years, this one follows Hasan Rumlu; idem, II, 859–60.12 The sources give different years, this one again follows Hasan Rumlu; Rumlu, II, 864.13 See, for example, Roemer 1986, 208–09; to a lesser extent Savory 1980, 18; Dale, 67.


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all tell the same story, which is usually not given in great detail but still allows us to draw at least the general course of events. These reports shall serve as a basis for discussion in this paper.

1 The Raid of JoneydAs Joneyd planned to raid Shirvān, he gathered his adherents and set off north. When the Shirvānshāh Khalil I learned about these plans, he assembled his troops and confronted the invaders. The two armies met in the region of Tabarsarān, the Safavids lost the ensuing battle, and Joneyd lost his life. While each chronicle (apart from the Takmilat al-akhbār) contains these develop-ments, a systematic difference appears which concerns our subject matter and affects the actual objective of the campaign: According to three chroni-clers, Joneyd’s goal was the conquest of the Muslim (!) kingdom of Shirvān (Amini, 40; Khvāndamir 2001, IV, 426; Rumlu, II, 602–03). Two other chroni-clers remain vague, stating simply that Joneyd set off for Shirvān (Qazvini 2007, 269; Khvāndamir 1991, 28), while only one scribe records that Joneyd aimed for the (Christian) Circassians living in the regions of northern Shirvān (Ghaffāri Qazvini, 261). Another two chroniclers do not mention this event at all.

2 The First Raid of HaydarThe Ahsan al-tavārikh, which is very detailed on military matters, is the only chronicle that mentions this campaign. In 1484/85, Haydar gathered his ad-herents to conquer Shirvān. Due to a lack of troops he had to give up this plan and set out against the Circassians instead. When the Circassians learned of his coming, some of them took flight while others opposed Haydar. As the Safavids prevailed by killing large numbers of the enemy, Haydar resumed his plan to attack Shirvān. But his advisers convinced him otherwise, arguing that his forces would still be overstressed. So, he returned to Ardabil and wintered there (Rumlu, II, 859–60).

3 The Second Raid of HaydarAgain, this event is mentioned solely by Hasan Rumlu. In 1486/87, Haydar again set out for the Circassians, who tried to flee into the mountains as they learned of his coming. After taking many captives from among the remaining, the Safavids made their way home (Rumlu, II, 864).

4 The Third Raid of HaydarOnly this campaign is mentioned by all scribes, which illustrates how little attention is given to the early masters of the order. A detailed description of the respective events, contained in Fotuhāt-e shāhi, Habib al-siyar, Tārikh-e




Shāh Esmāʿil va Shāh Tahmāsb-e Safavi and Ahsan al-tavārikh, reports the fol-lowing: In 1487/88, Haydar assembled his troops to fight the Circassians of Darband, north of Shirvān. When he arrived in Shirvān, the new Shirvānshāh Farrokh Yasār, son of Khalil I, feared that the raid on the Circassians might be a mere pretext to conquer his kingdom and to avenge Haydarʼs father. He sent word to Yaʿqub Āq Qoyunlu in Tabriz for help, who sent an army to his relief. Meanwhile, Haydar was on his way to the territories of the Circassians and ar-rived in northern Shirvān. Still in the realm of the Shirvānshāh, he experienced local resistance and therefore laid siege to a fortress guarding the area (the castle of Golestān in Qarabāgh). During the siege, a messenger brought news of the arrival of the Aq Qoyunlu army under the command of Soleymān Beg Bijan. Haydar lifted the siege to face the enemy, who meanwhile had banded together with the troops of the Shirvānshāh. The ensuing battle once again took place in Tabarsarān. During the fight, the noble Haydar—we are deal-ing with chronicles from the Safavidsʼ courtly sphere, written in the names of both Haydarʼs son and grandson—even spared the life of Soleymān Beg Bijan, prophetically stating this man’s time had not yet come, but his own had. Then, Haydar drove the Aq Qoyunlu to the edge of defeat when he was struck by an arrow and fell. His surviving soldiers fled, while the Shirvānshāh and Soleymān Beg Bijan returned to their realms. Haydar was buried on the spot (Amini, 50–59; Khvāndamir 2001, IV, 432–34; Khvāndamir 1991, 31–33).

Only Hasan Rumlu gives a slightly different version of this raid’s begin-ning (Rumlu, II, 866–69): According to him, Haydar did not intend to fight the Circassians, but came to Shirvān on Yaʿqub Āq Qoyunlu’s request to assist the latter’s deputy Sufi Khalil, who had waged ghazā against the (Christian) Georgians and had been defeated by them. However, it is not entirely clear where this version comes from.14

A less detailed description—an abridgement of the detailed one (see Trausch)—contained in Lobb al-tavārikh, Nosakh-e jahān-ārā, and Javāher al-akhbār reports the following: In 1487/88, Haydar set off to Shirvān, which is why Farrokh Yasār became frightened. He sent to Yaʿqub Āq Qoyunlu a plea for help, who dispatched an army under Soleymān Beg Bijan. In course of the ensuing battle in Tabarsarān, Haydar died (Qazvini 2007, 270; Ghaffāri Qazvini, 262; Qazvini 2000, 110).

14 Regarding earlier sources mentioning roughly the same course of events see Woods, 142 n. 80.


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Case 1. War on Non-Muslims: Ghazā as Part of the Content

The subject of ghazā appears, obviously, when campaigns against Christians are described. In the respective passages, the texts meet almost exactly the ex-pectations of scholars who are interested in ghazā. They give an account of how Joneyd and Haydar raided infidel territory, driving the unbelievers into the mountains, plundering their possessions, killing many, and enslaving the survivors. In these passages, the fight-for-faith motif is of central significance and the terminology meets expectations: where Ahmad Qazvini gives the raids on the Circassians as reasons for Joneyd’s only and Haydarʼs third campaign into Shirvān, he calls it ghazā (Ghaffāri Qazvini, 261–62). Hasan Rumlu has Haydar send his ghāziyān against the infidels (koffār), the “enemies of religion (aʿdā-ye dīn),” when describing the first and second campaigns (Rumlu, II, 860; 864). The scribes giving the detailed description of Haydar’s third campaign do likewise: The ghāziyān planned to wage ghazā on Darband (see for example Amini, 50–59).

Yet another campaign led by Joneyd against a Christian realm of the region is quoted in the texts from Qazvin, presenting the less detailed descriptions of the political actions of the early leaders of the order: Joneyd’s attempt on Byzantine Trebizond. To use the scribes’ words:

Lobb al-tavārikh “After some time, his majesty Soltān Joneyd went with many men from Diyarbakır to the region of Trebizond to do ghazā against the unbelievers [koffār].” (Qazvini 2007, 269)

Nosakh-e jahān-ārā “… and from there [Diyarbakır], together with a band of victorious ghāziyān, he [Joneyd] went to do ghazā [against] Trebizond …” (Ghaffāri Qazvini, 261)

Javāher al-akhbār “After some time he went to the region of Trebizond and became a martyr [shahīd] there in the year 860 (1455/56).” (Qazvini 2000, 109)

Aside from the raids against the Circassians, this is the only other case of ghazā in the chronicles’ contents.

However, if these events are mentioned at all, their description is usually brief, almost never exceeding minimum detail: Haydarʼs campaigns into the Caucasus are covered in a few sentences each; the three scribes who mention the siege of Trebizond at all spend only one sentence on it; and Joneydʼs raid on the Circassians is mentioned in only one text, the Nosakh-e jahān-ārā, in a mere eleven words.




The descriptions of the raids on Shirvān and Trebizond demonstrate that as part of the contents—as war on non-Muslims—ghazā is treated only in a cur-sory manner. Moreover, the respective accounts are not even presented as indi-vidual reports, as depictions of specific historical events like campaigns, battles, and sieges, which form the basic narrative unit of the chronicles of sixteenth-century Iran (and beyond; see for example Conermann, 355; Trausch, 104–05). These raids are not regarded as historical events in their own right. Quite to the contrary, they appear only in the prelude to the descriptions of the wars against the Shirvānshāhs, serving merely as the latter’s introductions (where the actual reason of an imminent raid would be expected). Even where ghazā is part of the contents, the respective passages usually have another focus.

In the description of Haydarʼs first campaign, the actual topic of the pas-sage is the failed attempt on Shirvān. The same is true of the third campaign: According to the detailed description (i.e. the one from Heratʼs chronicles), ghazā was the original reason to move to Shirvān, but the events are told in just a few introductory sentences up until the actual war on the Shirvānshāh, which makes up the rest of the description. In two out of three chronicles con-taining the less-detailed descriptions (i.e. those from Qazvin), this reason is ab-sent altogether. Only Ahmad Qazvini records the ghazā of 1487/88 as being the motivation for the campaign—in eight words. To sum up, while the intended raid on the Circassians is part of the contents of five out of seven texts—Lobb al-tavārikh and Javāher al-akhbār do not deal with this event at all—the re-lated passages deal almost exclusively with the war on the Shirvānshāh.

Furthermore, when ghazā is part of the content, the events are described in a sober style: No scribe attempts to disguise that conquering lands was the primary objective of these raids (interestingly enough, however, the captur-ing of booty is almost never mentioned, neither as an objective nor as a re-sult, as one would expect with regard to ghazā); the fight-for-faith motif, the war against the enemies of Islam as a personal or collective religious duty, is hardly discussed at all; no scribe tries to conceal the fact that it was Muslim (though Sunnite) land Joneyd and Haydar set their sights on; and no scribe states, or states that it was said, that these Muslims, i.e. the Aq Qoyunlu and the Shirvānshāhs’ men, were not “real” Muslims, but “actually infidels,” as the Ottomans did in order to legitimize their ghazā against the Shiʿite Safavids (see for example Imber 1995, 147–48). This is all the more interesting since notably Haydar’s son Esmāʿil, who finally succeeded in overthrowing the Shirvānshāhs and Aq Qoyunlu some decades later, did so in his poetry, as well.15

15 Among other sources portraying the Safavids as fighters of the ahl al-bayt, i.e. the family of the prophet Mohammad, against the enemies of the ahl al-bayt, Esmāʿil depicts in his


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This passing treatment of the subject in the chronicles poses some difficul-ties when dealing with historical Safavid ghazā: from these meager descrip-tions, few details can be reaped. Although these chronicles are still the best sources on the subject we have, they are of rather limited use when examining the Safavid activities of the later fifteenth century against the Christians of the region. On the basis of these texts, we may state that Joneyd and Haydar car-ried out these raids; we may roughly state the years these raids were carried out (roughly since they vary); and we may state, more or less exactly, the regions the raids aimed for. On the other hand, we can only guess how the raids took place, what kind of understanding of ghazā Joneyd, Haydar, and their men had, and what political aspirations they linked to it. Ultimately, these respec-tive passages do not contain a good deal of what has been read into them, as the contents are not about ghazā.

Only now and then, do the texts allow us to make assumptions about his-torical Safavid ghazā. This is particularly interesting with regard to both Joneyd and Haydar’s intentions. According to the chronicles, they intended to establish their own territorial rule rather than to become the vanguard of Islam against Christendom, as they, for example, never tried to attack (remote) Byzantine Trebizond again. Furthermore, not even the scribes of their successors try to present them as men of faith who were predominantly driven by a religious sense of duty. The siege of the still prestigious remnants of the once powerful Byzantine Empire goes more or less unmentioned and the raids against the in-fidels in the Caucasus are presented as merely a means to an end.16 The scribes’ handling of these events is very telling as it indicates that the subject matter was less important for the sixteenth-century Safavid political agenda than has often been asserted.

divān the Shirvānshāhs, the Aq Qoyunlu, and the Ottomans as followers of Yazid , the Omayyad caliph and villainous antagonist of Hoseyn b. ʿAli in Shiʿite conceptions (see, for example, Gallagher). While this must be taken into account when dealing with historical Safavid ghazā of the later fifteenth century and Safavid notions of ghazā of the early six-teenth century, the court scribes’ sober style remains. And while this cannot be the place to further elaborate on this, the Wittekian thesis was also partly based on a poetic treatise which Wittek treated to be historical (Fodor).

16 In the Ottoman case, a third way of understanding ghazā has been considered much more plausible, situated somewhere in between “holy war” and pragmatic fighting for mundane reasons. According to it, contemporary notions of ghazā included both reli-gious fervor and mundane (i.e. territorial, monetary, or reputational) incentives (see, amongst many others, Kafadar; Darling; Lowry). While there is good reason to assume a similar setting for the early Safavid case, it is hard to substantiate this assumption based on the chronicles.




There are other sources that mention these events, but each raises prob-lems of its own. The siege of Trebizond is depicted in greater detail by Greek chronicles as well as an Ottoman one (see Shukurov) and the raids into Shirvān are described in the Tārikh-e ʿālam-ārā-ye Amini, Fazlallāh Khonji-Esfahāni’s chronicle from the Aq Qoyunlu sphere, which is probably one of the main sources of the sixteenth-century compilations.17 Its author was a contempo-rary and was occasionally in Ardabil himself. He mentions the raids of Joneyd as well as Haydarʼs, describing the third one of the latter in far greater detail than the other two. He gives roughly the same sequence of events and pro-vides considerable detail (see Khonji-Esfahāni, 261–94). Yet, the content dif-fers slightly, as he had no inside knowledge of the order, but rather of the Aq Qoyunlu court. This is also why his conclusions differ: Hostile to the Safavids, he portrays Haydar as an aggressor, denying pious motives altogether and call-ing Safavid ghazā a pretext to conquer Shirvān and “a means to tormenting Muslims.”18 Ultimately, we cannot give detailed and sound accounts of either Joneyd or Haydar’s raids, as unsatisfying as this may be.

Case 2. Ghazā as Part of Terms for a Group

However, the subject of ghazā does not only concern passages describing wars against Christians. Quite the contrary, one finds countless descriptions of various events where the respective terminology appears while no Christian is in sight. This is particularly true of the term ghāzi, which identifies people who perform certain activities, as opposed to the activities themselves, ghazā and ghazv, which appear less frequently in such descriptions. Despite their appearance, the crucial point is the distinction between content, the war on non-Muslims (ghazā), and terminology, the identification of the Safavids’ ad-herents as people taking part in raids against the infidels (ghāzi). The former always goes along with the latter while the latter may appear without the for-mer. This explains why ghazā terminology is present in almost all parts of the texts and while, obviously, terminology can produce content (for example, by branding the Aq Qoyunlu infidels against whom ghazā may well be waged), this seems not to be the scribes’ intention.

17 Only Khvāndamir states that he was not able to make use of this work; see Khvāndamir 2001, IV, 607.

18 Khonji-Esfahāni, 266; regarding other contemporary and later sources mentioning ver-sions of Haydarʼs fighting with the Shirvānshāh; see Woods, 143 nn. 81–82.


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In general, the scribes use four terms to identify Safavid soldiers: lashkariyān, Sufis, Qezelbāsh,19 and ghāziyān or ghuzāt respectively (the latter Arabic plu-ral appearing quite rarely). They seem to have decided individually when to use which term (with no trend being identifiable) as the terms vary even with-in the depiction of one specific event: Ebrāhim Amini calls Joneyd’s followers fighting the Shirvānshāh Khalil I his “soldiers (lashkariyān)” in the beginning of the battle, but the “army of ghāziyān (lashkar-e ghāziyān)” at its end (Amini, 41–43). Hasan Rumlu calls the same troops an “army of Sufis ( jonūd-e sufiyān),” but those fighting against Khalil I’s son Farrokh Yasār “ghāziyān” (Rumlu, II, 603; 867), to give just a few examples. While the terms Sufis, Qezelbāsh, and ghāziyān might well have had normative potential with the contemporaries, such variation in the scribes’ use of terms suggests that ghāzi has no specific normative function in these texts.

At this point, one has to mention the role of rhymed prose, being a charac-terizing feature of the early-sixteenth-century chronicles from Herat (Fotuhāt-e shāhi, Habib al-siyar and Tārikh-e Shāh Esmāʿil va Shāh Tahmāsb-e Safavi). One of the central characteristics of this type of prose is the repetition of the same ideas reworded in synonyms for the sake of linguistic balance (Fahd, 738). The mere practical use of ghazā terminology manifests itself particularly when terms for a group are doubled, showing that ghāzi simply serves as a synonym for lashkari, Sufi, or Qezelbāsh. For example, after Haydar had fallen, the Safavid army broke apart and the survivors fled. Where he names the fugi-tives, Khvāndamir rhymes to meet the specifications of rhymed prose: “The great Sufis and the excellent ghāziyān (sufiyān-e ʿezām va ghāziyān-e gerām)” (Khvāndamir 2001, IV, 434). His son Amir Mahmud proceeds similarly when compiling this account into his own text (see Khvāndamir 1991, 33).

The fact that ghāzi is employed for literary rather than normative reasons is also evident in variants of individual manuscripts. According to Ebrāhim Amini, Haydar’s followers did not understand his clemency when sparing the life of Soleymān Beg Bijan and they complained to their leader. In the crucial passage, one manuscript of the Fotuhāt-e shāhi has the term “adher-ents (molāzemān)” when referring to these followers, while another one has ghāziyān (Amini, 57, esp. n. 1). Apart from this variance, the passage is exactly the same in both manuscripts.

While modern historians are used to looking for complex systems of con-scious use of a specific terminology on a certain topic, it seems, with regard to ghazā terminology in the chronicles of sixteenth-century Iran, that there is no such pattern. On the contrary, these terms are used without special regard to

19 This term appears considerably less frequently than the other ones; for details, see Bashir.




the narrated contents and are mostly interchangeable. Beyond the minimum requirement of courtly literature to single out the Safavid soldiers by choice of words—for instance as fighters for faith—the expression of a political agenda is not identifiable. Instead, practical considerations prevail.

Case 3. Ghazā as Part of Epithets

Another way of using ghazā terminology to denote the followers of the Safavid order is through epithets. As epithets are related especially to the use of rhymed prose, they appear notably in the chronicles from Herat and the Ahsan al-tavārikh from Qazvin, which is mainly based on Khvāndamir’s work for the period up to 1524. Epithets are an important means by which the scribes ar-ticulate the qualities of their patrons’ dynasty. In Herat’s chronicles, the execu-tion of ghazā is one of these qualities.

In 1484/85, in the course of the battle between the remaining Circassians and Haydar’s forces, the Safavids killed many of the enemy’s men. Hasan Rumlu does not call the victorious fighters “soldiers,” but “the ghāziyān in whose footsteps victory follows (ghāziyān-e zafar-āsār)” (Rumlu, II, 860). The depiction of Haydar’s third campaign shows the same approach. After arranging his battle array before the battle of Tabarsarān against the Muslim Aq Qoyunlu and the Shirvānshāh’s troops, Haydar addressed and motivated his men, whom the Fotuhāt-e shāhi calls “ghāziyān of the military campaigns (ghāziyān-e maghāzi)” (Amini, 54), using the term “maghāzi,” which alludes to early Islamic times and the military expeditions of Muhammad and his companions. This epithet is pregnant with meaning and therefore its use here is all the more remarkable. Nevertheless, this is a unique appearance of this term and Ebrāhim Amini’s particular preference for melodic language likely played a role. Motivated as they were, in the course of the battle these “wise ghāzi-likes (ghāzi-sefatān-e farzāna)” furiously attacked the enemy, who had repelled the Safavid vanguard after its initial success and forced it to fall back to the center, and drove the enemy back (Amini, 55).

A central function of epithets is to emphasize the qualities of those named. Herat’s scribes achieved this by referring to the Safavid soldiers as ghāziyān. However, the war against the infidels was just one image amongst others to draw from: Islam in general, Sufism, dedication to the Safavid cause, and mili-tary strength were the alternatives, later on supplemented by references to the Timurids and ancient Iran. As epithets are mostly used to denote persons or groups of persons, ghāzi appears more frequently than ghazā or ghazv. Where ghazv and particularly ghazā appears, it usually addresses the Safavid army,


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like with Ebrāhim Amini, who calls the troops leaving for Shirvān in 1487/88 “the ghazā-demanding standards (aʿlām-e ghazā-eqtezā)” (Amini, 50). He again addresses people performing certain activities instead of the activities themselves.

Obviously, there was an awareness of terminology, but to identify complex systems of use of ghazā terminology would again mean over-interpreting the texts. The epithets are mostly interchangeable, too. As with terms for a group, one senses that the authors’ selection of ghazā terminology was likely random. However, in the case of epithets, practical considerations are flanked by liter-ary ones.20

The Contexts of Ghazā Terminology

The contexts in which the scribes used ghazā terminology further suggest that there was no conclusive pattern for its use (which would have indicated a gen-eral concept of Safavid ghazā by the scribes).

The focus of ghazā—offensive or defensive—is relatively clear. Scholars broadly discuss whether ghazā was considered as offensive or defensive war (see Imber 2000). However, concrete actions related to ghazā by terminology are offensive with very few exceptions. Concerning the aforementioned Safavid vanguard which retreated in 1487/88 due to the pressure of the Shirvānshāhʼs troops, the retreating men are called ghāziyān by Ebrāhim Amini (Amini, 55), and like Khvāndamir had done, Hasan Rumlu denotes the Safavid soldiers flee-ing the field after Haydarʼs death as ghāziyān (Rumlu, II, 868–69). Apart from that, the Safavid soldiers who are called ghāziyān are almost exclusively on the offense. However, the passages of concern are still of rather-limited use as to the question of ghazā’s general focus, as (almost) all raids mentioned were of-fensive. However, the only defensive conflict they deal with, the sack of Ardabil by a Georgian force in 1209 is not related to ghazā in any way, although the Christian Georgians are called koffār and “faithless (bi-imān)” (see, for exam-ple, Khvāndamir 2001, IV, 411–12).

The arbitrary use of ghazā terminology appears most notably where rela-tionships between certain groups of people are articulated. Only with regard to the friend-foe-relationship is it highly systematic; while there are numerous terms denoting the soldiers of either side, if somebody is called ghāzi, he is a

20 That the use of certain terms may indeed be systematic was demonstrated recently by Shahzad Bashir, who tracks differences of term in the primary sources and scholarly lit-erature with regard to the term Qezelbāsh; see idem.




friend, a part of us. There is no exception to this rule. However, this us describes not the Safavids alone, but also the Timurids and others. Depending on which dynasty’s history these universal histories currently tell, their followers are re-ferred to as ghāziyān, albeit with differing frequency (most commonly with the Safavids).

The use of ghāzi within the familiar us-group is considerably less system-atic. Ghāzi describes a single person or (mainly) a group of people (a group, however, that ultimately cannot be identified as a certain unit or contingent of the army), a common soldier or his shaikh, notably Abuʾl-Ghāzi Soltān Haydar, as is his laqab. However, while there are examples where ghāzi denotes a com-mon soldier as opposed to his shaikh or his commanding officers—accord-ing to Ebrāhim Amini, it were the “emirs and ghāziyān of Sufism (omarāʾ va ghuzāt-e sufiyya)” who agreed to Joneyd’s plan to move into Shirvān in 1459/60 (Amini, 40)—usually it does not. The term ghāzi serves to describe the army as a whole as well as its single members, but it gives no reliable evidence about their relationships to each other. According to Khvāndamir, when Farrokh Yasār was afraid that the “great ghāziyān (ghāziyān-e ʿezām)” might harass his subjects on their way to Darband in 1487/88 (Khvāndamir, 432), he surely feared the commander as well as the common soldier.

When it comes to the actual adversary in specific conflicts, the use of ghazā terminology lacks any system, indicating the crucial point: ghāzi is by no means an indicator that the enemy is non-Muslim, nor does it indicate that the scribe intended to make even the merest hint that this enemy is “actu-ally a non-Muslim,” like, for example, in Ottoman texts or in Esmāʿil’s divān (see above). Safavid soldiers are called ghāziyān when fighting against Christians and Muslims—Circassians, Byzantines, the Shirvānshāhs’ men, and Aq Qoyunlu—alike.

Obviously, the military activities of the Safavids’ following played a part in its naming—a soldier executing ghazā against the Christian Byzantines is a ghāzi. However, the naming in specific passages does not depend on specific activities in specific circumstances, but is more abstract. When telling Joneyd and Haydar’s history (as well as the history of the Safavid shahs in later chap-ters), their military following is called ghāziyān, regardless of whom they actu-ally fought against and the reason they fought for. This is true for terms for a group and epithets alike and it is the reason why terminology appears with-out content (and, again, without discernible scribal intent to form content by using this terminology).

Hence, to call the Safavid soldiers ghāziyān belittles their enemies, but it does not explicitly belittle the enemies’ religion. Rather, in the cases in which the enemies were Christians, any belittlement was implemented by


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the enemies’ own appellation as moshrekān, aʿdā-ye dīn, and—most of all—koffār (in the later chapters on the Safavid shahs, however, the term kāfer is also used to belittle Muslims, be they Sunnites or mere “insurgents” against the divinely-ordained order). Although the chapters under discussion cannot give conclusive proof, since all the Muslim rulers against whom Joneyd and Haydar fought were Sunnites, there is no religious—i.e. anti-Sunnite—overtone when the Safavid soldiers fighting against Muslims are called ghāziyān. About two years after his coming to power, Esmāʿil warred against Hoseyn Keyā Cholāvi, a local ruler in Rostamdār. This man was a Shiʿite, and the Safavid soldiers fight-ing him were called ghāziyān by Hasan Rumlu nonetheless—in a pair of syn-onyms with “soldiers (ʿasāker)” (Rumlu, II, 993).

Ghazā terminology does not appear clustered around specific situations; it does not serve to denote individual units or ranks of the Safavid army as com-pared to others; it does not describe Safavid soldiers according to what they are presently doing. Despite the implications the term might have possessed to the contemporaries, the designation of the Safavids’ military following as ghāziyān was not used to underlay the narrative with a politico-normative agenda. The Safavids were not presented as fighters for Islam against Christianity, the wars against the Shirvānshāhs were not presented as conflicts between Sunna and Shiʿa, and the Aq Qoyunlu were not presented as de facto infidels. Ghāzi simply serves as a synonym for lashkari, Sufi or Qezelbāsh. For this reason, the use of ghazā terminology neither contains significant information about historical Safavid ghazā nor about its historiographical use. This is all the more problem-atic as (2) terms for a group and (3) epithets are by far the most frequent ways of appearance, since they appear in all passages of the narratives, while the descriptions of the actual raids on the Circassians and Trebizond (1) are quite limited. Thus, the question of Safavid ghazā is not only first and foremost a question of terminology, but almost exclusively one.

Case 4. Ghazā as Part of the Chronicles’ Political Agenda

In contrast to historical Safavid ghazā, definitive statements can be made about the role ghazā played in the chronicles, both in their narrative composi-tion and for their purpose as politico-normative texts. As problematic as these chronicles may be with respect to concrete historical events (a problem not limited to the subject of ghazā), they are absolutely sound concerning the role that ghazā played in their narratives. Case (4) stands in sharp contrast to the other ones: on the one hand, it is rarely linked to the narrated contents, as the descriptions of Joneyd and Haydar’s four raids demonstrate; on the other




hand, it lacks any specific historical information, wherefore it is of little use for our understanding of historical Safavid ghazā. Still, it illustrates another aspect of the subject matter: regardless of the general triviality with which ghazā is treated, there are passages, albeit very short ones, where it plays the central role. Regarding terminology, the term ghazv only appears in these passages and only four times.

As was obligatory for courtly historiographical literature, these chronicles contain panegyrics. They are situated at the very beginning of the chapters on the respective Safavid shaikhs (or those on the shahs after 1501), empha-size their idealized virtues, and, in case of Joneyd and Haydar, present their alleged political agenda. According to several texts, this agenda was ghazā, the idea to which they allegedly dedicated their lives. According to Ebrāhim Amini and Yahyā Qazvini, for example, the “foundation of Joneyd’s command” was to “inflame the masters of discipleship towards making war (against the infidels) (ghazv-e koffār)” (Amini, 36; Qazvini 2007, 269). According to Khvāndamir, the focal point of Haydar’s “efforts and desire” always was “the plenty of reward for the masters of making war and combat (against the infidels) (ghazv va jehād)” (Khvāndamir 2001, IV, 427). Amir Mahmud also introduced Esmāʿil’s father as having “all desire employed to the making of war and combat (against the in-fidels) (ghazv va jehād)” (Khvāndamir 1991, 29). The programmatic function of this use of the subject matter is highlighted by the laqab of Sheykh Haydar: Abuʾl-Ghāzi Soltān Haydar.

Consequently, case (4) is the ultimate cause for the assumed political re-alignment of the Safavid order after the death of Sheykh Ebrāhim in 1447 (see, for example, Mazzaoui 1972, 84), as well as the reason that the history of the Safavid shaikhs prior to Esmāʿil is often summarized under the subject of ghazā.

The Role of Ghazā in the Chronicles’ NarrativesThe short passages where ghazā plays the major part notwithstanding, the role of ghazā for the narrative composition of the Safavid past is as limited as it is for the chronicles’ contents. With respect to the texts as a whole, this is shown first and foremost by the fact that the passages concerning the early masters of the order, the “ghāzī backgrounds of the Safavid state” (Mazzaoui 1971, 79), are discussed only in a very cursory manner, if they are mentioned at all. Amir Mahmud, for example, deals with the roughly 200 years between Safi al-Din and Haydar in about thirty pages, while the near eighty years of Esmāʿil and Tahmāsp cover more than 190 pages.21

21 The count is from the edited version of the text; see Khvāndamir 1991, 9–238.


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Moreover, with respect to the passages on the early shaikhs alone, the role of ghazā in the narratives is rather limited. Case (4) does not even show up in every text. The respective passages are missing both in the Nosakh-e jahān-ārā and the Javāher al-akhbār (Ghaffāri Qazvini, 261–62; Qazvini 2000, 109–10). Moreover, not every text has such passages on both shaikhs: the Lobb al-tavārikh, for example, lacks the respective passage on Sheykh Haydar (Qazvini 2007, 269). It is of particular interest that only Qazvin’s chronicles, written in the second half of the sixteenth century, almost completely lack these pas-sages. The scribes from the Safavids’ new capital used in particular the chroni-cles from Herat as sources—even though not as models—for events from the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, such as the raids of Joneyd and Haydar. However, following a minimalistic approach, they cut back the highly detailed depictions of the Fotuhāt-e shāhi and the Habib al-siyar to just a few details which they deemed absolutely necessary. Consequently, the fact that they excluded these passages when compiling their histories demonstrates that Joneyd and Haydar’s devotion to the cause of ghazā was not seen as essen-tial of the Safavid past, at least not around the middle of the sixteenth century. However, this is not a general trend in the composition of the Safavid past, as these passages re-appear—albeit in even briefer form—in some chronicles of the seventeenth century (see for example Torkmān I, 17; Vāla Esfahāni, 25). Ultimately, the descriptions of specific historical events under Joneyd and Haydar’s leadership following these introductory passages have no conceptual or narrative connection whatsoever with them. It is in these passages alone that the fight-for-faith motif is to be found and in which ghazā is a topic at all. Apart from giving the laqab Abuʾl-Ghāzi, the Lobb al-tavārikh (true to its name!) does not mention Haydar’s fights against the Circassians at all (see Qazvini 2007, 269–70).

Nevertheless, these political declarations of intent are part of some of the texts and indicate the role ghazā played for their narrative composition of the Safavid past. In contrast to the shaikhs preceding them, Joneyd and Haydar were portrayed as sincere devotees to the cause of war against the infidels, es-pecially by the scribes from Herat. But while ghazā is an issue in these (short) passages and provides the narrative with some sort of orientation, it remains a mere topos and is peculiarly uninvolved in the overall narrative structure. In the main parts of the chapters on Joneyd and Haydar, which take up most of these chapters, the subject is dropped altogether; now, the scribes only report repeti-tiously on individual campaigns and battles against enemy A or B, on the siege on city C or fortress D. A temporally and spatially limited ghazā may serve as an actual reason for one of these conflicts, as well as a literary introduction to its depiction, but the subject of ghazā is at no time part of the overall narrative




frame. Both in the chapters on Joneyd and Haydar, and beyond in the chapters on the Safavid shahs, the chronicles of the sixteenth century tell a story of mili-tary conquests by soldier-kings, no heroic tales of saintly men fighting for faith. Just like the contents, the narratives are not about ghazā.

The Role of Ghazā in a Chronicle’s PurposeChronicles (amongst other things) help to legitimize the status quo. One ap-proach to do so used by the scribes of sixteenth-century Iran was to write uni-versal histories, claiming to tell the history of mankind from the creation of men down to the scribe’s own time. Following a firmly established tradition in Persianate historical writing, the rule of the Safavid family was thus pre-sented as the culmination of the history of mankind (see Quinn 2000, 24–29). The contents also established legitimacy by being arranged by established nar-rative strategies and stereotypical topoi of Persianate courtly literature. The scribes accentuate the unique features of the Safavid family and emphasize the personal and moral fitness of its respective rulers; they stress the qualities and virtues of militarily active, successful, and morally-sound men.

In the passages on the Safavid shaikhs up to Esmāʿil’s father Haydar, the unique features assigned to the Safavid family are threefold: Sufi, Islamic, and dynastic, each of which contributed to Safavid legitimacy.22 The Sufi element derives from the order’s founder, Sheykh Safi al-Din, his “enthronement” by the famous shaikh Zāhed Gilāni (see Gronke, 251), and his dreams predict-ing temporal rule (see, for example, Quinn 2008). For obvious reasons, these subjects are dealt with primarily in the chapter on Safi al-Din himself, but are taken up again afterwards, for example, in the passages on Joneyd and Haydar. According to Hasan Rumlu, Haydar had a dream while on campaign in Shirvān in 1486/87. Zāhed Gilāni told him that his grave in Gilan was endangered by flooding from the nearby (Caspian) sea, and instructed him to hurry there to secure his mortal remains. Aware of this man’s significance, Haydar went to Gilan, saved the shaikh’s corpse and brought it to the Safavid family shrine in Ardabil (Rumlu, II, 864). By reporting these (alleged) events, Hasan Rumlu emphasizes again the link between his patron’s family and the famous Sufi.

The Islamic aspect focuses on the family’s alleged descent from Musā al-Kāzem, the Seventh Imam of Twelver Shiʿism,23 which is prominently placed

22 It is only in the later chapters on the Safavid shahs where another feature is added: the designation of the Safavid rulers as the “Shadow of God on Earth (zell-Allāh fiʾl-arz);” see Quinn and Melville, 209.

23 A claim which is backdated to the early Safavid shaikhs; for the respective discussions, see Morimoto.


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in every chronicle from the sixteenth century. Usually, it constitutes the begin-ning of the Safavid chapter (see, for example, Ghaffāri Qazvini, 258), followed by the reports on Safi al-Din, or, in some texts, even Safi al-Din’s predecessors from Firuz Shāh onwards.

The dynastic component of Safavid legitimacy is fed by their familial con-nection to one of the dynasties preceding them, the Aq Qoyunlu, who were the superior power in the region in the time of Joneyd and Haydar. All the scribes stress this connection by accentuating both Joneydʼs marriage to Khadija Begom, sister of Uzun Hasan Āq Qoyunlu, and Haydarʼs marriage to Halima Begom, the former’s daughter, with the latter event being particularly emphasized. In the texts from Qazvin, it is usually the first information given at all on Esmāʿil’s father (Qazvini 2007, 269; Ghaffāri Qazvini, 262). Only Budāq Qazvini mentions it second (Qazvini 2000, 109). The scribes from Herat also make prominent mention of it in the passages where they emphasize Uzun Hasanʼs greatness—and thereby his new son-in-law’s (Amini, 45; Khvāndamir 2001, IV, 427; Khvāndamir 1991, 29). Next, the birth of Esmāʿil is recorded, thus establishing dynastic continuity.

In comparison, ghazā plays only a minor role. Although most scribes men-tion Joneyd and Haydar’s devotion to the cause in the respective chapters’ introductions, the fight-for-faith motif is not used to portray, and thereby legit-imize, the predecessors of Esmāʿil. The broader context of the topic of Islamic “holy war”—the frontline position of the Safavid territories in the northern border regions of the Muslim world or the principal division between the dār al-eslām and the dār al-harb—is not discussed at all. In more specific details as well, the scribes place ghazā and its possible legitimizing potential in a minor position; according to the texts, the crucial event of Joneydʼs leadership of the Safavid order was his marriage to Uzun Hasanʼs sister, not his ghazā against the Byzantines and Circassians, which Khvāndamir and Amir Mahmud do not even mention in their extensive histories (see Khvāndamir 2001, IV, 424–26; Khvāndamir 1991, 27–28). According to Hasan Rumlu, Haydar’s crucial deed of the year 1486/87 is the rescue mission of Zāhed Gilāniʼs corpse, not the ghazā against the Circassians during which the rescue mission took place. However, historians have repeatedly read these topics the other way around (see, for ex-ample, Roemer 1986, 208–09).

In the portrayals of the Safavid shaikhs as successful warrior-leaders, ghazā is no decisive aspect. Cases (1) and (4) are by far too infrequent and too ca-sual to have possibly been of significance to the scribes, while cases (2) and (3) are not treated uniformly enough. While it is certainly noteworthy that the scribes call the Safavid soldiers “ghāziyān” on a regular basis, one should still be cautious not to overrate this fact. The scribes use this identification, with all




the possible implications it entailed, to emphasize the grandeur of the Safavid cause and those fighting for it, but they do not portray these men as fighters for faith. Neither is the narrative of the Safavid past modeled on the pattern of a ghazā narrative (like ones from other contexts), nor is the terminology sub-stantial and—above all—systematic enough to produce one of its own. This is precisely because it was neither the scribes’ plan to excessively emphasize the fights against the Circassians and to fashion them as a ghazā narrative, nor to present the wars against the Shirvānshāhs and Aq Qoyunlu as religious conflicts. Despite the use of ghazā terminology, the fight-for-faith motif is ul-timately of no significance. One finds no accounts of Joneyd and Haydar raid-ing Sunnite territory, driving its inhabitants into the mountains, plundering their possessions and killing many; rather, there are just clashes between rival armies. As presented in these passages, the Aq Qoyunlu and particularly the Shirvānshāhs were simply obstacles in the Safavids’ way to territorial rule—that they were Sunnites is hardly ever mentioned. With regard to ghazā, no scribe tried to form content by terminology.

To be a successful warrior-leader, it suffices that Joneyd and Haydar won. It matters little whether they won against the Christian Circassians or the Muslim Shirvānshāhs—or whether Haydarʼs son Esmāʿil later defeated the Shiʿite Hoseyn Keyā Cholāvi. The depictions of the campaigns into Shirvān make this perfectly clear: They are presented as steps of the Safavidsʼ coming to power, not as part of the large-scale war between the Safavid religious doctrine and the de facto and actual unbelievers surrounding them. Finally, just like the contents and the narratives, the strategies of legitimizing Safavid rule are not about ghazā as well. The fight-for-faith motif is just one source amongst others from which the scribes drew when arguing for Safavid legitimacy—but not the most important one.

Safavid Ghazā and Its Absence in Sixteenth-Century Historiographical Literature

It is probably no coincidence that many modern studies of ghazā focus on the Arab-Byzantine struggles in the eastern Mediterranean, the expansion of the Turks in western Asia Minor, and the Muslim conquests in northern India, while the last study of any larger scope on Safavid ghazā was written over forty years ago. While there are good reasons to assume that Joneyd and Haydar were the ghāzi shaikhs from Ardabil with their fanatical adherents fighting against the unbelievers surrounding them, it is still hard to substantiate this assump-tion. Even when it comes to the chronicles written in the Safavids’ name, it is


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somewhat problematic to make any explicit statements at all, as many of them stay silent on the subject matter.

With regard to the politico-military history of early modern Iran, our knowl-edge of Safavid ghazā remains limited, whether one proceeds from subject to source or vice versa. Instead, unresolved issues and general considerations pre-vail. Because of the chronicles’ passing treatment of the topic, drawing specific conclusions is still highly problematic, as is utilizing the information given by the hostile Aq Qoyunlu and Byzantine sources, which, moreover, are of rather limited use with regard to political aspirations and concepts of Safavid ghazā. While the chronicles from the Safavidsʼ courtly sphere do mention the raids of Joneyd and Haydar, most details stay wrapped in the fog of history. In par-ticular, the shaikhs’ aspirations remain unclear. Some motivations, such as the seizure of booty or the training and occupation of their military following, sug-gest themselves. However, a religious motivation of whatever sort—personal piety of the shaikhs, collective convictions of their fanaticized adherence rooted in messianic beliefs, or at least the desire to make a name as “fighters for faith”—may be supposed on good reason, but not be proven on the scarce information available from these chronicles alone. At any rate—and given the findings on Ottoman notions of ghazā between religious fervor and mun-dane incentives—these texts strongly indicate that Joneyd and Haydarʼs objective was the seizure of lands already in Muslim hands, rather than the execution of pious work for the cause of Islam (or for Shiʿite Islam), whatever their personal beliefs may have been.

According to the chronicles’ depictions, the same rather “pragmatic” at-titude may well be held true for their followers: Regardless of whether or not they held fanatic beliefs, Joneyd and Haydar’s adherents seem to have owed their allegiance to their masters and their masters’ temporal aspirations rath-er than to their masters’ alleged cause, the ghazā against the infidels. While the ideology of ghazā (again, as in the Ottoman case) may well have been part of the band unifying the later fifteenth-century Qezelbāsh, none of the chronicles—nor that of the hostile Fazlallāh Khonji-Esfahāni—even hint that the Qezelbāsh were ever out of Joneyd or Haydar’s reach, as were volunteer fighters for faith who lacked political considerations in other epochs and re-gions of the Islamicate world (see, for example, Paul, 13–17). And the capturing of booty from infidel territory is hardly ever mentioned.

In executing their objectives, the shaikhs seem to have attempted the feasi-ble: At first, the Christian lands in northern Shirvān (and Byzantine Trebizond) were the only territories they could inflict war on without difficulties of legiti-mization, as the surrounding regions of Ardabil were in the realm of their and the Shirvānshāhs’ Aq Qoyunlu overlords. However, whenever they felt strong




enough, or deemed the Aq Qoyunlu weak enough,24 they turned their sights on the latter’s possessions. Starting from the texts, their contents, their use of terminology (however indicative the individual case may be), as well as their generally trivial treatment of the subject, one cannot but wonder if there really was a “ghāzī background of the Safavid state” (Mazzaoui 1971, 79) as depicted by Mazzaoui:

For all of a sudden, the murīds of the order became the ghuzāt-i sūfiyeh, and under the next two leaders Junayd (1447–1460) and Ḥaydar (1460–1488), we see them fighting in large numbers against the remaining Christian enclave at Trebizund or the Georgians of the Caucasus. It is no more the heart of the Muslim world which attracts them; it is no more Rūm, Shām, or Māvarāʼ-annahr; it is no more the Dār al-Islām but the Dār al-Ḥarb. Overnight they have become ghāzīs fighting the unbelievers along the Muslim frontiers of the north.25

Mazzaoui 1971, 83

According to Joneyd and Haydarʼs depiction in the chronicles, it seems at least worth considering to readjust the weighting of religious fervor and mundane incentives when assessing their motivation. In the historical narratives written in their successors’ names, we see the other end of the range, as the scribes present plain attempts to establish territorial rule. These attempts do not even appear as a by-product of “holy war” against the infidels but as a set goal; a goal in which it was ultimately irrelevant at whose expense it would be achieved. These attempts failed before 1501, but were successful afterwards (their de-scriptions in later chapters identifyi the Safavid soldiers as ghāziyān in overall the same way as represented here).26 The Safavid followers may have been fa-natic, but their leaders’ policy seems to have been power-conscious first and foremost (attitudes which are not mutually exclusive anyway). The fact that Safavid religious fanaticism is a crucial element in Khonji-Esfahāniʼs text, who is usually quoted to substantiate this claim, is neither proof nor contradiction.

24 Regarding the contemporary internal conflicts within the Aq Qoyunlu federation, see Woods, 165–67.

25 I thank Henning Sievert for providing me with the printed version of this paper.26 According to Ali Anooshahr’s recent reading of the Fotuhāt-e shāhi, the successful at-

tempts right before 1501 were also the result of a carefully planned campaign run by Esmāʿil’s tutors (whom he had inherited from his father Haydar), rather than that of the young shaikh’s religious fervor (Anooshahr 2015). Jean Aubin has pointed in that direction earlier; see idem.


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This chronicler’s concern was the anti-Sunnite attitude of the Safavid order’s adherents, proof of their fanaticism and reason to demonize them. In compari-son, he gives little attention to the wars against the Circassians as well, as his text (too) is not about “holy war” against the infidels. Eventually, many points on Safavid ghazā must remain unsettled, as the sources simply do not provide answers.

However, the sources’ silence speaks volumes about the trivial treatment of the subject by their near-contemporaries, and it is here where the way of proceeding from source to subject seems to be most beneficial. Ghazā only played a marginal role in both the narrative composition of the Safavid past and the messages these politically-normative texts were meant to present to their audience. While it may not be ruled out that the appropriate terminol-ogy sufficed to create the corresponding associations in the contemporaries’ minds, the fact remains that the topic was never written about in any greater detail. Two explanatory approaches (which are, again, not mutually exclusive) come to mind: On the one hand, the scribes’ conspicuous lack of interest in ghazā as a faith-inspired enterprise, together with their general disinterest in the formative phase before 1501 (formative at least from retrospect) may be seen as a part of the broader project of repressing the Safavidsʼ millenarian past. In this respect, depicting ghazā as a completely worldly enterprise would have been a means to an end.

On the other hand, the simple reason could be that most of the related events, the siege of Trebizond, the raids into Circassian territory, and the struggles with the Shirvānshāhs, were of limited long-term impact. Thus, they were of little interest for the writers of politically-normative universal histories working several decades later and facing the inevitable task of emphasizing some events while leaving others out. In many of the less detailed chronicles from Qazvin, ghazā is dropped almost altogether. But even in the detailed ones from Herat, the subject is reduced simply to the use of the corresponding ter-minology. In the end, the term “ghazi” serves to denote the Safavid following, to differentiate between us and them. It is thus an allusion—one, of course, which might be understood differently by men of the later fifteenth century, those of the sixteenth century, and modern historians.

Ghazā was used to describe certain historical events, but not to interpret and integrate them into a broader context, because the chronicles from the sphere of the Safavid court(s) are no ghazā narratives. The context is the dy-nasty’s path to power, not the war against the infidels (or against the enemies of the ahl al-bayt). Correspondingly, ghazā was used to praise individual deeds of the Safavid shaikhs, but not to legitimize them and their political ac-tions as a whole, since the topic is not part of the crucial repertoire from which




the scribes drew when arguing for their patrons’ legitimacy. Ghazā is simply associated with all kinds of war and land seizure (albeit, without the capture of booty), regardless of whether the adversary was Christian or Muslim. In six-teenth-century historiographical writing from the Safavid sphere, there was no wrongdoing to conceal—no need to present attacks on fellow Muslims as part of or necessary for a war against infidels. For example, no scribe undertook the task of fundamentally rewriting Fazlallāh Khonji-Esfahāni’s appraisal of the motivation of Joneyd and Haydar. Accordingly, ghazā is never presented as the unifying band of the early Safavid movement (although it actually may have served as such, or at least contributed to it), which is—besides the self-evident devotion to the shaikhs—hardly ever addressed at all.

This being said, one invariably finds oneself questioning if these texts actu-ally are the best sources we have. They remain so, simply because most others are no better or even worse. However, ultimately, they are of rather limited use in this matter as well, as the near-contemporaries stayed almost completely silent on Safavid ghazā. In turn, when dealing with the “ghāzī background of the Safavid state” today, one inevitably comes to wonder if it would not be best to simply limit oneself to Colin Imber’s appraisal of the Ottoman case:

It might, however, be permissible to state, as a general principle, that it is inadvisable to base a theory explaining the foundation of an Empire on a single word, especially if you do not know what the word means.

Imber 2000, 178

While much of what has been said about Safavid ghazā sounds perfectly plausible—risky adaptions from the Wittekian thesis and the Ottoman discus-sion aside—one can hardly substantiate it on the basis of the sources often consulted to do so, simply since they do not deal with Safavid ghazā in any greater detail. Obviously, those doing in history in Safavid times were much less concerned with Islamic “holy war” than modern historians are.

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