Editing Safavid dynasty (section)

==Genealogy and identity==
{{See also|Safavid dynasty family tree|Safavid order|Safvat as-safa|Silsilat-al-nasab-i Safaviya|Firuz-Shah Zarrin-Kolah|List of the mothers of the Safavid Shahs}}

{{anchor|Genealogy}}The Safavid Kings themselves claimed to be [[sayyid|''sayyids'']],<ref>In the pre-Safavid written work Safvat as-Safa (oldest manuscripts from 1485 and 1491), the origin of the Safavids is tracted to Piruz Shah Zarin Kolah who is called a Kurd from Sanjan, while in the post-Safavid manuscripts, this portion has been excised and Piruz Shah Zarin Kollah is made a descendant of the Imams. R Savory, "Ebn Bazzaz" in ''Encyclopædia Iranica''). In the Silsilat an-nasab-i Safawiya (composed during the reign of Shah Suleiman, 1667–94), by Hussayn ibn Abdal Zahedi, the ancestry of the Safavid was purported to be tracing back to Hijaz and the first Shiʻi Imam as follows: Shaykh Safi al-din Abul Fatah Eshaq ibn (son of) Shaykh Amin al-Din Jabrail ibn Qutb al-din ibn Salih ibn Muhammad al-Hafez ibn Awad ibn Firuz Shah Zarin Kulah ibn Majd ibn Sharafshah ibn Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Seyyed Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Seyyed Ja'afar ibn Seyyed Muhammad ibn Seyyed Isma'il ibn Seyyed Muhammad ibn Seyyed Ahmad 'Arabi ibn Seyyed Qasim ibn Seyyed Abul Qasim Hamzah ibn Musa al-Kazim ibn Ja'far As-Sadiq ibn Muhammad al-Baqir ibn Imam Zayn ul-'Abedin ibn [[Husayn ibn Ali|Hussein]] ibn [[Ali ibn Abi Taleb]] Alayha as-Salam. There are differences between this and the oldest manuscript of Safwat as-Safa. Seyyeds have been added from Piruz Shah Zarin Kulah up to the first Shiʻi Imam and the nisba "Al-Kurdi" has been excised. The title/name "Abu Bakr" (also the name of the first Caliph and highly regarded by Sunnis) is deleted from Qutb ad-Din's name. ُSource: Husayn ibn Abdāl Zāhedī, 17th cent. Silsilat al-nasab-i Safavīyah, nasabnāmah-'i pādishāhān bā ʻuzmat-i Safavī, ta'līf-i Shaykh Husayn pisar-i Shaykh Abdāl Pīrzādah Zāhedī dar 'ahd-i Shāh-i Sulaymnān-i Safavī. Berlīn, Chāpkhānah-'i Īrānshahr, 1343 (1924), 116 pp. Original Persian: شیخ صفی الدین ابو الفتح اسحق ابن شیخ امین الدین جبرائیل بن قطب الدین ابن صالح ابن محمد الحافظ ابن عوض ابن فیروزشاه زرین کلاه ابن محمد ابن شرفشاه ابن محمد ابن حسن ابن سید محمد ابن ابراهیم ابن سید جعفر بن سید محمد ابن سید اسمعیل بن سید محمد بن سید احمد اعرابی بن سید قاسم بن سید ابو القاسم حمزه بن موسی الکاظم ابن جعفر الصادق ابن محمد الباقر ابن امام زین العابدین بن حسین ابن علی ابن ابی طالب علیه السلام.</ref> family descendants of the Islamic prophet [[Muhammad]], although many scholars have cast doubt on this claim.<ref>R.M. Savory, "Safavid Persia" in: Ann Katherine Swynford Lambton, Peter Malcolm Holt, Bernard Lewis, ''The Cambridge History of Islam'', Cambridge University Press, 1977. p. 394: "They (Safavids after the establishment of the Safavid state) fabricated evidence to prove that the Safavids were Sayyids."</ref> There seems now to be a consensus among scholars that the Safavid family hailed from [[Iranian Kurdistan]],<ref name="savoryeiref"/> and later moved to [[Azerbaijan (Iran)|Iranian Azerbaijan]], finally settling in the 11th century CE at [[Ardabil]]. Traditional pre-1501 Safavid manuscripts trace the lineage of the Safavids to the [[Kurds|Kurdish]] dignitary, [[Firuz-Shah Zarrin-Kolah]].<ref name="R.M.">[http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ebn-bazzaz RM Savory. Ebn Bazzaz.] ''Encyclopædia Iranica''</ref><ref>F. Daftary, "Intellectual Traditions in Islam", I.B. Tauris, 2001. p. 147: "But the origins of the family of Shaykh Safi al-Din go back not to Hijaz but to Kurdistan, from where, seven generations before him, Firuz Shah Zarin-kulah had migrated to Adharbayjan"</ref>

According to historians,<ref>Tamara Sonn. ''A Brief History of Islam'', Blackwell Publishing, 2004, p. 83, {{ISBN|1-4051-0900-9}}</ref><ref name="csatoetal">É. Á. Csató, B. Isaksson, C Jahani. ''Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case Studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic'', Routledge, 2004, p. 228, {{ISBN|0-415-30804-6}}.</ref> including [[Vladimir Minorsky]]<ref>{{Cite book|last=Minorsky|first=V|contribution=Adgharbaydjan (Azarbaydjan)|title=Encyclopedia of Islam|edition=2nd|editor1-first=P|editor1-last=Berman|editor2-first=Th|editor2-last=Bianquis|editor3-first=CE|editor3-last=Bosworth|editor4-first=E|editor4-last=van Donzel|editor5-first=WP|editor5-last=Henrichs|publisher=Brill|url=http://www.encislam.brill.nl/|archive-url=https://archive.today/20120728190604/http://www.encislam.brill.nl/|url-status=dead|archive-date=2012-07-28|place=NL|year=2009|quote=After 907/1502, Adharbayjan became the chief bulwark and rallying ground of the Safawids, themselves natives of Ardabil and originally speaking the local Iranian dialect}}</ref> and [[Roger Savory]], the Safavids were Turkish speakers of Iranian origin:<ref>Roger M. Savory. "Safavids" in Peter Burke, Irfan Habib, [[Halil İnalcık]]: ''History of Humanity-Scientific and Cultural Development: From the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century'', Taylor & Francis. 1999, p. 259.</ref>

{{quote|From the evidence available at the present time, it is certain that the Safavid family was of indigenous Iranian stock, and not of Turkish ancestry as it is sometimes claimed. It is probable that the family originated in Persian Kurdistan, and later moved to Azerbaijan, where they adopted the Azari form of Turkish spoken there, and eventually settled in the small town of Ardabil sometimes during the eleventh century.}}

By the time of the establishment of the Safavid empire, the members of the family were Turkicized and Turkish-speaking,<ref>{{iranica|iran-ii2-islamic-period-page-4}}, "The origins of the Safavids are clouded in obscurity. They may have been of Kurdish origin (see R. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, 1980, p. 2; R. Matthee, "Safavid Dynasty" at iranica.com), but for all practical purposes they were Turkish-speaking and Turkified."</ref> and some of the Shahs composed poems in their then-native Turkish language. Concurrently, the Shahs themselves also supported Persian literature, poetry and art projects including the grand [[Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp|''Shahnameh'' of Shah Tahmasp]],<ref>John L. Esposito, ''The Oxford History of Islam'', Oxford University Press US, 1999. pp 364: "To support their legitimacy, the Safavid dynasty of Iran (1501–1732) devoted a cultural policy to establish their regime as the reconstruction of the historic Iranian monarchy. To the end, they commissioned elaborate copies of the ''Shahnameh'', the Iranian national epic, such as this one made for Tahmasp in the 1520s."</ref><ref>Ira Marvin Lapidus, ''A history of Islamic Societies'', Cambridge University Press, 2002, 2nd ed., p. 445: To bolster the prestige of the state, the Safavid dynasty sponsored an Iran-Islamic style of culture concentrating on court poetry, painting, and monumental architecture that symbolized not only the Islamic credentials of the state but also the glory of the ancient Persian traditions."</ref> while members of the family and some Shahs composed Persian poetry as well.<ref>Colin P. Mitchell, "Ṭahmāsp I" in ''Encyclopædia Iranica''. "Shah Ṭahmāsp's own brother, Sām Mirzā, wrote the Taḏkera-yetoḥfa-ye sāmi, in which he mentioned 700 poets during the reigns of the first two Safavid rulers. Sām Mirzā himself was an ardent poet, writing 8,000 verses and a Šāh-nāma dedicated to his brother, Ṭahmāsp (see Sām Mirzā, ed. Homāyun-Farroḵ, 1969)."</ref><ref>See: Willem Floor, Hasan Javadi (2009), ''The Heavenly Rose-Garden: A History of Shirvan & Daghestan'' by Abbas Qoli Aqa Bakikhanov, Mage Publishers, 2009. (see Sections on Safavids quoting poems of Shah Tahmasp I)</ref>

The authority of the Safavids was religiously based, and their claim to legitimacy was founded on being direct male descendants of Ali,<ref>[[Kathryn Babayan]], ''Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran'', Cambridge, Massachusetts; London : Harvard University Press, 2002. p. 143: "It is true that during their revolutionary phase (1447–1501), Safavi guides had played on their descent from the family of the Prophet. The hagiography of the founder of the Safavi order, Shaykh Safi al-Din Safvat al-Safa written by Ibn Bazzaz in 1350-was tampered with during this very phase. An initial stage of revisions saw the transformation of Safavi identity as Sunni Kurds into Arab blood descendants of Muhammad."</ref> the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, and regarded by the Shiʻa as the first Imam.

Furthermore, the dynasty was from the very start thoroughly intermarried with both [[Pontic Greeks|Pontic Greek]] as well as [[Georgians|Georgian]] lines.<ref>From Maternal side: Chatrina daughter of Theodora daughter of [[John IV of Trebizond]] son of Alexios IV of Trebizond son of Manuel III of Trebizond son of Alexios III of Trebizond son of Irene Palaiologina of Trebizond. From Paternal side: [[Shaykh Haydar]] son of Khadijeh Khatoon daughter of Ali Beyg son of Qara Yuluk Osman son of Maria daughter of Irene Palaiologina of Trebizond.</ref> In addition, from the official establishment of the dynasty in 1501, the dynasty would continue to have many intermarriages with both [[Circassians|Circassian]] as well as again Georgian dignitaries, especially with the accession of [[Tahmasp I]].{{sfn|Yarshater|2001|p=493}}{{sfn|Khanbaghi|2006|p=130}}