Safavid Empires

To create something great you must learn from the achievements and failures of others. This is how many of the great empires of the old world became what they were and how modern day society came about. Some of these empires that we have learned from are the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals. These societies had a major impact with their cultural achievements, ranging from their art to their writing. While they share similarities of a virtuous empire, they also have some differences which contributed to their rise and fall. Many of what our world is today is because of these empires and what they did for modern society.

The Ottoman Empire was a resilient empire that started its journey in the early 1300’s. They conquered the capital

Sheikh Safi al-Din, a Persian mystic, was the founder of a Sufi order called Safaviyeh, was which the Empire got its name from. In 1501, the Empire officially came about due to the capture of Tabriz by Ismail I. At the Safavid’s peak its empire consisted of Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of Turkmenistan. Today, the Safavid Empire could have been located in Iran. The height of the Safavid’s rein was under the rule of Shah Abbas, who assumed the thrown in 1587. Under his rule he expanded his trading market with the English East India Company and the Dutch East India Company and he broke the feud between the Ottoman Turks and the Safavids for the Fertile Crescent, breaking up Iran and Turkey between the two. Shah Abbas allowed culture to bloom, writing many poems and literary work himself. Such art like panting evolved from traditional to a more calligraphic style with explicit pictures of naked women and couples. Reza Abbasi influenced these changes in his Isfahan School. The fall of the Safavid Empire was due to shifting trading routes and continuous battles. After the rein of Ismail III, Karim Khan seized the power of the Safavid Empire and destroyed

Although they also had differences which distinguished them from each other. In the aspect of religion, they didn’t vary considerably the Ottomans and the Mughal’s had Islam as their religion, while the Safavids had Shi’ism. The Ottomans established who ruled by a monarch, as did the Mughals, claiming divine right and the Safavids were ruled by a Shah. As for trade the Ottomans were fueled by the seas that they surrounds, the Mughals, surrounded by land, had limited trade, and the Safavids traded along the silk