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Carpets

Silk Textiles

  • Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires provide some of the richest examples of royally produced carpets
  • Noted for their detailed precision, sumptuous materials, and ornate designs
  • Carpets intended for religious settings display non figural decoration including flowers and calligraphy.
  • Carpets for secular settings (ie. the court’s palaces) display a wider range of motifs involving animals, humans, hunting scenes, and even angels.
  • Hunting was considered a princely pastime in Iran and continued as a widely used subject in Safavid art

  • Figural designs relied heavily on manuscript illustration for composition and subject matter
  • Scenes included pastimes like hunting or poetry reading in garden settings

Paintings

  • Peak in technical excellence and emotional expressiveness
  • Decorative painting

Limited to inanimate subjects, especially floral patterns used in illuminated margins; design is based on work of predecessor

  • Figurative painting

Animate subjects human & animal.

Art and Culture

The social class of the Safavid Empire

Economic System

  • ‘Golden age’ of fine arts
  • Shah Ismail:poet Shah Tahmasp:painter
  • Court allocated resources to promote art to assert its political dominance on the visual landscape of the Empire
  • The Safavid style combined pre- existing elements of Timurids from Herat and the Turkmans from Tabriz.
  • Rulers supported the formation of a distinct and unified style of art in order to establish a robust centralized nation-state, bearing the visual markers of the rulers’ power and prosperity.

Extent of the Safavid Empire

Calligraphy

  • Located on Silk Road
  • Produced high quality products
  • Carpets and textiles were export items, and were produced in workshops in Isfahan
  • The main imports were textiles (woolens from Europe, cottons from Gujarat), spices, metals, coffee, and sugar
  • Westerners (England and The Netherlands) wanted Persian rugs/carpets
  • Royal courts regarded the art of calligraphy as one of the most sophisticated arts
  • Calligraphy is used in religious texts in the Qur’an, histories, poetry, and prose.
  • Vegetable reed of the calligrapher was the first created thing, and is essential to writing the Koran, it is known as the “key to the gates of happiness,” Qāżī Aḥmad’s Calligraphers and Painters

^^ writing is akin to an act of worship

Religion that has been developed now

Linking Economics and Art

  • Safavid rulers appreciated artistic goods; played a prominent rule in growth of the local arts and crafts, particularly in Isfahan (capital)
  • Safavid culture played a role in the economy because ‘Abbas encouraged the manufacturing of traditional products
  • Artisan's products provided much of Iran's foreign trade.
  • Safavid Iran exerted a noticeable effect upon the Ottoman empire specifically in calligraphy and painting

Religion

- Faith became a major pillar of the dynasty

- Mainly Shi'a muslim

- Sunni Muslim, Christian, Jews, Zorostrians and followers of Sufi preachers were pressured to convert

- Safavid Empire imported Arabic-speaking Shi'a religious experts, but later shahs relied on Persian religious scholars

- Much of the religion was under government control

Conclusion

Religion contd

Geography

- The early Safavid empire was effectively a theocracy. Religious and political power were completely intertwined, and encapsulated in the person of the Shah

- The people of the Empire soon embraced the new faith with enthusiasm, celebrating Shiite festivals with great piety. The most significant of these was Ashura, when Shi'a Muslims mark the death of Husayn. Ali was also venerated.

- Because Shiism was now a state religion, with major educational establishments devoted to it, its philosophy and theology developed greatly during the Safavid Empire

Positives

Religious Festivals

  • The Safavid Empire included the area between Persia and Central Asia
  • The climate of the land was mostly arid and is subtropical along the coastline of the Caspian Sea
  • The terrain is very mountainous and rugged with discontinuous, small plains along both coastlines
  • The natural discrepancies around the area include periods of drought, floods etc.

- Commemorating the martyrdom of Husayn, a son of Ali

- Public flagellation and passion plays

- Pilgrimages to Shi'a shrines (Karbala in Iraq)

- Shi'ism became part of Iranian identity

- Changes in status and shifts in religion were crucial to the rise of Safavid power

- Abbas I established his empire as a center of Islamic trade and culture

- Protected trade routes

- Set up workshops for different goods

- Encourage widespread trade with multiple nations

- Special attention placed on the capital (Isafahan)

- Great mosques

- One of Shah Ismail’s most important decision was to declare that the state religion would be the form of Islam called Shi’ism which was completely foreign to Iranian culture

- The Safavids launched a vigorous campaign to convert what was a predominantly Sunni population by persuasion and by force. The Sunni ulama (a religious council of wise men) either left or were killed.

- To promote this Shi’ism the Safavids brought in scholars from Shi’ite countries to form a religious elite. They appointed an official (the Sadr) to co-ordinate this elite- and ensure that it did what the Shah wanted. The religious leaders effectively became a tool of the government

- The Safavids also spent money to promote religion, making grants to shrine and religious schools. And most craftily of all, they used grants of land and money to create a new class of wealthy religious aristocrats who owed everything to the state.

Negatives

- In specifically religious terms the Safavids not only persecuted Sunni Muslims, but Shi’ites with different views, and all other religions. Alien shrines were vandalism, and Sufi mystic groups forbidden.

- This was surprising, since the Safavids owed their origins to a Sufi order and to a form of Shi’ism that they now banned. They also reduced the importance of the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), replacing it with pilgrimage to Shi’ite shrines.

Social System

- Geography & Political

- Shreya

- Economical & Culture

- Jennifer

- Religious & Social

- Raehash

- Long standing Hierarchy

- Theocracy that followed God's will through the Shah who was the government

- Dominated early on by warrior aristocracies (Kizilbash) that helped Shah Ismail capture Tabriz

- Kizilbash power declined at the time of Shah Abbas

- Power shifted to new merchant class including ethnic Armenians, Georgians, and Indians as well as the nobility

Empire Overview

  • The empire was founded by Shah Ismail
  • The Safavid were a native Iranian dynasty from Azerbaijan
  • They established Shi'ism Islam as Iran's official religion
  • United its province under a single Iranian sovereignty
  • They cleverly allied themselves with Europe to protect themselves from the Ottomans

Shah Ismail

Shah Abbas 1

Women

- Shah Ismail's curious blend of Shiism and Turkish militancy gave is regime a distinctive identity but also created powerful enemies

- The greatest of these enemies were the Sunni Ottomans who detested the Shiite Safavids and feared the spread of Safavid propaganda among the Nomadic Turks in their own territory

- Not equal to men

- Early Safavid Women had considerable power and respect and could be patrons of art, architecture, and religious institutions

- Early Safavid differed with other Islamic societies

- After death of Abbas the Great, women lost some rights

- Shah Abbas greatly revitalized the Safavid Empire and helped the empire recover from the disaster at Chaldiran

- They relied more heavily than Ismail on Persian bureaucracy and its administrative talents

- They also assigned lands grants to qizilbash officers to retain their loyalty and give them stake in the survival of the regime

- During his reign, a critical battle named the Battle on the Plain of Chaldiran occurred

- The Ottomans deployed heavy artillery

- During this time period, the Safavid were considered a "gunpowder empire" and they knew about the technology, but did not use it in the battle because it would seem cowardly

- Trusting the protective charisma of Shah Ismail, they fearlessly attacked the Ottoman line but suffered devastating casualities

- Shah Abbas went to great lengths for the revitalization of the empire

- He moved the capital to a more central location Isfahan

- Encouraged trade with other lands

- Increased the use of gunpowder weapons

- Sought European assistance against the Ottomans and Portuguese in the Persian Gulf

- After his devastating loss, Ismail slipped away and left his empire

- The Ottomans temporarily occupied his capital of Tabriz

- They lacked the proper resources to destroy the empire completely, but they still badly damaged the empire.

-The two empires remained locked in an everlasting conflict for over two centuries

- With newly strengthened military forces, Shah Abbas led the Safavid to numerous victories

- His campaigns brought most of northwestern Iran, the Caucasus and Mesopotamia under Safavid rule

- He harassed the Ottomans mercilessly in series of wars from 1603 to the end of his reign

The Safavid Empire

By Raehash Shah, Jennifer Baer, Shreya Palacherla

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