The Rise of Science in Islam and the West by John W. Livingston

Author:John W. Livingston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Notes

1 Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2002, pp. 11–86 for a detailed chronology of military success and reverses up to the middle of the 17th century.

2 Geographically between the two great Sunni empires, Ottoman and Hindi Moghul, arose a third Muslim power that was Shi’i, the Safavids, centered in Iran. Though Turkish in origin, the Safavid ruler and his tribesmen soon became Iranianized upon conquering the country, as had Arabs, Turks and Mongols before them. Before achieving power over Iran, the Safavid ruler had led a confederation of seven Turkish tribes united in a mystical order of warriors for the faith. They believed their order to have been founded by an early 15th century pious mystic, Safa al-Din, hence the dynastic name Safawi, as pronounced in Arabic, Safavi in Turkish and Persian. The Sufi order had originally been of Sunni persuasion, but to win recruits in the heavily Shi’i region of Turkish Azarbayjan to where the tribes had migrated, a descendent of Safa al-Din switched to Shi’ism, his tribesmen following. To its enemies and outsiders, the Safavid order of Sufis was known as the Kizilbash, Turkish for redhead, because of the towering red conical headgear that members wore, crowned with 12 tassels symbolizing the 12 Shi’i imams.

The seven Turkish tribes of the Safavids were quickly absorbed and Iranianized. Iran in whole or in part, had been ruled by a dozen or more Sunni and Shi’i dynasts since the 10th century, but none left a trace as deep and indelible as the one made by the Safavid dynasty. In 1501, a year as decisive in Iranian and Muslim history as it has been divisive, the Safavid leader Ismail, a descendant of Safa al-Din and chieftain of the seven tribes, declared himself Shah and his dawlah Shi’i. Henceforth, Iran’s religion would be the cult of betrayal, martyrdom, expiation, sorrow, suffering, persecution and, ultimately, triumph when the Hidden Imam would reveal himself and announce the end of time and the wicked would be punished for their persecution and denial of the family of Ali and his descendants through Hasan and Husayn. Unlike earlier Shi’i dynasties, of which there were many in Muslim history, the Safavids ruthlessly forced the Iranian populace to convert, persecuting, executing or driving out those who refused. Many Shi’i dynasties had ruled in lands where the large majority of the population was Sunni, such as the Fatimids in Egypt and Palestine, but the rulers left the populace to their religion and in general made no changes that affected the populace. Until the advent of the Safavids, a state policy of forced conversion and expulsion had never occurred in Islam. By ironic coincidence, when it did occur, the Christian rulers in newly unified Spain were at the time doing the same thing, just as brutally, to Muslims and Jews – a less savory instance of historical parallelism in the familial pattern of Muslim and Western civilizations.

3 Sevmek, to love; Seven, he who loves or lover.

4 Dan Diner, Lost in the Sacred: Why the Muslim World Stood Still, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2009, pp.

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