The army Ismail commanded at the start of his campaign of conquest was the prototype for later Safavid military forces. A tribal confederation in which subordinate units were composed of warriors from Turkman, Kurdish, and other tribes, its cavalrymen were armed with sabers, lances, and bows and manned the main batt alions. Although the Ott omans had used cannon and harquebuses for decades in att acks on the Safavids, the zealous Qizilbash may have seen litt le value in these unwieldy weapons. Cannon of the day were simply iron tubes so heavy that they were suitable only for siege operations or to defend fortifi cations. A harquebus, meanwhile, was merely a “hand cannon” with a wooden butt end held by the soldier, who needed a forked stick or some other object on which to rest the heavy barrel before fi ring. A “professional” corps of units loyal solely to Ismail was recruited from the Qizilbash tribes. During Ismail’s conquest of the lands that make up modern Iran, other diverse elements, such as Persians, Azeris, and Kurds from the conquered territories, joined the Safavid army. The Safavids lacked a navy and had no choice but to accept the initial European intrusion into their territory in 1507 when the Portuguese captured Hormuz Island in the southern Persian Gulf and turned it into a naval base and trading outpost.
The early Safavid state had a predominantly military character. Ismail’s Qizilbash commanders were given provinces to rule and demanded and obtained the highest offi ces in the state, including the two top military posts, the amir al- umara, or commander in chief of the army, and the qurchibashi, or commander of the Qizilbash tribal regiments. In addition to sett ing the tone for governance and establishing themselves as a military elite, the Turkman Qizilbash created a major division within Shah Ismail’s new state. The Qizilbash disdained Persian traditions and did not mix freely with the Persians. They were “men of the sword” and found it dishonorable to be commanded by Persians. The Turkman chiefs derisively and short- sightedly viewed the Persians as being fit only to fill the ranks of the bureaucracy, which the Persians promptly did to their overall advantage. As early as 1507 Ismail became apprehensive about the power of his Qizilbash chiefs, and he soon appointed a Persian to the offi ce of vakil, the highest administrative post in the state.
The Sunni Ottomans saw the establishment of a new state with a militantly Shia ideology on its eastern frontier as a grave challenge. The Ott oman sultan, Bayezid II, initially congratulated Shah Ismail on his victories but advised the young monarch to stop destroying the graves and mosques of Sunni Muslims. Ismail, who was convinced of the righteousness of his cause and was strongly anti- Sunni, ignored the sultan’s warning and continued to spread the Shia faith by the sword. In turn, the Ottomans became greatly concerned about subversion among the Shia Turkman tribes inside Ott oman domains. When Bayezid’s son, Selim, seized the Ottoman throne in 1513 after four years of civil war against his father and brothers, the new sultan took out his wrath over Safavid support of his siblings on the Turkman tribes in the Ottomans’ eastern domains. Selim was a devout Sunni who hated the Shia as much as Ismail despised the Sunni. He saw the Shia Turkman of Anatolia as a potential “fift h column” and deported them to Ottoman lands in Europe in 1514, killing up to forty thousand in the process of securing what would become the rear area of his invasion of Safavid Iran.
Turkish vs. Iranian Elements of Safavid Persia
