New Foreign Policy of Safavid Persia: Shah Abbas, the Monarch and His Shrewdness

By 1601 when Shah 'Abbas resumed the war with the Ottoman Empire a significant change had occurred in the character of the Iranian state. The state had been unified in part by the Shia creed, which was relentlessly espoused by Shah Ism ail and his successors. This (act had made Iran a basically theocratic state. But by the time of Shah 'Abbas this characteristic had undergone a significant change. Secular monarchical absolutism rather than Shiism was the dominant feature of the state. The Shil creed was still the official religion, but it was overshadowed by the secular absolutism of the monarch. Allegiance of subjects to monarch no longer derived primarily from the latter's religious standing. The Shah was feared and the millennial institution of the monarchy respected. This change in the internal setting influenced the foreign policy of Iran. In the long era of intermittent and inconclusive wars with Turkey the predecessors of Shah 'Abbas had lost vast territories. This had occurred particularly since the death of the founder of the Safavi dynasty in 1524. By the time Shah 'Abbas took power Turkey had conquered from Iran at least “one hundred and fifty leagues in length from South to North, reckoning from Tauris to the extremities of the Kingdom of Caket, and as much more in breadth, from the Western Coast of the Caspian to the Black Sea.” Upon his accession to the throne, the Shah made the restoration of these territories the fundamental objective of his policy toward Turkey. Something similar to the principle of territorial sovereignty thus overshadowed sectarian animosity. In fact, the Shah concluded a significant “peace" with Turkey in 1590, in which he pledged that Iran would abandon the cursing of “the first three Caliphs,” a practice that had come to symbolize Shil antagonism toward the Sunni Ottoman Empire. This concession to Turkey as well as the surrender of vast territories to the Porte was a tactical device designed to buy temporary peace with Turkey in the west in order to check the encroachments of the Uzbeks in the east. When the Shah resumed war with Turkey in 1601, restoration of Iranian territories was his principal objective (Source: the Foreign Policy of Iran).