What was needed there above all was astute political decisions — in the first place peace with the Ottomans, which could not have been easy for the shah to accept. But since he had no hope of defeating them as long as several provinces were in revolt and the Uzbeks were occupying Khurasan, this was the only means open to him of securing a free hand to deal with his other, even more pressing problems.
Ottoman troops who had already invaded large areas of Persia in the reign of Muhammad Khudabanda — parts of Azarbaljan along with Tabriz, parts of Georgia and Qarabagh, the city of Erivan, Shirvan and Khuzistan — extended their conquest of Persian territory still further after the accession of the new shah. Baghdad was lost to them in 995/1587 and shortly afterwards they took Ganja. Negotiations with the Porte led to the Peace of Istanbul on 21 March 15 90. This put an end to twelve years of hostilities between the Ottomans and the Safavids. The conditions imposed on the shah were unusually harsh. They included the loss of Azarbaljan and Qarabagh together with Ganja, • of Shirvan and Daghistan, of the Safavid possessions in Georgia, of parts of Kurdistan and Luristan, of Baghdad and Mesopotamia.
Although Ardabil, the seat of the Safavid order, remained in Persian hands, the old capital of Tabriz, where Shah Isma'Il I had founded his empire, had to be relinquished. A clause which decreed that the Persians should desist from anathematising the Orthodox Caliphs — a practice instigated by the founder of the empire - added a particularly humiliating note to the peace treaty, for it involved the original hallmark, as it were, of the Safavid state. The peace which was bought at such a price gave the shah a free hand to solve urgent internal problems and to confront his foreign enemies in the east. (We shall discuss these measures later.) Yet the fundamentally unacceptable terms militated against a final peace settlement, and relations with the Ottomans were to occupy 'Abbas for the rest of his life.
To begin with, however, he turned his attention to the Uzbeks, who had been occupying Khurasan for the past ten years. Disputes concerning the succession in Transoxiana favoured his undertaking, and in 1007/1598-9 he reconquered Herat and Mashhad, also extending his control to include Balkh, Marv and Astarabad. But when, two years later, BaqI Muhammad Khan, the new ruler of Transoxiana, reoccupied Balkh, the Safavid troops found they were no match for him and were finally not only forced to withdraw, but lost the greater part of their new artillery in the process (1011/1602-3). That, for the moment, was the end of the Safavid-Uzbek conflict. In spite of their eventual losses, the Persians had gained from it by the reconquest of western Khurasan, the area lying to the north of it and bordering the Turkmen desert and including Marv and Nasa, and eastern Khurasan, including Herat, Sabzavar and Farah. Later — in 1031/1622 — they also won back Qandahar, which the Mughal emperor Akbar had wrested from the Safavids in 1003/1594, when 'Abbas had been in no position to put up an effective defence.
With the successes in the east the danger of a war on two fronts was checked, so that even by 1012/1603—4 tn e shah was able to risk a confrontation with the Ottomans. He now reconquered Azarbaljan, Nakhchivan and Erivan. The Turkish supreme commander Chighalezade Pasha, preparing to strike back, suffered a crushing defeat at Tabriz. Although a new peace agreement was drawn up in 1612 at Istanbul which re-established the old Turkish — Persian frontier, the sultan tried once again a few years later, albeit in vain, to recover control of the ceded Transcaucasian and Persian conquests by means of another military expedition. A Safavid campaign against Mesopotamia in 1033/1623-4 re-established Persian control over the Kurdish territories of Daquq, Kirkiik and Shahrazur, Karbala and Najaf, and in addition over Baghdad, though in this case only for fifteen years; a further result was the occupation of Diyarbakr.
These had been preceded by further extensions of territory: in 1010/ 1601—2 the island of Bahrain had been annexed, and in 1016/1607-8 Shlrvan had been reconquered. A series of campaigns brought extensive areas of Georgia into Persian hands. However, 'Abbas was not able to subdue Kakhetia, and was in fact obliged to recognise the government of King Theimuraz I. In 1031/1622 he succeeded - though only with the help of the English - in driving the Portuguese out of Hurmuz.
Shah Abbas I: Challenges and Solutions
