Abbas I of Persia
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Shāh ‘Abbās the Great (or Shāh ‘Abbās I) (Persian: شاه عَباس بُزُرگ) (January 27, 1571 – January 19, 1629) was Shah (king) of Iran, and generally considered the greatest ruler of the Safavid dynasty. He was the third son of Shah Mohammad.[1]

Abbas came to the throne during a troubled time for Iran. Under his weak-willed father, the country was riven with discord between the different factions of the Qizilbash army, who killed Abbas' mother and elder brother.

قتل جيش والده امه واخوه الاكبر وهو سن الثامنة

Meanwhile, Iran's enemies, the Ottoman Empire and the Uzbeks, exploited this political chaos to seize territory for themselves. In 1587, one of the Qizilbash leaders, Murshid Qoli Khan, overthrew Shah Mohammed in a coup and placed the 16-year-old Abbas on the throne. But Abbas was no puppet and soon seized power for himself. He reduced the influence of the Qizilbash in the government and the military and reformed the army, enabling him to fight the Ottomans and Uzbeks and reconquer Iran's lost provinces. He also took back land from the Portuguese and the Mughals. Abbas was a great builder and moved his kingdom's capital from Qazvin to Isfahan. In his later years, the shah became suspicious of his own sons and had them killed or blinded.

Early years

Abbas was born in Herat (now in Afghanistan, then one of the two chief cities of Khorasan) to the royal prince Mohammed Khodabanda and his wife Khayr al-Nisa Begum (known as "Mahd-i Ulya"), the daughter of the governor of Mazandaran province, who claimed descent from the fourth Shi'a Imam Zayn al-Abidin. At the time of his birth, Abbas' grandfather Shah Tahmasp I was ruler of Iran.

Abbas' parents gave him to be nursed by Khani Khan Khanum, the mother of the governor of Herat, Ali Qoli Khan Shamlu. When Abbas was four, Tahmasp sent his father to stay in Shiraz where the climate was better for Mohammed's fragile health. Tradition dictated that at least one prince of the royal blood should reside in Khorasan, so Tahmasp made Abbas nominal governor of the province, despite his young age, and Abbas was left behind in Herat.
In 1578, Abbas' father became Shah of Iran. Abbas' mother soon came to dominate the government, but she had little time for Abbas, preferring to promote the interests of his elder brother Hamza. The queen antagonised leaders of the powerful Qizilbash
army, who plotted against her and strangled her in July, 1579.

Mohammed was a weak ruler who was incapable of preventing Iran's rivals, the Ottoman Empire and the Uzbeks, invading the country or stopping factional feuding among the Qizilbash. The young crown prince Hamza was more promising and led a campaign against the Ottomans, but he was murdered in mysterious circumstances in 1586. Attention now turned to Abbas.[5][6]
At the age of 14, Abbas had come under the power of Murshid Qoli Khan, one of the leaders of the Qizilbash in Khorasan. When a large Uzbek army invaded Khorasan in 1587, Murshid decided the time was right to overthrow the ineffectual Shah Mohammed. He rode to the Safavid capital Qazvin with the young prince and proclaimed him king. Mohammed made no protest against his deposition and handed the royal insignia over to his son on 1 October 1587. Abbas was 16 years old

Absolute monarch
The kingdom Abbas inherited was in a desperate state. The Ottomans had seized vast territories in the west and the north-west (including the major city of Tabriz) and the Uzbeks had overrun half of Khorasan in the north-east. Iran itself was riven by fighting between the various factions of the Qizilbash, who had mocked royal authority by killing the queen in 1579 and the grand vizier in 1583.
First, Abbas settled his score with his mother's killers, executing four of the ringleaders of the plot and exiling three others.[9] His next task was to free himself from the power of the "kingmaker", Murshid Qoli Khan. Murshid made Abbas marry Hamza's widow and a Safavid cousin, and began distributing important government posts among his own friends, gradually confining Abbas to the palace. Meanwhile the Uzbeks continued their conquest of Khorasan. When Abbas heard they were besieging his old friend Ali Qoli Khan Shamlu in Herat he pleaded with Murshid to take action. Fearing a rival, Murshid did nothing until the news came that Herat had fallen and the Uzbeks had slaughtered the entire population. Only then did he set out on campaign to Khorasan. But Abbas planned to avenge the death of Ali Qoli Khan and he suborned four Qizilbash leaders to kill Murshid after a banquet on 23 July 1589. With Murshid gone, Abbas could now rule Iran in his own right.[10][11]
Abbas decided he must re-establish order within Iran before he took on the foreign invaders. To this end he made a humiliating peace treaty with the Ottomans in 1589/90, ceding them the provinces of Azerbaijan, Karabagh, Ganja and Qarajadagh as well as parts of Georgia, Luristan and Kurdistan.[

Family tragedies and death

Of Abbas' five sons, three had survived past childhood, so the Safavid succession seemed secure. He was on good terms with the crown prince, Mohammed Baqir Mirza (born 1587; better known in the West as Safi Mirza). In 1614, however, during a campaign in Georgia, the shah heard rumours that the prince was conspiring against his life with a leading Circassian, Fahrad Beg. Shortly after, Mohammed Baqir broke protocol during a hunt by killing a boar before the shah had chance to put his spear in. This seemed to confirm Abbas’ suspicions and he sunk into melancholy; he no longer trusted any of his three sons. In 1615, he decided he had no choice but to have Mohammed killed. A Circassian named Behbud Beg executed the Shah’s orders and the prince was murdered in a hammam in the city of Resht. The shah almost immediately regretted his action and was plunged into grief.[52]
In 1621, Abbas fell seriously ill. His heir, Mohammed Khodabanda, thought he was on his deathbed and began to celebrate his accession to the throne with his Qizilbash supporters. But the shah recovered and punished his son with blinding, which would disqualify him from ever taking the throne.[53] The blinding was only partially successful and the prince’s followers planned to smuggle him out of the country to safety with the Great Mughal whose aid they would use to overthrow Abbas and install Mohammed on the throne. But the plot was betrayed, the prince’s followers were executed and the prince himself imprisoned in the fortress of Alamut where he would later be murdered by Abbas’ successor, Shah Safi.[54]
Imam Qoli Mirza, the third and last son, now became the crown prince. Abbas groomed him carefully for the throne but, for whatever reason, in 1627, he had him partially blinded and imprisoned in Alamut.[55]
Unexpectedly, Abbas now chose as heir the son of Mohammed Baqir Mirza, Sam Mirza, a cruel and introverted character who was said to loathe his grandfather because of his father’s murder. It was he who in fact did succeed Shah Abbas at the age of seventeen in 1629, taking the name Shah Safi. Abbas’s health was troubled from 1621 onwards. He died at his palace in Mazandaran in 1629 and was buried in Kashan.

Character and legacy

According to Roger Savory: "Shah Abbas I possessed in abundance qualities which entitle him to be styled 'the Great'. He was a brilliant strategist and tactician whose chief characteristic was prudence. He preferred to obtain his ends by diplomacy rather than war, and showed immense patience in pursuing his objectives."[57] In Michael Axworthy's view, Abbas "was a talented administrator and military leader, and a ruthless autocrat. His reign was the outstanding creative period of the Safavid era. But the civil wars and troubles of his childhood (when many of his relatives were murdered) left him with a dark twist of suspicion and brutality at the centre of his personality."[58]
The Cambridge History of Iran rejects the view that the death of Abbas marked the beginning of the decline of the Safavid dynasty as Iran continued to prosper throughout the 17th century, but blames him for the poor statemanship of the later Safavid shahs: "The elimination of royal princes, whether by blinding or immuring them in the harem, their exclusion from the affairs of state and from contact with the leading aristocracy of the empire and the generals, all the abuses of the princes' education, which were nothing new but which became the normal practice with Abbas at the court of Isfahan, effectively put a stop to the training of competent successors, that is to say, efficient princes prepared to meet the demands of ruling as kings."[59]
Abbas gained strong support from the common people. Sources report him spending much of his time among them, personally visiting bazaars and other public places in Isfahan.[60] Short in stature but physically strong until his health declined in his final years, Abbas could go for long periods without needing to sleep or eat and could ride great distances. At the age of 19 Abbas shaved off his beard, keeping only his moustache, thus setting a fashion in Ir