Literary History of Persia

With the Georgians also the Persians were constantly at war during this period, to wit in 947/1540-1, 950/1543-4, 958/1551, 961/1554, 963/1556, 968/1560-1, and 976/1568-9. These wars were also waged with great ferocity, and it is worth noting that contemporary Persian historians constantly speak of the Christian inhabitants of Georgia as “guebres” (gabrán, a term properly applicable only to the Zoroastrians), as in the following verse describing the first of these campaigns:

“In that stony wilderness those beasts had established themselves, the native land of man-stealing guebres.”
In this campaign, as the Aḥsanu’t-Tawáríkh informs us, such of the Georgians as consented to embrace Islám were spared, but those who refused were put to the sword; and similarly, in speaking of the campaign of 958/1551 the same history says:
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“The victorious champions encompassed the lands of the sinful unbelievers, lowlands and highlands, and every mountain and ridge whither that misguided one [their ruler] had fled was levelled with the plain by the trampling of the [Persian] warriors. Not one who drew breath of those polytheists saved his soul alive from the circle of wrath and vengeance of ‘and God encompasseth the unbelievers²¹⁰,’ and, by lawful heritage, the wives, families and property of the slain passed to their slayers.”
Besides these greater wars, there were minor operations against the more or less independent rulers of Gílán, and the last representatives of the ancient but expiring dynasty of the Shírwánsháhs, who boasted descent from the great Núshírwán. Although the last of this line, Sháhrukh ibn Sulṭán Farrukh ibn Shaykh-Sháh ibn Farrukh-Yasár, was put to death by Ṭahmásp in 946/1539-40, nine years later we read of a scion of the house named Burhán in conflict with Isma‘íl Mírzá. In Gílán, Khán Aḥmad, the eleventh ruler of a petty dynasty which had ruled for two hundred and five years, was defeated and interned in the Castle of Qahqaha in 975/1567-8. In 981/1573-4 Tabríz was terrorized by a gang of roughs who were not reduced to order and obedience until a hundred and fifty of them had been put to death. Barbarous punishments were frequent. Muẓaffar Sulṭán, governor of Rasht, was for an act of treason paraded through the streets of Tabriz, decor-
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ated for the occasion, amidst the mockery of the rabble, and burned to death in an iron cage, suspended under which in a particularly cruel and humiliating fashion Amír Sa‘du’d-Dín ‘Ináyatu’lláh Khúzání simultaneously suffered the same fate. Khwája Kalán Ghúriyání, a fanatical Sunní who had gone out to welcome ‘Ubayd Khán the Uzbek and was accused of speaking slightingly of the Sháh, was skinned in the market-place of Herát and the stuffed skin exhibited on a pole. Ruknu’d-Dín Mas‘úd of Kázarún, a most learned man and skilful physician, incurred the Sháh’s displeasure and was burned to death. Muḥammad Ṣáliḥ, a liberal patron of poets, in whose honour Ḥayratí composed a panegyric, had his mouth sewn up because he was alleged to have spoken disrespectfully of the King, and was then placed in a large jar which was afterwards thrown to the ground from the top of a minaret.

According to the Aḥsanu’t-Tawáríkh, Sháh Ṭahmásp was in his youth much interested in calligraphy and painting; he also liked riding on Egyptian asses, which consequently became fashionable, and were adorned with golden trappings and gold-embroidered saddle-cloths. Alluding to these idiosyncrasies a ribald poet with the extraordinary nom de guerre of Búqu’l-‘Íshq (“the Trumpet of Love”) lampooned him in this verse:

“The scribe, the painter, the Qazwíní and the ass

Obtained easy promotion without trouble.”

He made a great ostentation of piety, “regarding most things as unclean, and often spitting out his half-eaten food into the water or the fire,” in view of which it is satisfactory to know that “he would not eat in company.” He was also punctilious about such matters as cutting his nails, and would spend the day after this operation in the bath.
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Ṭahmásp died on Tuesday, Safar 15, 984 (May 14, 1576) at the age of sixty-four after a reign of fifty-three years and a half, the longest reign, according to the Aḥsanu’t-Tawáríkh, of any Muhammadan sovereign except the Fáṭimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir bi’lláh²¹¹. Eleven of his sons are enumerated in the history just cited, of whom nine at least survived him. The eldest, Muḥammad Khudá-banda, who was about forty-five years of age, though he succeeded to the throne a year later, renounced it on his father’s death on account of his partial blindness, this infirmity, whether natural or deliberately inflicted, being regarded in the East, and especially in Persia, as an absolute disqualification for the exercise of regal functions²¹². His younger brother Ḥaydar, taking advantage of the absence from the capital of his brothers, of whom Isma‘íl was imprisoned in the Castle of Qahqaha, while the others were for the most part resident in distant provinces, endeavoured to seize the throne, but was murdered in the women’s apartments, where he had taken refuge, by the partisans of his brother Isma‘íl, who was proclaimed king in the principal mosque of Qazwín nine days after his father’s death.

Isma‘íl’s reign was short but sanguinary, and in his drastic methods of dealing with possible competitors for the Crown he rivalled the most ruthless of the Ottoman Sulṭáns. He first put to death his two brothers Sulaymán and Muṣṭafá; then, after providing an elaborate funeral for his father at Mashhad and a gorgeous coronation for himself at Qazwín, in which his remaining brothers occupied their due positions, he resumed his fratricidal activities. On Sunday the sixth of Dhu’l-Ḥijja, A.H. 984 (Feb. 24, 1577), he put to death the six following princes: Sulṭán Ibráhím Mírzá, poet, artist, musician and calligrapher;

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his nephew Muḥammad Ḥusayn Mírzá, a lad of eighteen, who had already been deprived of his eyesight; Sulṭán Maḥmúd Mírzá; his son Muḥammad Báqir Mírzá, a child of two; Imám-qulí Mírzá, and Sulṭán Aḥmad Mírzá. He next turned his attention to those princes who were resident in outlying provinces, such as Badí‘u’z-Zamán Mírzá and his little son Bahrám Mírzá in Khurásán, Sulṭán ‘Ali Mírzá in Ganja, and Sulṭán Ḥasan Mírzá in Ṭihrán, all of whom he destroyed. Only by a most wonderful chance, accounted by his biographer Iskandar Munshí²¹³ as a miraculous intervention of Providence, did the little Prince ‘Abbás Mírzá, destined to become the greatest of Persia’s modern rulers, escape his uncle’s malevolence. The blood-thirsty Isma‘íl had actually sent ‘Ali-qulí Khán Shámlú to Herát, of which ‘Abbás Mírzá, though only six years of age²¹⁴, was the nominal governor, to put the young prince to death, but the emissary, whether actuated by pity or superstition, delayed the accomplishment of his cruel task till the sacred month of Ramaḍán should be over, and ere this respite had come to an end a courier arrived bringing the joyful news of Isma‘íl’s death, the manner of which was as discreditable as his life. On the night of Sunday, Ramaḍán 13, A.H. 985 (Nov. 24, 1577), being at the time the worse for drink, he had gone out in search of adventures into the streets and bázárs of the city accompanied by one of his favourites, a confectioner’s son named Ḥasan Beg, and other disreputable companions, and towards dawn had gone to rest in Ḥasan Beg’s house, where he was found dead later in the day. Some suggested that he had been poisoned, or first drugged and afterwards strangled, while others maintained that he had merely taken an overdose of the opium
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wherewith he was wont to assuage the pain of a colic to which he was subject. But his death was so welcome to all that no great trouble seems to have been taken to arrive at the manner of it, and it does not even appear that any punishment was inflicted on Ḥasan Beg, who, indeed, is said to have been also half paralysed when found²¹⁵.

Muḥammad Khudá-banda, in spite of his blindness, was now placed on the throne which he had refused on the death of his father Sháh Ṭahmásp. He was at this time about forty-six years of age²¹⁶ and was resident at Shíráz, having been replaced in his former government of Herát by his little son Prince ‘Abbás Mírzá, whose narrow escape from death has just been described. The new king at once set out for Qazwín, and amongst those who welcomed him at Qum was Ḥasan Beg Rúmlú, the author of the Aḥsanu’t-Tawáríkh, which important but unpublished history was concluded in this very year and contains the most authoritative account of the events above narrated. That this account is in places confused and must be supplemented by later histories like the Khuld-i-Barín and Ta’ríkh-i-‘Álam-árá-yi-‘Abbásí arises from the fact that the author, for his own personal safety, had to walk with great caution amidst the rapidly-changing circumstances of these perilous times.

At Qazwín, Muḥammad Khudá-banda received the homage of Sulaymán Páshá, a great-grandson of Abú Sa‘íd the Tímúrid, who greeted him with the following verses:

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“O King, thy gate is the qibla of the Kings of the world,

Heaven is subjugated and earth surrendered to thee:

In thy reign the thread of royalty hath become single²¹⁷,

But, Praise be to God, though single it is strong!”

The able, ambitious and beautiful Princess Parí-Khán Khánum, Ṭahmásp Sháh’s favourite daughter²¹⁸ by a Circassian wife, who had played a prominent part in the troubles succeeding his death, and aspired to rule in fact if not in name, was put to death at Muḥammad Khudá-banda’s command by Khalíl Khán Afshár, together with her mother’s brother Shamkhál Khán, and Sháh Shujá‘, the infant son of the late King Isma‘íl. In consequence of these pitiless slaughters the representatives of the Ṣafawí Royal Family were now reduced to Sháh Muḥammad Khudá-banda himself and his four sons, Ḥamza, ‘Abbás, Abú Ṭálib and Ṭahmásp. The first, who is sometimes reckoned amongst the Ṣafawí kings (since he seems for a while to have exercised regal functions during his half-blind father’s life-time), was murdered by a young barber named Khudá-verdí²¹⁹ on the 22nd of Dhu’l-Ḥijja, 994 (Dec. 4, 1586). Abú Ṭálib was thereupon nominated Walí-‘ahd, or Crown Prince, instead of his elder brother ‘Abbás, who was still in Khurásán, but who speedily appeared on the scene with his guardian and tutor Murshid-qulí Khán Ustájlú,
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inflicted condign punishment on those who had prompted the murder of his elder brother Ḥamza, and rendered his two younger brothers harmless by depriving them of their eye-sight and imprisoning them in the Castle of Alamút²²⁰. His father abdicated in his favour after a reign of ten years in Dhu’l-Qa‘da, 995 (October, 1587), and Sháh ‘Abbás ascended the throne to which he was destined to add so great a glory. He and his three brothers were all the sons of one mother, a lady of the Mar‘ashí Sayyids of Mázandarán, who seems to have resembled her sister-in-law Parí-Khán Khánum in her masterful character as well as in her tragic fate, for she, together with her aged mother and many of her kinsfolk and countrymen, was murdered by some of the Qizil-básh nobles who objected to her autocratic methods and dominating influence over her irresolute and peace-loving husband, being of opinion that —

“No luck remains in that household where the hen crows like a cock²²¹.”
Muḥammad Khudá-banda was born in 938/1531-2, was forty-six years of age when his father Sháh Ṭahmásp died in 984/1576-7, reigned ten years after the death of his brother Isma‘íl, survived his abdication eight or nine years, and died in 1004/1595-6. His character is thus described by Riḍá-qulí Khán in his Supplement to the Rawḍatu’ṣ-Ṣafá: “He had some knowledge of all the current sciences, and was incomparable in understanding and judgement, virtue and discernment, bounty and generosity, and expression and eloquence. Being a ‘servant of God’ (Khudá-banda) he showed an excessive
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clemency in matters of administration, war, anger and punishment, and, so far as possible, would not consent to the death of any one. Though he struck the first blow at Khudá-verdí the barber²²², this was only according to the enactment of the Holy Law. In consequence of his weak eyesight he seldom gave public audience, and, while he tarried in the women’s apartments, the Sayyida [his wife] gave effect to his commands, and, in order more effectively to control affairs, herself sealed the documents. … In short, he was a king with the qualities of a religious mendicant, or a religious mendicant endowed with regal pomp (Pádisháhí darwísh-khiṣál, yá darwíshí pádisháh-jalál).”

His reign, though short, was troubled not only by the domestic tragedies indicated above, but by the Turks, Uzbeks, Crimean Tartars, Georgians and other external foes, who, encouraged by the spectacle of those internecine struggles which succeeded the death of Ṭahmásp, sought to profit by the distractions of Persia.

Sháh ‘Abbás I, commonly and justly called “the Great,” was only sixteen or seventeen years of age when he ascended the throne in 996/1588²²³, and died in Jumádá i, 1038/Jan. 1629 at the age of 60 after a reign of 43 lunar years, in which, by general agreement, Persia reached the highest degree of power, prosperity and splendour ever attained by her in modern times. His position at first was, however, fraught with dangers and difficulties. Not only was his kingdom threatened, as usual, by the Ottoman Turks on the west and the Uzbeks on the east, but many of the provinces were in revolt and the country was distracted by the rivalries and ambitions of the great Qizil-básh
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nobles of different tribes, in the hands of two of whom, Murshid-qulí Khán and ‘Alí-qulí Khán, the young King seemed at first to be a mere puppet. When the former accompanied him to Qazwín to place him on the throne, the latter was left in Khurásán to bear the brunt of the Uzbek attack, to which, after a defence of nine months, he fell a victim. ‘Abbás, suspecting Murshid-qulí Khán of deliberately withholding help from his rival, caused him to be murdered one night in camp at Sháhrúd, thus freeing himself from an irksome tutelage, and becoming a sovereign ruler in fact as well as in name. Realizing that he could not possibly wage successful war simultaneously with the Turks and the Uzbeks, he determined, with far-sighted prudence, to make peace, even on unfavourable terms, with the former in order to check the encroachments of the latter and to devise some mechanism to control the disorderly rivalries of the Qizil-básh nobles, whereby his authority and the efficiency of his military force were paralysed. The terms of the treaty with Turkey included the surrender of the towns and districts in Ádharbáyján and Georgia conquered by the Ottoman troops during a war which had lasted more than twelve years (985-998/1577-1590), such as Tabríz, Ganja, Qárs, Nakhjuwán, Shakí, Shamákhí and Tiflís, as well as part of Luristán; the abandonment of the cursing of the first three Caliphs, Abú Bakr, ‘Umar and ‘Uthmán; and the sending as a hostage to Constantinople of Sháh ‘Abbás’s nephew Ḥaydar Mírzá, who departed with the Turkish general Farhád Páshá for the Ottoman capital, where he died two years later.

Sháh ‘Abbás next proceeded to subdue Shíráz, Kirmán, Gílán and Khurram-ábád in Luristán, and to inflict condign punishment on Ya‘qúb Khán Dhu’l-Qadar and other rebels. Meanwhile ‘Abdu’l-Mú’min Khán and his Uzbeks were again ravaging Khurásán, and the

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Sháh, advancing to attack them, was stricken down by fever at Ṭihrán. While he lay sick and unable to move, the holy city of Mashhad was taken and sacked by the savage Uzbeks and many of its inhabitants slain. Sabzawár²²⁴ suffered a similar fate in 1002/1593-4; but three or four years later²²⁵ ‘Abdu’lláh Khán, the Uzbek sovereign, died, and his son, the above-mentioned ‘Abdu’l-Mú’min Khán, was killed by his own people. It was at this juncture (April, 1598) that Sháh ‘Abbás was at length able to attack the Uzbeks in force and drive them out of Khurásán, which now at length enjoyed a period of peace and tranquillity. On his return from this victorious campaign to Qazwín in the autumn of the same year, he found awaiting him there those celebrated English soldiers of fortune Sir Anthony and Sir Robert Sherley, whose romantic adventures are fully described in several excellent monographs²²⁶. These, who were accompanied by some dozen English attendants, including at least one cannon-founder, aided him greatly in the reconstruction of his army and especially in providing it with artillery, the lack of which had hitherto so severely handicapped the Persians in their wars with the Turks, so that, as it is quaintly phrased in Purchas’s Pilgrims, “the mighty Ottoman, terror of the Christian world, quaketh of a Sherley fever, and gives hopes of approaching fates. The prevailing Persian hath learned Sherleian arts of war; and he which before knew not the
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use of ordnance, hath now five hundred pieces of brass and sixty thousand musqueteers; so that they, which at hand with the sword were before dreadful to the Turks, now also, in remoter blows and sulphurean arts, are grown terrible.” The discipline of the Persian army had also been improved by the elimination of the more ambitious and disobedient Qizil-básh nobles; the creation of a composite tribal force known as Sháh-seven (“King-lovers”), united not by tribal allegiance but by personal devotion to the King; and the formation of a regular infantry comparable in some degree to the Turkish Janissaries.

A year or two later circumstances were favourable for the long-projected attempt to recover the provinces wrested from Persia by the Turks during the interregnum which succeeded the death of Ṭahmásp. The reign of the feeble Muḥammad III was approaching its end, and Turkey was weakened by a prolonged war with Austria and by the so-called Jalálí²²⁷ revolt in Asia Minor when Sháh ‘Abbás opened his campaign in 1010/1601-2. Tabríz was retaken “with cannon, an engine of long-time by the Persians scorned as not beseeming valiant men,” in 1012/1603-4, and two years later the celebrated Turkish general Chighála-záda Sinán Páshá (“Cicala”) was defeated near Salmás and compelled to retreat to Ván and Diyár Bakr, where he died of chagrin. Baghdád and Shírwán were recaptured by the Persians about the same time, but the former changed hands more than once during the reign of Sháh ‘Abbás, and the occasion of its recapture from the Turks in A.D. 1625 gave rise to an

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interchange of verses between Ḥáfiẓ Páshá and Sulṭán Murád IV which has attained a certain celebrity in Turkish literary history²²⁸.

No coherent and critical account of these wars between the Persians on the one hand and the Turks, Uzbeks and Georgians on the other has yet, so far as I know, been written, but the materials are ample, should any historian acquainted with Persian and Turkish desire to undertake the task. The enormous preponderance of the military element in such contemporary chronicles as the Ta’ríkh-i-‘Álam-árá-yi-‘Abbásí makes them very dull and arduous reading to anyone not specially interested in military matters; even from the point of view of military history they are vitiated by overwhelming masses of trivial details and the absence of any breadth of view or clearness of outline. Many matters on which we should most desire information are completely ignored, and it is only here and there incidentally that we find passages throwing light on the religious and social conditions of the time. Of the recapture of the Island of Hurmuz in the Persian Gulf from the Portuguese in March, 1622, by a combined Anglo-Persian force we have naturally very detailed contemporary English accounts.

Allusion has already been made in the introductory chapter²²⁹ to the splendour and prosperity of Iṣfahán under Sháh ‘Abbás, and to the number of foreigners, diplomatists, merchants and missionaries, which his tolerant attitude towards non-Muslims brought thither. These and other similar matters are very fully discussed in the first volume of the great monograph on his reign entitled Ta’ríkh-i-‘Álam-árá-yi-‘Abbásí, half of which consists of an Introduction (Muqaddama) comprising
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twelve Discourses (Maqála). The first of these, dealing with his ancestors and predecessors, is much the longest, and in my manuscript occupies about two hundred pages; the others, though much shorter, often occupying only a page or two, are more original, and deal with such matters as the religious devotion of Sháh ‘Abbás; his wise judgement and wide knowledge; his worthiness to be regarded as a Ṣáḥib-Qirán, or “Lord of a fortunate Conjunction”; his miraculous preservation on several occasions from imminent peril; his wise administration and care for public security; his inflexible severity; his pious foundations and charitable bequests; his wars and victories; his birth and childhood; and an account of the most eminent nobles, divines, ministers, physicians, calligraphers, painters, illuminators, poets and minstrels of his reign. Speaking of his severity (Maqála vi) the author, Iskandar Munshí, says that no one dared to delay one moment in the execution of any order given him by the King: “for instance, should he command a father to kill his son, the sentence would be carried out immediately, even as the decree of destiny; or should the father, moved by parental tenderness, make any delay, the command would be reversed; and should the son then temporize, another would slay both. By such awful severity the execution of his commands attained the supreme degree of efficiency, and none dared hesitate for an instant in the fulfilment of the sentence inevitable as fate.” He also compelled his officers, on pain of death, to be present at all executions; held each provincial-governor and local magistrate responsible for the security of the roads in his district; and punished falsehood with such severity that it was generally believed that if anyone ventured to lie to him, he was informed of it from the Spirit World. Yet at other times he would be very friendly and unassuming in his intercourse with his
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courtiers and attendants, careful of their rights and just claims, and ready to overlook accidental and involuntary shortcomings. Though not averse from the banquet and the wine-bout, he was greatly concerned to be correctly informed as to the circumstances of the neighbouring kings and countries, and devoted much attention to the development of his Intelligence Department. He was also something of a linguist, and not only appreciated but occasionally composed poetry.

Amongst the towns and districts which benefited most from his munificence were, besides his capital Iṣfahán, Mashhad and its holy shrine of the eighth Imám ‘Ali Riḍá, which, as we have seen, he rescued from the savage and fanatical Uzbeks and raised to a position of the greatest glory and honour; Ardabíl, the original home of his family; Qazwín, the earlier capital of the Ṣafawís; Káshán, near which he constructed the celebrated dam known as the Band-i-Quhrúd²³⁰; Astarábád; Tabriz; Hamadán; and the province of Mázandarán, one of his favourite resorts, which he adorned with several splendid palaces and the great causeway extending from Astarábád to Ashraf, of which full particulars are given in Lord Curzon’s great work on Persia²³¹. As regards his conquests, his armies reached Merv, Nisá, Abíward, Andakhúd and even Balkh in the north-east, and Nakhjuwán, Erivan, Ganja, Tiflís, Darband and Bákú in the north-west.