“Every day by order of that unbelieving Khán ('Ubayd) five or six individuals were slain for Shí'a proclivities on the information of ignorant persons in the market-place * of Herát. Godless villagers and treacherous townsmen would seize anyone against whom they cherished a grudge and drag him before the judge, asserting that in the time of the ‘Red-heads’ (i.e. the Shí'a Persians) he used to curse Abú Bakr and 'Uthmán; * and on the word of these two ignorant witnesses the judge would pronounce sentence of death on the victim, whom they would then drag to the market-place of Herát and put to death. Through their sinister acts the waves of sorrow and the hosts of mischief attained their culmination, while plunder and looting took place throughout the confines of Khurásán.”

With the Georgians also the Persians were constantly at war during this period, to wit in 947/1540-1, 950/1543-4,

Wars with the Georgians. 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:

“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 unbelievers,’ * 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 Minor wars and disturbances. 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 Barbarous punishments. 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 Tabríz, decorated 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 paint- Ṭahmásp's foibles satirízed. ing; 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:

<text in Arabic script omitted>

“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.

Ṭahmásp died on Tuesday, Ṣafar 15, 984 (May 14, 1576) at the age of sixty-four after a reign of fifty-three years Troubles succeeding the death of Ṭahmásp. and a half, the longest reign, according to the Aḥsanu't-Tawáríkh, of any Muhammadan sovereign except the Fáṭimid Caliph al-Mus-tanṣir bi'lláh. * 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 functions. * 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 Short and sanguinary reign of Isma'íl II. 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; 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 'Alí 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 Munshí * 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 Narrow escape of Prince 'Abbás. had actually sent 'Alí-qulí Khán Shámlú to Herát, of which 'Abbás Mírzá, though only six years of age, * 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 Discreditable end of Isma'íl II. 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 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 found.*