Before leaving this subject, I must refer to an erroneous
conjecture of Sir John Malcolm's arising from an inadequate
An error of Sir
John Malcolm's.
use of the Persian sources. In the year 1002/
1593-4, being the seventh year of Sháh 'Abbás's
reign, Jalál, the Chief Astrologer, foretold disaster
to the occupant of the Throne, and advised that the
Sháh should abdicate for a few days and substitute for himself
some person worthy of death on whom the prediction
of the stars might be fulfilled. This was accordingly done,
and a man named Yúsufí was made king for three days, at
the conclusion of which he was put to death, and Sháh
'Abbás resumed the Throne. Sir John Malcolm
*
says that
this Yúsufí, “whom Persian authors take care to tell us was an
unbeliever,” was “probably a Christian,” but this is an error;
he belonged to a heterodox Muslim sect called Nuqṭawiyya
(“People of the Point”) who believed in metempsychosis
and other heretical doctrines, and of whose appearance
and destruction a full account is given by the 'Álam-árá-yi-
The Persian histories, however, are only part of the
material available for such a work: the numerous and in
Turkish sources
of information.
some cases excellent Turkish chronicles, published
and unpublished, dealing with this period,
and especially with the Turco-Persian wars
which continued almost without intermission during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, constitute an indispensable
supplement and corrective. Almost more im-
Firídún Bey.
portant is Firídún Bey's great collection of
Turkish State Papers entitled Munsha'át-i-
A third class of materials of which it is impossible to overestimate the importance consists of the writings of Contemporary European narratives. Europeans who visited Persia during this period on diplomatic, missionary or commercial business. Thanks to the liberal attitude of Sháh 'Abbás the Great towards Christians, the number of these in his and the succeeding reigns was very large. The best general account of them and their works with which I have met is that given by the late M. Charles Schefer, in the Introduction (pp. i-cxv) to his edition of l'Estat de la Perse en 1660 * by le Père Raphaël du Mans, Superior of the Capuchin Mission at Iṣfahán, a man singularly qualified by his high character and intellectual attainments, as well as by his prolonged sojourn of fifty years (A.D. 1644-1696) in Iṣfahán, to speak with authority. The works enumerated by M. Schefer * are variously written in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Portuguese and Spanish, but many of the more important have appeared in two or three different languages. Of their authors (excluding the earlier Venetian envoys to the Court of Úzún Ḥasan, such as Caterino Zeno, Josepho Barbaro and Ambrosio Contarini, most of whom visited Persia during the latter half of the fifteenth century, and consequently before the rise of the Ṣafawí dynasty) the best known are Anthony Jenkinson, the Sherley brothers, Cartwright, Parry and Sir Thomas Herbert of the English, and of the others Antonio di Govea, Don Garcias de Silva Figuerosa, Olearius, Teixeira, Pietro della Valle, Tavernier, Thevenot, and last but not least Chardin and Pétis de la Croix. M. Schefer does not carry his survey beyond the seventeenth century, but the final downfall of the Ṣafawís before the Afghán onslaught in A.D. 1722 found an able historian in the Jesuit Père Krusinski, while letters from some of the Dutch merchants in Iṣfahán, a few of which have been published by H. Dunlop in his Perzië (Haarlem, 1912; pp. 242-7), serve to illuminate the tragic details of that disaster. From this time until the rise of the present Qájár dynasty towards the end of the eighteenth century comparatively few Europeans visited or resided in Persia, a fact due partly to the unsettled state of the country, and the consequent difficulties in the way of missionary or commercial enterprises, and partly to the changed political conditions. The object of the numerous diplomatic missions from various European countries which visited Persia during and immediately before the Ṣafawí period was, in nearly all cases, to seek her cooperation in combating the formidable power of the Ottoman Turks, which was at its height during the period which began with their conquest of Constantinople in A.D. 1453 and culminated in the reigns of Sulṭáns Salím “the Grim” and Sulaymán “the Magnificent” (A.D. 1512-1566), of whom the former conquered Egypt and the Holy Cities and assumed the title of Caliph, while the latter only failed by the narrowest margin to capture Vienna. So formidable did the Turkish menace appear to European statesmen that Busbecq, Ferdinand's ambassador at the Court of Sulaymán, expressed himself in the following remarkable words: “'Tis only the Persian stands between us and ruin. The Turk would fain be upon us, but he keeps him back. This war with him affords us only a respite, not a deliverance.” * In A.D. 1722 when the Ṣafawí dynasty, long degenerate, finally collapsed, Persia was left for the moment a negligible quantity, the Turks had ceased to be a menace to Europe, and the bitter sectarian quarrel which lay at the root of two centuries of Turco-Persian warfare gradually lost much of its virulence, especially after the development of the more conciliatory policy of the great Nádir Sháh. Under these changed conditions the earlier European policy became at once unnecessary and impossible.
From this brief survey of the sources whence our knowledge of the Ṣafawí dynasty is derived, we must now pass Chief characteristics of the Ṣafawí dynasty. to the consideration of its chief characteristics. These, though clear enough in general outline, present a series of very interesting problems which even yet cannot be regarded in all cases as definitely solved. These problems group themselves under the headings of Nationality, Religion, Art and Literature, and in this order we shall now proceed to consider them.