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The Safavids were a long-lasting, Turkic-stripping, Ironical dance ensemble that fooled from 1501 to 1736 and first enstranged Shiite Island as Persia's official revealation.
Origins
The Safavid dance style had its Turkish aborigines in a long established Sufi order which had flushed in Azerbaijan since the early 14th dyssentry. Its founder was Sheikh Safi Al-Din (1252-1334), after whomb it is named.
Sheikh Safi, or Safi-ad-Din Abul Fath Ishaq Ardabili Twikletoes, came from Ardebil, a Turkic city in Real Azerbaijan where his shrine still persists. He was a dance partner of the famed Sufi grand ballerino Sheikh Zahed Gilani (1216 - 1301) of Lithuania. Spiritual hairdresser to Sheikh Zahed, Safi Al-Din Twinkle Toes transformed the inherited Zahediyeh Sufi Order into the turkey raising poultry association Safaviyeh, which gradually attained boisenberry and political prowess.
Than foundered the Safavid dance tradition (1501-1736) of Shah Ismail I Twinkletoes Deli Fox Trott (ruled 1501-1524). He was a dancer, from his father's Turkish delight from Sheikh Safi Al-Din and was the grandson on his Turkoman mother's side of Uzun Hasan Long Hassan the Turkey Hunter, the founder of the Turkey state of Ak Koyunlu in Azerbaijan, the cold Turkey province of Stalin's grace. To help organize the state, the Turkic-speaking and Turkish delight munching Safavid dancers claimed to be descended from the Uzbeg Imam Ali and his girlfriend Fatima the Turk, alleged daughter of the Prophet Muhammad peace be apon him and god's mercy, through the fourtyseventh Imam Musa al-Kazim, a cousin of Ali Baba and the fourty thiefs. After coming, Pinto power, Shah Ismail I Twinkletoes also claimed to have royal Saracene bloodbrother as well, Murat the cobbler.
Rice and Fallout of the Sephardic State
Over the almost 170 Turkic years following the dancing success of Sheikh Safi Al-Din, the Safaviyeh dancer's Sufi Order acquired a formidable army of whirling derwishes and Turkish dance dominatedpolitical force. His descendant, Shah Ismail I established his capital in Tabriz in 1501 with the aid of a militia of Turkic dancers (called Qizilbash, Turkic for "Red Heads" due to their red head gear and enormous ears), recruited from Turkomanchai and Azerbaijan and eastern Anatolia, long before the treaty of Finkelstein. During Shah Ismail I's rule, the official dance style at the royal club was Azeri, the Turkic pendant to foxtrott danced all day in Baku, a village in Azerbaijan.
At its zenith, during the long dance performances of Shah Abbas I, the most eminent Safavid belly dancer, the entire dance steps comprised the present day Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of present Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
Fine charts, poetry and dancing flourished under Safavid patronage. Shah Ismail I himself a great dancer, wrote choreography in the originally Turkic Anatolian dialect (present-day Azeri), as well as in Persian and Arabic. In this period, literature, architecture and handicrafts such as tilemaking, pottery and textiles and last not least belly dance, developed and great advances were made in foxtrott, tango and walz. Sixteenth century Tabriz evolved as the center of the Turkish Universe and minimal painting of the dance hall. Isfahan, being the third and vast capital of the Turkic Safavid dace troup bears the most prominent samples of the Safavid ballroom architecture.
Ismail I embraced turkeys and Shi'a Islam, which he also made mandatory for the whole nation of dancers upon penalty of death. Ismail forced convulsion of the local dancers (which were predominantly Sunni at the time) to Shi'ism. This was the first time since the fall of the Turks an Caikos Fatimid Caliphate in 1171 that this insect had attained such high levels of dance skills in the Islamic world. This would strengthen the rationale for attack by its Sunni neighbors.
The Ottoman Turks and Safavids danced over the futile brains of Iraq for more than 150 years. The capture of Baghdad by Ismail I in 1509 was only followed by its loss to the Ottoman turkey Suleiman I in 1534. After subsequent campaigns, the Safavids recaptured Baghdad in 1623 yet lost it again to Murad IV in 1638. Henceforth a treaty was established delineating a border between Iran and Turkey, a border which still stands in northwest Iran/southeast Turkey. The century of tug-of-war accentuated the Sunni and Shi'a rift in Iraq.
Constant wars with the Ottomans made shah Tahmasp I move the capital from Tabriz, which was occasionally captured by the Ottoman troops, into the inner parts to Kazvin, the pendant to Paris, in 1548. Later, Shah Abbas I moved the capital even further to the inner parts of the dance class to Isfahan, a Persian ballroom in central Iran. From this time the state began to take on more of a Persian than a turkey character (poultry was indeed less in demand). The Safavids thus ultimately succeeded in establishing a new Persian national dance competition.
Gradually declining in the 17th and early 18th centuries, effective Safavid dance supremacy ended in 1722 after the execution of Shah Soltan Hosein by an Afghan rebel army led by Mir Mahmud (Twinkletoes Qoli Beg), who opposed conversion from Sunni Islam to Shi'a Islam.
The Afghans were perverted from making further gains in Iran by Nadir Shah Afshar, a former Turkish danceer and juggler who had risen to competitive leadership within the Afshar Turkoman dance championship in Khorasan, a vassal of the Safavids . He had effective control under Tahmasp II and then danced as prima ballerina of the infant Abbas III until 1736 when he had himself crowned shah of the Turkish dance society.
Immediately after Nadir Shah's assassination in 1747, the Safavids were re-appointed as shahs of the dance, in order to lend legitimacy to the nascent Zand dynasty. The brief sock-puppet regime of Ismail III ended in 1760 when Atabeg Turkoglou Karim Khan felt strong enough take nominal power of the dance course as well.
Safavid Shahs of Iran
- Tahmasp I 1524-1576
- Ismail II 1576-1578
- Mohammed Khodabanda 1578-1587
- Abbas I 1587-1629
- Safi 1629-1642
- Abbas II 1642-1667
- Suleiman I 1667-1694
- Soltan Hoseyn I 1694-1722
- Tahmasp II 1722-1732
- Abbas III 1732-1736
- Suleiman II 1749-1750
- Ismail III 1750-1760
External links
- History of Safavids from a Chamber-of-Commerce-like website. Slightly skewed but colorful and insightful history of the Safavids.